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Thursday, August 25, 2005

We're going to kick David Letterman's ass. Ball State. 2006. Feel the lack of excitement.

The Big Ten basketball schedule was recently released. Hawkeye Hoops has the relevant section of it: a list of the opponents each team plays only once. Michigan draws one of the shorter sticks, missing delicious puffy substances Northwestern and Penn State. (Why does the Big Ten play only 16 conference games? Can't they at least go to 18? Do I really need to see Michigan destroy pushovers like Boston University Oakland IUPUI?)

Blogspotting over heah: The Bemusement Park checks in with a Dabbler's Guide to College Football. Good for you Pac 10 fans out there. Check it out between earthquakes. Sunday Morning Quarterback drops his Big Ten preview. He picks the Hated Buckeyes with an Obviously Flawed Computation System, but he does it with panache, so it's cool. The Subsidiary... I don't even know how to describe this. It's obsessive, insane, beautiful: a theorized fall spent road-tripping across the country, catching games as often as possible, wandering about, watching bratwurst, eating football. Sweet. Eat football. And then there's this from Wannabeleader. Uh. Yeah. And stuff. (HT: Boi From Troy.) And Blah Blah Blah has some lingering concerns he'd like addressed.

O Canada, sometimes I love you. Usually this is during the opening theme of Hockey Night In Canada, but it also pops up when I read things like this:

The lockout-ridden CBC was left without camera technicians, directors, announcers and commentators for the game between the Toronto Argonauts and Edmonton Eskimos.

"We've been monitoring the chat rooms and some of the online feedback around the game and in fact the response has been fairly positive," said MacDonald. "Contrary to what some people have said in the press, a lot of fans said they enjoyed it."
Ratings actually increased. Hopefully network management is getting some "right-sizing" ideas. (HT: FO.)

Speaking of Canada, when you make an uncannily accurate comparison between the Canadian Curling Association and the NCAA, well, you get linked. The Sports Economist has your SWEEP! SWEEP! AVAST YER MATIES SWEEEEEEP action.

Sports (Graphically) Illustrated gets a well-deserved knifing from Michael David Smith, also of Football Outsiders, in the latest issue of The New Republic. Insert a lot of words about the unfortunate direction of sports media that you've heard from me before. I actually stopped reading SI before the ESPN Magazine/tabloid pressure came into being because when I got each issue I realized I was reading about the last 10 pages--you know, the "Inside the NFL/NBA/CFB" stuff--and skipping over 80 or so softball profiles of athletes who I find interesting only in the context of competition. People who are both highly paid sports professionals and, you know, not deathly boring are few and far between, like supermodel neuroscientists. I'm at a loss to explain why it seems to be the focus of an ever-expanding coverage universe that results in things like the "Budweiser Hotseat."Gag me with a spoon, as they say.

Check the comments on FO for more discussion.

The Harris Poll sucks! Okay, this is an interesting article from Dennis Dodd on the 114 voters of the Harris poll and their general unsuitability for the job at hand. Four have already resigned. Three, including Lou Holtz, are gone because of their ties to ESPN, which is apparently against this whole polling business now. The fourth is some dude who lays bricks for a living. No, that's not a joke. His connection with college football: he watches a ton of it. Sounds like he'd do a better job than Terry Bradshaw, but alas, it is not to be.

(HT: Fanblogs)

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