2008 CFBAs: Best Non-BCS Blog

The voting is finished and it's time to present this year's College Football Blogger Awards. Where possible, last year's winner, ineligible to win this year, will be presenting the award to this year's winner. Please check in at Rocky Top Talk and EDSBS for a schedule of all the awards to be presented over the next two days.

The next award presentation - for "Best National Blog" - will be around 4 at SMQB

AWARD PRESENTATION: "Best non-BCS Blog"

2007 Nominees

• Hawaii Football Blog
• Temple Football Forever
• The MWC Connection
• The Birddog

2007 WINNERS

2007 RUNNER UP: The Warriors Will Throw

(Before we start it should be noted that this category was incredibly close. The runner up was a point behind the winner, and the fourth-place blog was a mere four points adrift.)

Hawaii was this year's chosen amongst the non-BCS brethren, and though it all ended in tears and broken little island dudes against Georgia, an undefeated romp through the WAC and reaching the BCS is nothing to sniff at. Chronicling it all was the somewhat confusingly named "The Warriors Will Throw (You Off The Pali)", a news-aggregator sort of blog that comprehensively assembled anything related to Colt Brennan & Co for your Hawaii-fan edification. Just click on a random month in the archives, say November, and then be prepared to scroll. Lo, everything written about Hawaii every day in one convenient spot, along with a heap of video. Any team could use something so comprehensive.

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2007 WINNER: Temple Football Forever

A one man-shame factory for any moderately beleaguered school without a dedicated blogger (Michigan State and Arizona, I'm looking at you), TFF is an actual, frequently updated, serious blog about Temple Football and, as such, is a permanent Job Award Nominee until such time as it actually wins the thing. Need ten reasons to attend Temple? Check. Anger about the UConn fiasco? Check. Various other things about Temple? Temple's football team? You know, the one you pick in NCAA so that you don't win a national championship for at least three years? Check.

Here is an award. Long may it last.

2008 CFBAs: Best Big Ten Blog

The voting is finished and it's time to present this year's College Football Blogger Awards. Where possible, last year's winner, ineligible to win this year, will be presenting the award to this year's winner. Please check in at Rocky Top Talk and EDSBS for a schedule of all the awards to be presented over the next two days.

The next award presentation - for "Best SEC Blog" - will be around 2 at EDSBS

AWARD PRESENTATION: "Best Big Ten Blog"

2007 Nominees

• Black Heart, Gold Pants
• Black Shoe Diaries
• The MZone
• Eleven Warrors
• Lake The Posts

2007 WINNERS

2007 RUNNER UP: Black Heart, Gold Pants

(...and associated blogs run by those lunatics before they migrated to SBNation.)

At some point in the fall, Orson asked me if there was anything he had to read that he was not, and I had one crystal-clear answer: Black Heart, Gold Pants. A conglomeration of three or four different Iowa fans who ran sporadically updated but entertaining blogs of their own, BHGP was originally "The Hawkeye Compulsion" before getting noticed and picked up by SBNation, whereupon they became a staple in the Big Ten blogger's diet. They're up for a bunch of other stuff, too, despite being totally unheard of at the year's start, and that's because they put out killer, killer content.

I know BHGP is smarting because they didn't win (again, you Susan Luccis you), but here is balm for their souls:

Feel better.

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2007 WINNER: Black Shoe Diaries

Obama will be heartened to know that the way to win in Big Ten country is to be associated with the color black.

Uh... anyway, Black Shoe Diaries is the most consistent and excellent Penn State blog out there, and with PSU blogs beginning to rival those of Notre Dame, Michigan, and Georgia in terms of sheer quantity that's no mean feat. A testament to BSD's dedication: Mike continues to follow Penn State's basketball team. While this is not technically a college football achievement, anyone even slightly familiar with Penn State basketball can only imagine the dedication put into coverage of Penn State football, motto: "basically as full of white guys but much, much better." Though this site has sparred with BSD in the past, Mike remains one of the true gentlemen of the college football blogosphere and is a deserving recipient of an award.

Here is an award.



No... seriously, this picture of JLeman should be an award.

2008 CFBAs: Best Analysis

The voting is finished and it's time to present this year's College Football Blogger Awards. Where possible, last year's winner, ineligible to win this year, will be presenting the award to this year's winner. Please check in at Rocky Top Talk and EDSBS for a schedule of all the awards to be presented over the next two days.

The next award presentation - for "The Job Award" - will be around 7 at EDSBS

AWARD PRESENTATION: "Best Analysis"

2007 Nominees

• Blue Gray Sky
• Burnt Orange Nation
• Sunday Morning Quarterback
• Saurian Sagacity
• Smart Football
• Statistically Speaking

2007 WINNERS

2007 RUNNER UP: Burnt Orange Nation

BON's great contribution to the wonkier outliers of the college football blogosphere was diarist Horn Brain's devastating, continued expose of Richard Billingsley's ongoing debacle masquerading as a poll, but Peter, et al., also cranked out a daily dose of Texas-specific analysis that makes BON one of the top team-specific anythings out there.

They did not win, no, but there's no shame in losing to...

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2007 WINNER: Sunday Morning Quarterback

Le duh! Let's take a brief gander at SMQ's front page as of right now. It contains:

• A detailed analysis of Boise State's dominance in the WAC vis a vis other intra-conference contenders
• A "we can rebuilt it" analysis of Alabama
• A detailed etymology of the term "single wing" (a guest post from MGoBlog-ite Tyler Sellhorn, but still)
• The Big Ten edition of SMQ's gigantic, perpetual "Stats Relevance Watch"
• An out-of-character but devastating fisk of Mike Freeman, aaaaand
• that video of Michigan's women's basketball coach going loco.

Not included: "Best Recurring Feature" nominee "Life on the Margins," any of SMQ's penetrating insights into what will and what did happen during the season, or his Absurdly Premature, Reasonably Anticipatory, or Frantically Rushed team previews. The only shame is that MGoBlog was not eligible so that SMQ could give this space the thorough beating it deserves. Congratulations, here is an award.

2007 College Football Blogger Awards Presentation: Best Post - Analysis

The voting is finished and it's time to present this year's College Football Blogger Awards. Where possible, last year's winner, ineligible to win this year, will be presenting the award to this year's winner. Please check in at Rocky Top Talk and EDSBS for a schedule of all the awards to be presented over the next two days.

The next award presentation - for "Best Community" - will be noonish at Burnt Orange Nation

AWARD PRESENTATION: "BEST POST OF THE YEAR: Analysis"

2007 Nominees

Fiascotime Post-Mortem, by MGoBlog

Playing the Numbers Game: The BCS Computers, by Burnt Orange Nation diarist, Horn Brain

Requiem for a Triple Option, by Sunday Morning Quarterback

Simple Complexity, by Blue Gray Sky

The Divide Route in the Multiple Smash Concept, by Smart Football

2007: Pythagorean Wins Revisited, by Roll Bama Roll

2007 WINNERS

2007 RUNNER UP: "Requiem for a Triple Option," by Sunday Morning Quarterback

This could have been any of a half-dozen different SMQB posts tackling anything from statistics to the origin of the term "single wing"; I'm probably not spoiling much to tell you that SMQB won the blog version of this award in an epic landslide. As it is, there is another in this category...

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2007 WINNER: "The Divide Route in the Multiple Smash Concept" by Smart Football.

Hey, this is kind of the reason we made jury awards for certain categories. Smart Football is low traffic, posts every month or two, and exists only in the feed readers of wonky football obsessives who would like things explained to them very slowly by trained professionals in an effort to become one with their dork. Smart Football does this with aplomb, and though its posting rate and overall traffic made us pretty sure it wasn't going to win Best Analysis -- these things are usually go with what you know -- each post is a little jewel of clarity.

An excerpt:

I refer here to the "Smash concept" or the "Smash route." Both refer to a two-man combination with the outside receiver on a 6 yard hitch and the inside receiver on a 12 yard corner route. Some coaches and teams go further and actually refer to either the corner route or the hitch route as a "smash" route. Again, "smash" to me is the combination - i.e. the concept - rather than any individual route.




In any event, the quarterback has a progression read: (1) corner, (2) hitch underneath. In his progression read he will "key" the cornerback: If the cornerback sinks back to stop the corner route, throw the hitch; if he comes up for the hitch, throw the corner. The best way to describe this to a QB is that you have a progression read and you "read" your receivers. You simply "progress" from one to two. In doing this though you have to understand what guys you are "keying," as their reactions should determine your progression. A Quarterback must understand defenses and defender reactions, but at the same time there is no telling where those 11 guys on defense will go, and as long as he knows where his receivers are and if the QB and the receivers are all on the same page we can run a successful play. We tell him his general rule is to throw the corner route until they take it away (though by gameplan or defense you can tell him to always throw the hitch until they come up for it).

This is the basic explanation; things get more big-play oriented and complicated as they progress, but Smart Football never wanders off into seriously incomprehensible jargon. By the end you feel like you have a handle on an important facet of beating zone coverage, down to the slight adjustments in each receiver's route, and at no point are you overwhelmed. Clearly explaining a difficult, obscure concept is a terribly hard thing to do, so we give out awards for it. Here is an award.