USA Today released their Preseason Coaches Poll today. The poll seems to be consistent with the amount of hype teams are getting in the preseason magazines, circumstantial evidence that this poll is merely a product of SID’s using the magazines as their primary means of “scouting”.
1. Southern California (45) 1,481
2. LSU (4) 1,372
3. Florida (9) 1,278
4. Texas 1,231
5. Michigan (2) 1,218
6. West Virginia 1,205
7. Wisconsin 1,114
8. Oklahoma 1,026
9. Virginia Tech 1,005
10. Ohio State 919
11. Louisville 836
12. California 763
13. Georgia 604
14. Auburn 595
15. Tennessee 583
16. Rutgers 466
17. UCLA 454
18. Penn State 440
19. Nebraska 388
20. Arkansas 360
21. Florida State 301
22. TCU 233
23. Boise State 222
24. Hawaii 214
25. Texas A&M 209
Others receiving votes were:
Boston College 150; Georgia Tech 150; Miami (Fla.) 91; Notre Dame 90; South Carolina 90; Wake Forest 71; Missouri 58; Oregon State 52; Brigham Young 47; Clemson 30; Oregon 30; South Florida 26; Texas Tech 20; Alabama 16; Oklahoma State 15; Southern Mississippi 14; Iowa 12; Kansas State 8; Memphis 5; Houston 4; Arizona 1; Duke 1; Kentucky 1; Washington State 1.
In case you’re wondering how Duke got a vote, Steve Spurrier always votes Duke 25th as a token of appreciation for giving him his first head coaching job…and they do return 19 starters.
While this is an example of an arcane, flawed, and boring preseason ranking list, I’ll take this opportunity to let you know an in-touch, perfect and witty projected postseason ranking list is on the way.
Starting Monday, The Pride and The Pageantry will countdown its Projected Postseason Top 25 with previews of what should be the best teams in college football come January 2008.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
The Links on the Right
Hopefully one of the first things you've noticed on TP&TP after Matthew Stafford's "friend" is the extensive list of links to the right. The goal is to provide one link for each of the 119 Division I Bowl Subdivision Teams. I know by this I will be under representing many programs that are fortunate to have more than one great blog covering them, like USC, Penn State, Ohio State, and Georgia among many. For some programs I had to include message boards, scout.com or rivals.com sites which cover recruiting more so than the actual teams on the field. Each link does represent the most frequently updated, extensively written coverage of their respective college football programs that I could find.
While these blogs provide as much inside references and rah-rah homerism you'd expect. I encourage you to click on them to get inside perspective on any college football team your curious about. Here are some choice picks.
Everyday Should Be Saturday (Florida)- As Florida is the defending national champion on the college football field, EDSBS is regarded as the best in the blogosphere. If you live north of Jacksonville or south of Ocala you may not understand everything you read but their "Fulmer Cup" (a running tally and ranking of schools by off-field incidents) is pure genius.
Burnt Orange Nation (Texas)- Another blog that parallels the success of the team it covers. BON is part of the SBNation.com network which also includes:
Sunday Morning Quarterback- "Papa Bear", the best coverage of college football on the internet.
Roll Bama Roll (Alabama),- Because someone still has to love Nick Saban
The Band is Out on the Field (Cal),- Your source for all of Desean Jackson's YouTube highlights
And the Valley Shook (LSU),- When Les Miles officially goes insane, they'll break it.
Crimson and Cream Machine (Oklahoma),- They thought the Fiesta Bowl sucked.
The 12th Manchild Home of Dennis Franchione's hot seat.
Double T Nation (Texas Tech)- Hoping a defense will show up someday.
Block U (Utah),- Yep, Mid-Majors get represented here too
Provo Pride (BYU),- Discovering the next great 26 year old rookie Quarterback
Rocky Top Talk (Tennessee),- For the record, my <i>least</i> favorite Tennessee play is the bullsh*t pass-interference call against Syracuse in 1998.
Black Shoe Diaries (Penn State), - These guys might help clean Beaver Stadium.
Bruins Nation (UCLA), - Chelsea's favorite college football blog.
I am partial to my brothers on the blogspot server though. Blogspot as you know is what Myspace would be like without any bands or girls with daddy issues, so you can see how these sites have to earn their hits. I will try my best to help them out.
I expect things to get suspiciously better for Arizona State Football in the next coming years. Get on the bandwagon at House of Heat (Arizona State).
Keep up with the Running Back and Sociologist factory that is Auburn University at From the Bleachers (Auburn)
When your sports teams suck and your girls don't put out, you need a sense of humor to get by. Luckily the guys at Bear Meat (Baylor) do.
Boston College may have sold out its alumni in the Northeast by joining the ACC, but they didn't sell out the Eagle in Atlanta (Boston College).
Compared to Tommy Bowden, Danny Ford is God (Clemson).
Even UConn and Florida Atlantic have football blogs on blogspot. Check out Ramblings from the Runway (UConn) and The Edge of College Sports (FAU) to find out what optimistic bullsh*t could possibly be on there.
There is also Fresno State Football Blog (Fresno State), M State Sports Blog (Mississippi State), Jason's OSU Beavers Blog (Oregon State), WSU Football Blog (Washington State), Washington Husky Sports (Washington) and Badger Sports (Wisconsin) but I have no idea what those blogs are about.
If you're part of the 95% of the country who WON'T be getting the Big Ten Network, you can still follow the teams at Illini Talk (Illinois), The Hoosier Report (Indiana), Hawkeye State (Iowa), M Zone (Michigan), The Enlightened Spartan (Michigan State), Lake the Posts (Northwestern), Buckeye Commentary (Ohio State), and Boiled Sports (Purdue).
You may need a degree or student ID from Minnesota and Syracuse to understand the genius in the titles "Paging Jim Shikenjanski" and "Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician" but you don't need either to enjoy the coverage they dedicate to college football's underachieving dome teams. (side note MariusJanulisforThree at TNIAAM… is a gracious supporter of my "work" linking to my old Pizza Parlor site and immediately linking to this site once I started the slow launch on Wednesday, even if you don't know the difference between Dick MacPherson and Don McPherson, give his site a look, its great stuff)
Hope you can forgive me for not cheering for the people at The Warriors Will Throw and their BCS hopes. For if they went 0-12, they still LIVE IN HAWAI'I!
Turtle Waxing celebrates Ralph Friedgen's genius.
World Class Glass laments Ed Orgeron's lack of.
It'll be interesting to read Mizzou Sanity and Double Extra Point as their teams battle for the right to get pasted by a Big 12 South team in the Big 12 championship game.
Pitch Right is updated as often as Navy runs the football and its Midshipmen coverage is beat as often as Navy passes.
Click here to find the Oregon blog Lightning Strikes, for if you type it, you'll get another blog entirely with no great Duck football coverage.
Cock n' Fire patiently waits for South Carolina football to prosper under the Ol' Ball Coach.
Blue Gray Sky (Notre Dame), - Coverage as independent as Notre Dame is.
Trojan Wire is a USC blog that I'm allowed to read at work.
And perhaps the best blog title ever belongs to West Virginia of all people. You have to check out We Must Ignite This Couch
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
The Title
The first thing any blogger does when starting their own blog is try to come up with the wittiest title they can think of. And when I decided to dive into this genre of the blogosphere, I intended to do the same. Several ideas came across my mind.
I haven’t earned enough income to fend off any possible lawsuits so biting attention getting titles like “Keith Jackson’s Liquor Cabinet”, “The Auburn Sociology Scholar”, or “Kirk Herbstreit Gave me Herpes” were too risky to put on the top of this site.
The worst thing you can call any blog is unoriginal so I figured any reader would see through anything named “Every Night Could be Thursday” or “Bright Orange Nation”. While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery this blog isn’t to any level that it would flatter anyone.
So call it safe, hopefully you won’t call it boring, I decided on The Pride and The Pageantry. The Pride is what holds us to our teams. Either through student, alumni or local association we are stuck with our college football teams for life through good times or bad we have no choice but to have Pride in them. Pageantry is a cliché word that describes college football and no other sport. The traditions and rituals that make college football such a constant in my life and yours provide the hook that plays as much of a role in our love for college football as the players on the field whom are ever changing.
So there you have it. The Pride and The Pageantry (or TP&TP for short) and hopefully a blog that will do justice to both.
I haven’t earned enough income to fend off any possible lawsuits so biting attention getting titles like “Keith Jackson’s Liquor Cabinet”, “The Auburn Sociology Scholar”, or “Kirk Herbstreit Gave me Herpes” were too risky to put on the top of this site.
The worst thing you can call any blog is unoriginal so I figured any reader would see through anything named “Every Night Could be Thursday” or “Bright Orange Nation”. While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery this blog isn’t to any level that it would flatter anyone.
So call it safe, hopefully you won’t call it boring, I decided on The Pride and The Pageantry. The Pride is what holds us to our teams. Either through student, alumni or local association we are stuck with our college football teams for life through good times or bad we have no choice but to have Pride in them. Pageantry is a cliché word that describes college football and no other sport. The traditions and rituals that make college football such a constant in my life and yours provide the hook that plays as much of a role in our love for college football as the players on the field whom are ever changing.
So there you have it. The Pride and The Pageantry (or TP&TP for short) and hopefully a blog that will do justice to both.
The Banner
The banner you see on top is my own creation using my very novice Photoshop skills.
From Left to Right:
Ernie Davis, Syracuse's only Heisman Trophy winner wearing the trademark '44' jersey which Syracuse used to give to only an elite group of Running Backs before throwing away the tradition and any kind of recruiting leverage it could have had by retiring the number in 2005. Syracuse is my alma mater and I will write my first team post about SU before focusing on programs in college football which are actually relevant.
Script Ohio, Ohio State's classic ritual of it's "Best Damn Band in the Land" to spell out "Ohio" with a tuba player dotting the i. Ohio State is my brother's alma mater, he invites me once a year to Columbus to watch REAL college football. It is only the school I know of where the band members have a decent chance of getting laid. Traditions like this are part of the "Pageantry" that lures me to college football as much as the game itself.
Florida Quarterback Chris Leak holding the BCS National Championship Trophy, this one hurts my brother and hurts me too but Florida is the king of our mountain going into 2007. The controversial system which the trophy Leak is holding up represents is always on the mind of anyone who covers college football and rightly belongs in the center of everything.
Georgia Quarterback Matthew Stafford holding an Empty Keg as if it WAS the National Championship Trophy, some may take this to represent the difference in goals between the Gators and the Bulldogs. That is unintentional. This mildly controversial picture of Stafford represents the sort of harmless and humorous news that will come on this blog from time to time providing amusement to all fans nationwide.
Ian Johnson taking the Statue of Liberty to Beat Oklahoma, the end to the Greatest College Football Game of All-Time. Yes, I'll say it. Not just for the trick plays and miracle comeback but for what it represented. The endless possibilities that arise every Thursday or Saturday when two teams representing universities get together.
From Left to Right:
Ernie Davis, Syracuse's only Heisman Trophy winner wearing the trademark '44' jersey which Syracuse used to give to only an elite group of Running Backs before throwing away the tradition and any kind of recruiting leverage it could have had by retiring the number in 2005. Syracuse is my alma mater and I will write my first team post about SU before focusing on programs in college football which are actually relevant.
Script Ohio, Ohio State's classic ritual of it's "Best Damn Band in the Land" to spell out "Ohio" with a tuba player dotting the i. Ohio State is my brother's alma mater, he invites me once a year to Columbus to watch REAL college football. It is only the school I know of where the band members have a decent chance of getting laid. Traditions like this are part of the "Pageantry" that lures me to college football as much as the game itself.
Florida Quarterback Chris Leak holding the BCS National Championship Trophy, this one hurts my brother and hurts me too but Florida is the king of our mountain going into 2007. The controversial system which the trophy Leak is holding up represents is always on the mind of anyone who covers college football and rightly belongs in the center of everything.
Georgia Quarterback Matthew Stafford holding an Empty Keg as if it WAS the National Championship Trophy, some may take this to represent the difference in goals between the Gators and the Bulldogs. That is unintentional. This mildly controversial picture of Stafford represents the sort of harmless and humorous news that will come on this blog from time to time providing amusement to all fans nationwide.
Ian Johnson taking the Statue of Liberty to Beat Oklahoma, the end to the Greatest College Football Game of All-Time. Yes, I'll say it. Not just for the trick plays and miracle comeback but for what it represented. The endless possibilities that arise every Thursday or Saturday when two teams representing universities get together.
Welcome!
Welcome to The Pride and The Pageantry!
An all college football, all the time blog.
My mission for this blog is to entertain myself, my friends and hopefully a few others along the way with objective and fun coverage of my favorite sport college football. While I won't be enjoying the access that more "legit" media might, this blog will attempt to cover college football on a national scope and will not be centered around any one particular program intentionally.
My name is Derek. I have written under the names "Pizza Parlor Derek" and "Derek the Draft Dork" in the past.
I am a graduate of Syracuse University, with a job with Bertucci's Corporation in Finance/Accounting which allows my mind to wander and come up with ways to use my greatest asset, a sarcastic wit, to entertain my friends. So far I've only used this talent "professionally" with a cup of coffee with Bar Stool Sports, doing well received NFL Draft previews for their site.
Hope you enjoy this blog! I welcome all feedback at pridepageantry@gmail.com
An all college football, all the time blog.
My mission for this blog is to entertain myself, my friends and hopefully a few others along the way with objective and fun coverage of my favorite sport college football. While I won't be enjoying the access that more "legit" media might, this blog will attempt to cover college football on a national scope and will not be centered around any one particular program intentionally.
My name is Derek. I have written under the names "Pizza Parlor Derek" and "Derek the Draft Dork" in the past.
I am a graduate of Syracuse University, with a job with Bertucci's Corporation in Finance/Accounting which allows my mind to wander and come up with ways to use my greatest asset, a sarcastic wit, to entertain my friends. So far I've only used this talent "professionally" with a cup of coffee with Bar Stool Sports, doing well received NFL Draft previews for their site.
Hope you enjoy this blog! I welcome all feedback at pridepageantry@gmail.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)