Tuesday Thoughts

Hey Guys - two days in a row with updates, wow I must be getting less busy all of a sudden...or maybe it's just that we're getting close to that magical time of the year - College Football Preview Magazine time!! woo-hoo!!

Not sure what the rest of you do, but I have been committed to one preview magazine for the last 4-5 years...and for my money it blows away everything else. Phil Steele's College Football Preview provides the most detailed teams previews, complete betting information, history, and accurate predictions. I think it comes out on June 9th - grab a copy if you care. I also take a lot of my information from there and use some of his ideas to develop my own set of predictors etc. If you're into the betting side of it, and I think all of us are, this is the one you want.

Anyway, onto the notes from the last few days that I thought were interesting:

Jonathan Crompton, TN QB from last year, is now coming out saying that he was receiving death threats throughout the difficult season in 2008. He never said anything because he just assumed it was part of the gig as the Vols QB. Wow - I wish people in MN took their college football this seriously...maybe not THAT seriously, but definitely cared more than they appear to right now.

Iowa had a pair of brothers on the squad last year Shaun and Shane Prater. Well, these guys have had quite an eventful summer (BTW, isn't it nice to have Hawkeyes in the news all the time and not a single Gopher incident for quite a while?). Shaun was arrested for DUI and made a convincing argument that the bartender must have been sneaking alcohol into his cokes without him knowing...that Iowa education starting to kick in early for this fella. Well, his brother appears to be of lesser or equal intelligence. He had the choice to take a 3-week summer school course and be eligible for next year or transfer out and go to a JUCO. So instead of suiting up for a B10 team he chose Iowa Western to "get his GPA back up". But my favorite quote of all:

“With the party life, football and all kinds of stuff going on, it was kid of hard to cope with,” Prater said. Dude! You're in Iowa City! Besides football, what the hell else could possibly be going on! He went from an honor roll student in HS to flunking out as a Freshman in college. Another great story from Cap. Kirk and his cast of characters. Keep the defections coming Hogeyes!

On the other border - our Becky friends are experiencing some problems with their "devoted" fan base. Season ticket sales are dropping quite a bit, and Bulemia is on a very hot seat right now. I think as true Gopher fans we need to do all we can to keep Big Bret in his chair as Becky's head man, so I am proposing a season ticket buy for anyone that wants to keep the pendulam swinging toward our favor in this series for the next 10 years. I think Alvarez is a sharp guy, and he will likely soon realize the mistake he made and stop the trend dead in its tracks...but until then, let's make sure they continue to get buried farther and farther down in the standings before the new leader takes over.

Now for a little insight on our beloved Gophers - philsteele.com has posted some early charts and figures around some leading indicators for success in 2009...here's how our guys rank out nationally:

OL career starts returning - 8th in nation, 1st in B10
Total experience returning - 28th in nation
% of lettermn returning - 8th in nation
% yards returning - 8th in nation
% tackles returning - 20th in nation

These are all very good indicators that we could be in for an improvement in 2009. We do appear to have the toughest schedule in the league this year, so that might temper enthusiasm a little bit.

I read a quick preview from an AF site about the opener on Sept.12 at TCF - he, of course, is picking the Falcons to spoil our opener, but his reasoning is comical and makes his prediction pretty much worthless. I can't find the exact quotes, but it went something like this:

MN lost a lot of skill position players that will be tought to replace, and their defense also lost lots of playmakers. They will be in a rebuilding year and AF should win.

Hmmmm....the skill players we lost were, um..., Jack Simmons? And defensively we lost Hightower and probably Brock I guess. Yep - this guy is right on - WE HAVE NO CHANCE.

That's all I got.

Anyone catch PJ on Conan last night? I tried, but passed out about half way through the Ferrell interview. Here's the clip if you're a fanatic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHTvoOdC9I8