It has been a long off season and as we burn through the scorching month of July it still seems as if college football is too far away -- at least for my taste. Sure, there are only a few weeks until fall camp starts, and a scant month and a half before the beginning of the 2012 season, but what about right now? What if I need college football right this moment?
Thankfully, I found that over the last week and a half ESPNU has been counting down the top 25 games of 2011 every morning. This isn't a plug or a subtle ad for the WWL. This is just a helpful tip from one college football obsessive to a bunch of others. Over the past week and a half I've been lucky enough to relive UM's win over OSU, watch Ohio state lose to Nebraska, and watch Wisconsin lost to Ohio State. There have been high flying MAC games (Toledo vs. NIU), bowl games (Stanford vs. Oklahoma State), and games of the century (LSU v. Alabama I).
It was just what I needed to help break the doldrums of summer. Now to complete the whole thing they need to finally get to Michigan vs Notre Dame.
----
A Few Recruiting Notes 7/12 - Head over to Tremendous for a bunch of recruiting info from late last week including some 2014 linemen and a couple of possible 2013 focuses if the top targets for the class fall through.
Michigan football over-under: Will the defensive line's sack total drop? - Kyle Meinke and Nick Baumgardner continue the great Over-Under series previewing MIchigan going into the 2012 season.
Ranking the toughest Big Ten non-conference schedule - Michigan, naturally, comes in at number one because of course. That's the Alabama effect.
Photo Gallery: July Crisler Center Renovation Updates - Check out progress on the Crisler renovations from UMHoops and Michigan Stadium Aerials.
The Only Colors: Michigan State football isn't going away but has to prove it - Chris from The Only Colors is doing a guest spot over at the Freep this season, and it is well worth your time to check out his thoughts on MSU football.
Paternos to conduct own review of Freeh's data
"We are dismayed by, and vehemently disagree with, some of the conclusions and assertions and the process by which they were developed by the Freeh Group," Wick Sollers, the lawyer for the Paterno family, said in a statement Monday. "Mr. Freeh presented his opinions and interpretations as if they were absolute facts. We believe numerous issues in the report, and his commentary, bear further review."
I have one reaction:
Gooble gobble, indeed.
The Mercy Rule: The Worst Idea In Sports
In recent years, ESPN's programming has made a loud, silly, but mostly seamless transition to a doofily hetero-male sports analogue to Entertainment Tonight. This is good in that ESPN lacks the actual sociopathic anti-humanity edges of something like TMZ, but bad insofar as most things on ESPN which are not actual sporting events have played as Tebow-obsessed takes on the ghoulish, chiclet-toothed Pre-Pre-Red Carpet Preview Pre-Shows that choke non-sports television before entertainment award shows—lite bickering and flimsy speculation, and dad-grade japery, familiar faces in pancake makeup mouthing familiar words they don't quite seem to mean. To the extent that the ESPYs pre-show felt different from the programming that would ordinarily have filled this space, it was only insofar as the "Pardon The Interruption" team was pretending to disagree about LeBron James out of doors, in Los Angeles.
David Roth eviscerates the ESPY's