Thinking about the top 25

Recently, I applied to join the world-famous BlogPoll, and was accepted for membership in 2008.

Over the next week (the deadline for submission is the 18th), I plan on coming up with my first preseason ballot. It’ll be created from scratch, instead of picking and choosing the best of the preseason coaches poll. And I’m going to detail the reasoning behind my selection process. It’s not likely an experience that I’ll put on my resume if I ever click on that “Bowl Championship Series looking for Assistant V.P. of Shadowy Operations” entry on Craigslist. My general theory of voting is that humans are very biased. When in doubt, I’ll defer to Sagarin, and other uncaring computers that hate the game of football and want to send Oklahoma to the title game again.

Step 1 – Paring the list down

Evaluating all 119 teams would be both time-consuming and rather pointless. As far as Duke football’s reputation has risen of late, even Steve Spurrier didn’t give them a vote this year. I’m going to use a heuristic to speed up my mental search algorithm; intuition. The test is simple – does a team feel like they belong in the top 25? I’ll go with the first snap judgment that comes up, even if it’s that kittens should be microwaved. Boom – hot feline on rye. I’m far from the only person that uses intuition, in lieu of facts, to make points about sports. Although, I’m just using it as a filtering mechanism, and not as a final arbitrary criterion. There’s not a whole lot of interesting content in the rest of this entry.

Read: the following words are probably stupid, uninformed, biased, nonsense and scuttlebutt. It’s mere thinking out loud. I don’t even put ads on this page, so the only reason for you to go any further is if you’re trying to bankrupt WordPress click by click.

Media day aftermath

Media day was held on Saturday, and Schiano named the team captains.

For the offensive, there will be two captains: Seniors QB Mike Teel and WR Tiquan Underwood. And for the defense, it will be four players: DT Pete Tverdov, LB Kevin Malast, S Courtney Greene and CB Jason McCourty. All four are seniors.

A couple quotes are up on SK.com. GS singled out Noonan, Munoz, and Kitchen as standout players. You can also watch the 30-min video for yourself. Schiano also reiterated that there is no stadium-related escape clause in his contract.

The team also held its first scrimmage on Saturday. Early reports on Kordell Young were positive. Afterwards, Fooch from MSG interviewed Tom Luicci.

ESPN’s Bruce Feldman also visited practice.

Mike Teel and Kenny Britt have the NFL in the back of their minds.

Video analysis: Ray Rice

This is my first attempt at this. I may or may not do more during the NFL preseason, and if I do, they’ll probably focus on Rice and Leonard (as they’re time-consuming efforts enough as is). There will be more-detailed analyses during the season, disecting key plays in each week’s game. You can see the play by play and box score data on NFL.com. This is more trying to explain the ‘why’ behind the ‘what happened’.

Picture size is truncated a bit because of this damn wordpress theme. They’re a little bigger if you look at the images directly.

In Rice’s first carry of the game, Marshall Yanda misses his block on Pierre Woods. (Wow, I really should have spellchecking this entry before posting) Gain of one yard.

8/11 Around the Big East

Who will make plays in Storrs this fall? More practice notes.

With Ben Mauk’s final appeal denied, Dustin Grutza will likely start for the Bearcats in 2008. Former TE Connor Barwin has switched to the defensive side of the ball, and is looking sharp.

Louisville’s team this fall will have a local flavor. One of the biggest question marks this year will be the play of Hunter Cantwell.

Over the weekend, Pitt reeled in one of their top recruiting targets. Several heated camp battles are still ongoing, but they won’t have many worries on a deep defensive line.

South Florida is bringing back a lot of experience at WR this year. Matt Grothe is slimming down in hopes of improved mobility. On the other hand, George Selvie is trying to put on weight. USF is up to 26,000 season tickets. Other notes.

Syracuse is still shuffling its depth charts. The Orange received another in a long series of blows when WR Dan Sheeran broke his fibula on Saturday. Sheeran may have been in line to start. As a result, Bruce Williams, who was projected to start at safety, has permanently moved back to offense. They have a very thin roster, and can’t afford many more mishaps.

Bill Stewart is still insisting that West Virginia will pass more in 2008. Brad Starks and Jock Sanders are being tried at different positions on offense