Sorry for neglecting my blog -- I've just had a hard time focusing since my first in-person roller derby experience. My former college friend Bart texted me on Sunday afternoon saying simply, "Roller derby 2nite! Lets carpool!" Well, obviously, I can't turn down an invitation like that, particularly when my wife heard the message and reacted like Sarah Silverman during that song about Matt Damon.
So we carpooled over and saw the Tragic City Rollers at the Funtime Skate Center in Fultondale. And I'm not the least bit ashamed. OK, maybe a little. But the home team did win, I'm almost certain of that.

Anyway, onwards with some long-overdue links.
-- You knew when OTS got bored during the offseason, there'd be a super-long post with all kinds of nuggets you'd either forgotten or never knew coming. He obliges here, with the first in a series of posts about how the athletic department started going downhill. I still don't buy that Stallings was pushed out the door (it makes more sense to me that the old man saw what was coming in '97 and '98 and decided he was too old to rebuild again) but all the factors surrounding the department didn't help matters, either.
-- Here's some news that will delight Maguire: a member of the state legislature is proposing a bill that would allow university students to carry concealed weapons. A number of columnists pointed to a ban on such things as one of the factors in the recent school shootings (of course, the liberal columnists said the opposite, pretty much).
As an aside, I've never bought into the whole "media bias" thing and I know the writer in this case is a college student, but the lead in this story is what feeds this "bias" nonsense. So if the bill passes, everyone will be required to carry a Colt .45 in their backpack? Give me a break.
-- Basketball-related links: Kevin Scarbinsky tells us that, yes, Mark Gottfried will most likely come back for 2009 (hoorah), and Ian Rapaport ponders the great disappearing Alonzo Gee. Whatever. I have simply lost the capacity to care.
-- SMQ checks in with our old friend Dennis Franchione, and the possibility that Texas A&M fans could indict him.

The ballot proposal read: "Shall the Board instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against Dennis Franchione for crimes against our team, up to and including a losing record in Big 12 games, zero South division titles, five losses in six years to Texas Tech, Reggie McNeal's senior year and the entire 2005 secondary, and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities, and shall it be the law of the City of Dime Box that the Dime Box Police, pursuant to the above-mentioned indictments, arrest and detain Dennis Franchione in Dime Box if he is not duly captured, and prosecute or extradite him to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute him, and/or deliver him to hordes of drunken T-Sips?"

I think he's joking. I think.

wlh