a Thursday link-fest ... strappin' it on

No, you're not imagining things, folks: it's really here. Football practice does begin today for everyone around the SEC, and that means actual games — tailgating! marching bands! road trips! — aren't far behind. I won't bother to wax poetic about what football season means to us around here, particularly not when BSR has already done a far better job than I ever could. I will, however, provide an overview of what the next few (frustrating) weeks will entail in terms of coverage (and this is no matter which team you follow):

• "(Player X) Happy To be Back After Injury-Plagued 2008"
• "(Team X) Says Last Season Doesn't Mean a Thing"
• "(Coach X) Wants His Team To Be Better" (note: already covered)
• "(Important Player X) Says Something Stupid"
• "(Player You've Never Heard of X) Ready for a Breakout Year"
• "Fans Ready For All These Stories To Stop So They Can Watch Some Actual Games"

We at the DP will do the best we can to cull the best of those stories to try to get you through to Sept. 5. If it helps, here's another great video by bamafanzone.



(That didn't help, did it? OK then, links instead.)

— Nico has pieced together a list of road trips he'd like to see, many of them outside your normal conventional wisdom. I'm a big fan of home-and-homes with teams like that — I say, if we're not going to schedule top-tier non-conference games, we might as well schedule second-tier teams from other large conferences (San Diego St., Maryland, etc). Those seem like more fun than playing UTC and La.-Monroe.
(Whoops. Maybe I should shut up.)
— Some good news on the character front: Javy Arenas has been nominated to the AFCA Good Works Team. How far we've come in a relatively short time. Is this the right time to post the updated version of the "Javy Arenas is a bad man" video? I say yes.



— Mama may have called Sidell Corley, even though his name sounds perfectly suited to LSU. Also on the roster front, coach Saban confirmed four players from '09 aren't coming back. Sunrise, sunset.

— If you're into this sort of thing, here are today's practice notes from The Plains. Hey, was anyone else as shocked — SHOCKED — to read that Auburn's locker room in '08 was a wee bit divided?
— Like most major writers around this time, Tony Barnhart is into the "5 questions" method of banging out entries. Here are his entries on the SEC West and East.
— Two more solid football links: the Gurus look at the BCS automatic qualifiers in the future; and the Coaches Hot Seat Blog complains (rightly) about the USA Today poll.

We have all seen in recent weeks that the Coaches Poll is little more than a poll of sports information directors or other hangers-on in college athletic departments, because anyone with an IQ over room temperature knows that college head football coaches do not have the time that it takes to see teams play from across the country or to decide in a fair an unbiased way where teams should be ranked in a poll. With the fact that the Coaches Poll is an outright fraud, on top of that, here comes USA Today soliciting from the coaches and putting out in a Preseason Poll even before a damn football game has been played. How in the world could the coaches or anyone this side of a time-traveler possibly know where teams should be ranked before a game has been played is way beyond our cognitive abilities, but we are sure that the BCS Boys and BCS Lovers will find some half-assed and incredibly fraudulent way to explain way this absurdity as well.

— One more great reason for football season: to save us all from the frustration that is the Atlanta Braves. The guys at B&B break it all down for us.