Given that we've now had Jim Tressel show up on the Biden thread and Inca manifesting the one exception to his hatred of all things Trojan on Music, it's clearly time for a thread.

As always, I only have two words to say on the subject.

Go Bears.

I'm in the precarious position of having to care for the SEC, and worse yet, LSU.

However, LSU's education department started a PBS(Positive-Behavior-Support,not Public Broadcasting)model that they share with every school in the state. They are also leading the way on wetlands restoration.

Then seeing how gridiron sprouts up like weeds through the multitude of cracks, dents, and gaps in streets and pavements throughout the city - then seeing kids wearing uniforms so old and worn that they may have been used in the climactic scene of The Wanderers, and you can see how it's more than a sport.

So Geaux Tigers.

Fear the turtle, people. Fear the turtle.

ursus arctos wrote:

QUOTE:
Given that we've now had Jim Tressel show up on the Biden thread and Inca manifesting the one exception to his hatred of all things Trojan on Music, it's clearly time for a thread.

As always, I only have two words to say on the subject.

Go Bears.

AMEN BROTHER.

Jefe, are you going to attend the Cal game at Bird stadium? I'm booking my hotel room right now...

No. I work most Saturdays, and I've never been to a Maryland game anyway. The only football games I've ever been to are CFL games.

Geaux Tigers!

This is a "rebuilding" season for UCLA. Our O-line is decimated through injuries and bad recruiting (Karl Dorrell, fucking us even after he's been fired), so the O-line is comprised of converted D-line players and even some tight ends. Things certainly don't start out easy, with Tennessee and BYU.

Ignore the crap in the press about UCLA's fans being unrealistic--we know it's going to be hard this year. I'd be happy with 5 wins.

Oh, and I was going to send this to Ursus in a PM, but I know Reed talked a bit about rowing in the Olympics thread, and I'd thought I'd share with all of you how horrible USC is. Yes, the source is biased, but the gist of the story comes through:

QUOTE:
Most people don't know, but a lot of the college rowers actually have never rowed before. There are few high schools with rowing programs, so they usually start out with no experience. Now, the collegiate rowing landscape is changing. The major rowing powers, like Cal, Washington and the Ivy Leagues, are finding it increasingly difficult to stay competitive by using only on-campus recruiting to field their teams. These schools now place a big emphasis on recruiting high school oarsmen, with particular emphasis on foreigh rowers, many of whom as incoming freshmen have already competed at the highest level of international competition. Because there is such high demand for high school oarsmen of this caliber, these schools make liberal use of scholarships to attract proven rowers. For example, the winners of the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA - rowing is not governed by the NCAA) in 2001, 2002, 2006 and 2007 did it with 7, 7, 5 and 4 "pro" rower imports.

This year our cross-town rivals, the University of Soul Corrupters, pulled off a feat that went beyond the absurdity of this practice.

Estonia won the Under-23 World Rowing Championship in 2007. In January of 2008, the U$C men's rowing alumni donated over $100,000 to bring to U$C six members of that world championship boat, together with two spares and their Estonian National Team Coach. These oarsmen were then enrolled in the English Language Program at U$C's Rossier School of Education). Through the grapevine (three middle-class and irrelevant alumni) one of their motives was to field a crew that could beat UCLA.

Their first race in 2008 was the San Diego Crew Classic, a major event with basically a Varsity division and a Club division (in which UCLA rows). U$C tried to enter their crew in the Varsity division, but the stewards of the Classic would not allow them, so they had to compete in the Open division which they won by over 4 boat lengths!

Furthermore, the U$C crew (whom I will now refer to as the Estrojans) was not allowed to race UCLA in a dual meet because they never received their eligibility from the Pac-10! So, at the end of May, the Estrojans went home...without having race in a single collegiate event!

Now, imagine being a senior at U$C, coming into your final season, thinking you can finally make the varsity boat, only to have the Estrojans take your place. Sure, other schools are doing it...but those rowers are enrolled as full-time students! My crew was beaten in 1994 by a Washington crew in which the rowers all pretty much sounded like Aahnold. No problem for me, as long as they're students. I mean, our own UCLA tennis team does this liberally. But, bright as they are, U$C didn't even bother making them eligible, or enroll them as full-time students! Brilliant! Their alumni raised about $500,000 for crew last year...and this is the scam they came up with!

Hope you're deep at QB, Inca, with this kind of OL. At least Skippy's got an excuise this season.

Funny about USC's attempt at buying a rowing program. The right way would have been to just pay top $ for a top coach, but that's perhaps too subtle an approach for their AD. Stanford's Amerikhian would have been a good fit for them.

On the subject of this sport, Cal's dominance of collegiate crew is going to be less certain with the retirement of legendary coach Steve Gladstone.

That's a great story, though what USC had done is simply to take to its illogical conclusion something that Oxford and Cambridge have been doing for about 20 years, namely recruiting North American and Antipodean graduate students with Olympic or World Championship credentials in order to win "The Boat Race".

For a long time, college rowing in the US has suffered from the absence of a single, fully-recognized national championship. Not all of the Eastern teams go to the IRAs (notwithstanding the fact that they are held in New Jersey), and some of those that do have traditionally considered them secondary to certain Eastern races (like the Eastern Sprints or the Harvard/Yale 4 mile race on the Connecticut) or international competitions like Henley. That explains why teams such as Cal, Washington and Wisconsin tend to do very well at the IRAs and yet do not dominate the national teams. Harvard and Yale only started participating in the IRAs a couple of years ago, and prior to that the San Diego Crew Classic was usually the only race of the season at which both sets of crews would meet.

linus wrote:

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Hope you're deep at QB, Inca, with this kind of OL. At least Skippy's got an excuise this season.

Heh, do you not know about the QB situation? Patrick Cowan was named the starter, then got injured and will be out for the year. Then Ben Olson was named starter. Guess what happened? Got injured, and will be out for at least two months (that guy is made of glass, I swear).

Our starter is now Kevin Craft, a JUCO transfer, who started out at SDSU, where he got some playing time. After that it's a bunch of true and redshirt freshman.

LSU is hot, hot, hot.

not looking good for Tennessee, Inca. GL.

Yep, just hoping that we don't get blown out.

Nice win for Cal.

Yikes, whatta horrible, annoying game for Rutgers. They had the ball inside the 20 on 5 or 6 occasions in the 1st half.

Points from those possessions ? Zero. Point. Zero.

Damn that was so annoying. Fresno State wins 24-7, after it was 0-0 at the half.

UCLA-Tennessee is real good so far. Good luck, Incster.