What did you say?

Wow, Herbstreit just went nuts over Stafford on College Football Live – great physical specimen, makes all the throws, knowledge of the game, etc.  If I’m not mistaken, he hinted that Matt could upstage the GPOOE™ this season, which is close to rank heresy at ESPN these days.

Herbie is out at the Elite 11 camp, which is where he’s getting the personal observations about Stafford from.

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get a little nervous about this season.

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UPDATE: I guess I wasn’t the only one who heard it.

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More “it’s not in their heads”…

From one of my favorite Gator blogs, Orange and Blue Hue:

… And for this squad, one Saturday lies circled on the calendar: November 1, 2008. When they travel to Jacksonville, they have the opportunity to exorcise the demons of last year’s loss to the hated Bulldogs. An SEC East title would be within striking distance. A national championship berth? Certainly plausible. Maybe even another Heisman on the horizon.

But with a loss, there will be talk of Florida’s lost swagger, of only two wins in the last five years. Fairly or not, critics could question Tim Tebow’s ability to lead a team to the promised land. Lindsay Scott’s ghost could haunt this team.

In a sense, the psychology of this year’s WLOCP is huge.  I’m not sure it can be underestimated, in fact.  It’s as big as the first games in the series that Spurrier coached.  Win again this year, and Richt’s legacy as a head coach grows immensely – which is saying a lot for a guy who’s already accomplished much.

A simple question.

Seriously, would you spend a half million dollars to buy something called a “cockominium”?

I didn’t think so.

(h/t The Wizard of Odds)

More Media Days tidbits

Just some random stuff that caught my eye:

• ESPN.com’s Chris Low noticed that “the greatest player of our era” wasn’t a unanimous pick for the SEC coaches preseason first team QB.  Since Mark Richt couldn’t vote for his own player, that means somebody else did the honors.  I wonder who…
• Why do new coaches feel a need to screw an obviously good thing up?  Jorvorskie Lane, one of my favorite players, was underutilized by Dennis Francione (don’t believe me?  Lane’s stats from last year:  780 yards and a Big 12-best 16 touchdowns on just 169 carries.), so what’s the bright idea from new head coach Mike Sherman?  Move him to fullback. Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Lane sounds thrilled by the move:  “There was no hemming or hawing about it,” Sherman said. “He didn’t seem totally pleased with it, but didn’t balk at it necessarily.”
• And before you get too excited about the media’s predictions for the season, keep in mind two things:  (1) last year marked the first time since 1995 that the media covering the SEC correctly picked the eventual conference champ; and (2) the ACC media prior to this year had chosen FSU to win that conference for the last straight sixteen seasons.

It’s alive!

The Mumme Poll, that is.  There was enough interest expressed by you guys to move this puppy along.  Thanks very much to all who answered the bell yesterday – and to those that haven’t yet, Lord knows there’s still plenty of time to jump in.

I’ll do a little housekeeping with this post, laying out the basic ground rules and mechanics of the Poll.  As we get closer to Week 6, I’ll do some more posting with additional specifics and reminders.

1. Voting. I’ve set up an e-mail account to receive your ballots.  It’s mummepoll@yahoo.com.  Every week (beginning after the games of Week 6 have been played), send me your lists there and I’ll pull them down and compile the results.  Ballots should be submitted between 9:00 AM Sunday and 9:00 PM Monday.  (I won’t use the account for anything else, so don’t e-mail me there with general messages, please.)
2. Format. I’m pretty flexible on this front.  I simply need to see twelve schools listed and five of those notated in some form or fashion as your top five.  You don’t need to rank the schools in any particular order.  Just to give you an example, here’s what my ballot would have looked like after the bowl games were played last season:  LSU*; Georgia*; Southern Cal*; Ohio State*; West Virginia*; Missouri; Kansas; Oklahoma; Virginia Tech; Texas; Florida; Boston College (* indicates top 5).  See?  Nothing fancy – just make sure I can tell which schools are in your top 5.
3. Tabulation. I’ll post the results here every Tuesday after the games have been played.
4. ‘Da Rules. They’re pretty simple, really.  Any ballot that doesn’t contain twelve votes and five top five designations will be disqualified.  And those twelve votes must be for twelve different schools.  You can’t vote for any school more than once on a given ballot.  If you do, the ballot won’t be counted.
5. The One Commandment. Don’t try to game the system. Please don’t submit a ballot to me that subverts the voting.  Examples?  I don’t want to see a ballot that lists the membership of the SEC as your twelve best teams in D-1.  Or a ballot with Georgia and the eleven lowest ranked teams in Sagarin’s power rankings.  Or a ballot listing any 1-AA teams, no matter how shocking the upset.  Or Duke.  Deliberate stuff like that will get you tossed from voting.

One other thing.  This is an experiment. I have no idea where this will go, so the process is of as much interest to me as the voting is.  You don’t have to provide it, but I’d be very interested in feedback when you submit your ballots.  Let me know why you voted as you did, and why you may have left a particular team off your ballot.  And I’d like to know how long it took you to compose your votes.  I’ll post the most interesting of your comments and the average time it took to construct your ballots on Wednesdays following the vote.

I’m looking forward to this.  I hope you are, too.

Talk, talk, talk… when do they play?

Media Days are upon us, which means there should be plenty of quotable material to enjoy.  What follows is a random sample:

— Steven Orr Spurrier.

Adopting rules from the NFL is unpopular with some college coaches who believe their sport is resembling pro football too much.

“It seems like whenever the NFL boys are doing it, we always seem to want to do it, too,” South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said.

— Atlanta Sports Council President Gary Stokan, on the Alabama-Clemmins game.

“The demand was so high we could have sold out a doubleheader if these two teams would play again the next day,” Stokan said.

— Über quote Mike Leach (really, read the whole piece).

“We were the youngest team in college football last year, so I think as our players gain confidence and rally together as players, and the coaches over there, I think we steadily improved and some of them, you know, maturity, which is really kind of a word I don’t like, besides the fact that I’m immature. I mean, where is this benchmark?”

— Georgia defensive tackle Jeff Owens.

Q: You and Geno have been nominated for preseason awards, so clearly a lot is expected. Is there anyone who might surprise folks?

A: Corvey Irvin. Write that name down. He is going to be an impact player on this defense. I know it. He’s getting stronger. He’s already fast. He’s quick. He’s a good pass rusher and he can stop the run. He can do it all. I’m telling you, people are sleeping on our defensive line. People think we just have a starting two but our rotation is going to be crazy this year. We’re going to have so many guys in there, we’re going to be so fresh, we’re going to dominate.

—  Last thought, from Tommy Bowden.

“Which is more amazing,” he asked. “That I’ve been here 10 years without a conference championship or that I’m still here?”