All America lists, Pat Forde on SEC passion, Joe McKnight's buzz

Dandy Don seems to feel that Craig Steltz has a long future in the NFL. No explanation. I'm not sure about that, but I'd just like him to have a solid future of five more months here at LSU first.

You may have noticed that ESPN's Ivan Maisel placed three Tigers on his All America team (scroll down, link is a Java popup) - G Will Arnold, DT Glenn Dorsey, and LB Ali Highsmith.

And while those guys are all getting love from everywhere, it's nice to see the occasional shout out from a member of the national media for Jacob Hester. I think Vince Papale, just not as fast and way more talented.

News of the day is Pat Forde's column on ESPN asserting that SEC fans have more passion than fans of all the other conferences. Well, there's just more to do in Berkeley than in Athens, y'erd? I believe this was Heisman Pundit's argument a couple years ago on the very same subject. (I have no link. Lo siento.)

Meanwhile, Every Day Should Be Saturday chimes in with a hysterically mundane letter from a Pac 10 fan, along with one from a projectile-defending lawyer Sigma Chi type from Georgia.

For those of you following the Emmanuel Moody transfer issue (and maybe what it means for Louisiana's own Joe McKnight), Conquest Chronicles is keeping things up to date. Of course, in case you missed it, SI ran a piece Tuesday on the "buzz" McKnight is creating at camp. ESPN's Bruce Feldman added just about the same thing a week ago. They're already making the Reggie Bush comparisons; the pressure will be high from Day One for JM.

And yeah, I still wish we got him. No matter how great some of our backs could be, I think if we had one standout remotely equivalent to JM we wouldn't be dealing with this running back by committee issue. On the plus side: judging by SI's opinion of the nation's Top 20 running backs, which include zero Tigers, at least we can say expectations outside Baton Rouge are low.