Overall, I think the writing, though a little more sparse, took a step up in importance and quality this week. It was a pretty tough week here at Chez Pittman. I was in court every day this week, and I was up at 2:00am with a very awake toddler most nights. The result has been a tired, somewhat unproductive ATVS.
What's in the planning?
- Well, the series on 2008 Previews position by position is not over yet. We still have special teams to work on. That will be written this weekend and posted next week.
- This weekend's edition of The Great Media will focus on a beloved children's book that I wore out as a child and that was recently found at my grandmother's house after literally decades of being missing.
- I am going to do a preview of the SEC, but be warned, I am ethically opposed to prognosticating, as I think most prognosticators are utter frauds. My attitude is that football predictions are like a-------. Everyone has one, but very few are worth looking at. Instead, I will go through each team individually and tell you what I think of their overall quality, strengths, weaknesses, schedule, etc. This will be complicated by the fact that I know absolutely nothing about Vandy. While prognosticating is a no-no, I will go through schedules and tell what games I think are "very likely wins", "very likely losses", "50/50 games", "somewhat likely wins" and "somewhat likely losses." From that, I suppose you could manufacture a "prediction", but it comes with the caveat that there is a lot more uncertainty than there is certainty.
- ATVS never lets ignorance get in the way of a blog entry. It's a blogging tradition, and who am I to question it.
Pretty soon, we will shut down all recruiting talk except for the key events, such as a commitment., or perhaps the occasional FanShot. I love the recruiting game, but I am not a pro at it, and I think it's subservient to the games during the Fall. One thing I try to do in reporting on recruiting is to avoid regurgitating information posted originally on pay sites. I find it uncool to steal proprietary information from pay sites. I don't like it when other people do it, and I try to avoid it myself.
What I will do is take information from pay sites, analyze it through my own filter, and give you my interpretation, without reporting the underlying facts that the product of the hard work done by those getting paid for it. That, I think, is fair and actually valuable to the reader, if the reader trusts my perspective (and after all, if the reader didn't trust my perspective, why is he a reader?).
But while recruiting is all the rage during the summer, it has to play a secondary role once the real team takes the field. We're just about there.
I'm getting pumped for football. I'm getting more pumped for getting a good night's sleep. Good night.