Let's celebrate some greatness before we delve into some muck. LSU Softball, after a painful conference start, completely turned around their fortunes with a sweep of #1 Alabama in dramatic fashion. Junior Anissa Young hit walk off home runs on Friday AND Saturday night to take the series, and then got 2 runs off of NO HITS on Sunday for the sweep, all in front of a record weekend crowd. Young and pitcher Brittany Mack earned SEC Player and Pitcher of the Week honors for their performances. Softball is home again this weekend against #9 Tennessee and the Saturday game will be carried live on ESPN2 at 11 am.
Long time ATVS readers will know that we have a strict policy against linking to or discussing the writings of a certain reporter from the fictional town of "Gannett, Louisiana." However, there is some next-level trolling going on between the football beat writers that bears mentioning. Lets start with Sunday's piece in the The Advocate by Rosetta with the admittedly dubious headline of "Jefferson Cements Place as LSU Starter at QB." The article goes on to accurately describe the Ho-Hum performance of the QBs in the spring game, even writing off Mettenberger's TD pass to open the 2nd half as potentially "staged" (and he isn't alone in that opinion) That-guy-who-we-don't-talk-about saw his opportunity and decided to burn the press box down, criticizing his fellow reporters for joining "the parade of propaganda" about Jefferson's improvement in the spring and topped it off with a title straight from a message board: "What's Next? Jordan Jefferson for Heisman?"---Ed Note: I cannot wait to use that line next season.
Let's step back for a minute and realize that the job of a sports beat writer isn't easy, especially during the spring. Practices are almost always closed to the media, and aside from a few minutes of warm up drills here and there, reporters are left to create a week's worth of articles out of the always optimistic player interviews and a transcript of Les Miles' practice reports. Of course reporters were saying Jefferson was having a great spring. Miles told them so, and so did a lot of the players when interviewed. So did the "stats" they got from the early scrimmages. (A debate on the dubiousness of closed scrimmage stats is a discussion for another time, if it's even worth discussing) It's all they had to go on. With the exception of a few schools like Vandy who have open spring practice, it's all anyone covering college football has to go on. That-Guy's piece is calling out the other reporters for essentially doing their jobs: reporting based on the facts they have available to them. It's contrarian for contrarians's sake and a perfect example of why we don't share stories from a reporter who believes he is above admitting he writes for a newspaper in Shreveport. In any case, Rosetta does a fine job defending his own work and further clarifying his opinions on the QB situation.
Wanna get even more contrarian? How about an article on why Tharold Simon should start over Tyrann Mathieu. (relax, it's not a completely insane idea)
Football Study Hall concludes their breakdowns of the other D-1A football programs in Louisiana with a look at USL.
My pending trip to Morgantown may have just become a whole lot more dangerous/awesome as they are considering allowing beer sales at West Virginia football games. The folks from The Smoking Musket are embracing the possibility.
The SEC: Makin' MAD Bank Yo!
The NCAA is thinking about allowing players actual names and appearances to be used for profit in various promotional forms (without additional compensation for the players, of course). The upshot is that, If passed, we'll get full rosters included in NCAA video games.
ULM is looking to increase their budget by 25% by asking students to approve a fee hike.
Of course this is where Stephen Garcia is going to end up.
I am going to spend all of my vacation next week playing Tecmo Rose Bowl 2002.
In this year's so far barely moving CONFERENCE EXPANDAGEDDON, The Big East may have killed their own plans about adding Villanova as a football school due to stadium issues, and The Sun Belt wants to expand (HERE'S YOUR OPENING LA TECH!).
We encourage everyone to give to the annual EDSBS fundraiser, if only for the opportunity to force Mr. Swindle to get a Les Miles tattoo.