First things first: there was a tremendous amount of participation in the nomination process of the College Football Blog Awards. All the nominations have been gathered, tallied, and organized, and today the official nominees will be rolled out. For all the details, you'll need to start with Rocky Top Talk, then keep your eyes on MGoBlog for the first series of nominations. Voting on the official nominees will be open to all college football bloggers. Stay tuned.
Rivals is reporting that Texas is officially in the mix for Joe McKnight. I wouldn't get too riled up: it looks to me like he's headed to the SEC.
2006 has been in the books for about 24 hours... which means folks will start talking about 2007. The Statesman has your early 2007 odds to win the title. Texas at 10:1.
Chip Brown weighs in on the Akina/Mac Duff situation, saying he thinks Akina is a mix of Tomey, Robinson, and Chizik. Perhaps, though a commenter asks a pertinent question: "Hasn't that been the chorus for the DC position at UT (i.e., he'll play a more aggressive defense than the previous guy)?" There's some real truth in that question: every time a new defensive coach is hired, the buzzword is "aggressive." I remember hearing that about Chizik when he was hired, though "aggressive" is certainly not the right word to describe his philosophy. More like "disciplined." I do think, though, that we can count on more aggressive schemes from Akina. I think that's generally wise: you pay for blitzes in the NFL far more often than in college.
Oh, boy. Take a look at this. So -that's- how Ted Ginn got hurt...
--PB--