Wednesday: Links with loyalty

Story of the day:

Childs a steal on fantasy football depth charts [RotoWorld]

We consider ourselves pretty big dorks for taking fantasy football so seriously. Yet we are nowhere close to the uber-dork territory of college football fantasy players (although, now that you mention it, we are rather intrigued).

Jeremy Childs found himself on the fantasy football list of RotoWorld as the nation's 37th rated fantasy receiver. Congrats, we guess.

Should all go as planned then Childs is certainly worth a top receiver pick. Yes there's concern over breaking in a new starting quarterback, but if Boise has proven anything over the years it's the ability to make seamless transitions in personnel and keep the offensive train rolling.

We're not sure how the scoring works, but we assume that it is one point for every 10 receiving yards, six points for a touchdown, and 10 points for an "A" on an original essay.

Other links:

Oregon season preview [FOX Sports]
Who doesn't have a QB controversy this summer?

Free magazines at the IPT [Dave's Blog]
What? They're Phil Steele magazines? Then never mind.

Update on stadium construction [Arbiter Online]
Still no mention of a Dairy Queen kiosk.

What went wrong with Hawaii [USA Today]
It's not rebuilding if you're not building anything.

Thursday: Links with politics

Story of the day:

Yahoo/Rivals starts rankings countdown [Rivals.com]

Starting with the bottom of college football and working their way up, Rivals.com will be unveiling a countdown of all 120 teams over the next few weeks. And there's no surprise whom they chose for the bottom.

Numbers 118 and 119 out of a possible 120 are the WAC's Utah State and Idaho. Only Florida Atlantic was deemed worse.

RE: the Vandals:

THE BUZZ: It's tough to succeed in the WAC when you can't throw the ball effectively. Playing in a league that featured five of the nation's top 40 passing offenses last year, Idaho is going to continue to lag behind until it shores up its passing attack.

Well, we don't know if we would call it "buzz." More like sad, depressing truth.

Their take on the Aggies started awfully optimistic, but quickly turned south.

Utah State enters the season on a two-game winning streak. They haven't won three in a row since 1996-97. But a 1-4 start looks likely, and unless the Aggies win at home against Idaho on Sept. 20, a winless season is a possibility.

Too bad Florida Atlantic isn't on the schedule.

Other links:

Face of Boise State football [Bronco Nation NOW]
Our vote rhymes with "Schmadman."

WAC expansion with...Utah Valley State? [Parsing the WAC]
They don't have a football team, which is a far more honest assessment than that of the University of Idaho.

Utah State pretty geeked up about Phil Steele [Utah Statesman]
Take comfort in the small victories, Aggies.

Still no Jeremy Childs [Idaho Statesman]

Phil Steele's messed-up All-WAC team

Phil Steele, one of the more famous names related of college football preview magazines, has released his picks for the WAC's all-conference teams. And boy did he pick some doozies.

First, allow us to disagree with a number of items:

• Kyle Brotzman: 4th team kicker
• First team defense: no Broncos
• Second through fourth team offense: no Broncos
• No Jeron Johnson
• No Titus Young
• No Vinny Perretta
• No Richie Brockel

At least Steele found Ian Johnson's name while he was figuring, in vain, the distance between his rear end and a hole in the ground. In all, Boise State had three first team members (Andrew Woodruff and Jeremy Childs joined Johnson with that distinction), and one second team member. That is exactly one more than Utah State and two less than Idaho.


In addition to egregious mistakes on the Bronco front, we had some nits to pick with the rest of Steele's reality-challenged opus. But the greatest one might have been the horrible future he predicted when he named NMSU QB Chase Holbrook to the first team.

Needless to say, we will not be purchasing Steele's print publication.

Phil Steele's 2008 WAC all-conference [Philsteele.com]