Web site news

I’ve updated the lineal titles on the site, and if Jerry Jones cared about a piece of complete wankery only I care about, he’d be loving the Falcons win over the Bears. For the first time, the lineal title will be defended in The New Greatest Stadium in the History of History, aka Jerryworld, aka Cowboy Stadium.

I’m aiming for CFB rankings Tuesday, CFB schedule Wednesday, SNF Flex Sked Thursday, and RID Friday. I think this year I’m pretty much committed to doing the SNF Flex Sked Watch on Thursday at least through the end of college football season.

Florida had a bye this week.

The Bears have a bye this coming week, after which they play the Falcons, who had a bye this past week.

Oregon doesn’t have a bye this week but does have one next week.

And the lineal title updates are probably among the worst, most boring posts I make all week if not all year. I’d roll them up with the rankings if that worked for the NFL title, and I’d rather not contaminate the SNF watch with that sort of wankery. (That the Bears blew out a team as boring and mediocre as the Lions doesn’t help.) I’m considering moving notices of lineal title updates almost entirely to Twitter.

Umm… if you believe the hype, Florida-LSU is the best hope for a Princeton-Yale title change until the SEC Championship Game?

What does losing Tim Tebow really mean for the Gators considering what they did to Kentucky regardless? What does Oregon’s win over Cal mean for how good Boise State really is and how good the Ducks could have been if LeGarrette Blount hadn’t become me a few years ago? What does it mean that the Bears could very easily be 3-1 after the game with the Lions? What does it mean that a Lions team that just picked up its first win in over a year could hold the NFL Lineal Title a week later?

Well, actually, very little. But lineal title wankery isn’t the only thing I do involving the NFL. Tune in after the close of games for one of the earliest traffic drivers to my blog back in 2007, the Sunday Night Football Flexible Scheduling Watch, my attempt to determine which games are moving to primetime in the last eight weeks of the season.

Henceforth, my weekly schedule, sports-wise, is likely to be something along the lines of: college football rankings Monday or Tuesday, flex scheduling watch Monday through Wednesday, and college football schedule Tuesday through Thursday. As for this week, expect the college football rankings and schedule sometime over the next two days.

What’s more fun than having Final Four-style brackets for everything? Having boxing-style heavyweight champions for everything! Hence, my college football and NFL lineal titles, and this was a surprisingly eventful week for them.

Florida was the only champion to hold on to its title this week, although it came away with a narrow escape against Tennessee that suggests they may not be as dominant as everyone thinks. This week they go on the road to play a Kentucky team that, while not Top 25, seems to generally be considered better at this point.

I ended last season thinking the 2006 Boise State title was a “mid-major” title, to counteract Princeton-Yale’s BCS-team ownership, but a look at its actual history shows a lot of Pac-10 teams holding it. Oregon’s upset of Utah puts the title in the hands of a team that lost perhaps its best player to an outburst following an embarrassing loss to the title’s namesake. Now Cal comes to Autzen Stadium for a game that, with the USC loss, could have Rose Bowl implications.

How about Da Bears pulling off a last-second win over the Steelers? I doubt many people thought the defending Super Bowl champions would lose this early in the season, especially with the Bears losing Brian Urlacher. Now maybe the Vikings have a rougher road to the NFC North than a lot of people thought. Now they go to Seattle to take on a Seahawks squad that’s ailing and reeling. Yes, that’s my hometown team, folks. Hey, remember when the Seahawks were actually in the Super Bowl?

These changes have all been duly noted, and I’m thinking the first edition of my college football rankings will come out tomorrow.

The Pittsburgh Steelers eked out a win in a hard-fought game against the Titans in the NFL’s Kickoff Game, but lost Troy Polamalu for several weeks; in a battle of defenses against the Bears this week, how far back could that set the Steelers?

Florida showed it could knock around an FBS team the same way they could knock around an FCS team. Now, what about a BCS team? They take on Tennessee in the Picking A Fight With Urban Meyer Bowl.

It took until the fourth quarter for Utah to pull away from San Jose State – is that cause for concern, especially with BYU wowing the nation? With Oregon coming off a win, will a trip to Autzen Stadium treat the Utes as kindly as it did Boise State last year?

All three of those teams hold one of my football lineal titles, and will be defending them this week. The requisite categories on my web site have now been updated.