Blogging College Football
Here is the line up for the BCS Bowls. As expected, Texas will take on Alabama in the championship game. TCU and Boise State will play in the Fiesta Bowl, a first for two teams that are not from Automatic Qualifying conferences to make the BCS. The game is a rematch of last year’s classic Poinsettia Bowl in which TCU won 17-16.
Do you want another nightmare scenario for the BcS mess? Well it could happen. It looks like the winner of the SEC is on a collision course with Texas, but stranger things have happened.
TCU’s Jeremy Kerley won the top play of the day at ESPN for Saturday, October 17, 2009.
Editor’s Note: The following is an article written by guest blogger Adam Jones from Jones Top Ten. Although I think Adam is a great blogger and author, we are not related. I urger visitors to check out a copy of his book, Rose Bowl Dreams: A Memoir of Faith, Family and Football which I reviewed here. You can buy a copy of the book at the CFTT Book Store here.
Texas/Oklahoma Preview 2009
By Adam Jones, special to collegefootballtopten.com
Almost everything that could go wrong for the Oklahoma Sooners offense has during the first stretch of the season. Meanwhile, Texas rolls along mostly intact. So why are Longhorn fans nervous?
Editors Note: This article is written by guest blogger Daniel Durany. Daniel is a graduate of TCU in Communications Studies.
If you asked most people, what major city in Texas is located in Taylor County? The majority of people would probably say Lubbock, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, or Wichita Falls as the main city for Taylor County. Actually, Abilene is the major city for Taylor County. If you knew Abilene was the major city for Taylor County, then you most likely didn’t know how Taylor County became originated.
Today is 9/11. We will always remember this day that way. After what happened 8 years ago, we still remember it and the sting and pain we feel from all that happened. For me, 9/11 has a face. It is a beautiful face. It is the face of Sara Low who was a flight attendent on American Airlines flight 11. Sara grew up and graduated from the same high school in the same small town that I did; Batesville, AR.
In the middle of the 1980’s, I was growing up in Batesville, AR. We all, of course, were Razorback fans. Ken Hatfield had shown up, and he was in the middle of rebuilding a great tradition at Arkansas, but over in Jonesboro, AR, a guy by the name of Larry Lacewell was building his own tradition.
The Arkansas State Indians (ehem) Red Wolves were emerging as one of the best teams in Division I AA football, uh, I mean the Fooball Chamipionship (played on the field) Subdivision. Lacewell, was running the wishbone at st-A-te (we called them ASU, but everyone else didn’t know that, so they referred to Arizona State as ASU), excecuting the triple option with precision behind the quarterback Dwane Brown.
Texas A&M University-Commerce athletic director Carlton Cooper announced today that Rayfield Wright, a former member of the Dallas Cowboys from 1967 to 1979 and teammate of Lions great Harvey Martin, has agreed to serve as the keynote speaker during the luncheon at the Harvey Martin Classic on Thursday, September 10 at noon. There will be a reception prior to the luncheon at 11 a.m.
My two sports reporting worlds collided the past two weeks. I run Dfwfootball.net which is mostly about semi pro football in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and I cover college football for Pegasus News in the DFW area as well as run this college football blog.
Fort Worth Avengers semi pro football team
Fans of major college football program do not think about semi pro football. I don’t think there is any disagreement to that, but fans of semi pro football usually watch all football. And, for a few players, there is the hope that he will one day play big-time football, whether it is in the NCAA or the NFL.
Rarely, however, does this move actually happen. Mostly, the best these guys will do is move up in to a league that has a little more status. Maybe they can get in to an indoor league where they might actually get paid something to play the game. Thus, semi pro football has its pay-to-play leagues and the play-for-play leagues. Even the play-for-play leagues pay very, very little.
The chances of making the NFL is so slim that it prompted one semi pro football owner to tell me that guys looking to get to the NFL should just go to college. They should walk on if they half to, because, as he said, “If they have it, they will make the team.” Nevertheless, there are the rare exceptions of guys moving up the ranks because of their play in semi pro football. Oklahoma linebacker Mike Balogun is one of those exceptions.
Balogun played in the North American Football Leauge (NAFL), which is one of the largest semi pro football leagues in the country, although, it appears he may have played in another league as well. I am unsure of the entire story, but the question is whether or not Balogun played past his 21st birthday in semi pro football. That will cost a player elgibility.
I first learned this back in the Spring when it happened to a player at Florida State, who as turns out, seems to have blown the whistle on Oklahoma. How nice of them!
So, normally, the college football fan wouldn’t think twice about this vagabond existence of traveling football with little money involved, but this year, when Florida State and Oklahoma take the field, it will most likely be on the minds of their fans and the college football community as a whole.
For you college football fans, when the Spring rolls around, and it’s “off season” time, look up the local semi pro football team, and go make a game. The team in your area might just be really good. You might enjoy the football. They still wear helmets, not leather, and they still play on a football field. Some even have dancers!
Most of these teams have websites, Myspace and Facebook sites and Twitter accounts. The owners are usually local, and they are not looking to build a $2 Billion dollar facility on your dime!
It has been said that, “any news is good news.” This might be true for semi pro football, and most likely, the NAFL.
Editor’s Note–This a re-post of an article from Dfwfootball.net.
Last year at my college football blog, I read and reviewed several books. I like to think I had a niche at Collegefootballtopten.com doing book reviews, and I had access to the books working for a bookstore.
One of the authors I read was a guy by the name of Jeffrey Marx. He wrote a very inspirational book about a former Baltimore Colts football player-turned volunteer coach, mentor and minister. My story about reading it was almost as compelling as the book itself! Check out my reviews here and here.
Now, Marx has written a new inspirational book about a New England Patriots deep snapper who was teaching seventh-grade Bible Study when he got the call to snap for the Super Bowl bound Patriots. The player eventually won a Super Bowl ring on a last second field goal in which his job was critical to the outcome of the game.
I am a fan of what Marx is doing with his books. I highly recommend fans picking up a copy of his book and reading it, especially as we are approaching the football season. We all could use a little inspiration in a world in which it seems that the bad dominates the day in sports. We need heroes who display courage and provide inspiration.
The book is available to buy on Tuesday August 18. You should be able to find a copy at your local bookstore, however, you can help out this site and buy a coy from our bookstore at the same time. Simply navigate to the bookstore, and look for the Jeffrey Marx books. There is a regular copy and a large print copy available in the store. To make it easier, here is the link.
Be sure and let everyone you know that likes football about the book. Feel free to pass along this article if you would like. You can use the addthis button at the bottom of the article to send it via email, Twitter, and other social media outlets.
About the Book
“In his first book since his New York Times bestseller Season of Life, Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Marx tells the remarkable and true story of one man’s odyssey from seventh-grade Bible teacher to Super Bowl champion.”
The Long Snapper: A Second Chance, A Super Bowl, A Lesson for Life
“Don’t we all long for one last chance? Don’t we all dream to do it over again? Anybody who has ever had those pangs will love Jeffrey Marx’s beautiful and uplifting story about a guy who had opportunity dropped into his lap. Do yourself a favor and read The Long Snapper.”
– Frank Deford, Sports Illustrated
“Jeffrey Marx has done it again, only better than ever. Thoughtful and inspiring, The Long Snapper is quite simply a joy to behold.”
– Rick Telander, Chicago Sun-Times
Brian Kinchen was a thirty-eight-year-old husband, father of four, and seventh-grade Bible teacher whose professional football career had been over for three years when the New England Patriots called on December 15, 2003. With the Patriots riding a ten-game winning streak and the NFL playoffs only a few weeks away, they needed a fill-in for the obscure but vital job of snapping the ball for their punter and kicker – a long snapper. Brian was hesitant because he had received similar invitations to tryouts that yielded only disappointment – the teams always went with a younger guy. But could he really turn away from the chance of a lifetime?
The Long Snapper chronicles Brian’s remarkable odyssey as he and the Patriots – led by head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady – seek the ultimate trophy. Unfortunately, the dream come true turns into a personal nightmare as Brian struggles both on and off the field, and the pressure to perform on the biggest stage in professional sports nearly causes him to walk away. Seven weeks after leaving the classroom, however, Brian overcomes his greatest fear and snaps the ball on the historic game-winning field goal with only seconds left in the Super Bowl.
The Long Snapper is the story of a man who finally achieves the success he has always wanted. Brian Kinchen’s championship ring is a powerful status symbol for all to see. But his journey forces him to reexamine what really matters, and he realizes the true measure of a man has nothing to do with status: life is not about prestige, it is about passion and purpose. It is about impacting the lives of others.
Collegefootballtopten.com by Todd E. Jones is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at collegefootballtopten.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://collegefootballtopten.com/contact/.
All Helmets are the work of the Helmet Project .Powered by WordPress. Designed by Free WordPress Themes.
Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS) | 17 queries. 0.346 seconds.
