Its not often that the LSU Tigers venture into Big 10 country looking for players, but when they do, they generally target the best. Today, word started to circulate that James Barrett, the 6'4 272lb Center from Illinois committed to the Tigers. OFFLRecruiting.com had ranked Barrett the #2 overall prospect in the nation and tabbed him as a "celebrity recruit." For more on the Barrett commitment and other LSU recruiting stories, click on the LSU Tigers link which will bring you to The Geauxlden Tiger Blog.
The recruiting class this year in the OFFL is taking shape, and three young individuals have gathered more than their fair share of the spotlight. This year's "celebrity recruits" will raise the spirits of some lucky schools and break the hearts of many others.
Marcus Baker Halfback – Speed 6’2” 223 lbs Top Schools: Georgia, Florida, Florida State
Baker is lightning in a bottle – outstanding speed combined with agility and acceleration. Power running is not part of his game, but his speed and ability to break tackles makes him a dangerous outside threat.
James Barrett Center – Run Block 6’4” 272 lbs Top Schools: LSU, Texas, Notre Dame
Barret has all the makings of an All-American Center who will likely play on Sundays. Great strength and blocking skills will make him the cornerstone of an offensive line for years to come.
Will McBride Cornerback – Balanced 6’0” 180 lbs Top Schools: Ohio State, Notre Dame, Florida
McBride has the pure athleticism required to shine in the college secondary - great speed and acceleration with a strong vertical. Combined with good man and zone coverage skills, he’ll be a shutdown corner early in his college career.
Just thought I'd put out what I hope is going to be our schedule. It looks like the community rosters, which are easily the best set out there, are going to finish up sometime tomorrow. The patch that allows us to turn off dynasty accelerators is also due out tomorrow. See where I'm going with this?
If all goes as planned, I'd like to launch tomorrow. I'll send invites, we'll get our pre-season stuff done, and start week one on schedule, on Thursday. All of this, of course, is tentative. Rosters must be complete. The patch must be on time. We got the rules and new recruiting guidelines in place, so we're good there. By the way, READ THE RULES! Not knowing does not equal innocence. Some of the penalties have gone up. Know what will happen if you goof. Oh, and check out our new GameDay logo.
EA is adding more material to their site every day, so I thought I'd give a few of you an early look at what some of your guys are going to look like on the field. Most of the alternate uniform selections for each team are present in this year's release, it seems, and while there are certainly going to be a few mistakes, what I've seen of the new stuff looks great, except for the Oregon uniforms - but that's not EA's fault. For a complete list, click here, or, in case you're just too lazy, I collected a few shots for you to look at:
There are rivalries ... and then there's FSU - Miami. It's a game in a class of its own, though some say it has lost a bit of luster over the past several years. With both teams in relative decline over the past few seasons, and with off-field drama surpassing on-field success on both campuses, fans are begging their programs to get back to the way things used to be, when any discussion of the best teams in college football had to include the Seminoles and the Hurricanes. These two rivals have chosen the first week of the season to settle thing this year, and it's likely that the winner will be seen as the team returning to greatness, while the losers will once again find themselves struggling for national respect. Expect both teams to leave everything on the field in this one - After all, the future of both programs hangs in the balance.
The 'Canes hope to start the '09 season off right in the Orange Bowl
Buckeyes, Irish will be a yearly thing for quite some time.
In a stunning move for both schools, the Buckeyes of The Ohio State University have just signed a long-term deal with the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, a deal that will end each season with a game between perhaps the two most storied programs in the nation.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this deal is the fact that no one saw it coming. When asked about the deal, Ohio State coach Archie Griffin said, "Well, we just felt it wasn't anybody's business. We want to play the best, and they're the best, or pretty close to it, at least."
Some call the agreement a bit of a swipe at the Buckeyes' traditional rival, the Michigan Wolverines, since Ohio State's decision now places Notre Dame as the final game of the year instead of Michigan, a team that has struggled of late. When asked about it, coach Griffin said this:
The game happens when it happens because we couldn't find any other way to get it done. And anyone who says Michigan is no longer the primary game on our schedule ... well, they just don't know (expletive) about Ohio State football.
Coach Griffin: "Notre Dame is now a part of our season, but Michigan is the season."
While the home and away details have not yet been worked out, the two schools both seem committed to the idea of a long term agreement. For the Buckeyes, this likely means a lighter early schedule to compensate for the tough late schedule, and for the Irish, it probably means getting rid of one of its other Big Ten rivalries. While some believe Michigan State will likely be replaced by the Buckeyes on the Irish schedule, some insiders feel it is time to sever ties with in-state rival Purdue. But there is a strong contingent of Irish faithful who believe none of these games should go, so no one can say right now what will happen. However, we will watch the situation with interest.
Since we have a bit of time to kill while we wait for the release of NCAA 2010, I thought I'd ask if any of you went out and purchased the new UFC game. I picked it up, and I'm having a good time with it so far, so I thought I'd offer you guys the opportunity to punch me in the face - digitally, of course. Good old AG has created a digital version of himself (though I have to admit that even the fattest body style in the game does not do justice to my beer gut) and is welcoming challenges from OFFL members. I'm not going to join any of the fight leagues, since I won't have the time to spend on it, but I thought an occasional beating might do me some good. For those of you considering adding the game to your collection, here's a quick video with some gameplay stuff you might like.
This time, we're going to discuss embedding video. I'm going to assume we all know how to get vids up on EASportsworld.com, and I'm also going to assume that once we have those vids on EASportsworld.com, we know how to save them on our home systems. The first video below will show you how to post those vids on your blog. The second video will show you how to take a video from online sources like YouTube and embed that video in one of your posts. It may seem a little tricky at first, but trust me, it's much simpler than catching a pass across the middle.
Now, this second video leaves out the customizing options you can use before you copy the code. Here's a pic of what you will see to the right of whatever video you happen to be watching on YouTube.
The button you want to hit is that gear-looking thing to the right of the embed code. That will bring up the options, which include the size of the video, the color of the border (in case you want to match your team colors, for example) and a number of other things. Every time you click an option, the embed code changes to account for that new option. Once you have the look you want, copy the code, and then paste it into your blog.
That's enough for now. More to come in later posts, of course.
I thought it might be fun to post a vid here and there about the upcoming release, so we can see a few of the new features in action. Most of you guys have seen this already (it's been out for a while) but just in case soem of you haven't, I thought I'd put it up here for you.
Keep in mind that each of you is an author here. You may post anything cool you happen to come across. If you have trouble with the format, I can clean it up for you, since I'll have admin access to all posts. You have you own blogs for your team specific stuff, but feel free to use this one to post anything of interest to all.
Just thought I'd post a few blogger tutorials. I'm sure some of us are more comfortable working in spaces like this one than others, so I'll start with the basics, and then, bit by bit, post stuff we can use to enhance or further customize our team blogs. Hopefully, by the time the season starts, we'll all have blogs we like and can operate easily. The easier they are to use, the more we will use them, and the more we get out of the league as a whole. I'm looking into apps and gadgets we can use to update everything from stats to Heisman races in easy-to-access ways. Hopefully, we can reduce the time it takes to update weekly stats and such to a few minutes, so no one will get bogged down in the process. First things first, though. Here's a quick vid for the guys who haven't started a blog yet.
We'll get to embedding video later. For now, let's just get the blogs up. I need email addresses from everyone, so I can add you as an author on this blog. Then I can add your blog to the list on the upper right portion of this blog page. Here's another vid explaining how to add and manipulate gadgets.
That's it for now. We'll take the next step in a few days.
Here's a few oldies but goodies from back in the day. You'll love them. You will also hate them. But they sure are funny to look back on now. I had these sitting in an old file I used for the old site. I remember posting the Florida pic on the left as part of one of the early articles I wrote. It used to take me forever to churn that stuff out. Things sure have changed, haven't they?
Here's one of AMP putting the hurt on Trine.
And one of Dat putting the hurt on JC
One of my better efforts.
And here's Dat getting scored on in our first ever user game. FYI, I reached out to Manrilla to see if he might want to come back.
So there's a little nostalgia for you guys. I figured you would like those, since I'm probably the only guys who still has them. I don't have all of them, but I have quite a few.
Marlon Lucky, our first Heisman winner, who caught 76 passes in the final seven games of the year. But I'm not bitter ...
Ok everyone - I know I sent a message out a while ago with some info I need from each of you, but I thought I'd follow up with a post here, just to be safe, and redundant. So, to get started here, I need an email address from each of you, preferably the one you're using here on blogger. Once I have that, I'll send you an email invite, which you will use to become a co-author here. Also, once your blog is created, I will add it to the list on the right. The list updates, moving the newest member post to the top so we can all see the latest news.
Also, you can "subscribe" to the page, meaning new posts here (which any of you can write whenever you want) will link to whatever homepage you choose. This is a nice little feature for guys who don't get to check in as often. Let me know if there are any other features you would like to see. If there's an app, I'll go get it.
One more thing - I want to make sure we keep supporting the TF guys as much as possible, so when you're designing your pages, try to link back to the forums and other news pages as much as you can. We want to keep traffic up over at TraditionFootball.com as much as we can. See, it's just that easy.
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