Read this to understand what the glorious HLSTNHT25-PE actually is. Then look up at the stars tonight and try to convince yourself that everything up there is bigger than everything down here.  Even this…

It seems weird to be putting a MWC team in here.  Seems even weirder to put a team that’s been in 4 different conferences in 10 years in here.  Despite that inconsistency, the Horned Frogs are a very consistent team in terms of quality.  At least recently.  They’ve managed a seemingly incredible 5 top 25 finishes in the last 7 seasons.  It’s as if they’ve always been around and we’re just now starting to notice.  A look at their schedule doesn’t make you gasp in awe at their audacity - to either schedule an incredibly tough schedule or one full of cupcake games - at least not for a “mid major” team.  They’re just a nice solid team with some very nice circumstances this year, despite having to replace more than half of their offensive starters.

Their head coach, Gary Patterson, is a fairly popular name every time the end-of-season coaching carousel gets spinning.  So much so that the Horned Frogs had to buy themselves a bit of insurance in the form of a $1 million/year contract a year or two ago.  So long as they keep a bigger program from poaching Patterson, I think TCU has a pretty good chance at continuing their solid trend of the last half-decade.

Offense: Like we said above, they’re going to have to replace 6 offensive starters this year.  That could get rough.   Their new QB is on the wrong side of a career 60% completion rate, and they lost their best wide receiver this year.  They do get most of their offensive line back, which is nice, considering they gave up fewer sacks than anyone else in their conference in 2006 (along with gaining 4.5 ypc rushing).

Defense: They return 9 starters on a squad that only gave up a little over 12 points per game last year and haven’t allowed a 100 yard rusher for 20 consecutive games.  A capable defense like that will make any team capable of winning on any given Saturday.

Special Teams: Pretty bland right now, but HC Patterson has a reputation for fielding excellent special teams units.  They’ve lost several key guys this year, but Patterson is apparently capable of coaching this unit up, so look for a strong unit rather than a liability.

Facts:

• Dennis Franchione preceded Gary Patterson at TCU.  We’re wondering if Texas A&M is sure they got the better deal over TCU.
• LaDainian Tomlinson rushed for more than 4000 yards at TCU during his last 2 years, but he doesn’t hold the freshman rushing record.  That belongs to some guy named Lonta Hobbs.
• TCU has won 11 games 3 times in the last 4 seasons.

HLS Top 25 Meta:

• Highest spot on a HLS ballot: 19th
• Lowest spot on a HLS ballot: 25th
• Average rankings on HLS ballots: 21.75
• This is the first team on our HLSTNHT25-PE Countdown to receive a vote from all HLS pollsters.

Why Alex Trebek Loves Them:

• TCU’s 11 wins were the most by any D1 college football program in the state of Texas during the 2006 season.

Around The Web:

• TCU at Fanblogs

HLS Tracker 10 Forecast Technology Says:

Looking at the conference, and the TCU schedule, as long as they can figure out how to reinstall half their offense, they’ll be fine.  Heck, who knows, maybe they’ll even jump on an unsuspecting Texas during week 2.  Right?  Right.  Otherwise, not a single team on their schedule looks really primed to ruin this little 11 win season trend they seem to be enjoying.

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• And So It’s Down To Ten…
• The HLS Totally Non-Homer Top 25 - Week 1
• The HLS Totally Non-Homer Top 25 College Football Poll - Preseason Edition

Editor’s Note: I. AM. A. FREAKING. MORON. But none of you actually read this site on Sundays anyway, so you didn’t see my previous gaff on the ranking numbers. Suckers!

Read this to understand what the glorious HLSTNHT25-PE actually is. Then toast those who were wise enough to procreate and spawn the creators of this…

Yeah. I know. I know! First we kick you in the gnads by ranking our and your beloved Irish at #23, and then while you’re laying there, stunned, we give you atomic purple nurples, backwash in your slurpee, and steal your girlfriend by ranking Boston Freaking College at #22. Death threats may be sent along to the address at the right.

Anyway, here’s the deal: it’s not that we expect BC to do anything this season. In fact, we expect their #22 ranking will be the highlight of their entire season. If there were a “Plateau Team Of The Year” award, we’d just go ahead and give it to the Eagles today. They return 16 starters this season (9 on a pretty darn nice looking defense), so losing their head coach to North Carolina State may not be too disruptive. This team is on a streak of 3 9+ win seasons, not to mention the NCAA’s best current streak of 9 straight bowl wins. They also play in the ACC, and, frankly, who the hell in that league besides VaTech and Miami will get in their way this year to a #2 ranking in the league? (Hint: Wake Forest didn’t even get a vote in our polls) Georgia Tech, maybe, but, let’s face it, it wasn’t all Reggie Ball’s fault.

Here’s the wild-card between a season that’ll just make me roll my eyes at BC’s good fortune for playing in a conference that might make the Big East look like a power and my feasting upon the misery of delusional BC grads everywhere as they suffer the trials and tribulations of a 3-10 season: Jeff “Just Call Me JAG, Like That Military Court Room Drama With The Hottie Marine Lawyer Chick” Jagodzinski. Let’s face it, the only people on the planet surprised to see Tom O’Brien take a higher profile job (haha!) at NC State last year were all affiliated with Boston College. So it also came as almost no surprise that BC ended up settling for a replacement who even professional analysts had to google and then re-google with the correct spelling once an intern could dig it up. Most of the NFL wouldn’t have even guessed that the Packers had an Offensive Coordinator. So how the hell did BC find him? Was he under a rock the BC admin picked up while looking for Gary Barnett?

Offense: With the return of 1st Team ACC QB Matt Ryan (presumably without any ankle issues this year), they should have some decent leadership, but I also just read in Phil Steele that JAG is having his offensive line learn a brand new blocking scheme this year. Uh-oh. Why did we rank these guys in the top 25 again?

Defense: Oh. Yeah. Because they get back 9 starters from a defense that only gave up 15.7 a game last year. They’ve got 6 guys who’ve started at linebacker returning. Let’s just say we tend to think defense is important to this game of football, and by mid-season these guys will probably be looking pretty good.

Special Teams: Well, since it doesn’t look like the hex I placed on all past, present, and future kickers at BC a little over a decade ago ever took, we guess they must have someone playing the position this year. In fact, it may be a kid who played his first football game of any kind ever, ever, ever last year. I’m not sure, and I don’t think I’ll look it up because it’s B Freaking C, so who really cares, right?

Facts:

• JAG spent exactly 1 year as the offensive coordinator at Greenbay. And we’re guessing Favre had a lot more to say about the offense than he did. Before that 1 banner year, JAG was the TE Coach.
• The ACC are a bunch of Thursday Night Football whores. This season marks the 3rd straight BC/VaTech Thursday Night Match Up. It’s Must See TV if there are no local High School JV games in your ‘hood.
• If you moved BC to the midwest, people would call them Purdue.

HLS Top 25 Meta:

• Highest spot on a HLS ballot: 16th
• Lowest spot on a HLS ballot: Not Ranked
• Average rankings on HLS ballots: 22

Why Alex Trebek Loves Them:

• There are a lot of really good schools near Boston College.

HLS Tracker 10 Forecast Technology Says:

Look for Mark May and his ilk to be talking these kids up during the early part of the season. By October 13th, they’ll be claiming that JAG is the second coming of Charlie Weis. And then Notre Dame will kick their tails right out of Notre Dame stadium and into Granger, and they’ll just never recover from that point on. By the time I write up the final HLS Poll results for the offseason, we’ll have forgotten so much about BC that we’ll have to be reminded that O’Brien took that better job in North Carolina.

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• And So It’s Down To Ten…
• The HLS Totally Non-Homer Top 25 - Week 1
• The HLS Totally Non-Homer Top 25 - Preseason Edition: #7 - Virginia Tech

Before I get to the roundup, I’d just like to point out that, while we’ve received 23,336 pieces of spam in our comments sections since starting this site in late August of ‘06, we’ve only gotten 1,423 comments from real, live, actual folks. And one of them is this one. That’s right, that comment actually makes up .07% of all of our real comments. How in the world did this guy find this site? How did they find that post? Do they go around nervously seeking angry comments about GoDaddy? That’s awesome.

The Roundup:

• Michigan State discovers Detroit! This article isn’t that funny, but the headline made me smirk. Might really explain some things about Jor-el John-El’s old team.
• Thank God for that NCAA. They’re doing everything in their power to bring an end to an epidemic of over-eating among walk-on athletes. We should put these guys in charge of cancer research.
• What the hell is “construda?”
• Penn State football players have discovered new and inventive ways to get out of attending summer school.
• Georgia Tech’s Ramblin’ is temporarily wrecked.
• Sometimes other people come up with things so obvious but so brilliant that I hate myself for not thinking of it first. Like the internet. Or color.
• Everyone go here and threaten these kids with bodily harm if they don’t use this opportunity to rid the world of Mark May. No jury would ever convict.
• Looks like all that parity Bob Davie warned us about is here to stay when Boise State vs. Hawaii is considered a clash of the titans.

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• Friday Roundup: The Biscuit Edition
• Friday Roundup: The “It’s All About Bob” Edition
• Friday Roundup: The Saturday, the 14th Edition

I so don’t want to write this. This is actually my 4th 5th 6th attempt. The first one started off with how shocked I was to awaken and realize that we ranked Notre Dame so low. On Sunday morning. It’s damn near Wednesday Thursday, and I’m still struggling with it. See, when we did the poll, we made sure to try and remove our homer hats for a day and use our thinking caps instead. And this is what it got us. Her “Loyal” Sons turns it’s back on Our Mother and barely even ranks their beloved Fighting Irish in the top 25.

Now, to be fair, I think the one thing that sticks out in everyone’s mind here is how young this team is. Talented, yes, but young. And when you couple that with the brutal start to the 2007 schedule, it’s hard to have many rational feelings that this team will be a top team. For my own part in the poll, I judged teams based on how well I expected them to be playing by mid-season. And I fully expect this young, talented team to improve as the year goes on, but I expect it to be a very tough learning experience at the start. And then we’ll see improvement by leaps and bounds during the 2nd half of the year when the 2007 Irish can take a lot of the lesson they learned in the hard-knock first half of the season and use them to absolutely slaughter some lesser teams in the latter, admittedly easier part of the schedule.

Don’t get me wrong, as a “Loyal Son” I fully anticipate some miracles - some luck of the Irish - in the first part of the season, but my rational brain keeps yelling at me, “Fewest number of returning starters since 1994!” Remember how that year turned out? In fact, the Irish return just 9 starters from last year. That’s 4 on offense and 5 on defense. And, oh yeah, 2 of those people that aren’t returning are named Brady Quinn and Jeff, um, Shark.

We’ve seen how Charlie can take a bunch of, well, losers and convert them into a team that, at the very least, is dangerous enough to win on any given Saturday. (We’d say he turned them into “contenders,” but the last 2 BCS bowl games, where we ran into some truly elite talent, would beg to differ.) But those lovable losers (minus the previous coaching staff, of course) were relatively experienced. Quinn already had nearly 2 full seasons under his belt as a starter (if nothing else he learned how fast defensive ends can sack him at this level), the offensive line was fairly experienced, etc, etc, etc… Now we get to see what happens when Charlie has a fair amount of talent (a roster most of our opponents would love to have), but very young talent. One thing is for sure, the phrase, “The Best Players Play,” will be a fact, not just a mantra for this edition of the Fighting Irish. They have to play. There’s nobody left.

Charlie has said that, without Brady Quinn, Notre Dame would have been a .500 ball club. Well, now Notre Dame is without Quinn, but we don’t really think they’ll slump to .500 status. Otherwise they probably wouldn’t have been in the ranking at all (I’m looking at you, HLS Pollster who didn’t even rank them.). With Charlie at the helm, and a newly invigorated defense under Corwin “Spark Plug” Brown, we expect that the team will be “coached up” over the course of the season and may even provide some big thrills against opponents like Penn State and Michigan (who only return 10 starters themselves, including only 4 from last year’s nasty defense). We also have almost no idea what the 2007 Irish will look like. Aside from the occasional Zbikowski or Carlson, few players on the depth chart are truly “dug in.” Corwin Brown will be debuting a totally new defensive look with the 3-4 scheme, and Weis gets to go all mad scientist on us, if he chooses, with “x-factors” like Demetrius Jones at QB.

Let’s take a look at each side of the ball…

Offense: We have no clue who will start at QB. It seems quite clear that Clausen is expected to be ready for summer practices, but the “small procedure” he had done on his elbow will probably limit his conditioning this summer. Jones and Sharpley have both, apparently, made solid bids for the top spot, and, really, who’s to say that this depth chart will be written in stone at any point in the season? Jones is apparently the “play maker” of the group, and given Charlie’s propensity for “educated gambling,” we’ve got to wonder how much Charlie loves the idea of getting “DD” on the field as often as possible. Meanwhile the running back and receiver positions are both full of talent, but we don’t know who will establish themselves as leaders of either pack. Travis Thomas will certainly provide leadership and probably has the best grasp of Weis’ overall philosophy at this point, but some of the younger guys have talent that will just boggle the minds of those who haven’t been paying attention to this point. The offensive line is very young. It’ll be lead by John Sullivan at center who is the only senior on the line. We continue to look forward to what Sam Young can really do when he’s unleashed on opponents (especially after some really pretty down-field blocking during brief, successful campaigns against LSU in last year’s bowl). John Carlson, of course, is coming back, and that’s vital. Even if opposing defenses want to “key in” on Carlson, it’s darn near impossible. He creates serious match-up problem just against base defenses. Start tinkering to take him out of the equation, and you give the young talent at other positions a much easier path to success.

Defense: Clueless. Not them, us (Now that Minter is gone). We know what a 3-4 is supposed to look like. We know Corwin Brown’s pedigree. We do know that this squad will look a lot more aggressive than last year’s version. Let’s restate that: We know that this group will now probably blitz on just about every single down. What we don’t really know is who will play at what position. Maurice Crum has a hell of a nose for the ball. We can’t wait to see him loosed upon opponents. And a newly stream-lined Zbikowski is expected to perform as possibly the nation’s best safety, so long as the scheme truly lets him “just play” and stops forcing him to think and then react (and then chase from behind). The only thing I know for certain is that there will be times this season when some ND fan somewhere will complain over the exact opposite issue that they were complaining about last year. This year ND will get caught “being too aggressive.” But personally, I’d rather die trying.

Special Teams: Ugh. 2 questions continue to drive us insane here: 1) Why can’t any Irish kicker in the last, I dunno, 10 years, consistently kick the ball into the end zone? 2) When will a 30 yard field goal feel like a gimme to the Irish? The latter question probably worries me the most as I think Charlie may be able to put this squad in a position to win some games against top competition, but the kicking game needs to be there for precious point-scoring opportunities from just beyond the red zone. Punting should be pretty good this year, and with a healthy Zibby, so too shall punt returning. I’m also hoping for at least one ridiculous ESPN pun involving Notre Dame, a kickoff return for a TD, and a kid named “Golden.”

Facts:

• Notre Dame has brought in consecutive top-10 recruiting classes in 2006 and 2007 (#8 in both years). In 2004 and 2005, Notre Dame didn’t even rank in the top 25 (rivals.com).
• The position-group with the most “experience” anywhere on the field is probably the defensive secondary, returning Zibby, Lambert, and Wooden.
• EDITED - I was wrong.  We play 8 2006 bowl teams in 2007.  I was whacked out on goof balls when I was writing this before.
• Corwin Brown’s nickname while a player at Michigan was “Cornflakes.”

HLS Top 25 Meta:

• Highest spot on a HLS ballot: 20th
• Lowest spot on a HLS ballot: Not Ranked
• Average rankings on HLS ballots: 22.75

Why Alex Trebek Loves Them:

• 7.5 tons of leaves are collected from the grounds of Notre Dame every year (source).

I’m not thrilled with this write-up. My heart’s just not in it. I want to scream from the top of the highest tower that the Irish are the greatest football program ever, and no ridiculous thing like “rationale” is going to change that, but, for now, I’ve got to try and stick with the facts. It’s about 10am here. I think I’ll go drown myself in Guiness until I can’t feel what I’m feeling now: dirty.

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• And So It’s Down To Ten…
• The HLS Totally Non-Homer Top 25 - Preseason Edition: #22 - Boston Freaking College
• The HLS Totally Non-Homer Top 25 - Week 1

Defensive Back Robert Blanton of North Carolina has reportedly been visiting Notre Dame for the past several days.  Apparently he liked it so much that he’s decided to call it home for the next 4 years.

Scout.com

Blanton is a very special player and the first defensive back to commit to Notre Dame in this class.  With his verbal, the current ND recruiting class has an astounding 15 verbals.
Welcome to the family, Robert!

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• Farewell, Robert Goulet
• Please Keep the Hughes Family in Your Prayers
• Biscuit is Right. Title of The Blog Genius Holds True.

The Scene: A man and his wife return home for the day after a workout at the gym and a long walk home. Having walked home from the gym, the man feels he can afford a little dessert to end the evening and unwind, and begins to look through the kitchen to assemble said dessert. Meanwhile, the man’s wife goes to get the mail, and returns to the apartment with a bundle of mail, paying close attention to a magazine wrapped in plastic.

Man: Honey, where’s the chocolate sauce?

Woman: Huh?

Man: Chocolate sauce.

Woman: Fridge.

Man digs through the fridge while the woman rips open the plastic wrap around the magazine, turns to page 172, and stares.

Man finds chocolate sauce and begins searching other cupboards, walks down to living room.

Man: Where are the Dorritos?

Woman: Huh?

Man: Dorritos?

Woman: Above the oven.

Man heads back to kitchen, begins to dig thru cupboard above oven.

Man: I feel great. Had a heck of a workout tonight. Ran 3 miles. Had a good lift. And that walk was nice, eh, Hon?

Woman: Says here he has 5% body fat.

Man: What? Who? What are you reading?

Woman: Brady Quinn. He’s featured in Men’s Health. He’s got 5% body fat. And he’s tall. Nice and tall. Needs a haircut, but 5% body fat. Impressive.

Man: Yeah. Very impressive. I hear he only eats boiled chicken. I wish we had some cream cheese. Where are the Fruit Loops?

Woman: 5%. What do you think’s average for a guy?

Man: I dunno. 20?

Woman: What percent are you?

Man: …

Woman: Sweetie, what percent are you?

Man returns to living room with a glass of water.

Woman: I thought you were going to have dessert.

Man: Me too.

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• Quinn Reminds Browns Fans Why They Deserve to Be Browns Fans
• Brady Quinn Wins the Maxwell Award
• Brady Quinn, Pillsbury Dough Boy Don’t Like Eachother

UPDATE #1:  I’m still hungry.   Update #2 is at the bottom of the Roundup.
It’s just one of those mornings when you realize the brilliance behind Burger King’s “anything on the menu at any hour” campaign.

Breakfast. Probably “first breakfast” to be exact.

The Roundup:

• Nick’s getting paid. Pretty good for a guy that’s only managed to scare away football players from Alabama at this point. With this sort of contract, we see a trip to Costa Rica in the works for Pete Carroll and a few NFL GMs in the near future.
• The NCAA hates bloggers and blogging. And if any of us f’ing pricks live-blog any games, they’ll execute every motherf’ing last one of us! Or something. I wonder when they’ll start claiming that they own facts about the game like the MLB is doing today.
• Some random newspaper in Tennessee decided to write a preseason article about college football, so they lead off with a bit about the Vols, right? No.
• Michigan State’s Fantasy Summer Football Camp had all of 15 attendees. We’d make some jokes, but the IRT took them all.
• Is Florida the new Miami? Is Chocolate Brown the new Black?
• The Big 12 needs a new commish. Hmmmm. If only I could think of someone in the NCAA Athletics world with lots of personal ambition. A concensus builder… A unifier… Strong? Oh. Never mind.
• And why does the Big 12 need a new commish? Because the current one is stupid enough to leave for a job with the Big 10 Network. “Hey! This “Titanic” of yours looks amazing! Mind if I come aboard?”
• Oh, and in case you missed it, the Spurs won the NBA Championship. I missed it. There was a funny rerun of The Office on, and then I tried to start reading The Brothers Karamazov, and then there was a somewhat amusing rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond on, so… there ya go. The Spurs. Huh.
• UPDATE:  Terry Hoeppner will not be coaching Indiana Football in 2007.

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• Friday Roundup: The Biscuit Edition
• Friday Roundup: The “It’s All About Bob” Edition
• Friday Roundup: The Awesome Edition

Read this to understand what the glorious HLSTNHT25-PE actually is. Then praise the Lord for the gift of the wondrous analysis below…

You all may remember last year’s Texas A&M team because they managed to make Army look scary. They managed to win that game, but only because Army played stupidly in the 4th quarter. Still, the team was much improved, by the numbers over the previous few years. For one thing, the “Wrecking Crew” earned the right to even hear that term again by allowing only 17.8 points per game. Good thing too, because their offense was only earning 27.8 points per game. Seemingly not bad, sure, until you see that they scored 35, 51, and 45 against The Citadel, Louisiana-Lafayette, and Louisiana Tech respectively. All in total blow-outs. Way to pad the stats.

The Aggies played only 3 ranked teams in the regular season last year, going 2-1, and their 2 wins were against sub-top-15 teams (Texas was actually ranked #11 at the time, but their starting QB was either out of the game, or still recovering from big time neck injuries. I can’t remember which, and I’m not paid for this, so…). Anyway, this wasn’t exactly a juggernaut team. And while they will have more experience on the offensive side with 9 returning starters, they need to replace 5 members of that much improved defense in 2007.

One quick look at their 2006 schedule, and you realize that they didn’t exactly run a gauntlet on their way to the Big 12 season. This team simply beat up on bad teams (The Citadel, anyone?), and then “found a way to win” against better competition. Yeah, they beat Texas, but, like we said above, it was a hobbled Texas. And they took Oklahoma to the wire, but it was an “off” year for a Bob Stoops Oklahoma team. If Texas A&M were a girl, she’d be a nice, solid, 7.5.

Offense: One wonders if the fact that Stephen McGee threw for a total of 121 yards against Texas and Oklahoma was b/c of Stephen or the coaching staff. In fact, when it comes to the offense, I find myself asking a lot of those sorts of questions. Still, McGee passed for 62% and a 12-2 TD/Int ratio. Oh, and he can run. They do have one “look out” type player in Martellus Bennet at tight end that could give John Carlson a run for the Mackey Award this year.

Defense: They found a way to improve last year, and they’re gonna need to do it again this year, replacing 5 starters. One of their returning starters, Jordan “Toast” Peterson is back and may not be able to hold onto his starting spot. The guy made ND’s secondary look all-world at times - really, really important, game winning/losing times. They lose their top 2 tacklers this year but get back the next 7.

Special Teams: Back in the day the “12th Man” referred to more than just the Aggies very enthusiastic home crowd. It used to be the label for their special teams unit too. But Head Coach Dennis Franchione pulled a David Copperfield with that reputation. They do have some speed, however, and were starting to turn that part of the game back around last season, including a blocked field goal (again, The Citadel?) and 2 kick returns for TDs (and, yes, again, one of them happened against The Citadel).

Facts:

• The Aggies are replacing 2 Offensive Starters and 5 Defensive Starters.
• One of the Offensive Starters they must replace is on the Offensive Line, but that’s it. The rest of the line is back from last year.
• Ranked #21 in the Holiday Bowl, they decided to lay down and take it like a coked up starlet to the tune of 45-10 from #20 Cal.
• Franchone’s special teams were ranked between #73 and #99 in his first 3 years.

HLS Top 25 Meta:

• Highest spot on a HLS ballot: 22nd
• Lowest spot on a HLS ballot: Not Ranked
• Average rankings on HLS ballots: 23.25

Why Alex Trebek Loves Them:

• The Texas A&M mascot is actually a Collie named Reveille. Bitchin’.

Around the Web:

• Texas A&M on Fanblogs
• TAMU on Scout
• The 12 Manchild

HLS Tracker 10 Forecast Technology Says:

Eh. They made the top 25 out of name recognition, if anything. Yeah, ok, they won 9 games last year but there’s no Citadel on the schedule this year. In fact, with Fresno State, Miami (Fl), mixed into their pre-Big-12 schedule this year, I think they’ll be lucky to reach 9 wins this year.

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• And So It’s Down To Ten…
• The HLS Totally Non-Homer Top 25 - Week 1
• The HLS Totally Non-Homer Top 25 - Preseason Edition: #21 - TCU