Sooooo........what now?

And I thought it was depressing when spring ball got over.........now that there's no NFL draft, we officially have nothing to look forward to until fall camp starts up....that is, unless you count the AFL....(yea, I don't either).......I didn't feel like posting a pic of a player, and I was daydreaming about the great times I've had tailgating.....so I decided to put one up from last season at ISU.........I'm the one on the left, for those of you who were curious as to what stud was writing this.

I figured I'll just pass on a few links for today.......here is an article from the Omaha World Herald talking about the talent we have that has Gil Brandt weighing in with this thoughts on the subject.......I'm eventually going to write a whole entry on this topic, but to be honest I don't have the motivation to do that now.

Adam Caparell of CSTV.com weighs in with his post-spring Top 25, in which he has the Huskers ranked 20th. This comes on the heels of Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated ranking us 18th. I think this is going to be the norm heading into next season for the Huskers. Sure, we won the North last year, but we didn't beat anybody of note and people are going to be very skeptical of giving us any publicity until the USC game. If we lose that, don't be surprised to see us drop out of the top 25 right away. The recent announcement that the tilt with the Trojans is going to be at 7 p.m. was fantastic news, as it assures us a national spotlight (although it was pretty much a sure thing) and gives our fans more time to imbibe beforehand. Now, I realize that people get worried in situations like this due to the fact that students might forget their Husker manners when they are hammered, but I'm confident we will still be extremely gracious hosts. I think the more drunk a fanbase is, the louder it is during the game. I hope this is the case come September 15th.

For those of you who haven't checked out Double Extra Point recently, they had an Eric Crouch update. Apparently, he's up in Canada, where he's the second string QB for the Toronto Argonauts. It's good to hear that he's competing somewhere, as it's such a waste for him to be doing sports programs for Omaha news stations and other things of that nature. The starter for Toronto, as the article notes, is a 43 years old, so who knows, we may see Crouch playing like it's 1999..........is it bad that I am considering buying his jersey?

In an article by Tim Griffin over on ESPN.com, the litany of QB battles in the Big 12 is discussed. With half the teams in the conference dealing with some sort of QB controversy, there is a lot of uncertainty going into next season, and it'll be interesting to see who will be getting the nod for the season opener at each of the schools. The biggest surprise is the struggles of Josh Freeman at KSU. Although I do expect him to be the starter when it's all said and done, he was thoroughly outperformed by Carson Coffman in the spring game (as Griffin points out). All these competitions will make the opening of fall camp interesting to watch as we see what plays out across the conference.

In another ESPN article, we see that the Big East Kool-Aid is becoming more and more popular. While the play of this conference has been surprising, one should point that, like the Big 10, there is a big dropoff after the top 3 (top 4 if you count South Florida, who is an up-and-comer but one that could see a drop-off because they can't sneak up on anyone anymore). The top three (Louisville, Rutgers, West Virginia) all finished high in the rankings last year, but I think you gotta look at who they played outside their own conference to determine how good they really are. Rutger's non-conference slate from last year: North Carolina (who was starting Dailey at the time), Big 10 doormat Illinois, Ohio, HOWARD, Navy, and K-State in the bowl game. Not exactly a daunting set of teams if one looks at their combined record (35-40). Louisville had what looks like decent wins over K-State, Miami, and Wake Forest until you consider that K-State and Miami were both 7-6 and WF won their conference by default because the supposed powerhouses of the ACC were all horrible. The only one I like to give a lot of credit to is West Virginia, who can run on absolutely anybody (and it's only going to get worse now that Noel Devine passed his ACTs). Basically, what I'm getting at is that the Big East's bad teams are so bad that it's hard to take their good teams seriously.

And just for fun before I sign off, here's a clip of Bruce Willis hammered at a Nets playoff game: