Unverified Voracity Vicariously Sexes Duff

Book update! Maple Street says that the book should be in bookstores like Borders and Barnes and Noble across Michigan, as well as newsstands at Meijer, Walgreens, and wherever fine book-magazine-preview-type things are sold. Should be arriving sometime this week. An excitable commenter inquired at the local Borders:

Borders in Ann Arbor just said that it hadn't been shipped to them yet and it would be at least a few more days before they had it. Hearing that, I broke down and ordered it online.

They are coming, I assure you. Anyone who sees one in the flesh, please let me know.

Amazon orderers are spooked by the projected ship dates (September?); Maple Street assures me that this is a fiction borne of Amazonian caution to not over-promise and under-deliver and that they will have the books shortly as well.

If you'd like to check out what the book actually looks like in the flesh, as it were, here's a PDF of the first half of SMQB's schedule preview.

Order the book. It wants you to order it. All these links go to the same place.

I have been inundated with email (two pieces!) about this, so, yeah:

Left: Mike Comrie. Right: Hillary Duff. TMZ says the duo has been "hot and heavy since a wet weekend of jet skiing in Idaho." (Idaho?!) Someone mail this to recruits across the country.

The photo proves a few things. One: It doesn't matter if you're 5'8" on a good day if you've got a jaw like that. And millions and millions of dollars. (Not only is Comrie a well-compensated NHLer but his father is the owner of a chain of Canadian furniture stores.) Two: holy hell Hillary Duff is tiny. I can't believe she can even lift her enormously oversized purse-type thing. Shouldn't she have a manservant or something?

That would be awesome. If I was preposterously wealthy and famous instead of getting all coked up my vice would be hiring a tiny elderly man from the Indian subcontinent to carry around things for me. Not even heavy things. Like, my cell phone. Because my jeans profile must not be disturbed, I say!

This appears to be a digression.

(HT: WCH.)

Schedule bits. As soon as a break in the ND series is dropped everyone wants in. Texas:

Two readers emailed me this morning with links to this story noting that both the Wolverines and Fighting Irish are seeking opponents for the 2010 and 2011 seasons. I've beaten the "please schedule tougher" horse to death by now, so I won't take the podium for that particular lecture again.

Instead, a quiet sigh of resignation as I note our current schedules for both seasons in question

Peter's actually got the years wrong, as it's 2012 and 2013 that are the open slot. Texas is very feasible.

Cal:

As Hydrotech wrote before in our most controversial post to date, while it's rather unfortunate that while THE Ohio State University (seriously, what is up with that?) decided to cancel our series with them in 2012-2013, it does leave us with other opportunities. Like the opportunity to schedule a habitually underachieving Big Ten foe whose fans somehow got more riled up about our dis of Ohio State than their own fans did. Maybe it's an inferiority complex.

Still, just like Ragnarok suggested, our Bears have an open date in 2012. So do the Wolverines. The two haven't played since the 1950 Rose Bowl. And we are a national power from a major conference.

This would be great if this was true, but it isn't. Cal's not even a Pac-10 power: the Bears' last Rose Bowl was in 1959. The reason Jeff Tedford is such a sexy candidate for the hypothetically open Michigan job is that he's managed to drag Cal into respectability. Next.

Doug Karsch got on the radio -- I did not actually hear this, but have seen it multiple places on the message boards -- and said that Michigan was looking at Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, and the big three in Florida. FWIW.

Meanwhile, I will enjoy watching the pretzel logic from a certain genre of Notre Dame fan that turns this Bill Martin quote on its head:

"Certainly, we will be playing them; we'll never discontinue playing with Notre Dame," Martin said. "We may take breaks now and then so that we can add other prominent programs to our schedule."

Ready... go!

Szzzzabo. Brief excerpt from a GBW interview with Steve Szabo with interesting bits. Graham and Thompson lead for their spots at the moment. Szabo on Austin Panter:

Spring was rough for Austin. He played eight-man football in high school in Kansas and then went to junior college out there. He doesn't have a vast background in 11-man football. He struggled in the spring, but I think he'll come back a different man this fall. He's become acclimated to the university and his teammates and I think he'll come back much more competitive in the fall."

Yikes. On Thompson:

John's got to step up to the plate. He's got a ways to go, but I'm often reminded by the coaches of some comments that I made last spring about David being a little mediocre (laughing). Thompson is the same way. He's not a house hold name right now, but you never know with how hard he'll work.

I am not particularly assured at the moment.

This will be next to Yost next fall.

Click for big. Construction info here. All the windows are reflective. Curses! Foiled again.

Etc.: Lake The Posts is counting down the top games in Northwestern football history. They've reached #6. You
probably don't want to read about it. And you definitely don't want to read the Anthony Thomas fumble one, whenever that is.