Maize n Brew Big Ten Preview - nurture your addiction
Maize n Brew is linked in the MGoElsewhere section of mgoblog, but for anyone interested they have an ongoing B1G preview which began a few weeks ago. It's a good blog, and the previews are informed and entertaining (I was stunned at the reminder of just how tire-fire-y Beckman's first year was at Illinois). It's a good series on its own, and a primer for the CFB preview magazine season which will begin in earnest in just a few weeks.
Link: http://www.maizenbrew.com/big-ten-football-2013
Their opening paragraphs are something to agree with, as you, much as I have this Sunday morning, ponder the choice between anything related to college football and that copy of Voltaire's Candide you've been meaning to re-read. Il faut cultiver, notre jardin...
Summer is a wonderful time of year. We'll spend it basking in the sun on long weekends, going on vacations and attending weddings, and almost habitually looking for some body of water in which we can cool off -- while maybe still drinking out alcoholic beverage of choice. Summer's main downfall, you know, other than: sunburn, what A/C does to your electric bill, and your plummeting productivity at work, is that there is no football until the very tail end of the season. It is simultaenously a nice little cherry on top of the sundae that is summer and also the thing that makes you groan at least a dozen times, "god, I wish summer would just END so football could start."
Well, bloggers get bored too. With Fort Schembechler in full effect there isn't a whole lot of news to run with, and one can only focus on the college decison of a bunch of 17- and 18-year olds for so long before going stir crazy. So, for the second year in a row, we here at Maize n Brew have decided to take a look at the rest of the Big Ten to try and entertain ourselves, while learning a little bit more about those teams we should be most familiar with. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, as they say.
I was actually reading the section on Iowa's offense when I saw that this thread was started, but yes, these are some very good previews over on Maize'n'Brew.
Speaking of "Candide", I think that it may very well be an appropriate supplemental read for Greg Davis and his apparent desire to start implementing no-huddle concepts in Iowa.
You can almost hear Greg now: "An offense can be no better than the players of which it is composed. Our labor now is not to mold drives but to make punts."
"punts are for the best in this best of all possible worlds" (except when he plays us, gd him)
They have some pretty good information there, but I look at the three sbnation websites (Maize n Brew, The Only Colors, Black Shoe Diaries) I go to far less that I used to because I hate the format sbnation forced all its affiliates to use. I'm not illiterate, and I'm not impressed by pretty pictures (well Kate Upton and a few others excepted). I far prefer a format that provides textual lists of titles or summaries for me to decide which stories to further peruse without the huge photos that to me are just a distraction and space wasters that force me to keep scrolling just to look at a few titles.
/old man rant
My daily reading MGoBlog, TTB, and Maize 'n' Brew. Keeps the non-football season withdrawal symptoms to a minimum.
Add The M Block and umhoops and thats my lunch break everyday
"That one cuts like Valyrian Steel" LMAO
Just wanted to add, I guess if it means anything to anyone, that I'll be doing some in-depth previews of teams a little later in the series. They'll be a bit like what I was doing over at Tremendous before he moved over to 247.
Overall, the series is a nice way to get caught on what is happening with other teams and how it's looking for the upcoming season.