Anyway, the Hawkeyes will play their 2008 Blackout Saturday game will be on September 13th against Iowa State.  Be sure to buy your official event shirts early.  The proceeds will go straight to somebody’s pockets.

I’ve complained about the Blackout games in the past and appear to have been ignored by the university.

Let’s take a second to consider the event this year.  September 13th at 11am will probably still be insanely sunny and hot.  Black shirts tend to attract heat and make the wearer hot, tired and miserable.  In addition, we will be playing the Cyclones which seems to also be Hawkeye the official Drink-As-Many-Beers-As-Possible-Before-Kickoff.  Hot, sweaty, drunk, tired, lethargic Hawkeye fans.  Sounds perfect for a game against one of our most hated rivals.

I will not be wearing black if the weather is above about 65 degrees, which it will be.

Also, there is going to be a Be Bold Wear, Gold game against Wisconsin on October 18th.  I’m a much bigger fan of the gold one because it is brighter and louder and more energetic.  But that gives us two games out of the 7 at home where we have recommended outfits.  Couldn’t we just theme up the other 5 games and maybe get some kind of media coverage on TLC.  Maybe get the What Not To Where team to come and recommend the best t-shirt for each game.  I think they are really missing some opportunities in the headband and ballroom gown/tuxes motifs.

Nothing says rowdy football fan more than a dress code and avoiding fashion faux pas.

• Size doesn’t matter for Big 12 QBs - I’m very happy to hear that the Big 12 QBs have learned to be comfortable with their size and work with what God gave them.  Openly talking about these issues should help all the fans who have always been uncomfortable with their own size.
• Sun Belt signs with 3 bowl games - kinda. They get first dibs for the St. Petersburg Bowl, the Papajohns.com Bowl and the PetroSun Independence Bowl as long as the conferences that are not currently committed to those bowls are not able to qualify enough teams for the post season.  I always feel like I should be getting paid some kind of commission everytime I say these bowl names anymore with all of the product tie ins with their names.
• Miles faces questions about Alabama joke - He made fun of Alabama for losing to both LSU and Louisiana Monroe last year.  Good for him and who cares.  I made fun of Michigan for losing to Appalachian State and Iowa for loosing to all kinds of teams last year.  Half the teams win a game and the other half get made fun of.
• Appalachian’s Edwards OK with flying now - The Appalachian State QB is afraid of flying but managed to survive the flight to beat Michigan (Ha ha) and is now heading to LSU to try another upset.  If that happens, I promise to make fun of Miles and LSU.  On a sidenote, have the players in the former Div 1-AA always been eligible for the Heisman?  How about Div 2 and 3?
• UCLA RB Ramirez ineligible for season - I’m not even going to talk about it because the Pac 10 gets way to much time in the media spotlight.
• Vols’ Fulmer denies being subpoenaed - Seems like Fulmer doesn’t want to talk to the legal system about some sketchy boosters and is trying to dodge receiving the paperwork.  In this day and age, shouldn’t the lawyers just give it to the University Complaince Office and they could just drop it in Fulmer’s inbox.
• Iowa Sexual Assault Case Reopened - This one pisses me off.  The school needs to do whatever they are supposed to do to let the legal system do what they have to do.  Anything less than that is inexcusable.  But, I’m sure the school officials are greatly limited in what they can say about the details so I will wait until it is all sorted out and if anybody at Iowa knowingly did something wrong, I want them gone.  Plus, I want Hawkeye news about how great our players are or how easy our schedule is or how bad the restroom situation is at the stadium.  I’m tired of legal stuff.  The program needs to get its act in order because the problems just seem to get bigger and bigger since Beutjer got beat up for now paying his share of the cable bill.

The article has the Cubs as the runaway favorites in the NL.  They have the best record in baseball so that seems fine.  Here’s my beef.  For the Cubs they list their weakness as:

They’re bad: At pinch-hitting. In 126 at-bats, Cubs pinch-hitters have only 22 hits, and their .175 average is worst in the NL.

Sure that sounds pretty sucky.  But I think the Cubs have a bigger issue that is completely overlooked in the article.  The Cubs have a losing record on the road.  They are 21-28 away from Wrigley.  The Cardinals, who are just a couple games back from them are 27-22.  The Brewers who are only 3 games back from the Cubs are 24-26.

I like teams that can win wherever they play and while the Cardinals are not quite as scary as the Cubs or Brewers, especially with the recent pitcher additions to both teams, the Cardinals are capable of winning on the road and at home.

Which makes me wonder at why the Cubs would have 4/5 odds of getting to the post season while the Cardinals and Brewers are 10/1 and 6/1 respectively.

Especially with the 3 teams as close as they are with so much of the season remaining.  I have no trouble giving pretty strong odds to all three teams to make the post season since currently all three teams have records quite a bit better than the 2nd place team in the other divisions, so the 2nd place team in the Central should be in good position to get the wildcard.  I’m just not sure that the Cubs are that much more likely to get to the post season than the Cardinals or Brewers.

I’m not sure if those odds are Jeff Passan’s odds or Vegas’ but it sounds like somebody might be getting a little swept away by Cubs hysteria.

The summer is a particularly bad time to write a college sports blog but I won’t let this hold me back anymore.

I just sent in my check for the football season tickets so it is probably about time to start complaining about scheduling Maine and Florida-somebody-or-other (one of those teams that will actually play for a championship instead of a BCS trophy).  It is probably time to start figuring out how many different ways Illinois and Notre Dame are going to suck (I’ve spent most of my life in Illinois getting abused by fans of those two programs so I have a health hatred for them).

But this post is more for me than you.  It is a reminder not to go months without writing something because I feel like I should be trying to cover sports like a reporter.  I’m no reporter.  I normally don’t even bother spell checking.  But I am an annoying Hawkeye fan and this is my reminder to write more about that.

Plus, he was a guy that seemed to be a good person and never seemed to have any hints of causing any trouble off the court (that I heard of at least).

So let me break out my tin foil conspiracy cap for a second. Maybe Freeman realized that Lickliter’s style doesn’t quite fit with Freeman’s skills. Or maybe Lickliter realized that Iowa was not going to turn into a power house and make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament. Feel free to swap Freeman and Lickliter’s names above.

So, then let’s say Freeman and Lickliter are playing pool and drinking a couple beers and start talking about all of this out loud to each other and the subject of Freeman transferring schools comes up.

Lickliter says something along the lines of, “We’d really love it if you stuck around this year but I totally understand if you want a better chance of playing somewhere that will highlight your skills and give you a better chance of making it into the NBA.”

Freeman says something like, “I had thought about it but I really don’t like the thought of sitting out a year.”

Lickliter: Yeah, that rule blows when coaches come and go like we do these days. What you need is a hardship?

Freeman: But coach. I’ve got my shit together. My family is fine. My injury from last season is completely healed.

Lickliter: Well, I’ll make you a deal. You announce that you are going to transfer and I’ll make up some story about how I told you that you weren’t going to get any playing time during your senior season even though you were the best player on our team last year while fighting through an injury. It’s not 100% guaranteed to work. But maybe everybody will think I’m an ass and totally screwing you over and the NCAA will let you play without sitting out for a year.

Freeman: That just might work. I love you, man.

I know it is a little far fetched but I just can’t think of any reason why Lickliter would not want Freeman to be a part of the program so at least a conspiracy theory would answer that nagging question. Plus, SIU really does have a much better chance of making it to the Sweet 16. They do it way more often than Iowa these days. And Lickliter doesn’t really seem like a mean guy that would kick a guy under the bus for no good reason.

Good luck at SIU, Tony. I hope to catch you on TV a few times this winter.

I get most of my general sports news from Yahoo! Sports. One of the Headlines is an article about 2 ex-Hawkeyes accused of sexually assaulting a woman on October 14, 2007. Both players left Iowa after shortly afterward. First off, they are accused right now. As far as I know, there has been no conviction. But they are definitely not the first Hawkeyes in recent memory to at least have the cops and lawyers paying attention to them.

I miss when the big some news was whether Tate was allowed to collect the car (or was it cash) for hitting the hole in one during a charity golf outing.

I know bad things happen to sports programs across the country all the time, but maybe the players on the Iowa leadership thing should spend some time learning how to use the media over the summer to highlight all of the good, funny, and heartwarming things that the rest of the players on the team are doing. Maybe a team blog or something would be useful to help highlight the good guys that the media isn’t as quick to cover.

First up is the Kansas State - Wisconsin game at 3:20pm CT. Both games that I have seen of Kansas State involved Beasley getting into early foul trouble. For some reason, I expect him to stay out of foul trouble today score a billion points and help his team beat Wisconsin. It’s a long shot, but I picked it before this tournament began and I can’t change it now. But if he gets in foul trouble Wisconsin will kill them.

At the same basic time, Purdue plays Xavier at 3:40pm CT. Purdue looked as good as I hoped in the first round. I picked them to win this round (against Georgia). They will still beat Xavier. I kind of wish that I had picked Purdue to beat Duke in the next round.

The final Big 10 game is Michigan State against Pittsburgh at 9:10. MSU looked fine against Temple which means it is about time for them to play like crap. Pittsburgh will cause all kinds of trouble and win by 10 or more.

Which will leave Purdue as the only Big 10 team left in the tournament after today. Go Boilermakers.

I couldn’t care less about any of the other games except for wanting Duke to win today so that a Big 10 team (Purdue) can beat them on Saturday. It would also be nice if Marquette beat Stanford since I originally picked Kentucky to beat Stanford today.

No proofreading today. I have to go install hardwood floors in the dining room and living room today.

The Big 10 managed to win all 3 games yesterday. Good job.

Today, the only Big 10 game is the Indiana - Arkansas game which starts at 8:40pm CT tonight. Arkansas will regain the lead and pull away in the second half after the each Indiana player is distracted by Kelvin Sampson sending them text messages and calling them throughout halftime.

Also on the schedule today is the Butler - South Alabama. Butler got hosed by how lowly they were seeded. They can either let that bug them and lose or just show up and beat up South Alabama. I’m expecting the latter.

Drake opens the tournament today against Western Kentucky. Go Drake, go.

So far in my Yahoo Pick ‘Em Tournament, I still have 15 of the Sweet 16 (and that’s only because Kentucky only has 3 players). I think based on my safe picks, that I shouldn’t lose any other Sweet 16′ers today.

Let’s take a second out of our busy days to remember the Duke - Belmont HS game last night. It’s always good to take a few minutes to laugh each day.

Today, the Big 10 has 3 games. Considering the Big 10 only had 4 teams make the NCAA tournament this year, today is a pretty big day.

The first Big 10 game today is the Michigan State - Temple game which starts at 11:30am CT. I know nothing at all about Temple but plenty about Michigan State. It is completely irrelevant who MSU is playing. They have about a 50-50 chance of winning the game. I cannot remember seeing such in inconsistent team that is capable of swinging from such highs to such lows in the history of basketball. I flipped a coin to determine that MSU will win by 1 point because Nietzel happens to hit a 25 foot 3 pointer as the clock expires.

Next up for the Big 10 is the Purdue - Baylor game at 1:50pm CT. I really want Purdue to do well since they seemed to come out of nowhere and stand toe to toe against anybody on the schedule. Both teams flubbed horribly in their conference tournament losing to really bad teams. Purdue was definitely hotter up until that point as long as you are impressed with regularly beating Big 10 opponents this year. I like Purdue’s defense and the few times I have watched their games I thought their offense was pretty efficient. I’ll pick Purdue to win by 8.

The final Big 10 game today is Wisconsin - CSU Fullerton at 8:40pm CT. CSU Fullerton likes to shoot 3s and their tallest player is 6′ 6″. Unless they hit about 20 of 25 3 pointers, Wisconsin will crush them. And Wisconsin’s defense is good enough that CSU will have to make those 3 pointers under extreme duress. Wisconsin will easily walk away with a 15 point win.

The other big hyped game from today is the Kansas State - USC matchup at 6:10pm CT. The game features two big name freshman who will be playing in the NBA next year. One of them will be playing their last game today. It would be a lot more interesting of a game later in the tournament but who really cares about the outcome of a couple of one year wonders outside the fans of the respective teams. My prediction is that the game will end with one of the teams scoring more than the other but other than that, I don’t care.

I’ll also be keeping my eye on the Duke - Belmont game to make sure that Duke wins so that they can eventually get crushed by Kansas in the Final Four like I predicted yesterday.

Iowa took care of making sure I don’t have to feel bad when they get knocked out of the tournament by deciding to only beat Northwestern over the last month or so.

That just leaves the beloved tournament.

I signed up for the Yahoo! Tourney Pick ‘Em ‘08 this year by joining the Black Heart Gold Pants group (Group #5862, password gornstar) mostly just because I wanted a chance to use gornstar correctly in a sentence for once.

Normally, I am eliminated from any hope of winning these things after picking the Hawkeyes to win the championship. This year however, I have a slightly more sanely filled out bracket.

I have Tennessee, Kansas, Memphis, and Duke in the Final Four. Then Tyler Smith will score 56 as Tennessee beats Kansas and Memphis will beat Duke 204 to 27. Tyler Smith will be the only person to score in the championship game which Tennessee will win, 32-0.

I really wanted to pick Drake to beat Duke but after several years of watching what Duke does to Davis lead teams, I expect that Duke will win by 1 on some last second bullshit free throw.

Okay, maybe the Hawkeyes still end up influencing my decisions after all.