http://extracurlyfries.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/top-25-toughest-places-to-play/ In the new edition of NCAA Football ‘09 which releases for the XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3 next Tuesday, the top 25 toughest places to play in the game are set. Three SEC teams in the top five. Not bad. #1 LSU #2 Florida #3 Ohio State #4 Penn State #5 Tennessee #6 Oklahoma #7 Oregon #8 Wisconsin #9 Virginia Tech #10 Nebraska #11 USC #12 Texas #13 Michigan #14 Texas A&M #15 Notre Dame #16 Georgia #17 Florida State #18 Alabama #19 Auburn #20 West Virginia #21 Clemson #22 Arkansas #23 Colorado #24 Boise St. #25 South Carolina Why on earth is Oregon, Wisconsin, and Southern Cal ahead of Georgia, Auburn, and Alabama? The latter three should be in the top ten instead of the first three mentioned. Southern Cal has to cover up 30,000 seats and they still can’t sell out. I guess it’s tougher to play in Autzen Stadium (50,000+) than in the SEC? Ha. Here’s my top 25: 1. LSU 2. Florida 3. Tennessee 4. Georgia 5. Ohio State 6. Penn State 7. Auburn 8. Alabama 9. Michigan 10. Virginia Tech 11.Nebraska 12. Texas A&M 13. Florida State 14. Texas 15. Oklahoma 16. Clemson 17. Wisconsin 18. Notre Dame 19. Oregon 20. Arkansas 21. Southern California 22. Arizona State 23. South Carolina 24. Colorado 25. West Virginia ExtraCurlyFries,please 7/10/08

http://recruiting.scout.com/a.z?s=73&p=2&c=767909 Most teams in Tennessee are going to rely on their ground game heavily during the 2008 season. Find out who some of the top running backs will be this season throughout the state. Learn more about the prospects and the schools recruiting them. The most sought after running back prospect in the state may be Gabriel Hunter, 5-11, 190 pounds from Memphis-Kingsbury (Tenn.). He has offers from Alabama, Tennessee, Auburn, Memphis, Mississippi, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech. Hunter is a strong running back with the potential to take it the distance. Look for a big season from this 2007 Mr. Football Finalist. One of the hottest prospects in Tennessee is David Jones, 6-0, 205 pounds from South Pittsburg (Tenn.). Jones holds offers from Memphis, Middle Tennessee, Vanderbilt, and Mississippi State. He is being recruited by some schools as running back, but his athleticism has allowed some schools to go after him as a linebacker or safety. His team will be out to defend their 2007 state championship relying heavily upon Jones. Keenan Kolinsky, 6-1, 212 pound running back from Knoxville-Christian Academy (Tenn.) is a big back in East Tennessee hoping to turn some heads this season. He holds one offer from Air Force and is receiving a lot of interest from many other schools. The other schools actively after this big back include Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, Stanford, and Virginia. In his junior season he had 193 carries for almost 1,300 yards and 12 touchdowns. scout.com 7/9/08

http://lsusportspalace.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/just-who-is-andrew-hatch-football-thursday-and-more/ I think the move is pretty expected if you look at the history of position battles since Les Miles has been at LSU. When each player is at or near the same skill set, Miles always tends to go with the more experienced player and the results have worked. Where would LSU have been this past season if Miles didn’t name Jacob Hester the team’s starting running back? But while Hatch is older and more experienced in the system, we still do not know a ton about him, because he only has been out on the field a couple of times in his career. So what we will do today here at the Sports Palace is give you the report card on Hatch, so Tiger fans can know what they can expect from the LSU signal caller. Andrew Hatch: Arm Strength: C- Hatch does not have a cannon and he sometimes struggles with distance on his long ball. But he is capable of hitting a man down the field if the receiver has a step. The receiver he has the most chemistry with is DeMetrius Byrd as we saw in spring when the two connected on several deep balls. lsusportspalace.com 7/10/08

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/nyregion/10towns.html?hp GREENWICH, Conn. Vincent Provenzano, 16 years old, experienced his Kevin Costner moment one Sunday afternoon in May after a thrilling day of Wiffle ball in a friend’s backyard. He came home, gazed at a field of weeds, brush and poison ivy in an empty lot off Riverside Lane, turned to his friend Justin Currytto, 17, and proclaimed: “If we build it, they will come.” After three weeks of clearing brush and poison ivy, scrounging up plywood and green paint, digging holes and pouring concrete, Vincent, Justin and about a dozen friends did manage to build it — a tree-shaded Wiffle ball version of Fenway Park complete with a 12-foot-tall green monster in center field, American flag by the left-field foul pole and colorful signs for Taco Bell Frutista Freezes. But, alas, they had no idea just who would come — youthful Wiffle ball players, yes, but also angry neighbors and their lawyer, the police, the town nuisance officer and tree warden and other officials in all shapes and sizes. It turns out that one kid’s field of dreams is an adult’s dangerous nuisance, liability nightmare, inappropriate usurpation of green space, unpermitted special use or drag on property values, and their Wiffle-ball Fenway has become the talk of Greenwich and a suburban Rorschach test about youthful summers past and present. “People can remember how much fun it was to go out in the woods in the summer, build a fort, do something fun and creative, so there’s something pretty cool in what these kids did, especially at a time kids grow up in such an incredibly structured and stressful environment,” said Lin Lavery, one of three Greenwich selectmen, who inherited Wifflegate while the first selectman, Greenwich’s version of mayor, is on vacation. “But we have a situation that’s escalated,” Ms. Lavery said. “Neighbors are upset that it’s too close to their property; building has been done on town property; there are issues of traffic and drainage. We’re hoping to come up with a compromise, but there are a lot of issues to address.” There’s plenty of local history in Wiffle ball (it was invented up the road in Fairfield) and Greenwich land-use disputes (where to start?), but Vincent and Justin say they just wanted a place to play Wiffle ball. They got materials from a friend’s basement plus two big pieces of plywood being thrown away by a Shell station on East Putnam Avenue. They fished pallets out of Dumpsters and spent perhaps $200, mostly on green paint. But even before they were finished, things began to get complicated. They were told the neighbors had complained, the field was on town-owned land, they needed a permit to put up their field and it would probably have to come down. nytimes.com 7/10/08