Been thinking about the jungle that is the college football blogosphere and thought I’d give my opinion on who deserves some kudos out there.

Funniest Blog–EDSBS.com.

Orson and Stranko found a good niche with their blog, combining Onionesque humor with a writing style that reminds me of one of my favorites, P.J. O’Rourke. In the end, the best thing about EDSBS is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. NOT the place one goes to talk hardcore football, but sometimes a little wit and irony can push you a long way towards enlightenment on certain issues.

Most Useful Blog–CollegeFootballResource.

I don’t call him ‘The Linkmaster’ for nothing. Brian’s resourcefulness in finding even the most obscure links has turned his site into the Grand Central Station of blogs.

Hardest Working Blogger–Brian from MGOblog

Whatever our differences, the dude has his nose to the grindstone, churning out tons of content on a daily basis. That takes a lot of dedication. You can’t have a college football blogosphere without content and he more than does his part.

Best In-Depth Coverage Of A Team–BlueGraySky.

The guys at Bluegray do a good job at straddling the fine line between pertinent in-depth analysis of Notre Dame and irrelevant overkill. Their blog is informative and interesting enough for a non-fan of Notre Dame to read, yet doesn’t fall into the trap of over-the-top partisanship. NOT an easy task for most bloggers.

Most Knowledgable Blog–LannieJulias.com

Though he’s a newcomer to the fray, Lannie has already imparted a good amount of wisdom by sharing with us some of his stories from his time as a coach and scout. Given his unique background, his addition to the blogosphere is invaluable to us all.

Most Objective, Hate-Free, Easy-Going, Yet Partisan Blog–Michigan Zone

These guys skewered the Onepeat.com crowd because, well, it was the right thing to do. Not above making fun of Michigan, either. No haters here.

Most Important College Football Blog–Why, this one of course! Last offseason, it became apparent to me that there were not enough blogs out there attempting to seriously discuss college football as a whole. Most blogs are parochial, started because of the love of a particular team. The bigger picture was often ancillary. Since this is one of the few blogs out there that isn’t fettered to a team, it freed me up to comment on not only the Heisman (my specialty), but everything else in college football. Of course, I did as much as I could to push the envelope–and quite a few buttons as well.

Whatever the case, I’m proud to say that some of the discussions started here and continued elsewhere have resonated–and are still resonating–throughout the college football blogosphere. Several wide-ranging debates took place on a whole set of issues, from the role of blogs and their relationship to the media, to the continuing evolution of offenses, to the debunking of conference stereotypes, to scheduling disparities between conferences, and so on. The arguments were often heated, but they were vital and healthy. The ideas discussed sparked increased interest from readers and helped establish that blogs were a fresh–and often cutting edge–alternative to the established college football press. Quite often, issues discussed here and elsewhere later showed up in the mainstream media and thus were able to reach a wider audience. So to all who participated and who continue to participate: Well done.

And of course, this site is best known for the Heismandments, which remained canon for yet another season.

Getting off the soapbox, here now are the awards for the best and worst contributors to the comments section on HP:

Best Overall Commentator–Cody. Always interested in a real discussion. No real axe to grind. Fair-minded.

Most Entertaining–The Spirit of Bill Oliver. Where has he been anyway? I miss his brilliance.

Most Intelligent–John Q. Public

Most Objective–ND101

Most Effective Opponent of HP–Solon

Most Annoying–Dawgy1

Worst Commentator–Anonymous

I’m looking forward to another offseason filled with lively discussions and stimulating debate.

I’ve been at it on this blog since August of 2004 and, therefore, I produce one of the oldest college football blogs in existence–which is a little like saying you are one of the tallest midgets, but still.

Even after over 800 blog entries, however, I have yet to look back on how it is I got here. What’s more, I have yet to reflect publicly on how cool I think it has been to witness the spread of so many other blogs that deal with college football. So, what follows is an attempt to do just that.

My first season was pretty interesting and intense. Thanks to some industrious friends who linked it on message boards, the blog got some decent traffic. But for the most part, I didn’t care much about that. I just wanted to have an outlet to get my thoughts down on certain subjects. I figured that having an audience would force me to keep at it. Little did I know that it would be so time consuming and that people would actually start to care about what I wrote.

The Heisman was the overwhelming focus the first season. I wanted above all to educate people on The Heismandments so that we could all understand how the process worked. Using the Heismandments as a guideline, Matt Leinart was my preseason pick and, of course, he went on to win the trophy.

But funny things happened along the way. While people enjoyed engaging in Heisman debates (particularly the Purdue people in the early going), many started to get really pissed off about my rare forays outside the Heisman domain.

I soon found that my Top 10 teams list tended to spark a bunch of commentary, while my first tentative early posts about subjects such as SEC scheduling (I believe I was the first to point this out) seemed to really strike a chord.

The race soon narrowed to Leinart, Jason White and Adrian Peterson. Of course, the site was soon engulfed by Oklahoma fans who naturally thought I was biased for insisting the Leinart was the likely winner.

But win it he did. It seemed to make all the time and energy I had put into the blog worth it, since my prediction (which admittedly, was not a reach by any means) came true.

I wrapped up the season with what I think were some pretty valid points:

–The Wrench In The Works

–Underclassmen

And with the Heisman race settled, I went into hibernation for a couple months, not sure of what to do with my creation.

It wasn’t until late April of last year that my thoughts turned back to HP. Bruce Feldman of ESPN, who had linked to me early in the 2004 season, emailed me and asked if I was going to put out my list for the spring. Seems he wanted to link to it again.

That provided enough motivation to get things going again.

Coming out of hibernation, I soon noticed that I wasn’t alone in the college football blogosphere. My friend at CollegeFootballResource alerted me to the existence of a pretty cool site called EveryDayShouldBe Saturday.com.

Honestly, it was a relief to see more people out there. Maybe I was just not privy to the ways of the blogosphere, but I felt pretty isolated during my first year. If people commented, no one would link to anything. No one else seemed to want to put their neck out. That was clearly not going to be the case in 2005.

After some very tentative Heisman blogging into early May, I just was not feeling very inspired. There was only so much you can talk about with regards to the Heisman in May. I felt that I needed to branch out and stir the pot a little, to stimulate some debates. It seemed to be the only way to break out of the rut.

And so on May 20, I put this post out. Of course, it contained items that turned out to be way off, but it touched on some themes that seemed to generate great interest in joining the debate.

So I kept at it. And while HP still mainly dealt with the Heisman, I increasingly piped in on college football in general. Then I decided to shake things up a bit.

I recently looked back on the great Blog War of 2005 and noticed that, in retrospect, the tone was a lot more civil than I remembered.

It evolved from arguing over the role of blogs, to a back-and-forth over my belief that a few schools were being more innovative on offense than other schools, to an all-out brawl over conference superiority to the final culmination–my wrong-headed contention that Boise State would beat Georgia.

Along the way, I became familiar with a whole new slew of bloggers, including The Realist, Brian from MGOBlog, Bruinsnation and Voluminous among others.

They all had their perspectives–some obviously tended to get under my skin more than others–but they helped create a more vibrant roundtable type of atmosphere than any other that could have been planned.

And what can one say about the myriads of crazy, yet earnest, SEC fans who found their way to my site after even the tiniest slap in the face of their beloved conference?

Indeed, I quickly learned that if things got boring, all I had to do was write something about the SEC and fireworks were sure to follow.

So what about some of the comments I made prior to last season? How did things turn out?

–Well, for the second year in a row, my preseason pick for the Heisman took home the trophy.

–Not only that, but I said from the getgo that Leinart was the longest of the long shots to win it.

–This post on the 2006 race from May, 2005 looks like it could have been written in, um, May, 2006.

–We figured back in July that UCLA was going to beat Oklahoma. We also thought the Sooners would lose at least three games, which they did.

–Our excoriation of Phil Fulmer for picking Erik Ainge over Rick Clausen as the Vols starting quarterback was on the money.

Check out the first part of this fantastic recruiting story from Lannie Julias at LannieJulias.com.

His first tale took us into the recruiting offices of coaching great Chuck Fairbanks, as the Colorado coaching staff debated the recruitment of a then-unknown player (but future NFL star) named Jeff Donaldson. Along the way, we learn how Lannie’s extensive knowledge of track and field helped him as he traversed the country looking for recruits to bring to Boulder.

In the Walter Shockley story, we get a glimpse of the underside of recruiting as it was back in the late 1960s.

The way Lannie tells it, it all seemed so innocent.

Can’t wait for part two.

Thanks to Google Alerts, I just came across a site called realfootball365.com, where there is this story by Connor Byrne talking up Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith for the Heisman Trophy.

With the Heisman trophy presentation just shy of ten months away, you might be wondering, “Why is he hyping up Smith now?” It’s never too early to think about who the best player in the land might be. My early vote definitely goes to Mr. Smith.

Of course, I have Smith in my pre-pre-pre spring Heisman group, but I think at this point he is a darkhorse for the award.

Smith’s candidacy may be helped by the current–and warranted–media infatuation with Vince Young. As I wrote a few weeks ago:

He (Smith) could benefit from some make-up votes by voters who now think Vince Young deserved the Heisman over Reggie Bush. How better to atone for that sin that to vote for another dual-threat quarterback from a traditional power?

And Byrne echoes this sentiment somewhat here:

Comparisons between Smith and Young are definitely valid because of their mobility and ability to get passes to the right receivers in clutch situations. Although Young has a few inches of height on Smith, both QB’s have great intangibles and the skills to lead their teams to big plays in the most key of situations. With Young headed to the NFL next season, the torch has been passed to Smith.

However, all that said, Byrne makes one HUGE error by not including one of the two strongest candidates for next season:

…the logical choice appears to be Smith, or Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn.

Well, there is a certain running back who plays for Oklahoma who is a MAJOR omission from that column.

In reality, the 2006 Heisman race is between Quinn, Adrian Peterson and a bunch of boys. The only way Smith wins is if he has a spectacular year while both of these two fail to produce what is expected of them.

He’s good, but at this point he’s at best No. 3 behind Brady and Adrian

…from some of the greatest coaches of all time:

“I’ve seen football make men out of condemned material.” –John W. Heisman, the Heisman Trophy namesake, in 1929.

“Football doesn’t build character. It eliminates weak ones.”–Darrell Royal of Texas, 1972.

“We’ll settle for three kinds of bones: a funny bone, a wishbone and a backbone. The funny bone is to enjoy a laugh even at one’s expense. The wishbone, to think big, set one’s goals high, and to have dreams and ambitions. And a backbone — well that’s what every boy needs to get up and go to work to make all those dreams come true.”–Coach Duffy Daugherty of Michigan State, in 1965.

“There are only two types of coaches — them that have been fired and them that are going to get fired.”–Frank Howard, Clemson coach, 1968.

“Ability is what you can do. Motivation determines what you do, and attitude determines how well you will do it.”–Lou Holtz

“When you make a mistake there are only three things you should do about it: One, admit it; two, learn from it; and three, don’t repeat it.”–Bear Bryant

“It’s been incorrectly stated that practice makes perfect. Practice just makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”–Vince Lombardi, 1964.

Check out this link for a real cool device that predicts which play Notre Dame will run under any given situation (albeit for the 1995 and 1996 seasons under Lou Holtz).

Did you know that on a third and 4 from his own 26 yard line, with 1:22 left in the third quarter and down 22-19, Holtz was most likely to call a pass to the split end?

Clearly, the guy who built this program meant business. At least he was doing something productive during college instead of wasting his time hanging out with the girls from Omega Mu.

This is the kind of program that math nerds who claim to like college football should be creating in their spare time.

Ann Arbor’s finest are thinking up some new graphs as we speak

Putting up billboards seems to be all the rage these days.

And while LSU fans and USC fans are running into all kinds of roadblocks in getting their messages out, 2004 Heisman Trophy winner Matt Leinart is making it look pretty easy.

According to the Los Angeles Times, billboards were raised at 14 locations in Southern California on Friday with the following message from the former Trojan quarterback:

USC fans and Southern California, Thanks for the memories…

You can see the billboard on Matt Leinart’s new website here.