Happy Tuesday everyone, and welcome to your morning Skull Session. As you may or may not have known, Sunday was James Tiberius Tressel's 58th birthday. It's hard to believe that the Senator is vulnerable to the sands of time, but indeed he is. At a point in his life when most of us will be thinking about more osteoporosis and an active bladder than how to attack a 3-4 defense, he shows no signs of slowing down at a job that requires a 120 hour a week commitment. Very few of us have the kind of superhuman patience and drive that is required for the job, and frankly probably none of us have the ability to to do it even remotely as well as he has.
Let me put it this way: you could pay me to guard a bee in a jar for 120 hours a week, but after about a month I would most likely smash the jar out of spite and replace it with a wasp in a coffee can. At some point in the next 5 years or so, Tressel will probably retire to that big comfy administrative desk in the sky to spend more time with his family, but in the meantime we should enjoy him as our coach as much as we can. Happy birthday Mr. Tressel.
You Fools! You Foolish Fools! 6-6 UTEP is in a bowl. 6-6 Middle Tennessee is in a bowl. Just a few weeks ago the powers that be were talking about the potential for a 5-7 team to reach a bowl game, as it is becoming more and more difficult to field 70 teams in 35 bowls with appropriate records. Of course, tell that to 8-4 Temple, who will not be participating in any of said games. Temple is a team that has made a remarkable turnaround under head coach Al Golden, and their reward this season is to become the poster child for the various hypocrisies in the bowl system. It's inexcusable, and to say that there are some serious inequities here would be an understatement.
Know Thy Enemy In the long, long wait from now until the Sugar Bowl, you have one of two options: go insane, having sipped from the cup of the offseason, finding it a contemptuous concoction of bile and filth. Or, alternatively, you could get to know how our Razorback rivals think. There are two places on ye olde internets that I've found to be very good places to do just that. The first is Hogville.net, a message board populated by Arkansas fans who for the most part seem well informed and polite, and might make for some pretty good drinking buddies at the game. The second is Arkansas Expats, an informative blog that should provide some really good insight into the upcoming game. Check these places out, but also try to rep Buckeye nation in the right way if you do so.
Not Yours. Ours. And by "ours," I mean "Stanford's". In an effort to keep Jim Harbaugh away from any greasy, prying, maize and blue fingers, Stanford is looking to sweeten his contract. This is smart, seeing as how Harbaugh is likely one of the very few names that make up a list of people Michigan would immediately dump Rich Rodriguez for if he were willing to come. I can't imagine why, though. After all, all the guy did was
... [take] the fifth-ranked Cardinal (11-1) [to] the Orange Bowl against Virginia Tech on Jan. 3, a remarkable turnaround from the 1-11 team Harbaugh took over four years ago.
Oh, right. Well, despite that, I still feel that Michigan AD Dave Brandon is going to stick with RR for next season, Harbaugh will get paid, and the blue hairs up north will bemoan their lack of a true Michigan Man™ for at least another year.
Take That, State Of Florida The Dispatch has some good news and notes from the basketball game against Florida State. OSU had some of their worst shooting in a win in a long, long, loooonnnggg time, but there are a lot of other things to take away from this game. I for one was very impressed with the kind of composure that the team continues to show. Aaron Craft had a poor night at point guard, but he never seemed overly emotional or flustered. Same goes for Jared Sullinger, who also had something of an off night but made his presence known in other ways, particularly on the boards. I'm not the world's biggest basketball junkie, but I am really excited about the kind of maturity these guys are showing so early in the year. It's going to be fun watching them develop.
BUT WHO CARES ABOUT THAT?!? We're going to the Sugar Bowl, baby! New Orleans! The Big Easy! Birthplace of Louis Armstrong! Setting of A Confederacy Of Dunces! YEAH!
