COLLEGE PICK'EM IS HERE!!!!!

Hi all! Albeit a week late, here is another way we can talk smack and compete against each other. Plus, it gives people like me reason actually gloat when bowling green upsets pit, instead of just thinking "really? thanks for showing up this season Pit". I just sent you all an email invite to join the league (at least i hope i got you all - let me know if i am missing anyone). Its a setup similar to the bowl pickem we did last year. -You follow the link and choose a name. -The password (if you need it) is "gameday" without the quotes. -Once you get your name setup you can make your picks for the week. The format I chose uses a "beat the spread" system. What this means is this - as an example: UF is a 21 point favorite to beat Miami this weekend. If you choose UF, it doesn't mean you think UF is simply going to beat Miami, it means you are betting that UF will "cover the spread" and beat miami by at least 21 points. That said, if you pick miami, you will win even if miami loses, just so long as they dont lose by more than 21 points. I chose not to include confidence points with this. I figured that having to deal with confidence points would triple the time it would take to make picks, and I know some of you - not me :) - actually have lives and/or are involved in other leagues where green things are the wager and the stakes are a little higher. You can make your pick up until 5 minutes before each game. You can also opt to have the league send you a reminder email and let you know its time to make your picks. If anyone has any questions or trouble getting on let me know at jfraxeda@law.stetson.edu Incidentally, i will be in gainesville for the game this weekend, so look for me on sportscenter saturday morning cheering and holding up an irrelevant but humorous sign. Happy gameday!!!

The Blog Is On Fire!!!!!!!!!!

Man, this is GREAT. The season has barely started and the blog is really coming to life with a vengeance. We've got a bevy of new 5-star recruits. Hawkeye Ted from the Big Ten. Willy a/k/a Requeyo The Hoya is even quoting Shakespeare to show off his quasi -Ivy credentials to us neanderthals in the SEC (I thought that was an exclusive province only visited by Nora and me-- Shakespeare, not neanderthals). Johnny has finally made his grand entrance enhancing the blog exponentially! One thing is missing, though. Other than Nora, we have not heard from the women lately. Where's Michelle Katnik??? Natalie's fateful email last week got luisleon and I together with Aggie Pete in Jax but she hasn't made a blog appearance this year. Nora, please, round up the other females, you've been carrying the torch by yourself too long!

Hola Fellow Bloggers

I will never make it as a computer hacker. After many days of frustration, establishing new accounts, new emails, I turned to older brother Vic, sister Nora and Joaquin across the country to FINALLY gain access to this hallowed territory known as "Coast to Coast Sports Chat"! Johnny Cueto as I'm known to most hittin hard from the West Coast - the land of the #1 in the Country USC Trojans (since Mr. Bruin AZarate has not logged in yet I can still talk trash on our lowly crosstown rivals UCLA). Very happy to be here; I've read all the early season postings and have been thoroughly entertained. Love the photo of the Frax Brothers @ the Swamp - Vic we need one of us @ the Colisseum in the near future. Good news bad news: I will be out of town for our huge home opener against Ohio State / the good news is I'll be in Vegas watching it on massive screens with hundreds of total strangers (just like being @ the game isn't it?) Looks like my first taste of the Colisseum will have to wait til 10/4 against Oregon. Lets see if we can have another meeting of the bloggers somewhere in the country in the near future. Until then, good luck to all.

Hi Everyone

Thank you for the invitation. I hope to add tidbits of commentary now and then to this spectacular aggregation of like-minded "guanajos". Over the next few days I will be letting everyone know why Georgetown is in fact the best. In the interim ... go Hoyas.

SC jumps to #1 in AP poll

Gang, Indeed, SC has been elevated to #1 in today's AP poll. We leapfrogged Georgia, who has fallen to #2. Ohio State is now #3. When they meet in the Coliseum one week from Saturday, it will, likely, pit the #1 and #3 teams in the land, which, as previously stated, may be a better ranking match-up than the eventual national title game. It looks like a potential Game of the Century type of battle. Again, while other teams play powder-puff types of schedules, the Trojans are stepping to the plate and taking on all comers. Meanwhile, A&M lines up Arkansas State and promptly loses to them. What an embarrassment! Poor Pete Dunn. 2010 cannot arrive any sooner. All our other blog mates' teams won on Saturday, even Iowa. Congrats, Ted. Being new to the blog, had your beloved Hawkeyes stepped on a duck (don't Hawkeyes eat ducks) and lost in their opener, you would have had to explain a great deal, not to mention the beers you would have to buy for all of us for tanking in the opener. Bye, for now, Victor

PAC-10 v SEC

Like last year, Tennessee blew their first game of the season against a PAC-10 team losing 27-24 to UCLA in OT @ The Rose Bowl. It was actually a pretty interesting game. Bruins young QB Kevin Craft was Mr. Interception (4 in 1st half) and Dr. Brilliant NFL Passer (a series of beautiful drives to pay dirt the 2nd half). The kid really grew up in a hurry and looks to have a great future ahead of him. Both defenses were terrific and played better than the score indicates. Phil Fulmer looked stunned, as usual. They shouldn't have given him a raise. Congrats, PAC-10 cousins & watch out, I think UCLA is back.

LOL

I really lol when I saw Vic's comment that the L.A. Times said that although Ohio State is considered by the usual bevy of fools the #1 team in the country, it's actually the #2 team in the PAC-10 since SoCal will beat the living daylights out of them and the #3 team in the SEC since Florida and LSU already have!!! Good going, Vic!

My Return to The Swamp

At the behest of my older brother and blog founder Joaq, I am submitting for your reading pleasure and sleeping aide the story of “My Return to the Swamp” You know that good things await you when you’re over 100 miles away from Gainesville in the crisp of the morning and the car astride you on the Florida Turnpike has a huge “Swamp Bound” sign on its side. As I rode with Joaq attired in our defiant (more on that later)orange and blue shirts, I was reminded of the adrenaline generating force of the Chattooga River pushing our whitewater raft towards the thundering rapids that awaited us. Now let me digress to tell you why our Orange and Blue attire was defiant. For those of you who are not yet familiar with the demi god that has been bestowed upon the Gators, Urban Meyer- it appears that he not only a football prowess, but also an artist who uses a unique medium to express his creativity. He regularly applies the denizens of the Gator Nation as pigments that paint his orange and blue canvas AKA “The Swamp”. On this particular Saturday Urban had decreed that white would be the color of choice for painting his Swamp. However, yours truly (and his other brother Darryl) decided that resistance was in order and refused to be assimilated. As you might imagine, our bravado wavered as we neared The Swamp and saw that our fellow denizens had all been happily assimilated as Urban’s white pigments. When we grew increasingly concerned that the Swamp forces would eject us and I couldn’t shake the thought that we had seats on the very top row next to the outer wall of The Swamp, I took secret comfort in remembering that I was wearing a white t-shirt under the orange shirt that Joaq so graciously had provided me. Being the loyal brother that I am, and thinking that Joaq was not wearing a white t-shirt, I fought my urge to jettison the orange shirt and spent much of the first quarter holding on tightly to my seat lest I suffer a Monty Pythonish ejection over the top of The Swamp wall. But I’m getting ahead of myself. While still en route to G’ville I suffered a bout of nostalgia requiring a dose of contact with my old Frat house roommate, Worthless Worm. I employed my cell phone and the miracles of modern technology to erase three decades of history as the voice on the other end exclaimed “What’s Up Frax?” As if awakened from a 30+ year long dream I gave the obligatory response plagiarized from the good old days of SNL “Is this the party to whom I’m speaking?” After a long discussion involving complex logistics, time, and space, we resorted to the universal solution for bodies that are moving in convergent but different directions, at varying speeds, and hope to converge at some point – “Call me when you get there and we’ll figure something out”. As usual it worked – but I’m getting ahead of myself again. As we approached the familiar confines of the epicenter of the Gator Nation I was thrown off by an unfamiliar name on an otherwise familiar Law School area, at which we would soon be tailgating. It appears that if you have had a building named after you; some bozo can come along with a sufficiently large boatload of money and outbid you for the naming rights. Even if that bozo is someone nobody likes and you are too dead to counter their bid (as is the case in the renaming of the UF law school). As soon as I’m done with this blog I’m starting the campaign to prevent the renaming of the Washington Monument to the Bill Gates obelisk. OK back to The Swamp story. After spending a most pleasant couple of hours with the bright and pleasant future of our country, under the shade of Spanish moss covered Live Oaks, and discussing everything from hurricane path prediction models to the virtues of environmental engineers, it was time to leg the final part of the trek to Mecca. The orange and blue brothers approached hallowed ground of The Swamp, propelled by the white rapids (they were rapids before they became pigments) composed of citizens of the Gator Nation, the nervous excitement of the looming waterfall at the end of the rapids returned to my veins. Unfortunately, instead of the waterfall we were now facing a climb to row 90 of The Swamp with a recurring warning from the loud speakers that I would probably be dead from heat stroke within three hours. Ah, the Swamp. All the color and pageantry of college football in its greatest glory – slightly dampened by some very dark and ominous clouds overhead and a very whitish hue as decreed by Urban– well, at least we weren’t dying of heat stroke. When the dark clouds released a torrential downpour that chased us all back to the entrails of the Swamp (all except my conspicuously blue clad brother) I turned to the sardine next to me and said “don’t worry Urban has connections that go way above the coaching sky boxes and he is making deals to ensure an on time and dry start to the game.” I had no idea of my power of prediction until… exactly on cue the rain stopped with just enough time to allow us to get back to our seats and watch the sun peak through as the Gators hit one of the many lousy kicks they would kicking this Saturday. A football pundit later said that the sky high kicks that barely made it to the Rainbow Warriors 20yd line were intentional – yeah right! Not only did Urban have a rain shower cool down The Swamp right before kickoff, he made those dire warnings of death by heat stroke seem silly by ordering just the right combination of drizzle and breeze so that The Swamp was swathed in a cooling mist throughout the afternoon. After I finish the name retention campaign, I am contacting NOAA so that they stop this passive nonsense of trying to predict where hurricanes are going and hire Urban to tell the hurricanes where to go. (Pun intended) About the Game- You already saw Jason’s game analysis as posted by Joaq on the blog yesterday – Here is a different take: True the Gators won big; true the Gators didn’t pull out all the stops; but what the Gators accomplished, after several failed attempts, was to win a game without relying on Team Tebow to pull off the win. For the first time in two years Urban forced the Gators to win a game using running backs gaining yards with up the gut plays. The Gators were also lucky that the Rainbow Warriors had difficulty completing passes to some very open downfield receivers. I’m sure that’s been noted by the Bulldogs, Tigers, and assorted other wildlife. Regardless of what the pundit said, the Gators had better find someone who can send a kickoff into the end zone before we play a team with an offense that will take advantage of starting their drives on the 35 or better. Well, I’ve bored you enough and besides I’m plum out of that poetic wax stuff (my brother got most of it in our family); and with all these her-acanes and his-acanes coming at us- we best get outa here- So I’ll be back later if the good Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise. Say a prayer for New Orleans and our Gulf Coast dwelling friends that are about to get walloped by his-acane Gustav. Go Gators!

Who Needs a Home When You Got The Swamp!

To the right is a picture of Rick & me at The Swamp for the opening game against Hawaii. Rick is homeless as a result of a fire that burned down his beautiful house in Ft. Lauderdale last week. I am also homeless as a result of a flood that drove me and Rhonda out of our lake home in Orlando last week. Both of us will be out of our respective homes for months. Thursday I called Rick who was in North Carolina on business and after he told me about his fire and I told him about my flood, I told him I had an extra ticket to the Gator's opening game against Hawaii, would he like to come? Like a true Bull Gator, he not only said, "Yes!!!" But "Heck, YES!!!!!!!!! I'm changing my flight to Orlando as we speak". So I picked him up at the airport and we headed to Gator Country. Who needs a home when you got The Swamp?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!

1st Weekend Recap

• Trojans-- The Trojans dismantled the Virginia Cavaliers 52-7 @ Virginia. QB Sanchez put on a commanding performance. He was 26 for 35 for 338 yards with three picture-perfect touchdown drives in the first 11 minutes. Then the Trojan offense hit warp drive and made the hyperspace jump. I hate to see what would have happened if Sanchez had not hurt his knee a couple of weeks earlier. Obviously he's 100%. The Trojan "D" was utterly dominating. Congrats, cousins, it looks like a great season coming right up.
• LSU Tigers -- The defending national champs easily took care of last year's Cinderella Appy State beating them 41-13 for the home opener @ Baton Rouge. The Tigers essentially ran the ball at will. Charles Scott rushed for a career high 160 yards on 16 carries. LSU looked like a steamroller rolling over the poor Moutaneers... while the steamroller driver ate a sandwich and spoke on his cell phone. Congrats, Luisleon, you got a couple of easy off-conference games coming up and then dum da dum da daaa... the SEC will come knocking at your door. Enjoy it while you can.
• Iowa Hawkeyes-- The Hawkeyes crushed the Maine Blackbears 46-3. Like LSU, the Hawkeyes ran the ball at will and ended with a total 245 yards rushing. Congrats, Ted!!! Good luck the rest of the season.
• Gators-- It was a windy and rainy day at The Swamp thanks to Hurricane Gustav and the Gators breezed through Hawaii 56-10 without breaking a sweat. It was an interesting game (if you're a Gator). Florida was without some of it's principal weapons on both sides of the ball. Heisman candidate wideout Percy Harvin stayed on the sidelines because of a sore heel and All -SEC middle linebacker and defensive leader Brandon Spikes also sat it out (sore toe). Veteran TE Aaron Hernadez also sat it out, not sure why. I think Meyer wanted to let some of the freshmen play. Tebow never took off his Clark Kent suit and played with one hand tied behind his back. At the beginning it almost looked like a scrimmage as Tebow kept handing off to a number of brand new running backs to let them stretch their legs with all the urgency of a backyard barbecue game of tag football. Then the running backs warmed up and between them, the defense, and special teams, the Gators put up 42 points in about 15 dazzling minutes. During those blinding moments, Brandon James returned a punt 74 yards to the house, Strong Safety Ahmad Black returned an interception 80 yards to paydirt and various and sundry running backs kept dazzling the home crowd with incredible speed as they crossed the goal line untouched. While the Gators scored at will, I got the following text message from Jason: "Dad, you realize that all our points have come from 1. Defense 2. Running backs. Urban's genius is beyond my comprehension... he is toying with them." Jason is right, of course. We barely opened our playbook. There's no tape for Miami or Tennessee to watch. We just ran a Saturday afternoon scrimmage. Toward the end of the game Hawaii finally scored a field goal against our third-string D (after the first attempt was blocked by our second string) and then a last minute touchdown after the Gator D bench had been completely emptied. By then our defensive coordinator Charlie Strong had taken off his headset and was chatting with our offensive coordinator Dan Mullen who had come down from his box. The game had been turned over to the graduate assistants and the big boys were just shooting the breeze, enjoying the breeze.
• Texas A&M Aggies-- Pete, my heart goes out to you, buddy. You guys still have some rebuilding ahead of you. Arkansas State 18, Texas A&M 14.