we interrupt this programming to tell you more about ourselves

This is as good a time as any to hit pause for a second here. The football season is upon us, which means interest is way up in what the hell's going on in the world of college football. It also means readership at this blog is up quite a bit from when it started three months ago. Things are happening, links are happening, and I like to think that this particular corner of the (finger quotes) blogosphere is taking what you might call a rightful place in it. So it's only right, I think, to reiterate what Who I Am, and What It Is I Do, so you know what to expect.

- First and foremost, this blog is a hobby. It's rather a fun one, too. Takes more care and feeding than I expected, but also it's a lot more interesting than I expected, and I obviously expected it to be pretty interesting otherwise it would never have come to be. But the fact that it's a hobby, not a job, means a lot for what this creation of mine looks like.

- When I post, for example. Posting between about 7:30 AM and 5:30 PM is almost exclusively out, unless something really important pops up on the news. Will Barker's arrest is an example of that. That was a work post. Normally, though, daily posts come between about 6 and 9 PM. It's an odd time, but that's the way it has to be. Because this is not my job, though, I don't feel the need to take a break from it on weekends, so when I feel like it, up goes a post.

- I don't have any totally scoopy insider info. I post the news after it comes available to the general public. Sometimes I'm a little faster than the news services; for example, you could have read about the coaching staff's happiness with Cam Johnson yesterday on these pages, or today at the RTD. That was straight out of the press conference posted at the team's official site, though. Usually though, if there's a juicy tidbit of something or other, at least one news outlet has it before I do.

- Why should you bother, then? The deal, obviously, is this: we aim to be your one-stop-shop extravaganza!! Irony aside, that's pretty much true of all blogs. I read a bunch of different sites so you don't have to. The catch is that I'm only one person, not a walking Internet search engine, and prone to missing stuff here and there, and it's my opinion alone that decides what gets posted. You'll notice I haven't posted anything yet on the onerous no-signs policy. You don't need a blogger to tell you that it sucks to high heaven. (Though if I get a return email from Craig Littlepage, who I complained to, you bet your ass it's getting posted.)

- You also get my cutting edge opinion and piercing insight. Again: hobby. I could post my opinion on message boards (and do, frequently) but here I get pretty much unlimited sway to say what I want. If someone doesn't like it, they won't reply-post to tell the world how stupid I am, they'll just self-select themselves out of my audience. Sometimes this piercing insight is uncannily right. I predict Anthony LaLota will keep UVA in his top seven; he does. I make a passing mention that Peter Lalich did a decent job of escaping pressure against USC; the next day, Groh goes to a press conference and praises his ability to do just that. Full disclosure also requires me to point out that I can be stunningly, horrendously wrong at times. USC was not a defensive battle. I called for UNC to be a surprise team this year in the Blogpoll Roundtable and they went ahead and looked like ass against a I-AA team. So my soapbox does not come with a free visit from the Always Right fairy.

- Hopefully, also, you are enjoying/will enjoy the features I try to put together. I like to think that they are things you either can't find anywhere else, or can but would have to look in multiple places.

So. That's what it's all about. It's going to be a great time - happy reading.