Rob and I both have moved into our fashionable new senior year houses, although there is apparently some sort of fortnight-long back-up at Comcast, so it's very possible we won't be getting cable and internet in our fortresses of football until September 4th or 5th.  They promised they'd get us hooked up sooner if any openings came up, but I'm not getting too excited.  If anyone reading this knows anyone who works for Comcast in the South Bend area, please direct them to us, where they'll find a case of beer of their choice and a finely-grilled steak as their reward.

Right now I'm in the slightly-renovated Hesburgh Library first floor, right next to the heavily-renovated Street Formerly Known as Juniper, and there's only nine days until football starts.  Posting may be sparse for the next few days (Please, Comcast, come to us...), but count on a full report from the open practice for students on Sunday night in the Stadium.  A few links to tide you over...

Here's the nearly complete television schedule for the upcoming college football season, and just glancing over it has me in fits of giggles.  On September 8th, you can roll out of bed to Miami (FL) at Oklahoma, catch Oregon at Michigan at 3:30, head on down to Beaver Stadium or your usual spot for Notre Dame/Penn State at 6:00 and then recover from the thrilling upset/merciless beatdown with South Florida at Auburn and Virginia Tech at LSU at 9:00 and 9:15.  If you haven't passed out yet from the combination of pigskin and alcohol, Colorado vs. Arizona State is your FSN nightcap.  

The combined college football blogosphere is responsible for a lot of awesome and hilarious t-shirts you'd be proud to wear, but House Rock Built has designed my favorite one of the summer:

The first BlogPoll of the season is up if you're interested, although being a preseason poll, there's not a lot you can really say about it.  As hilarious as I find the idea that someone could possibly make Wisconsin a preseason number one, I suppose if you answer any "What if?" question about a top-25 team with all unconditional positives you can justify the selection to yourself.  For what it's worth (not a lot), Notre Dame received three 25th-placed votes, a 24th, a 23rd, a 22nd and one 14th (!?), from the gentlemen over at Saurian Sagacity, a Florida blog.  They came to their conclusion by tabulating accumulated talent over the last four years, which is as good of a way as any to put together a preseason (worthless) poll.

Randomness: SMQ has a coaches salary quiz, things are getting trippy at BON, Penn State ironically (?) busts out the sirens for charges getting dropped, BGS reminds you how smart they are by breaking down our running game like a doctoral thesis, EDSBS guides you through next Thursday and Her Loyal Sons has some great game-by-game predictions I could definitely sign off on.

On the pro side of things, Charlie Frye is starting this weekend but Brady Quinn is still in the conversation. One could guess that if there was no hold-out, this whole Browns quarterback race (Sweet heavens, if you told me five years ago I'd ever be this invested in a Cleveland quarterback controversy, I would have laughed in your face then went back to watching Spiderman, Catch Me If You Can and the Buffy musical episode) would be over.