A Retrospective

We've been doing this blog thing for about 4 1/2 months now through slow off-season lack-of-news. Despite that, there is a LOT of content in the archives that, in my unending egotism (notice the use of the royal "We" above), I consider well worth reading. Because we have a number of new readers these days, I thought I'd link back to some of my key earlier writings, much like when The Simpsons do a clip show.

• My introduction
• My informative series on the basics of recruiting
• A criticism of the standard passer rating and a new formulation of a passing statistic, and an analysis of last year's SEC quarterbacks under this new system.
• The continuing series on Bama and Saban, which I think are critical, but very fair.
• An attempt to do the same for running backs and rushing teams what I did for passers.
• Post #1 about the "Dismissed Three", followed by Post #2, where I suggest that better players need not be treated the same as lesser players.
• A brief statistical analysis of Auburn's recruiting and results, wherein I conclude that Tommy Tuberville is probably the best coach in the SEC.
• Poseur's post on Jamarcus Russell versus Brady Quinn.
• The "underachiever" meme
• Media biases in the NFL draft.
• Comments on PETA and Mike V's death.
• Why it is not necessary to boot Ryan Perrilloux off the team.
• The series on 2007 recruits. Don't worry. This is not strictly biographical information. While there is biographical information, much of this series uses the incoming recruits and their stories as starting points to discuss larger, more general issues.
• My account of getting kicked off of TigerDroppings.
• The posts written by my guest-blogger, Poseur. His own, only partially-sports-related blog can be found here.

And finally, I leave you with the infamous Coach Orgeron song. Yaw yaw yaw.


For the new blood

Who am I? What am I doing here?

Last night, I almost went to see LSU vs. Bama in gymnastics. Gymnastics here is a big deal. The meets are better attended than the men's basketball games, in part because the tickets are cheaper than a movie ticket, and in part because a lot of young girls here do gymnastics. My wife has season tickets and she goes with a friend. The friend had to leave town, and I was going to take her ticket because it was LSU and because my wife needed someone to go with her. I've been before, and I have to say it was a lot of fun, and I don't even particularly like gymnastics. I did not make it last night, however, because I took my wife to the hospital. We thought we were having out baby, but it turns out we weren't.

Anyway, since I don't have gymnastics to talk about, I'll just do a postmortem on my first week of keeping a blog. I'll also tell you a little more about why I'm doing this.

I've been a poster at TigerDroppings for a long time. In my time at TigerDroppings, it has evolved from a fairly small community of posters to a huge, bawdy festival of LSU-ness. It is undoubtedly (though I have no statistics to back this up) the single largest and most heavily trafficked LSU-related site on the web.

I respect what Chicken has managed to accomplish. I'm sure Droppings has surpassed his expectations many times over. My problem with Droppings is that, at its size, it has kind of left me behind a little bit. Though there is still great content from many of the posters there, the signal-to-noise ratio has gone way down since 2003. There are so many posters there, and so much activity, that there is little sense of any permanence in any of the writing there. If you start a new topic at a high traffic time, chances are decent that it will fall off of the first page and into oblivion within an hour or so, unless you say something inflammatory or excessively optimistic. The result, I think, is that it discourages in-depth analysis, and the culture has gotten increasingly combative and negative.

Why spend 20 minutes writing out carefully crafted thoughts at TigerDroppings? Most responses will be along the lines of, "I don't come here to read novels," or "That's 2 minutes of my life I'll never have back", and the post will slowly sink to the bottom of the page and into oblivion, never to be seen again. You get a lot more permanence and a lot better response if you say something like, "Check out the [boobs] on Tim Tebow's girlfriend," or "John Brady is teh suck," or make some kind of disparaging remark about DandyDon. I'm not trying to be elitist or anything, but that just isn't my style.

That's why I decided to start this. Well, that and plain old vanity. This is my place for writing about football in more depth, in a place that has more permanence, even if the traffic is a lot lighter. So, place me alongside the Dandy Dons of the world, writing an LSU blog, though I think if you stick around, you'll see that my style is a lot different from ol' Dandy's.

Don't get me wrong, I also respect what he has done. He has kept an LSU blog since long before anyone used the word "blog". At the time he started, I was living in Delaware. The Advocate was just starting to get an online presence, and Dandy was probably my single best source of LSU news. His style is to a little more scattershot than mine, however. He tries to tell you a little bit about everything going on, while I will try to take one topic at a time and give you a lot of depth of analysis. He gets a lot of criticism, but I bet his track record on "scoops" is as good as you'll find at the other sites.

As for what you can expect in the near future, I'm thinking about eventually inviting some guest posters. I have some people in mind who can add a very helpful and interesting perspective, if they're interested in bringing it here. I also have a lot of posts already in the hopper, just waiting to go. Right now, a lot of thoughts are going through my head, and I'm writing them down to turn into posts. Some of them are completed or almost completed, but I'm holding off on them because I will need to have SOMETHING available to post when my baby comes and time becomes a bigger problem.

Among the expected topics in the future:

• Why it's not a bad thing when a player leaves the program.
• Why people look at the 40 yard dash to evaluate players, and why they shouldn't.
• What the heck is a quarterback rating, anyway?
• Richard Murphy, the most highly anticipated redshirt freshman running back in my memory.
• My completely useless March Madness coverage, which may necessitate bringing in a guest writer.
• Why I don't like Tubby Smith's coaching style
  

So stick with me.

First Post

Hello,

I am Richard Pittman. I am a third generation LSU graduate, living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I am starting this blog to talk about LSU athletics in general, and about the joys of living in "enemy" territory. This blog will cover football, basketball, baseball (a little), recruiting, and other sports as they come up. I'll also sneak in some posts unrelated to LSU athletics, such as life in Tuscaloosa, my deep and abiding love of alternative music, and law.

A little introduction to me:

• Like I said, I am a third generation LSU graduate. I graduated LSU in Chemical Engineering in 1996. My parents are both LSU graduates, and my maternal grandfather graduated as well.
• I am from Gonzales, LA and have lots of family in the Ascension Parish and Baton Rouge area. My father was a teacher and principal at East Ascension High School, St. Amant High School, and Gonzales Middle School before his retirement several years ago.
  
• I am an attorney working primarily in Bibb County, Alabama. I went to Law School at the University of Alabama (yes, I know). I graduated in 2005.
• I live in an undisclosed location in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I am married, with pets and a child on the way, but this blog will not be about my personal life.
• I am not an athlete. I never played organized football except in the 3rd grade, and my experience in organized basketball ended when I got to high school. I played a little high school soccer, but frankly I wasn't very good at it, and if I went to a high school that had a well-established program, I probably would not have made the team.
  

Here are some things I will not be doing on this blog:

• I will not criticizing players in a personal way, unless they get in major trouble with the law (re: Cecil Collins).
• While I will discuss football recruiting extensively, I will not be evaluating high school talent. I put this limitation on myself for the simple reason that I have no skill in evaluating how a high school player will perform in college. I can watch a highlight tape of a guy and know he's good, but I can't tell the difference between an LSU-level prospect and a ULM-level prospect. For that, I trust the coaches and the semi-professional scouts at Rivals and Scout. My discussions of recruiting will focus on the battles for recruits, evaluating recruiting needs, and discussing LSU's standings in the college football recruiting world.
  
• I will not criticize other teams in a knee-jerk, purple-and-gold-colored glasses way. It's just not my style to say something like, "Bama will suck this year because Saban will ruin them." I don't believe it to be true, and even if I did believe it, I do have to live and do business in the Tuscaloosa area. I will try to evaluate other teams, especially in the SEC, but I will do so in a fair and objective way to the best of my ability.
  
• I will not ever use the phrase, "LSU gets no respect from the media."
• I will not be giving you "inside information", because I don't have any.
• I will not ever call for a coach to be fired, even if I personally believe the coach should be fired.
• I will not be discussing sex or politics, except as they intersect with sports.
  

I think I am an intelligent guy, and I hope I can give some intelligent insight about LSU athletics. I also hope to have a vibrant and thriving comments section. Fans of other teams are welcome.

I hope you see this and check back frequently. I probably will not post every day, but I want to post on average about 4 to 5 times per week, more or less, depending on what is going on in the world of athletics. Drop me a line in the comments. I'd like to hear from you.