Bill, Jeff Bowden doesn’t coach at FSU anymore, why do I care?

Bill, seriously man he’s at North Alabama now, with Terry. We don’t care.

Bill. For real. I don’t want to relive that God-awful era by reading a Jeff Bowden interview.

To that, I say you should care, since your Booster money is still going to him. Why? Because Terry Bowden was kind enough to get him as a volunteer at North Alabama. We are financing Bowdens that don’t coach here anymore, to the tune of $107,500 / year through the 2011 football season.

NoleDigest.com – As usual, the Scout, Inc. website is my lowest rated website for FSU. It’s always been ugly, to the point that I can’t tell if it has good information or bad. Hell, it might be the most informative FSU website ever, but because of the design at Scout, I’ll never know because I can’t wait to leave that site and head to another.

Nole Insider – Another one of the sites that are “premium” content. The user interface / layout isn’t as bad as NoleDigest in my opinion, but there are too many articles that are “premium” and quite frankly I can get all of my info for free, elsewhere. Why would I pay for it at Nole Insider, ESPN affiliation or not.

Fear The Spear – (New entry) Seminole Productions has a nifty looking website out there called Fear The Spear. Here’s the thing, I WANT to love this website. It has the slickest look out there by far. It’s media-rich, with virtual tours of the locker room, video and audio of the team and countless bits of information that fans love to read. But, and here’s the big BUT, I think they got a little over ambitious in the design. I’m sure it runs wonderfully on a local network, but over the internet this is Web 2.0 gone awry. Whether I load the site in Chrome, Firefox or IE, and wherever I load it, I have to watch progress bars as the site loads, and then suffer through loading menus, etc. Design is big to me, since I like my info up front, and in full view, and I just can’t get that yet at Fear The Spear.

Garnet And Great – G&G only ranks down here because it is a niche site that doesn’t update as often as the rest ahead of it. Rich Halten runs interesting pieces, and it’s still one of my favorite FSU sites on the Internet.

Seminoles.com – The official site of Florida State. Over the years Seminoles.com continues to improve, and it has information on every FSU sport. I was a bit disappointed in this past year’s softball coverage, but I’m probably one of the few that pays attention to that too. On the major sports, Seminoles.com continues to do a pretty timely job of getting the official word out to the masses.

Warchant.com – The most popular, the biggest community and slowly becoming more irrelevant every day. Rivals thrives on “premium” recruiting information. I’m not a fan of recruiting news, but there are many fans out there that live and die by it. Other websites are catching on, and provided much of the “premium” information for free. I have a feeling that the entire Rivals network will have to figure out something soon, or they’ll be blindside by the fact that they’ve hemmoraged readers. Either way, Warchant is what it is, the behemoth and the always on Garnet-Colored glasses reporting. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, I suppose.

ChantRant – ChantRant moves up over Warchant for this review. Why? Less Bowden bashing, more interesting articles. Sure there is some poking fun still, but lately Rich has brought some strong articles to the table that are FSU related, but not necessarily about FSU. Like, don’t look now Seminole fans, but Jacksonville State has a QB you might be interested in…

Nolefans.com – I continue to thank the guys that do the stats. Everything you need is there!

NoleSports.com (Tallahassee Democrat) – It’s been solid, and it’s better than a lot of other sites out there, but I always feel like what I read at the Democrat I could read anywhere else. I don’t mean that to be a knock, because the articles are well written, and occasionally surprising, but overall by the time I read about the games in the Democrat, I’ve already read about them elsewhere.

Chopping Block (Orlando Sentinel) – Here’s the deal, I liked the Chopping Block more when Andrew Carter was doing it alone. At times other writers contribute, and so far I’ve read nothing compelling from them. Maybe the “newness” of the blog fell off for me, or maybe it will pick back up once football season starts. For now, the Chopping Block falls back to #2.

And your current champion…

Tomahawk Nation – As much bitching as I do about TN, it’s because I see the potential over there for great things. They’ll hammer you with stats, they’ll hammer you with insight and they always have well thought out posts. Even better for a lot of fans, is the recruiting information they put out for free. I’ve ranked them ahead of Chopping Block because of the passion behind the blog, and the improvements they continue to make over there, even though they are at the mercy of the SB Nation website template. Now just lay of the unfunny attempts at humor (keep the funny ones) and don’t do too many out-of-character things (see: reviews, keychain) and you might just be the champ for a while. Wear the belt proudly gentlemen, your title defense begins now.

Others not mentioned:

I’m sure there are others out there, and one specifically that gets mentioned but is disqualified for causing problems here at ScalpEm. If I’ve left anybody out, let me know and I’ll include them in the next ranking, but remember that they are FSU specific sites, not just ACC or NCAA sites!

ScalpEm.com?

Well you know, I’m always #1 in my heart. ;-) If you have ideas for ScalpEm though, or things you’d like to see, by all means include them in the comments on this post or email me. I’m always up for some constructive criticism, or ideas for improvement.

Vote!

Vote to the left for YOUR #1 FSU related website!

“Rafter is coming back as a Student Assistant and Michelle Snyder is coming back as a grad assistant – both welcome additions to the coaching staff.
Heard Rafter also attracted players looking to learn from one of the best catchers out there. Watch for news of a couple transfers coming to FSU for the 09/10 season.”

”

Oops – forgot to mention this tidbit of information from July 2, 2009:
NCAA 2008-09 Postgraduate Scholarship Women’s Spring Sports Awardees from the State of Florida:

Stacey Nelson, Softball, Florida – 3.56 GPA (Philosophy)
Kaleigh Rafter, Softball, Florida State – 4.0 GPA (Criminology)

Congrats to these girls – especially to Rafter representing FSU!!”

From the article:

How much are you down this year in season ticket sales?
“Probably about 13%. And I think that’s primarily due to the economy.”

The economy is only part of the problems for FSU Football. A relatively inferior product since 2002 has slowly chipped away at the fanbase. Constant bad press, that FSU players bring on themselves, puts a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. And, FSU continues to cave into the ACC and ESPN when it comes to the Miami Labor Day game. You know why that game isn’t sold out? Because historically it’s an early season mistake fest, with no implications on the ACC or the MNC picture.

The best game of the 2009 home schedule is the first game of the season, on a Monday night, on the island that is the City of Tallahassee. People are going to make plans for Labor Day weekend, that involve travel, the beach, etc. Most of them aren’t coming to Tallahassee, a city that I adore, but lacks the vacation appeal of other places, especially on the last weekend of Summer. Oh, and what do I mean about it being the best game on the schedule? It’s the big traditional rivalry, and should be a huge game in October if both teams are in contention, and it’s winnable for the Noles. The rest of the schedule looks scary. USF screams trap game, and Georgia Tech is going to run up and down the field at Doak this season. Fans had better brace themselves for some agonizing trips to Doak.

Patrick also makes one final, and valid point:

What are you telling FSU fans, both boosters and non-boosters?
“Get your tickets now. This team needs your support.”

The college fanboy in me wants to agree with this, but the newly crowned 30 year old can’t help but think of a line from Fever Pitch, ”You love the Red Sox Seminoles, but have they ever loved you back?” I love the Seminoles, and I’ll be there to root them on, but at the end of the day, with the situation the economy is in, and the stagnant-until-Bowden-retires feeling around FSU football, I understand why people are reducing the games they attend, or stay home entirely. HDTV, a couch and the ability to flip the channel when it gets ugly is a great, great thing.

Here’s what I have:

NoleDigest

Nole Insider

Garnet and Great

Seminoles.com

ChantRant

Warchant

Tomahawk Nation

Nolesports.com (Tallahassee Democrat)

Andrew Carter / Chopping Block – Orlando Sentinel

Am I missing anyone (FSU specific, ACC general blogs are not included) I should review and include in the rankings? Let me know in a commment!

CLEMSON — The billboards advertising Clemson football season tickets have made their annual appearance on highways leading to the campus.

Generally football in this state sells itself. But this year, the school could use the promotional help.

If any of the other ACC bloggers come by here, how bad is it at your school? Let me know in the comments.

I KNOW I should hate Miami more, but I don’t. Every experience I’ve directly had with GT fans (minus the guys at Legacy x4… but I haven’t actually met them remember), has been one of a foul mouthed, drunken moron. What’s that? You say, college football fans in general act like drunken morons? Well yes, that’s true, but they don’t start yapping about their technical degrees and that they’re SMARTER than you during the diatribe.

I miss the days of a yearly battle between FSU / GT. One of the best games I ever attended was the Joe Hamilton / Chris Weinke affair years ago that was the Keith Jackson definition of a “barn burner.” There was no defense in that 41-35 victory over the Yellow Jackets, and the Yellow Jacket fans were exceptionally (and they’d continually tell you how exceptional they were) obnoxious. Toss in the 2000 campaign and a skin-of-the-teeth win by FSU in Atlanta, with the same brilliant students yapping about “almost beating FSU” and telling the quiet “thank-God-the-Noles-survived-that” FSU fans to shut thier f’ing mouths!

GT has a special place in my heart thanks to those experiences, how about you? Do you hate any particular ACC team the most? It doesn’t just have to be football experience either!

Sometimes, I just absolutely hate sports fans. Specifically, I hate sports bloggers, who are the guys that are passionate enough to actually write about the team they adore. Yes, I even hate myself a little bit at times too for it, but there’s a fine line between passion, and being one of those idiots that argues on Fanarchy on Versus network. (Seriously, I clicked that on the other night and had a good laugh for 5 minutes, then I felt bad for everyone involved.) I pride myself on being balanced around here, and I don’t think there are too many examples of me just flat out attacking other schools for no good reason. As usual though, a rival blogger is going off half cocked about “THE Florida State University.” Hey, buddy, it’s not Ohio State. If anyone at FSU says THE Florida State University, we’re mocking Ohio State’s idiocy. Mmmkay?

A couple of things for FOV to keep in mind:

• Peter Lalich, just a small reminder that every program has problem children.
• Preston Parker. Yep, blew it. Should have gone sooner probably. I don’t hear anybody arguing with you.
• Cursory suspension? Not really, FSU acted in good faith and suspended those involved for a rather long period of time.
• You may go ahead a turn the argument to baseball, that’s fine. We don’t like our baseball situation either, so you’re not rubbing any salt into wounds that aren’t already wide open and painful from prior lost opportunities. Although, overall it’s an astounding 43 wins, 14 losses for FSU over the baseball Cavaliers.
• I wasn’t calling you a dirty Jefferson loving hypocrite… I was calling you a whiner, which is what you’re telling everyone else to stop. Wait, so I guess I am calling you a Jefferson loving hypocrite.

I just have to wonder, why does anyone care so much about a topic that doesn’t involve them? Maybe I don’t understand the motivation behind it. It’s like me following Florida and posting about all of their problems. Some sites do it, some don’t. I’ve always felt that I shouldn’t bother wasting my time researching a team I can’t stand to begin with! Enjoy the offseason FOV, you’re undefeated and unique, just like everyone else in the ACC.

Excuse the non-FSU news, but I felt as though I had to point out a huge death over the weekend. As Chili once told me, “Billy Mays is an American Treasure and anyone that thinks differently WILL SHUT THEIR MOUTHS.” I couldn’t agree more. Billy Mays got me to try Oxy Clean, and he got me to try Might Putty. Thank you Billy Mays for keeping my high school baseball pants white, and my rain gauge for the sprinkler system firmly attached to the gutter!

Rest In Peace Billy!