I've been meaning to write something about The Blue-Gray Sky, a self-described "Notre Dame scrapbook" produced by ten contributing writers who collectively have crafted one of the most respected sites in the college football blogosphere.
Due to the position the Fighting Irish occupy in the sport, it is impossible for any college football fan to be neutral where the Golden Domers are concerned. You can be a U.C.L.A. fan and have no opinion about Alabama; you can be a Clemson fan and never give a thought to Iowa; you can pull for Syracuse and hold no views about Texas A&M one way or the other . . . but, if you follow college football, you have to take a stand on Notre Dame. Either you love 'em or you hate 'em; there is no in between.
It's like being a baseball fan and not having a firm opinion about the Yankees . . . it simply can't be done.
It goes without saying that the guys at Blue-Gray Sky and I fall on opposite sides of that particular divide and, as a result, our views diverge upon many other points, as well . . . up to and including the proper spelling of certain colors we agree are important.
To their way of thinking, the October sky against which Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Sleepy Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden were outlined is gray; to my way of thinking, the color of the uniform my great-great-grandfather wore into battle in 1862 was grey.
Along those same lines, I didn't much care for it when B.G.S.'s Mike wrote that Robert E. Lee was "a villain because he made the unforgivable mistake of casting his lot with the bad guys" and drew an analogy between the commanding officer of the Army of Northern Virginia and Erwin Rommel. Those characterizations crept a little closer than I would've liked to the sort of absurd accusation leveled by the Fighting Irish fan (not a contributor to Blue-Gray Sky, I would hasten to add) who wrongly wrote of me that "[t]he only way he could be more 'Anti-Catholic' is if you combined his DNA with that of Jerry Falwell, Bob Jones, and Osama Bin Laden." However, Mike later clarified that his accusations of villainy were "facetious," so I am willing to overlook those jokes, even if I didn't find them particularly funny.
I guess I'd be more inclined to use the phrase "the bad guys" to describe the side that burned my home town to the ground, but maybe that's just me.
In short, Blue-Gray Sky is a fine weblog and a recent posting that appeared there (purely coincidentally) dovetailed nicely with something I wrote earlier this week.
Although it now appears that some of Pat's speculation may have been premature, there are hints that Notre Dame may revive Knute Rockne's tradition of "barnstorming," when the legendary Fighting Irish coach took his team around the country to play neutral site games against stiff competition, essentially inventing intersectional scheduling.
Since one of Notre Dame's putative neutral site games tentatively was slated to be played in New Orleans in 2011, Pat had this intriguing observation to offer regarding the Golden Domers' prospective opponent in the Big Easy:
While I'm not entirely sure it's accurate to say that Georgia cancelled the game with Cincinnati rather than the other way around, the rest of what Pat had to say sounds good to me, too, even if the prospect of playing a game on "live" T.V. isn't quite as jaw-dropping as he made it sound.
The 'Dawgs haven't traveled to New Orleans during the regular season since playing their last road game against Tulane in 1972 and there would be a nice symmetry to facing the Irish a second time at the site at which the Red and Black won their most recent national title.
On Wednesday, I wrote that Notre Dame would be my fifth choice for a major non-conference opponent---yes, fifth, not sixth; I was kidding about Kristin Davis's alma mater---so I am all for Pat's suggestion.
Obligatory Kristin Davis photo.
The moral of the story is that The Blue-Gray Sky is a fine weblog that should be placed in the same category with Every Day Should Be Saturday and Swamp Ball . . . namely, sites you will want to visit regularly despite the authors' team affiliation.
Hopefully, the many denizens of the Bulldog blogosphere will get the chance to cross paths with the B.G.S. guys in the Big Easy in 2011.
Go 'Dawgs!