It's going to be a busy Monday morning and, quite frankly, I'm not looking forward to getting back to the office after a week away and finding out what has accumulated on my desk in the interim.
Nevertheless, I didn't want to leave you to face a brand-new work week without anything original to get you through the day. I was torn, though; I wanted to call attention to the best blog dialogue in recent memory, but I wasn't sure whether it was this or this.
I likewise considered pointing out Thomas Paine's recent polemic on the Oakland Athletics, but, given how much less of a splash William Faulkner's The Sound and the GameDay made than I had anticipated, I didn't want to doom American (League) independence with my endorsement.
The shot heard 'round the blogosphere?
I also thought about directing your attention to Pyle of List, where Lunchbox offered a research-based take on the L.S.U.-U.S.C. controversy and caught the attention of Orson Swindle in the process.
Lunchbox makes a legitimate case and I would not quarrel with him too much, except to note that Georgia unquestionably is one of the S.E.C.'s top-tier teams . . . and, I would argue, the league's pre-eminent athletics program. The Bulldogs are the only S.E.C. team to have won at least nine games in each of the last five seasons and they alone among Southeastern Conference squads have captured two league titles during that span.
Beyond that, sane S.E.C. fans---and, yes, there are many of us---know that Les was wrong and I hope Lunchbox will not judge us by L.S.U. fans' behavior at the 2004 Sugar Bowl. Bayou Bengal fans actually are a good group, they just became absolutely insufferable in 2003. Fortunately, this was strictly a temporary condition.
The 'Dawgs did their part to keep the Bayou Bengals from becoming overconfident.
On the plus side, Lunchbox's co-author, JP, offered a nod to Georgia. Admittedly, there's a good-natured jab at Matthew Stafford's offseason antics, but anyone who predicts a 10-win season for the Red and Black is all right in my book.
In the end, though, it dawned on me that what I should note this morning is the fact that today marks the second anniversary of the date I entered the intercollegiate athletics blogosphere.
As I noted a year ago, my original weblog, Kyle On Football, debuted with a trio of postings published on July 16, 2005. A little over seven months later, I made the move to SportsBlogs Nation, setting up shop here at Dawg Sports. MaconDawg joined me here in March 2007.
I thought about starting my weblog two days earlier, on Bastille Day, but those of us with the word "King" in our nomenclature tend to try to avoid connections to the French Revolution.
It has been 24 months since Paul Westerdawg encouraged me to take the content I compiled during six years spent co-hosting "The Dawg Show" on local cable access and begin posting it on the internet instead of sending it out to a growing list of e-mail recipients. In the interim, I have published 1,033 postings at Dawg Sports---1,034, counting this one---in addition to those articles appearing at Kyle On Football.
Along the way, I have received praise and criticism, both of which I have welcomed.
As the 2007 football season rapidly approaches, and as Dawg Sports rides the crest of a wave of two months of solid traffic growth, I would like to take a moment to thank all of you who pay regular visits to this weblog. I can only hope that you derive as much enjoyment from reading it as we do from writing it.
Go 'Dawgs!