The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board

So no F Double today. I’m learning some things about this Big 12 and one is that it’s going to take some time to get places. In order to get to Austin, I have to get to San Antonio first and since I want to get to Austin at a decent time, I have to leave early.

I’m already in the air by now on my second flight bound for San Antonio as you read this and with the way these weeks stack up now, I knew yesterday I wasn’t going to have time to do F Double properly.

Can’t promise you it won’t be the same story next week, but I’ll just try to use this past week as a learning experience and get a little better next week. This week won’t make be a worse blogger. In the long run, I think we’ll look back and see at it as a blessing.

Moving on, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on the game and likely game plans and ideas you’ll see in play or whatever Gus Johnson drinking games you’ll have on the table.

Keep an eye on WVU’s five-receiver set, though. It debuted last week — and I mean debut in the sense there were five receivers and not four with a running back — but was a Baylor ploy because of the way the Mountaineers saw the Bears defending empty backfields.

Doesn’t necessarily mean WVU will do this against Texas because Texas might have a better and thus discouraging tactic to defend it. But it’s at least another caliber of weapon in WVU’s arsenal because it looks and works so well. And Shawne Alston isn’t traveling to Austin or playing in the game, so WVU is again without its full range of running backs and might have to think outside the box again.

Surely by now you caught the Grantland piece Michael Weinreb wrote about Dana Holgorsen. Good stuff about a story you know, but it was delivered from a slightly askew angle — ” … his mullet spiked into a Noltean panorama of peaks and valleys, as if it had spent the afternoon waging war with a family of vengeful squirrels while the gray matter beneath it processed the subtleties of the Air Raid offense.”

Yes!

Within the story, you’ll find a variety of diversions in the form of footnotes and links to stories and video clips. There’s also a link to my book.

Right here.

Study it. Check the cover. There’s a white dot, sort of a bizzaro USA Today thing, that screams WITH NEW EPILOGUE.

The second version is out now and available for just a little bit more, but that’s with reason. The old epilogue was restructured to become another chapter. It is called “Seventy” and I’ll let you guess what that covers. The new epilogue brings us into the new future, since we previously left off at the beginning of the offseason.

The offseason was eventful, both tragic and exciting, and it deserved to serve as the fresh coat of paint on this old house.

All in all, a few dozen additional pages. I went back and colored in some earlier chapters, and got a major assist from Paul Rhoads, and made sure to do more with the 2011 season, with Dana getting a little reflective about exactly what happened and how it came to be.

There’s also new content, including more detail than previously delivered about the move to the Big 12 Conference. Oliver Luck was kind enough to tell me things he’d never told anyone before and Chuck Neinas threw in, as well. Some questions were left unanswered, or unasked, before and some things were not mentioned or not fully explained. I think we fixed that this time.

Carry on …