Wow Front Page of New York Times

So a team announces that its best pitcher is going in for Tommy John surgery and it shows up on the front page of the New York Times, welcome to the world of Strasburg mania. When I saw this I saw shocked and still am. This is one of the biggest stories in the world, all I can say is Wow.

SEC Football = Paid Content

For the last couple of years people in the newspapers industry have debated how to get people pay for content on the web. Maybe the Southeastern Conference has the answer. The State, the state newspapers of South Carolina, announced Thursday that they would be charging people for access to their cover of University of South Carolina sports.

"In the coming days, we will begin charging a modest membership fee to access a new and improved GoGamecocks.com web site. Memberships will be available for $50 per year (less than 14 cents per day) or $10 per month,'' according to the story.  

The State is the not the first newspapers to move toward paid content with its sports coverage. Last year, the Tuscaloosa News made the Tide Sports Extra a paid site. The site covers University of Alabama sports including the defending BCS National Champions. The company charges almost $60 a year or $10 a month for access to their site.

With this moving being made could more sports departments around the country do the same thing, especially in the SEC territories, where football coverage is king. Maybe hard news will not make the right amount of the money on the net, but sports on the other hand might be the one to drive it. Sites like ESPN have even turned to paid content, their Insider section, to balance their Internet books and it seems to be a success. So maybe the newspapers in the SEC towns will do this first and the rest of the country will follow, its just a thought.

Cover Story: College Football Previews

In less then  a week, the first games of the college football season will be over. In honor of that here are the various college football previews magazines from all over from Sports Illustrated to The Sporting News to Phil Steele

OTWT Champions League Predictions

The draw for the 2010/2011 Champions League has been made and there are some tastey groups including Group B, which includes: Spurs, Inter Werder Bremen, and FC Twente and Group G, which features three former winners of the event. Here are OTWT predictions on who is going advance to the knock out stages.

Group H: ARSENAL, Shakhtar Donetsk, SC Braga, FK Partisan: Arsenal and SC Braga
Group A: Inter Milan, Werder Bremen, TOTTENHAM, FC Twente: Inter and Spurs
Group B: Lyon, Benfica, Schalke, Hapoel Tel Aviv: Lyon and Benfica
Group F: CHELSEA, Marseille, Spartak Moscow, MSK Zilina: Chelsea and Spartak Moscow
Group D: FC Barcelona, Panathinaikos, FC Copenhagen, Rubin Kazan: Barcelona and Rubin Kazan.
Group G: AC Milan, Real Madrid, Ajax, Auxerre: Real Madrid and Ajax.
Group C: MANCHESTER UNITED, Valencia, RANGERS, Bursaspor: Manchester United and Rangers
Group E: Bayern Munich, AS Roma, FC Basel, CFR Cluj: Bayern Munich and AS Roma

Strasburg is a real American

This is a terrible parody song of Hulk Hogan's "I am real America" for Nats pitcher Stephen Strasburg. This might be the worst song in the history of the world.

That Head has its own Solar System

Mench's head is as big as the Capital Buidling

So Strasburg did not make it through his start on Saturday night, but all was not lost, when I found out that we now have Kevin Mench on our roster. Mench's claim to fame is not his baseball skills, but rather the size of his head.

The consensus around Major League Baseball is that he has the largest head in the game,size 8, according to Wikipedia. In fact, his teammates on the Rangers went so far as to create a green Shrek helmet for him to wear, although Major League Baseball would not allow him to do so. Like Al Snow used to said, during his days in ECW: ""Head Head Head Head.''

Professional Tailgating: Strasmas in Philly

As a true Nats/Expo fan, Saturday's game against the Phillies was something that I had been waiting for and when my friends at Sox and Phils let me know that Strasburg was starting it became one of the biggest sporting events of the years. Little did I know that Strasburg would be only going four innings and leave having the rest of his season in jeopardy.

Fans lined up just to get a view of Strasburg warming up in the bullpen before his start.

Everyone had their camera and cell phones out for this warm up session.
Strasburg warms up


Strasburg was not the only top prospect to be playing, Dom Brown was also getting the start

The AB that end Strasburg game and maybe his season