Tales From The Jayhawks Gridiron and Google's Attempt to Scan Every Single Item on Planet Earth

Get Your Read On

Working for what I would consider a mid-major player in the publishing industry, I'm on the frontlines of the whole "print is dead" battle that is coming to a head (read as fistfights) in corporate conference rooms across the landscape. The dire economic environment helps, but another accelerant is the work of Google. Somehow, someway they're going to find a way to get a tiny slice of every bit of content served up on the internet. Okay, how does this relate to KU football? Google books my friend. They're going to scan every piece of print that ever existed. What does that net for Jayhawk football fans? Right now, a really nice read from the "Tales From the Jayhawks Gridiron" book by Mark Stallard via the Google books preview above. If nothing else you get a great read from Bill Whittemore on the 2003 Mizzou win. If you click on the more about this book in the bottom right of the reader, you'll go directly to the Google site and you can open up a larger preview.

Office Tips for the KU Football Fan

Tired of co-workers trying to distract you from the greatest season in KU football history? Here's a list of ways to turn any conversation into an opportunity to discuss KU football:

Coworker/boss: Hey, Bob how are the kids doing?
Response: You mean Briscoe and Chris Harris. I think they're doing alright. Briscoe made SI and Chris Harris lost his starting status to Harper, but they'll make a nice pair of Big 12 corners next year when Talib leaves.

Coworker/boss: How was your weekend?
Response: Historic. A&M fans booed and I learned about Don Carlos.

Coworker/boss: How's that TPS Report coming?
Response: It's going to be a while. I'm bogged down in trying to decipher the Sagarin Ratings.

Coworker/boss: What are our quarterly projections?
Response: From a point-production standpoint a little low in the first quarter, but it seems to steadily increase throughout the remaining quarters.

Coworker/boss: You want to grab some lunch?
Response: Are you insane? I'm headed home to re-watch the A&M game.

Coworker/boss: How do sales look?
Response: Arrowhead is soldout, but I better have good seats or Lew and I will be having a meeting.

Coworker/boss: What did you think about the season finale of Californication?
Response: Are you insane? That's time that I spend re-watching the A&M game.

Coworker/boss: Do you think Pam from The Office is hot?
Response: Yes, but moreso in a KU cheerleader outfit.

Coworker/boss: Are you going to make that deadline?
Response: Are you insane? I'm headed home to re-watch the A&M game.

KUsports.com Endorses Hawk Digest

Finally, KUsports.com jumps on the Hawk Digest bandwagon. Pro Blogger Ryan Greene pushed the idea of mini-stickers on the helmet in today's Greene Room post. Obviously, I'm all for it as it was proposed here back in August. Of course, HD doesn't quite get the play that KUsports.com generates, so this new effort should help out.

The best news is that it is now clear that we have the eyes of KUsports.com upon us. We're over the hump. Internet stardom soon will follow for HD.

NOTE: I would have posted a big compliment in the comments section but for some reason the LJW login never works for me over there.

More Big 12 Football Media

Another KU Resource

A little trolling around this past week unearthed the AOL Fanhouse page tagged for Kansas football. It looks like another good resource that mixes up both Big 12 football and KU stories. The Fanhouse site has always been a mystery to me, so we'll keep an eye on it throughout the 2007 season.

The search for a true Mizzou blog may have reached an end. Through the College Football Resource site, I stumbled upon another sports blog network -- MVN. They have a Missouri page that looks like it will stay up to date. Again, another one to watch throughout the fall.

For your convenience, both of these pages have been linked on the lower left of hawkdigest.com and on the KU Blog Media and the Big 12 Blog pages.

Enemy Report: K-State Cat Zone

A New Kansas State Blog Emerges

A quick check of the Burnt Orange Nation site this week led to the discovery of a new Kansas State blog -- K-State Cat Zone. Considering that its hosted by Blogger as opposed to SBNation, it's already impressive that the site has landed a coveted link from the almighty BON site. Early indications are that you can expect some serious action at the Cat Zone. Looks like the posts are pretty frequent.

Overall, the enemy blog scene is a little sparse, but here are the best links retained at Hawk Digest if you've got a little spying to do:

Kansas State Blogs

Kansas State Football 

K-State Cat Zone

Missouri Blogs

Behind Enemy Lines-Husker H8er's View of the World

Tiger Tracker

KU Blog Media

A Fourth Blog Is Discovered

While doing a little "research" over the weekend, I stumbled upon another Jayhawk sports blog -- Jayhawk Nation. Looks like they've been in business for over a year and they get quite a bit of discussion going on. Another great resource for KU fans. Here's the full run down of KU blogs I know about:

Hawk Digest - Focused on Kansas football
Jayhawk Nation - Appears to be all KU sports with an emphasis on basketball
Phog Blog - The big one. Definitely geared toward Kansas basketball, but they'll comment on the other sports as well
Rock Chalk Talk - Best all-around KU sports coverage
AOL Fanhouse (Kansas Tag) - Recently figured that this link is a pretty good resource for KU football and Big 12 News (added 7/21/07)

I'd also like to mention that as far as the internet and "Web 2.0"  has come I feel like the search engines are pretty off base in the way they operate. If I search Kansas sports blogs, I should be able to find all four of the blogs listed above. I don't care how much optimization or links they have -- I want to see every blog on KU sports, with the one that has the highest traffic listed first. I find it insane that Hawk Digest doesn't even come up under Kansas Football Blog on Google. Yes, I know there's a whole job set based on boosting your ranking and some fairly simple tricks that do a world of good. Still, Google and Yahoo! as a search tool seem outdated. To me, they're both pretty inefficient, advertised search engines. That being said, I would guess that there are more unknown KU blogs out there. If you are aware of one, please post a comment with link and I'll add it to this entry and to my blog roll.

Back on KU resources, I thought I should note that I am aware that the newsfeeds aren't hitting my own "Jayhawk Network" page. I had a host company go out of business on me. I'll get it corrected, but I'm looking to improve the overall speed of the page as well.