It's Fridizay! Actually, it's the last Friday before Iowa State kicks off against Northern Illinois!

Anyhow, I was doing some browsing online and just found some things that were funny... At least to me. I have a weird sense of humor, so if it's just me, it's all good:

1. Comes Courtesy of CycloneFanatic: There is a thread titled "What is going to be new at your Tailgate Sept 2????"

Now before I even clicked on the thread to read it, I immediatley thought of saying your mom. That's right, your mom made it big time, and she's rolling with a player like me! Feel free to easily replace mom with sister, cousin, aunt, grandma, or whatever floats your boat.

http://www.cyclonefanatic.com/forum/football/99049-what-going-new-your-tailgate-sep-2-a.html

2. Comes from the Des Moines Register. I saw online a preview of the 10 page story about the Cyclones in the Sunday paper. First of all, I'm shocked that the register employs anyone capable of writing 10 pages. I mean, I read Randy Peterson all the time and the guy just flat out stinks. But what he'll probably do is enlist a high school kid to write most of the stuff, then he'll "edit" it, throw his name on it, and then buy the kid a pizza...  At least that is what I want to believe.

I mean if you read his stories, they are like 4-5 paragraphs at a time, MAX. Maybe he wrote a story every day of fall camp and waited a month before publishing, and now it will equal 10 pages? Or maybe he'll just start a new paragraph every sentence and that equals 10 pages, but really it's like 1.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100826/SPORTS020602/100825007/-1/caucus/Coming-Sunday-Iowa-State-Cyclones-football-season-preview-section

3. The next comes from the Gazette about Klein and Knott. Now the story itself is fine, but if you only read the quotes, it is hilarious:

"We spend enough time together" (Knott)

"We've talked about rooming together again next year. We'll see what happens", (Klien)

"I see it as an opportunity" (Klien)

This is the type of stuff I do when I'm bored. Because if you read most of these stories, they are blah blah blah, anyhow, and you gotta find a way to stay entertained when reading it.

http://gazetteonline.com/sports/iowa-state-cyclones-sports/2010/08/27/young-cyclones-duo-looking-to-take-charge-at-linebacker

4. Nothing to do with Iowa State, I apologize, but hilarious to me: Double-Rainbow man. For reeeal. I know this may be old news to some, but I can't stop watching this over and over. "Double Rainbow all the way across the sky!" "What does it mean??"... Well, I think it means you are tripping on acid or mushrooms, but what do I know?

5. The idea of us losing to Northern Illinois is hilarious! According to fellow SBN Site, Red and Black Attack, they can't decide who is going to be QB between 3 guys!  Upsets are hard, especially night games on the road, when you do not have a leader at QB. I know NIU is supposed to have this awesome defense, but if they can't move the ball offensivley, they aren't going to do jack anyhow!

Pretty exciting huh? In exactly one week from today, many of you are going to be heading towards the tailgating lots, while others are going to be anxiously counting down the hours until they head home, and turn on the game on FSN.

There has been quite a chunk of news related to ISU recently. First, is more evidence is that the backup RB race doesn't really matter. Beau Blankenship, a player that the entire coaching staff raved about last year, has decided to walk-on at Ohio U, because it was clear he was not going to be more than a special teams player here. That's right! He's teaming up with Phillip "I believe I'm a QB, even though I'm not" Bates. Still worried about the backup running backs?

Since when did we have the luxury of worrying more about the second unit of our best position, than the first unit of our worst positions? Sagarin had us with the 71st hardest schedule last year, and we just got over .500. I think a lot of my fellow Cyclone fans are going to be in for a wakeup call if they think we're going .500 or better, and are more concerned with the #2 RB than the #1-8 D-Linemen, #1-8 WRs, the QB play, and our #1-6 at LB. 

Also, there's some drama with the punters. At the beginning of fall camp, Paul Rhoads stated that it was Van Der Kamp's job to lose. Well, just yesterday it was announced that they are giving a scholarship to Daniel Kuehl. I'm guessing Van Der Kamp lost the job.  I think a lot of people do not realize how valuable Mike Brandtner was to ISU over the years, and I think we'll have some growing pains and go through times when we'll really miss him. I'm not trying to diss the other guys, but field position is so important, and having a good punter goes a long way, when you are expected to have a so-so defense.

Enough of the downer stuff though! We got real football in a week! A week! What are ya'll doing? I'm probably going to head up to Ames a few hours early, get some express tailgating in, and enjoy the game at the Jack. Anyone playing hooky?

So, in case you do not know, Clone Chronicles participates in a blogpoll. It's a collection of over 100 blogs of virtually every college football team, and we put together a Top 25 poll, which often makes more sense than what the AP or Coaches put together. We rank based on resume, although I think there are some blogs that do not really understand what that means..

In the past, this was hosted by CBS Sports, but this year it has moved to SB Nation. Along with it, it has it's own webpage, along with twitter feed (@blogpolltop25), and facebook fanpage.

So how can we do a preseason poll based on resume you ask? You cannot. I'd much rather wait until Week 4 to start doing the poll, so we can truly rank based on how teams did, as opposed to making modifications to our previous weeks' ballot based on wins and losses. But the cool part is that when I post a poll, I usually do it on Sunday, and then you the reader, have until Tuesday to let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions. If you sway me, or I realize I messed up, I update the ballot based on your feedback. It's a way to get everyone involved

So what I did, was for the preseason poll, put together how I think the ballot may fare by season's end. I won't be collecting feedback for this one, since it is all guessing, but when Week 4 comes around, I'll definitely be looking to ask.

ISU got a couple of commitments from two Sam Richardsons earlier this week. One a QB, the other a DB. Old news, but hopefully they rock their middle initial on their jersey when they play.  It's pretty cool to see the commitment list up to 10 players now, before we even play our first game. In the past, we'd be lucky to see anybody at this point.

The coveted race for the #2 and #3 RB continues on. For those of you who love Jeff Woody, there's good news for ya'll too. Woody no longer has to pay to go to school, which also means he's going to get some clock this year. 

In other football-related stuff, the CBS Blogpoll has now moved to SB Nation. Over here it can get a lot more exposure. I'll post my preseason poll on Monday just for fun. From there, I'll refrain from voting for the first four weeks out of principle, and make a new poll based entirely on what has happened during the season, and NOT based on my previous preseason poll.

With flooding-related news as it pertains to athletics, it sounds like Hilton will be ready to go in some fashion for basketball season, but women's volleyball will be playing at Ames High.

We're less than two weeks away from the first game. The fun fest is still on as far as I know, this Sunday. Get there, buy some gear, and snatch up some of those $10 tickets to the Northern Illinois game if you don't have a season ticket plan. The week of August 30th, we get into previewing Northern Illinois, and get back into the swing of things. One more "dead" week, and the fun begins. 

It may be natural, but when people talk about fall camp, they want to get into the two deeps, see what the position battles are, and things of that nature. Football teams post depth charts throughout the camp, and fans get all excited. Thing is, it doesn't really mean jack in the scheme of things. Want to know where A-Rob was on the depth chart that came out right before the Kent State game in 2007? Not frickin' listed. For real. He didn't really take over until the end of that year, but still.

Below are some things that get kind of annoying:

People mentioning the wide receivers are deep. Guess what? That means NOTHING. All "deep" means in this case is either a) there are a lot of bodies and/or b) the next guy they put in there has similar abilities to the guys out there currently. Neither really say much about what level the guys are performing at. Last year, this unit was probably the worst in the Big 12. In terms of what was expected vs. production on the field, they were the biggest disappointment on the team.

What I do want to know about the wide receivers are: Did they hit the weights? Did they work on getting off of press coverage? Did they improve their downfield blocking?

I haven't seen any discussion about that at all. Wide Receivers are supposed to be crazy athletic. It's the Big 12; dime a dozen in that department.Who cares if we have 8 mediocre guys? Can we trade some of them for 1-2 better than average guys, please?

People wanting to know who the #2 RB will be.  I'm guessing it will be a person, and they will play RB. I don't get why so much talk is spent in this area. On offense, it's our best skill position area in terms of quality and depth. I love A-Rob. Even back in the day when he was on the come-up and people didn't know what he could do. At the same time, he's not Barry Sanders either. If the O-Line can make holes, and if the QB and WRs are improved, all you need is a guy that gets 4-5 yards a carry. Last year it hurt so much when A-Rob went down because we didn't have any backs that fit the system that well, and our QB and WR play sucked to the point where teams could stack 8-9 in the box, because they knew all we could do is run it

People wanting to know who the starters on the D-Line are. Guess what again? This unit was THE WORST in the conference, and barring a miracle, they are going to be towards the bottom again. I'd expect to see 8-10 guys all rotating. When you aren't that good, you just have to give everyone experience, and try to stay fresh. Who cares who starts? Most of these guys are going to get snaps anyhow. I'm not about to sit there and take notes of who's in when though. Just hopefully 1-2 guys standout and surprise in that area. If they do well, we'll see it.

Like I've said, I'm behind on the coverage, but I'm just tired of hearing about things we already know that give us no clue regarding how the team will fare this year.

I'm just ready to get this season crack-a-lackin', so we don't have to spend time guessing what could be happening on the practice field, and reading between the lines on depth chart updates.

I've been horribly behind with football coverage, and it's not really the best time of year to do that. With everything, there's a reason. I decided to be the headcoach of a 5th/6th grade youth football team, and it has been eating a lot of my time. I'm really excited to help teach these kids the game of football and show them the fundamentals of the game. I'm going to be involved with this through mid-October, and could really use the help with football coverage. I can help provide input, but simply do not always have the time to do full writeups.

Contact me at kieffer.mark@gmail.com if you are interested.

To the readers, I'm sorry I've been slow with stuff. Coaching these kids is where my heart is right now. 

Unreal. Just moved from Ames just under a month ago. Sad to hear about people displaced from their homes. I really puts into perspective stuff like Hilton having 8-9 feet of water and things like that. When I was just hearing about this from people I know, I thought it was only by the athletic facilities, and thought no biggie. Now I see the issue is so much more than just that. My thoughts are with everyone in the Ames community. Don't have much to add, just not in the greatest mood with this.

Check out some of the pictures here.