A special post for Orson, purveyor and promoter of shiny things. A shiny new animation visually reproducing The Worst Half of College Football in the History of the Game, courtesy of the 2005 Tennessee Volunteers.

Proves the point rather well that feculence polished is still feculence. Unmitigated futility is always appalling, even in gradients.

This is actually just a sneak peak at something I’ve been working on — and continue to work on — during the off season. It’s not really ready yet, but it’s getting there. If you don’t see anything, get the most recent Flash Player. If it doesn’t fit on your screen or the formatting has gone all funky, sorry. Working on it.

The solid lines are drives, and the segmented lines are punts. Play, pause, and stop buttons will be added later. For now, if you want to see it again, re-load the page. UPDATE: [I see now that it's repeating itself of its own free will. Sure hope that doesn't hold true for our season.] UPDATE II: [Well, what's going on? It's no longer repeating by itself. Hmmm . . . Coach Cut must have visited and put a stop to it.] For a bigger version, go the Animated Drive Chart page.

Currently, the drive chart is all hand-animated (except for the motion tweens), but I’m working on (1) creating the thing dynamically with Actionscript; and (2) getting the variables into and out of Flash and ActionScript so I can just input the numbers and have it spit out the result. Think good thoughts for me because if I succeed, I’ll share with other teams’ bloggers.

I’ll do Orson’s in brushed metal gradients. In cursive.

Sunday Morning Quarterback has an Absurdly Premature Assessment of Tennessee and compares the 2006 Vols to New Coke.  Best line: “REASON TO BE AFRAID, VERY AFRAID: The same Ainge behind a reconstructed line is a whole cookbook for calamity; the same guys on offense last year couldn’t score on anybody, and the defense can’t be nearly as good again without Mahelona, Haralson, Simon, etc.”

Losing Parys Haralson, Jesse Mahelona, Omar Gaither, Kevin Simon, and Jason Allen (two of four starting defensive linemen, two of three starting linebackers, and one defensive back) will certainly hurt, but defensive coordinator John Chavis always seems to have the talent and to coach that talent well, and he likes his linebackers for this year.  And the hope is that we won’t see the “same” Ainge but a reanimated one, and that the reconstructed line will be better, lighter, faster, stronger than the old one. Still, SMQ wonderfully articulates Vols’ fans’ worst fears.

Speaking of Parys Haralson, who was selected in the 5th round by San Francisco in the recent NFL draft, SFillustrated.com’s Russ Lande thinks that Haralson is going to be better than Manny Lawson, who SF picked in the first round:  “I think two years from now he’ll be the starter and Manny Lawson will be trying to find a way to get on the field.”  Pretty strong.

The off season tinkering with the system continues this year as basketball does away with the airborne timeout.  UT basketball coach Bruce Pearl doesn’t like the change.  To get in on the action, NCAA football officials decided yesterday to allow coaches to challenge one on-the-field ruling per game and have it reviewed by instant replay.  They can only challenge if they have a timeout remaining.  Y’all see any problems?