The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

The Good: A photograph of mine is published in the newest issue of Everywhere.

The Bad: There will be no more issues of Everywhere.

The Ugly: A longer piece of mine on Texas BBQ was slated to be published in the now never forthcoming Issue 5 of Everywhere.

Such is the nature of the magazine industry.

Buy, Buy, Buy!

You Say Coincidence, I Say Fate

I'm not afraid to admit it: I frequently like to start my summer days by listening to this song:



A good friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song. He also wrote this one:



Why I didn't make that connection sooner, I'll never know, but now that I have Steve Goodman is officially one of my favorite people on earth.

Let me, let me, let me!

Drifting

First Will Leitch leaves Deadspin and now this (indulge me with a brief bout of self-importance):

As of this post, I'm officially joining the crew at the Big Red Network.

OK, so maybe it's not that momentous, I didn't feel the Internet shake, but it does mean a couple of different things:

1) All of my Nebraska football content will now appear over there.

2) I will still be here at HiPlainsDrifter.com but in a more general sports/personal blog format.

I have a couple of reasons for doing that, which I will now letter to avoid confusion:

a) Writing this blog (for free) makes me feel like I'm utilizing my graduate degree (not free).

b) I have to fight the urge to not write about the worst thing to ever happen to me--the Chicago Cubs--daily. Now I'll have the freedom to do that and it's something I used to do a lot of. The timing for this really couldn't be better as the injury-riddled Northsiders are starting to come back to the pack which is good for me. I don't possess a vocabulary deep enough to write about the Cubs when they're good but over the years I have developed a sharply-honed arsenal of ways to say essentially the same thing: the Cubs suck. Hopefully I'll get to work on my weakness here but, if not, I'm ready to write them off about 300 times in the next three months.

c) I'm still going to kick the crap out of Trace Adkins this season. Despite the fact that I can't pick games worth a damn, I like doing it. Perhaps naively, the point-spread represents just about the most objective college football data out there to me and I'm going to keep looking at the game from that angle.

d) Shameless self-promotion. If anyone decides to pay me to write something, I assure you, I'll link it here.

Honestly, I don't know what this blog will be going forward outside of those few general ideas but I do know this: In financially dire, environmentally distressing times such as these what the world needs now is another navel-gazing, general sports blog so that's what I'm going to aim to provide.

But more than that, the reason for the move was driven by the opportunity to contribute to a site I read and respect. I won't be writing about the Huskers any less or any differently than I have been, it will just be at a different location.

I know most of the people who happen across this site day to day come here for the Husker talk and if it doesn't interest you outside of that then, sincerely, thanks for coming by and you know where to find me.

And if, by chance, you do find yourself back here, well, thanks for that too.

Meet the Broncos

Maybe it's a bit early to be thinking about Western Michigan but that extra time will be useful because the New York Times preview of the Broncos is just about as thorough as you can get without reverting to Phil Steele-like abbreviations.

The gist of the analysis is this: W.M.U. is a live longshot come August 30. Very live.

If you like that NYT style, here's the preseason look for the rest of Nebraska's opponents who have been revealed so far: San Jose State, New Mexico State, Baylor, Iowa State, and Kansas State.

Nebraska has yet to show up on this bottom-to-top list, meaning that, in the estimation of the NYT bloggers, the Cornhuskers are better than these six teams. And, as superior teams never lose to inferior teams, that means we're going bowling.

Great!