Mean Green

I was killing some time tonight while waiting for the late games to end so that I could finish laying out tomorrow's paper when I ran across a column that is sure to get the Mean Green faithful's blood boiling. Hang around an area long enough and someone is sure to forward you any column or note on the team you are covering.

Any way, Scott Farrell, who used to work at the Morning News, but is now running MustangManiacs.com, wrote a column on SMU's schedule and threw UNT under the bus along the way.

The premise of the column is that the scheduling deals SMU announced with regional rivals like UNT last week do not fit SMU's mission to be a top-25 caliber program.

"The trouble spot is Orsini allowing SMU to be baited into the four-game set with North Texas. That series and two throw-away games against Stephen F. Austin occupy what may become valuable schedule slots in the future that, should SMU improve and ESPN comes calling, could be used for a national TV date or a lucrative paycheck-earning game at Ohio State or Tennessee or Nebraska or such."

Part of the deal when you work for a newspaper is trying to be a neutral party and casting a skeptical eye on what is going on around a program. Work for a fan site and you are paid to drink the Kool-Aid.

Scott is only doing his job, but saying SMU should not play UNT because the Ponies are destined to be a Top 25-caliber program that will need open dates to go take down Notre Dame on ESPN seems to be rather large leap, but hey, I am sure the Pony faithful loved it.

If you are a Rivals.com subscriber like most of us in the media business who have to work the recruiting beat, here is the address. I still haven't figured out how to get the link function to work on the new blog.

http://smu.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=823433

I know some of you are asking what in the heck do I care about what some SMU fan thinks? Maybe you don't care, but if the column gets your blood boiling, be sure to post your thoughts on the blog.

After all, would I blog about an inflammatory SMU column to stoke UNT fans' Scrappy-loving, Jamario Thomas T-shirt-wearing, Todd Dodge-believing fire just to drive blog traffic?

You better believe it.