Rumors of my demise are exaggerated, but understandable

Has this blog died? No.

Unfortunately, I have been in the throes of a very difficult time. I am starting a second business, and it has simply overwhelmed me despite my best intentions.

Those of you who had been reading me up until the Holidays when my posting frequency went all to hell, hang in there. I will be back very soon, hopefully better than ever. I am trying to find a way to better integrate my blogging into my busy day, and I think I may have found a way.

In addition to finding a way to get my blog-stuff together, I have decided to simply dedicate this blog mostly to football. I have tried without much success to integrate basketball coverage also, but the pace of the season is a bit too quick for me to cover the entire SEC with any sort of coherence. I will blog about basketball, but more from a macro perspective over the entire conference than particular teams. Also, I have found that the SEC bloggers with the exception of UK, Vanderbilt and Florida generally don't pay that much attention to basketball, at least from a blogging standpoint. This is a football conference, and even a UK fan like me can see that. Why fight it? When in Rome ...

So for those of you who were wondering what had happened, have faith -- Best of the SEC Blogs will be back stronger than ever very shortly. This is just the kind of thing that seems to always happen to bloggers when real life encroaches, but I am quite dedicated to this effort and will not give it up. So hang with me, I am almost to the point to where I can resume my passion. I'm sorry for the unavoidable interruption, and I expect to be back up to speed beginning this week.

Thanks to all for reading!

Say what?

Wow. Imagine that. I've been nominated for a College Football Blog award.

I don't know what to say about that. So I'll say, "Thanks, guys" to Alligator Army for the kindness. This whole blog-award thing is new to me. Now I really feel guilty for not being able to post much for the last month.

[UPDATE1]: I'm told Rocky Top Talk has also suggested our name. Thanks to them as well.

[UPDATE 2]: Just noticed that SECFootballBlogger.com had nominated this blog also. SECFootballBlogger is one I didn't know about for some reason, but that's changed now. Thanks.

[UPDATE 3]: Now, I find that we have been nominated also by one of my favorite SEC blogs, Get The Picture. Thanks to the good Senator.

Duty calls ...

Unfortunately, the demands of work and the Holidays are going to keep me away from blogging for the next few days.

I should be back by Thursday or Friday.

Some administrative notes

Sorry about the long absence. Life happens, Internet outages happen. But I'm back in the saddle again.

I have changed the news box on the right a bit. Mostly what will appear there are the days best blog posts from SEC bloggers. As I update the box throughout the day, we will see some scroll off. I am trying to figure out a way to get better news as well, but the mission of this site is the Southeastern Conference bloggers, not promote big media. But I would like a better newsfeed than we currently have. I'm working on it. For now, really important stories will appear in the box as well, but mostly it will be great blog posts.

You will notice I maintain very few tags on this site. That is by design -- I currently have one for each SEC school, plus a couple more. I will probably be changing that just a bit over the next few weeks, but you can expect the tag list to be kept to a couple dozen at most. I hate big tag clouds, and I can never make sense of them, so I'm going to keep it short here.

The site will also be transitioning over to basketball coverage. I know there is still a lot going on in the football realm, and I am not going to ignore that. But basketball is now in full swing, and there will be gradually decreasing football news of note in the interregnum between now and the bowls.

Over the holidays, I hope to make a few small changes to our rather Spartan design, but not too much. I don't do pictures (I consider that to be a copyright violation without express permission) and don't do many graphics. This blog is all about content, and it is all about the hard-working SEC bloggers out there bringing us the great angles and insights on the news of the day. I know many of my readers have their own blogs, and I want this site to be about the great work they are doing.

Which brings me to another point -- What makes a great blog post? Well, like beauty, that is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. What I like is a fresh take, or some clever humor combined with real insight. I know that is vague, but bottom line, I like blog posts that are either:

• very informative
  
• very entertaining
  
• very insightful, or
  
• a combination of all three

If you think you have written something particularly good, or know of a great post I haven't listed or commented on, drop me a note and I'll look at it. I have to skim quite a bit. As you can see from the blogroll on the left, ther are lots and lots of SEC blogs, and every one you see is in my feed reader, and I go through that thing every day. So it is way more than possible for me to overlook something good.

As always, thanks for visiting the site and reading my drivel.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all who read this blog, or just happen across this post.

Enjoy stuffing yourselves, or the stuffing itself, or something. I know I am looking forward to a day of rest, because there are some big games coming up this week both in football and basketball.

I just saw South Carolina beat Penn State, and I am looking forward to more SEC basketball this weekend. Not only that, but we have Tennessee at Kentucky, the Egg Bowl, and the Iron Bowl this weekend. That's a feast for any sports fan.

I'll be back tomorrow, but today, I am taking a break. Enjoy your holiday!

Some administrative items

I have discovered that several readers use and enjoy the newsfeed box to the right. I have been doing a lousy job of keeping that thing updated lately, but that is going to change.

Going forward, my plan for this feature is this:

• Early AM update (except weekends, when I get my beauty sleep) with news from the main stream media sources and off the wires.
  
  
• After I select the stories, I will be picking the ones I think are the most interesting and moving them to the top of the listing. I will only do this once - after that, stories will pretty much be listed in chronological order.
  
  
• In the afternoon or early evening, I will switch to stories from SEC bloggers and other select blogs that contain SEC or other interesting sports-related content.

I am also planning a few more convenience features for the site, and will be announcing them as I get a chance to implement them.

Finally, I would like to take a second to thank my readers. This site was created primarily as an experiment. I wanted to see how fast and how well I could grow a blog from dead scratch. It has been interesting and instructive, and along the way I have kind of fallen in love with both the subject matter and the multitude of other outstanding bloggers out there in SEC land. I had no idea coming in that the SEC would be so well and capably represented in the blogosphere.

So to them and those who take the time to read my drivel, thank you.

Rumors of my demise

If some of you are thinking that maybe I have parted with this vale of tears (or possibly, just decided to give up blogging), don't worry. I have real life obligations that require me to be absent from the blog until Sunday night or Monday morning.

I apologize for the necessity, but that is just life for you.

Hope to see you all Sunday or Monday. There will be lots of things to talk about after today.

Good luck to all SEC teams today. Enjoy.

Periodic bleg

One of the missions of this blog (a blog with a mission? -Ed.) is to try to maintain as comprehensive a list as possible of SEC related blogs. It is a bigger job than I thought, because the Internet is, well, a big place.

It is so big, in fact, that I have to periodically enlist some help from people who read us. That's the point of this particular post. If you know of an SEC-related blog not listed on my blogroll to the left, or you are a new SEC blogger, please drop me a note at bestofsec@gmail.com, and I will get your site into my feed reader and on my blogroll.

On another administrative subject, those of you who read this blog will note that some schools get more tags than others. Quite simply, some schools have a really outstanding blog presence online, and I am not really an "affirmative action" blogger -- the best of the day in my opinion usually gets a mention. Not always -- occasionally when a school hasn't been mentioned for a while, I make a point to link one of their blogs. Also, I don't really do message boards unless they also have a blog, so schools with a really strong message board presence but a weak blog presence are obviously underrepresented.

But the goal, obviously, is to notice the best or the most interesting out there, while tying to maintain some semblance of egalitarianism. It is a tricky balancing act, and is turning out to be tougher than I thought. So for those out there blogging excellence who think I am ignoring you, be patient. There is a man, not a machine, behind this thing, and I'm giving it my best.

Notes on the SEC blogosphere

Warning: If you are a consumer of blogs, but otherwise don't care about them, this will bore you a bit. This post is directed more at bloggers themselves, so to those of you who find such minutiae boring, I promise to offer more meat and potatoes later.

Since I have been writing this blog (i.e. almost a whole month now), it has been interesting to me to observe the relative strength of each SEC school's blogospheres. I suppose, as a Kentucky fan, I had certain expectations -- UK has a rather notorious online presence of which I am often proud, but which almost as often leaves me chagrined. Having been steeped in the UK world for years, I was concerned about how I would react to covering other schools on an equal-time basis.

However, looking around at other SEC school fan blogs, I have been impressed and pleased with the strength, quality and production of a good many of them. Of course, this is football season, and if you live in the south where football is king, it is not unreasonable to expect a lot of passion, and passion leads to good writing. It will be instructive to see how the quality and depth of the commentary changes as the year grows older and basketball comes to the fore.

For my part, I am always looking for more blogs to add to my feed reader. I consume at least 200 blog posts per day in an effort to locate what I consider to be the most interesting commentary about SEC schools out there. I try to be fair as far as linking schools about the same number of times, but I am finding that to be more and more difficult -- some schools simply have way more people writing about them, and therefore, the odds of finding an interesting/insightful/compelling post among the more prolific teams is obviously greater.

With all that said, I am still "finding my groove" when it comes to these compilations, so if some of my choices seem arbitrary or biased, I can only say that I do the best I can to be fair. As a Kentucky fan, you can probably expect me to overcompensate and link fewer worthy UK blog posts, because I don't want this blog to be about UK first and everyone else second. So if you are aware of a post you think I have overlooked, please bring it to my attention. The old saying is, "If you don't toot your own horn, who will?" My experience is that very few blog authors count shyness among their defining characteristics.

As I say, it is my intention to be fair, but trust me, our biases and preferences have a way of manifesting themselves, unless of course, we happen to be MSM'ers, who are apparently anointed with the badge of "impartial journalist" by the spirit of Edward R. Murrow himself. At least, according to them. Myself, I'd rather just say, "Hey guys and gals; UK fan here, trying to be objective." Your mileage may vary.

Anyway, I have enjoyed this little blogging adventure so far. I hope I can keep up the pace, especially now that football season is about to burst upon us. There will soon be actual games, and I expect, controversy. I can hardly wait.

Blogroll and bleg

The blogroll is now complete as far as I know.

If any of our readers knows of an SEC blog I have missed, whatever the school, please let me know via comment or email.

Blogroll

I'm adding the blogroll now, and it is huge. It will take me a few days, so if you're a blogger who links us or comes here and wonders why I haven't returned the favor, please be patient. It is a big job, as there are a lot of blogs to add. I promise, I will get there.

Pardon the dust ...

We are trying out a new template, and we'll be messing with the blog look for the next day or so.

But all the great content will continue to be there. Thanks for coming by, and for your patience.

Administrativa

After a couple of weeks of trying to comment on the SEC blogs I have uncovered, I have found the task a bit too difficult. First of all, I am not steeped enough in each individual school's traditions to do a particularly good job. Second, it just takes to long to wade through 20 blog posts in enough detail to comment on them. So a change will be necessary.

My plan now is to identify the most interesting stories each day from all the SEC blogs and comment on that. If that turns out to be too painful, I'll figure something else out, but I am not really interested in becoming a "reblogger". I want to write original commentary on subjects interesting to SEC fans.

So there we have it. The new format will begin immediately, and I'll have a post up sometime today. I hope you like it.