In case you haven't been paying attention, I've got you covered. We're in the "dark period" of recruiting right now, but Paul Johnson has already been able to secure eight verbal commitments and should be able to really lock up some great prospects come January. Here's a collection of links to get you acquainted with both the situation and Navy's current commits.
Dawgsports.com. I still don't understand much of what Kyle is actually saying, but that doesn't make it any less interesting. He has a great base of knowledge on teams all over the country, and does a phenomenal job keeping track of all the daily happenings around the world of college football.
The Trev Alberts Quits To Do Construction Award
Comic relief; overall hilarity.
Like I'm sure you've read on a number of blogs to date, this one is simply a no-brainer. Orson's Every Day Should Be Saturday was the first college football blog I ever read, and is still the first I read when I get up every morning. I think I speak for all of us, however, when I say I wish he could have toned down the humor when interviewing Michael Lewis. I had no idea people actually could be that annoying when they laughed.
The Sports Fans Don't Cry Award
The blog that has suffered through its chosen team's dismal season with the most dignity.
How Ornage 44 can still find the will to not only post on his own blog, but on his Fan House blog, I'll probably never know. Let us all hope we can find such inner strength when our own teams suck that much.
The Keith Jackson Circa 1995 Award
The blog with the most consistently expressive and excellent writing.
The Blue Gray Sky. Excellent analysis combined with just solid diction and tone. If there was a "classiest blog" award, these guys would win it. Note that my overt fondness of the 'Domers played a huge role in this nomination. Deal with it.
The Brady Quinn Award
The prettiest blog, the best layout and design.
Defiantly College Football Resource. Brian has not only been a friend to Pitch Right since its inception, he's also been a friend to every blog since its inception. In a world of Blogger sponsored clones, CFR gets it right.
Best New Blog
The best new college football blog
There have been a lot of great blogs that have launched within the past year. The only problem is, I have no idea which ones are which, considering I've only launched within the past year. However I'm going to nominate another friend of Pitch Right (a reoccurring theme here) in Block U. Jazzy Ute does a great job not only keeping tabs of the Utes, but of keeping us all informed on whats going on in my favorite region of the country, The Mountain West.
More (hopefully anyway) tommarow...
Just a heads up for anyone interested in reading this who hasn't already seen it on the Fan House. I've just published Part I of an interview Bill Maloney and I had over the weekend. Bill, as some of you know, is the author of the Boston College Fan House page and does some great work over at Eagle In Atlanta. Among other things, we discussed Tom O'Brian, Navy's secondary, Paul Johnson, Brian Toal, and even Doug Flutie. Check it Out. 
They say that things like this are bound to happen. That in all manner events, whether on or off the football field, all things must eventuall come to an end. For Fisher DeBerry and the Air Force football community, the dynasty built during the 1980s and 1990s has come to a sudden halt following a third consecutive losing season, an event which culminated with the retirment of the 68 year old living legend and the beginning of a new Service Academy football era. 
I, along with just about every other writer who covers Navy football, have no idea where all this sprang from. Most likely it had to do with some on-the-field trash talk or behind the scenes stuff that none of us regular people see or hear about. When asked if the source of the comment was an Air Force player, Johnson responded with a "sure was." However when Johnson elaborated on his team being the "luckiest team in America," Navy's head Coach maintained that it wasn't just coming form the Falcons.
The Mids are slated ahead of Wake Forest (9 votes), NC State (8 votes), Texas Tech (5 votes), Miami (3 votes), and South Carolina (1 vote). Despite numerous text messages placed to his cell phone from the author of this post, the Ball Coach was unable to comment on how little the Harris Poll thinks of his Gamecocks. Mike Leach, still in shock over the decline of his superior offensive genius, merely reaffirmed his fondness of hail.
Discipline, needless to say, is something of a hallmark at a military academy. Yet you wouldn't know it by watching a tape of Navy's 41-17 win over UConn on Saturday. The Midshipmen, who routinely finish amongst the least penalized teams in the country, committed a staggering 12 penalties for 110 yards. That's more penalty yards then the Mids had in the first four games of the season combined (101), which in and of itself was already fairly high by Navy standards. So what's going on here? Head Coach Paul Johnson didn't even need to be asked about the issue after Saturday's game, skipping right to the problem in his opening statement.| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ohio State | -- |
| 2 | Auburn |  1 |
| 3 | Southern Cal |  1 |
| 4 | Florida | -- |
| 5 | Michigan | 3 |
| 6 | Boise State | 8 |
| 7 | Louisville | 1 |
| 8 | West Virginia | 4 |
| 9 | Notre Dame | 1 |
| 10 | Texas | 5 |
| 11 | Georgia | 2 |
| 12 | Georgia Tech | 14 |
| 13 | Oklahoma | 2 |
| 14 | Oregon | 2 |
| 15 | Louisiana State | 6 |
| 16 | Iowa | 1 |
| 17 | Rutgers | 4 |
| 18 | Nebraska | 7 |
| 19 | Purdue | 4 |
| 20 | Boston College | 6 |
| 21 | Brigham Young | 5 |
| 22 | Wake Forest | 3 |
| 23 | Missouri | 3 |
| 24 | Arkansas | 2 |
| 25 | Navy | 1 |
Navy doesn't get a whole heck of a lot of attention from the the big media sources, but somebody must have noticed what Brian Hampton did to the UConn defense yesterday. That's because "a panel of ESPN college football analysts" have selected Brian Hampton as a nominee for the Cingular All-American Player of the Week after Navy's 41-17 win over the Huskies. Who's on this panel I can only guess, but it was nice to see Mark May of all people sporting Hampton's praise on lat night's College Football Final. And why shouldn't he? Hampton was magnificent in yesterday's win, leading the offense to over 600 total yards. He ran 182 yards and three touchdowns while passing for 142 and a touchdown, all en route to Navy's most dominating performance of the season.
A 77-yard Brian Hampton touchdown pass to Reggie Campbell from the first play of scrimmage set the tone. On the play, Coach Johnson had Hampton make a "dummy check" for a pitch play to the motioning slotback. Picking up on what they presumed to be a genuine audible, the UConn defenders jumped the fake, allowing Reggie Campbell to get behind the safety. Hampton made a reverse pivot to freeze the defense, then gunned the ball downfield to Campbell, who made a great cut and picked up a block from Jason Tomlinson to get to the outside and score.
If you would have told me back in July that Navy would have started 3-1 over the first four games of the season, I probably would have been happy. Heck, I think most fans would have seen it as definite progress. Considering we thought ECU, Stanford, and Tulsa would be Bowl teams, (and the jury is still out on the Pirates and Golden Hurricane, although we can safely say the Cardinal is an abomination to the Pac-10), taking two out of three of those games would have seemed a step forward.Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ohio State | -- |
| 2 | Southern Cal | 1 |
| 3 | Auburn | 1 |
| 4 | Florida | 1 |
| 5 | Texas | 1 |
| 6 | Louisville | -- |
| 7 | TCU | 2 |
| 8 | Michigan | 1 |
| 9 | Louisiana State | 2 |
| 10 | Notre Dame | 2 |
| 11 | Nebraska | 7 |
| 12 | West Virginia | 2 |
| 13 | Georgia | -- |
| 14 | Boise State | 3 |
| 15 | Oklahoma | 1 |
| 16 | Oregon | 4 |
| 17 | Iowa | 1 |
| 18 | Virginia Tech | 3 |
| 19 | Clemson | 2 |
| 20 | Tennessee | 1 |
| 21 | Rutgers | 2 |
| 22 | Arkansas | 4 |
| 23 | Purdue | 3 |
| 24 | Tulsa | 2 |
| 25 | Wake Forest | 1 |
