The Good: The Kia Soul hamsters:

Two hamsters driving a toaster to the sound of Black Sheep’s The Choice Is Yours. Ninety years of television history have led to this moment. Embrace it.

The Bad: Bob Sheppard, who was the Yankee Stadium public address announcer for more than half a century, passed away yesterday at 99. His long list of credits outside of Yankee Stadium included PA duties at West Point and five Army-Navy games.

The Ugly: Remember David Graham? The Air Force half of LOVE’S DEADLY TRIANGLE? The inspiration for the greatest USNA wardroom movie ever (and murderer, probably should mention that too) is raising the esteem of bloggers everywhere by starting a blog of his own!

Graham and another inmate, Aaron Flaherty, plan to debate prison issues on line for people looking for insight into the corrections system. Their first topic: a story on rape in Texas prisons.

Well way to ease your way into it.

The Dumb: I understand the whole civiliter mortuus angle of punishing USC, but isn’t it a little dumb to automatically leave them out of the coaches’ poll? It’s just an opinion poll. If I beat USC, I would certainly like to get credit for beating a ranked team, assuming that the Trojans would be good enough to make the top 25. If they’re going to field a team, it’s stupid to forbid the coaches from opining as to where that team stacks up with all the others. They did the same thing to Auburn when they were on probation in 1993 & 1994, but who were they kidding? Like an SEC team that goes 11-0 and 9-1-1 in consecutive seasons isn’t one of the top 25 in the country.

The New Deal: ESPN has planted its flag on the ACC, grabbing the conference’s broadcast rights in a 12-year $1.86 billion deal. Patrick Stevens discusses the details here. Strangely, Navy doesn’t have any ACC teams on future schedules, although that can easily change (and might have already). On the other hand, with Georgia Tech helping the rest of the ACC grow spread-option calluses, maybe that’s by design.

The Eye Strain: Football scheduling conflicts are almost as difficult to manage as reading gray type on a maroon background.

The iPod: Arcade Fire– Broken Window

The Padres: The offense has picked up over the last 6 games before the All-Star break: .311 BA, 9 HRs, and 6.2 runs per game. Naturally, they were 2-4 in those 6 games.