Spencer Hall joins the show in what’s supposed to be our college football preview. I think we talk about college football at some point.

Spencer writes at EDSBS.com, which stands for Every Day Should Be Saturday. To say EDSBS covers college football from a skewed angle would be a disservice to angles. The site is irreverent, it’s tangential and it’s fantastic. And it’s Spencer’s full-time job now.

Yes, fifteen minutes after I signed on with The Sporting Blog, Spencer took the SB Nation money and ran. SB Nation recently came in to a boatload of capital (like seven million bucks) so I try to determine how much of that went to the EDSBS singing bonus? Four million? Five?

We talk about how life will be different on the site now that he’s only working at one location and not split throughout the blog world. And yes, we use the word tangential about 15 times, as he explains how his work has always had less directed focus, so expect the same from the site (and other SB Nation projects) in the future.

One of the last things Spencer wrote for TSB was a post about the death of the general sports columnists. He wasn’t celebrating people losing their jobs, especially the good writers, but he was happy about the mold of ‘800 words and a head shot’ being broken. And contrary to popular belief, including one held by Mike Pesca of NPR who implied on this week’s Slate podcast Hang up and Listen that people like Spencer (well, like any of us) probably took to blogging because we couldn’t get jobs as regular sports writers. And that’s simply not the case at all.

We discuss the merits of blogging when compared to general sports column writing, and get into the comparison of blogs to the work in magazines and books. It’s always interesting to compare blogs to books because, while they may be similar stylistically and standards-wise, the immediacy of blogs is polar opposite to the long lead time it takes for a book to be published. They may be similar, but they are the exact opposite too.

The notion of escapism arises, specifically how traditional columnists seem to lose that context when things get so formulaic and maudlin and dramatic all the time. It’s sports after all. That said, I bring up the fact that when you work in sports all day, your escapism is different than someone who doesn’t. An accountant, for example, has a vastly different experience watching a football game than I do. Or, I suspect, you do, if you’re in this industry full-time, part-time or even free-time.

And is that where the industry is going? Will the world be built on the backs of full-time work for part-time pay? Will the blog model ever be a sustainable model for enough people out there? Or will it always be the ultimate fan’s side job?

The conversation swerves into the blog subculture and how I compare it to my life growing up listening to punk music. Just like some bands sold out, more and more blogs are ‘selling out.’ So what’s the future of the sports blog? Will enough of them just be homogenized into MSM companies (and new media companies that make a living homogenizing) until it’s all one big gray area? Kinda like indie rock? And yes, this conversation delves into my blue-haired days and Spencer with a boss 90s mullet.

And then we talk some football!

First we discuss the strangest, saddest and perhaps dumbest story of the off-season. The UCF fans may boycott games because they can’t drink in the parking lots for more than six hours before kickoff. That seems insane to a guy from the northeast, but Spencer claims it’s the norm down south. He said people go to LSU games on Thursday just to hang out for a Saturday game. Is that a vacation situation? Do they not have jobs? (Note: some do not have jobs). How do they get tickets and money for beer? So many questions, not the least of which stems from the fact that UCF is NOT LSU. UCF didn’t win a game just, what, five years ago. They have no history. There is no culture there of fans flocking to the place. It’s just a bunch of drunks.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I suppose.

We try some quick hits to preview the season. First, who will get fired first, Charlie Weis or Rich Rodriguez? Spencer thinks Weis, because no matter how poorly Michigan plays this year, the school won’t pull the trigger on firing RichRod for poor play after just two years. That said, Spencer is quick to point out that after the recent scandal, a loss to open the season could get RichRod fired next week. Who knows, really?

We talk about the Michigan presser where RichRod cried tears of sorrow and regret. Was that fake? Am I too much a conspirator if I think that was an act for recruiting purposes? How many of those tears were crocodile?

Speaking of crocodiles, we talk about the Gators. They’re the same, right? Who has been more annoying to the general sports fan this off-season: Tebow or Favre? Spencer things Favre, but it leads to a debate about religion and it’s place in football. My issue is not that Tebow wants to use his football success to spread his evangelical word. My issue is that he’s doing that at a state university. Go to Notre Dame and preach religion through football. Go to BC or BYU or SMU. Thanking God in an interview is one

thing, but actively using your celebrity through a state college to spread the word of your faith is too much for me.

We discuss what other storylines will come out during the season? The offseason was dominated by Tebow, but what are some other stories we will be talking about in a few months? Matt Barkley? The Big 12 Heisman race? Spencer thinks it’ll be bigtime firings, perhaps a certain Golden Domer who already has billboards taken out on his behalf.

We run through a quick and haphazard look at the BCS and what teams really have a chance to win. Could a one-loss SEC school not make it to the title game? Can a BIG EAST school (Rutgers?) get to the BCS and win, or will they be the ‘just happy to be there’ team this year like when Pitt got blitzed by Utah a few years back?

And taking a question from the JSF guys (who took the question from me), what coach would Spencer most like to play for? Surprisingly, it’s not the Zooker.

Thanks for listening. Go listen to Spencer on the Deadcast and let us know which show had Jekyl and which show had Hyde.

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