Over The Pylon

As I usually preface the summertime season with, news out of Muncie on the Cards comes at a snail’s pace this time of year. In some respects, that’s a good thing. News this time of year for football programs is either remarkably good, like stacking up 4-star and 5-star commitments which BSU seldom does, or remarkably bad like shooting up a Pizza King birthday party with an uzi. Which, thankfully, also seldom happens around Muncie. I know myself and other fans have longed for a while for BSU to be a national player on the football stage, but being a top-flight upper echelon program is not all sunshine, daisies, and championships. Show me a program that consistently wins and I’ll show you a program that is either ruled by an iron-fisted dictator (read: Alabama) or a program that has on occasion run afoul of the laws of the land (read: Ohio State, Florida, USC, Tennessee, etc.). Thankfully, today is the last of the desolate wasteland of the summer offseason here at OTP as July is right around the corner and with it comes the ramp up for the fall. In the coming weeks you’ll see our BSU coverage explode with our position group breakdowns, depth charting, opponent previews, and other assorted goodies. We’ll also bust out our national pre-season happenings like our first blogpoll, Heisman previews, conference predictions, and such. You’ll also see a much more consistent posting pattern so keep checking OTP for the usual tomfoolery you’ve come to expect. The OTPcast is back for season #5 with some new folks and format to get you ready and keep you informed as the season goes on. So look forward to that as we move forward. On to today’s tidbits…

Chris Isaak celebrates his 56th birthday today, and I can’t think of another musician who had such a formative impact on adolescent teen boys that had absolutely nothing to do with the music or song he was playing. If you’re my age or a few years in either direction, you can remember fondly whenever MTV, The Box, VH1 or some other music network got ahold of “Wicked Game” and how you didn’t know why, but you also wanted to fall in love and had a remarkably strong desire to visit the beach. Happy 56th to Chris Isaak and let’s get to it with the (appropriate for his genre) hump day news and notes.

Making the rounds around the nest today is the recent post from SBNation that declares BSU as one of the nation’s best teams to watch. It’s a new rubric designed to give some sort of quantifiable measure to “entertaining”. Worth checking it if for no other reason than to see BSU amongst the likes of notorious eye-popping entertainment machines like A&M, Oregon, Oklahoma State, etc.

Speaking of rankings, the Orlando Sentinel has ranked the Cards 62nd in their preseason rankings. It’s a somewhat generic profile and write up but it’s some national attention if only for a day from the Sunshine State. Indiana is ranked 75th and Purdue 78th, so outside of that Catholic school up north the Cardinals are the best in the Hoosier State. NIU and Toledo have yet to be ranked, so BSU is looking like the 3rd highest MAC program.

Athlon sports has given a fairly detailed MAC breakdown. Spoiler: They have the Cards winning 9 games and finishing 2nd in the division to NIU which seems to be a popular line of thinking this offseason.

Kickoffs for the 2013 season have been announced, so make your plans to get to the Scheu at the appropriate time. Nothing tremendously shocking, and a decent mix of later-than-noon-home-games to be a bit positive about. Would have liked to have seen a bigger push for evening weekend games but the television rights most likely played into that.

BleacherReport named Keith Wenning/Willie Snead honorable mention in the best QB-WR duos in the country. It’s Bleacher Report so feel free to take that with a grain of salt.

Two future BSU men’s volleyballers were named to the Fab 50 list of Volleyball Magazine and Alex Pia was named to the United States Boys’ Youth National Team. Even knowing remarkably little about volleyball, I know those are good things. Congrats to the two future Cards!

MUNCIE NEWS OF THE DAY: A Muncie man was arrested for intimidation for allegedly vowing to scalp a Muncie police officer. You stay classy, Delaware County!

Finally, your Ball State tweet of the (yester)day, courtesy of @pbgetlikeus:

I’ve been to Bloomington on several occasions and frankly, the differences between Muncie and B-town are negligible at best. Sure there’s a bit more active nightlife in Bloomington, but the best thing about that nightlife is the Brewhouse, a Muncie staple. Point, Muncie. Plus, you have an active citizen base ready to scalp police officers. So you know the odds of being harassed by the boys in blue are astronomically lower in Muncie when they have such other folks to occupy their attention. But she does love her school, so props for that at least.

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