The avatar is connected to the email addy, not to the username. Cool. Thanks!

- I am not technically a blogger in the strict sense; though I post at RTT and am most strongly tied to it, it’s still Joel’s baby and I try not to seem too possessive of RTT elsewhere. He gets the credit, even if I try to encourage readership, etc.

- I don’t frequent that many blogs for a big reason: I have a somewhat addictive personality and I could easily lose myself in them. I learned that lesson in my undergrad days when I threw out about 10 computer games because of too many play-till-sunrise sessions. I am very slow to increase my involvement until I know where I’m going because I have a great career track in front of me and I don’t want to risk messing it up. (Currently in the PhD program in nuclear engineering.)

- To be honest, I didn’t run across your site until after I read a few of your posts at RTT. (Like you said, posting on other sites works.) I first started reading it about the same time a few of us covered for Joel at RTT, and that experience wore me out a bit. I’ve backed off a bit partly to rest and partly because of my second point.

But yes, posting at other sites does work. If you follow my train of link-learning, it goes like this:

FOX Sports (FO feature articles)
Football Outsiders (7th Day Adventure)
MGOBlog
RTT and EDSBS
Gate21, TSIB, MDL, SBNation, etc.

Even if your listed in the blog rolls, people will have a tendency to hover over your screen name on a comment as opposed to linking from the blog roll.

I’m a marketing whiz BTW. That was said in jest too.

1) On Gravatar, I’m 90% sure that it’s not the registration name at Gravatar that matters, it is the email addresses you tie the avatars to. Thus, anytime I use my email address to comment somewhere, it automatically associates my tough-guy Smokey avatar.

2) You know, I haven’t been doing a very good job of giving the Lady Vols their due this season — mainly because I’ve been so beside myself on the performance of the BasketVols. You got me on that one MoonDog.

3) It’s funny you should mention commenting on other sites, MoonDog, because I was thinking the exact same thing this morning. I don’t do a good job of commenting, and I admit it. Most of my commenting is in response to comments on here. According to my feed reader, I — using the word in the loosest possible sense — “read” (more like “skim”) 258 blogs at present — as a general rule, if you’re in my blogroll, I read your blog (and there are some which aren’t in the roll). About half of my subscriptions have daily postings, which means I have WAY too much to read. Who is to blame? Well, I would like to say Mal Moore, but in the end … sigh … it is me.

I think I need to scale back a bit and focus on a fewer blogs, and start being more active. Duly noted (and I do mean that sincerely, of course, you can never trust a lawyer =) ).

I understand what you guys are saying. I’m actually viewing this from a players perspective. As a player, you really don’t know how good you are in comparison with other teams until you line up.

Just because some banana heads in the media think you’re supposed to be good doesn’t mean you are. See the Vols football team in 2005.

The primary point I want to make is that you depend on your coach to have the insight you lack as a player. Players need to have lofty goals to perform to their best abilities. The coach implants the thought you WILL be competitive.

What the coach tells the media about the team is another matter. I’d agree that as a coach if you know your team is only going to be marginally competitive, you don’t want to talk about national championships. In that regard I absolutely agree with your points.

Why the hell don’t you guys comment like this at my site? I know you’re reading. It’s free advertising when you post. You don’t like my political rants? LOL!

Somebody else that uses “hooper” has that staked out. If I used a different username on Gravatar, would I still be able to use “hooper” on sites like yours, but with the Gravatar?

I personally don’t mind the 21 symbol, and I’d much rather stick with the generic than change my handle now.

Also, by the way, if any of you would like your own avatars to show up on here, you can go over to http://en.gravatar.com/ and register. The great thing about Gravatar is that once you register, any site that uses the WordPress/Gravatar system will automatically populate your selected Avatar. And for you guys, if you need a cool Avatar, just let me know and I’ll make you one up.