While Ed Norton continues to get money from his movie obviously based off of the life and times of Casey McMillan, I can't help but think some sort of royalties need to be paid to the incoming freshman.  Maybe some sort of likeness fee?  I don't know.  I've never studied law... or paid attention to it when I took any of those classes.

I think the McMillan family has a case, though.

These have been making their way around the series of tubes over the past week.  The Vine hasn't seen damage like this since the second Brad Banks fumble in the 2002 Iowa State game, after which I threw a dude off the balcony and devoured a defenseless waitress.

In any case, the damage is indescribable, to say nothing of the fact that every college kid who stayed in town for the summer to work here (or at any of the other restaurants and businesses on the Coralville Strip) is looking for a new job.  The economic impact is staggering.

Big Ten Network and Comcast finally struck a deal. Articles are easy to find so I won't link to one. It looks like BTN will be included in the expanded cable package (which they wanted) for the Big Ten covered states (this excludes Iowa obviously since they have Mediacom, not Comcast). In other states, BTN will be available in a sports package (which Comcast wanted). Comcast can shuffle this coverage after the first year, so who knows what will happen long term. At least the scums are talking to each other now.

Seems like a simple compromise; I wonder why this didn't occur last year. Oh well, I wasn't missing much during those BTN games anyway. The stars are aligning this year though. Hopefully this will mean all good things to come.

Didn't really think about this alot until now.  Just talked with my 70 year old father who lives in Iowa.  He is so disgusted by the latest felonious activity by the football team that he wants to completely shut down the Iowa football program.  Where do we rank in the country for criminal activity?  Many Iowans don't care about the record as long as things are "done the right way".  Hasn't Ferentz worn out his good will?  Isn't he failing his job as coach/teacher/parent to these young men?  If not now, at what point is he held accountable?  When you meet a young man who will be a prospective future member of your football family, isn't it your responsibility to judge if you can satisfactorily mentor/counsel/coach/parent this person?

Disgusted in Boulder

Please, I need this.

I need to be around people used to getting their hearts ripped out because they believe in teams they SHOULD NOT believe in, teams that really don't deserve fans, teams that, you have to ask: WHY?

I attended Iowa during the Cummings and Lauterber years. In three years they won three football games (1-10,  0-11,  2-9), 1974 to 1976??? Something like that. All I can say, it's a good thing Iowa had a Writers Workshop then and people like Updike were winning in the arts and film and outer space (Van Allen).

So, why am I drawn to perennial losers? Hope Gardens? Dream Dashers?  I could just have a dog  who loves me for who I am,  who thinks i am  gud-all-mitey.  The  Master.

I don't need to have my blood pressure pop brain cells when Hayden Fry decides to use "exotics." I don't need the torture of Ronnie Harmon fumbling five times in the Rose Bowl. I don't need Dr. Tom's collapse against UNLV in that awful March Madness memory.

I don't need the grief I get from my Michigan friends who kick me around like a cowpie everytime we face them. I mean, how fair is it when they get recruits from all over the world who can pass tests in school, and we get  Dominique Douglass and his low rent outlook on life? Boy did they laugh when they sent me his photo last year.

But I was distracted by The Rockies at the time. Who climbed out of a humidor sewer and managed to win 21 of 23 games en route to their First Ever World Series -- which they promptly gave away to Beantown and the same guy who gave Jack the beans and the wonderful idea to make ethanol Popcicles, Methane-powered lawn tractors (always cut the grass AFTER baked bean outings) and Maid-Rites.

Dude, why? June is a few days away and the Rockies have fallen off the wagon again (20-33). Their idiot manager, Clint Hurdle, is going to manage the National League All-Stars. For Real. And he may be unemployed at the time.

Kirk Ferentz has managed to offer scholarships to more criminals than the infamous Iowa State basketball teams that robbed McDonalds Restaurants before, during and after practice. They brought new meaning to McDonalds All-Americans.

And the Broncos? What gives? Mike Shanaghans's face, contorted and clueless grin are symptoms of total collapse, running back betrayal, defensive play that is down-right offensive.

i need to be here. I need to be understood. I need to be consoled.

I need to be around people who want to vote against Democrats, but, in order to do so, must find a way to get excited about McCain!?!?!?!?!

Please humor me.

It's this, or  face the fact that I am a Northern Californian instead of an Iowan in Exile.

Hey Black Heart Gold Pants,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Black Heart Gold Pants from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Black Heart Gold Pants and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Black Heart Gold Pants now has all the basic information about the Iowa Hawkeyes and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of Iowa Hawkeyes material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

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There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

I was perusing the Des Moines Register's site and discovered that they have a sports blogger named NancyStockdale.

I further discovered she looked a lot like former star journalist Nancy Clark.

A quick Google informs me that she is indeed now Nancy Stockdale.

http://wesleyvaclav.blogspot.com/200...

This seemed relevant to post.

Where did this Tigerhawk come from......

And how do we destroy it?????

This has bothered me for some time now.  I recall not sleeping because of it on occasion.  When my wife and I were dating, I tried to explain to her (She's from Boston)that if she ever bought me anything Iowa Hawkeyes with this logo, that I would burn it.  What is this?  Where did it come from?  And can we please destroy it!!!!!!  I can not recall when I first sighted this awfull thing.  When I browse through EBay and other Iowa sites I often come across items that contain this logo.  It bothers me.  It bothers me A LOT!!!!!   So please, let me know who created this and help me come up with a plan to destroy it.  Thanks, hawkfaninboston.

P.S.-Feel free to delete the picture of this grotesque logo, as I can barely look at it as I type this.

Wisconsin and Michigan State for their representation of the Big 10 in the NCAA tournament tonight.

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Gents,

All of you at BHGP need to post an apology (and for that matter, as a Hawkeye fan, I need to apologize as well - I could have posted a diary sooner too).

Our men's wrestling team just won the national freaking championship. WE ARE NUMBER 1! No, I'm serious - no Marchifornication craziness. WE ACTUALLY ARE NUMBER 1.

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