Just a quick note, the Big Ten Network will be in Iowa City today as part of its 2010 Big Ten Football Tour. They will be attending practice and the Iowa preview show will air a week from today (August 26) at 7:00 PM. The BTN crew gets a pretty unique look inside of an Iowa practice and last year spoiled Kirk Ferentz's hope to keep Wegher, Davis, and Hyde surprises. Hopefully this year they will be able to provide some other insider information.


They have a good sized crew on the tour and they all like to tweet updates and provide some quick analysis while at practice. So, be sure you are following Brent Yarina - @BTNBrentsBlog, Chris Antonacci - @BTNStatsGuy, and Dave Revsine - @BTNDaveRevsine on Twitter today.

Also, if you are in Iowa City, be on the lookout for their Big Ten Icons bus.

Four days after the open practice I am finally wrapping up my posts about it. I already shared my thoughts on the offense and defense. So today, a quick word on special teams (really just the kickers) and then a few pictures.

Place kicker
On Saturday Mossbrucker was the first in line to kick field goals all day. I'm not sure if that is any indication that he might be leading the battle for the starting job, or not. Murray kicked second and then, unlike in the spring, there was a third kicker getting reps: freshman Mike Meyer. Really all 3 performed about equally. Mossbrucker was 8 of 11, Murray was 8 of 12 (missed 3 and Clayborn blocked one), and Meyer was 7 of 11. (Side note: I just noticed whiling typing up this post that all 3 have a last name starting with "M"). Murray and Meyer both had a bad miss from long range where it looked like they just tried to overpower it and ended up kicking a line drive. Meyer looks like he could actually challenge for the spot this fall and to me had the strongest leg of the bunch.

Pictures!

The 2010 BlogPoll is officially now in session and college football bloggers everywhere are putting together their preseason ballots. The BlogPoll this year features some exciting improvements. Most importantly, there is my addition to the voter pool that automatically make it about 100 times cooler. Plus it's been moved over to a slick new platform on SB Nation that makes it extremely easy voting and provides a nice embeddable table of my ballot.

Anyway, here's my first attempt at a preseason top 25. I have until Monday morning to finalize it, so let me know who's too high, too low, who I missed, etc...

We are all accustomed to the Be Bold, Wear Gold and Blackout games. Iowa has been doing these for several years now and it has actually been quite successful. The stadium has never looked better than in 2006 when Iowa had a sea of gold fill the stadium Ohio State. Even a few of the Blackouts have looked pretty good (Homecoming last year against Michigan, 2008 upset of #3 Penn State).

There are 3 games that require specific colored clothing this year.

• 09/04/2010 - Eastern Illinois: Be Bold, Wear Gold
• 10/30/2010 - Michigan State: Blackout
• 10/02/2010 - Penn State: Black & Gold Spirit Day (What!?)

According to @LearHawks, the Black & Gold Spirit Day consist of a color scheme in which the student section and all even sections wear black and the odd sections wear gold. I'm not sure if this is one of those so crazy it might just work ideas, or just a crazy idea. I have a hard time believing that fans will be able to figure out what color they should wear, that is if they even get the memo about the spirit day and care enough to abide by its rules. I think it would be awesome if it worked, but unless they are handing out appropriately colored t-shirts in each section, I think this will be quite the let down. If it does work though, here's what it might look like (except, ya know, with the new FieldTurf):

Yesterday I made it through my thoughts on the offense at the open practice on Saturday. Today...the defense.

Defensive line
The starting 4 are good...really good. Clayborn had numerous big plays including a couple of tackles for loss and a sack or two. He also blocked a Murray kicked field goal and probably would have returned it for a TD (biggest crowd reaction of the day). I also remember Klug breaking through a couple of times. As a whole both the first and second team defensive lines looked stout against the run.