This is in Nebraska, so very few of you probably have any interest, so if you don't, go ahead and stop reading. But Aurora, Nebraska's 104-year-old Fidelity Building was destroyed by fire on July 10th. Here are some videos, and you can see pictures at the Grand Island Independent's Web site. --If you listen to the audio, you can hear someone say "They're breaking those windows" while the firemen are spraying foam on the building. I had to think broken windows were the least of the worries. Finally, the story from the Independent linked above indicates two juveniles have confessed to setting the fire. Way to go, ya little shits.

I know this is a little off topic from K-State, but I figure there are some KC natives here and would like to know about the "rules" of Arrowhead. (and besides, TB writes little tid-bits about things from the 90's - where did those go by the way?)

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Thisis hardly newsworthy, but...

For anybody who is as bored as I was today or who can't help wonder what the class of 2010 is looking like - here's a link to Rival's Top 100 for 2010.

 

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Bumped from the diaries. Heard a little more about this on the way to work this morning. Hope he gets results and has enough time to make the right decision today. Best of luck to Bill, no matter the decision...TB

Not much reported yet, but here's the link to the ESPN article:

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Big news for K-State baseball fans, the season continues!  Well, in a fantasy type way.  To get the first part of this story just click here: "Baylor Receives #1 Seed in first Baseball NIT tournament!

 

 

 

College Baseball NIT Field of 32 Set! San Diego State and Washington in! Notre Dame and William and Mary Snubbed!

 

The full NIT field was announced last night.

 

Waco Regional

1) Baylor (32-26) at large, Big-12
2) New Mexico (34-25) at large, Mountain West

3) Creighton (37-21) at large, MVC

4) Jacksonville State (37-22) SWAC Champions

 

Charleston Regional
1) Charlestown (39-20) Southern Conference champions
2) Duke (37-18) at large, ACC

3) Kent State (36-21) MAC Champions

4) Army (25-25) Patriot Champions

 

Springfield Regional
1) Missouri State (40-17) at large, Missouri Valley
2) Cincinnati (39-20) at large, Big East

3) Georgia Southern (33-25) at large, Southern

4) Xavier (27-31) A-10 Champions

 

Clemson Regional
1) Clemson (31-27) at large, ACC
2) Canisius (41-13) Metro Atlantic Champions

3) Central Florida (31-27) at large, C-USA

4) Monmouth (37-16) NEC Champions

 

Corvallis Regional
1) Oregon State (28-24) at large, Pac-10
2) UC – Santa Barbara (35-21) at large, WCC

3) San Diego State (31-28) at large, MWC

4) Marshall (30-30) at large, C-USA

 

Pullman Regional
1) Washington State (30-26) at large, Pac-10
2) Santa Clara (32-22) at large, WCC

3) Kansas State (29-29) at large, Big-12

4) San Francisco (31-26) at large, WCC

 

Fort Myers Regional
1) Florida Gulf Coast (38-15) Atlantic Sun Champions
2) South Florida (31-27) at large, Big East

3) Florida Atlantic (32-27) at large, Sun Belt

4) Binghamton (29-27) AEC Champions

 

San Antonio Regional
1) Texas San-Antonio (39-19) Southland Conference Champions
2) Louisiana Monroe (34-24) Sunbelt Conference Champions

3) Washington (33-22) at large, Pac-10

4) Jackson State (37-22) SWAC Champions

 

Release of the full brackets spread joy and misery in equal helpings across the nation.  Tony Gwynn tearfully addressed his players after the cheering died down, "Never say die.  Leave it all on the field.  Oh, screw the clichés guys, let’s just feel the moment!"  Up the coast in Seattle University of Washington’s head coach Ken Knutson set aside the traditional champagne and instead handed out small cups of dark roast coffee to his players.  "That is what we drink here in Seattle.  And besides, I want my players ready for practice tomorrow morning at day break."

 

The mood in South Bend was much more subdued.  "First "that" football season, and now yet another disappointing blow," said president reverend John Jenkins.  "Thankfully we have our faith to see us through this dark valley."

 

The situation was less restrained in Williamsburg, Virginia.  "Bitter disappointment like this must be purged by the students in the manner they see fit." said Anthropology professor Johnson Xavier.  "The students cannot help but feel this is an assault on their masculine identity.  The outburst was entirely predictable."

 

 

Play will start this weekend.  The eight team to emerge from the initial round will be paired up in four super regional "best of three" series.  The final four teams remaining will travel to New York City where the NIT championship will be determined in a double elimination tournament held at Yankee Stadium.

 

Disclaimer – None of this is real.  But all college baseball fans should still take the tournament seriously by visiting the College Baseball Dugout  this week and cheer your favorite teams on.

Copied over from Rock Chalk Talk.  The "other" Kansas sports blog.

Hey Bring On The Cats,

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 Bring On The Cats 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 Bring On The Cats 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

Bring On The Cats now has all the basic information about the Kansas St. Wildcats 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 Kansas St. Wildcats 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.

Given the excitement surrounding the basketball national championship I didn't get around to updating the baseball RPI rankings last week so this update will reflect two weeks of action.

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Looks like K-State didn't want to lose to Fresno State for a third time.  It's pretty pathetic that your school requested to cancel the game so that you could play Montana State.  That is emabarrassing for any program.

Fresno State agreed though and we replaced you with a road game at Rutgers on Labor Day on ESPN at 1:30.  Oh yeah, we also play Wisconsin at home and at UCLA.  We go out of our way to play good programs, you go out of your way to avoid them.

Kansas State Wildcats?  I think not.  Kansas State Scaredy Cats would be much more appropriate.  

I may be a little late to the party with this, but Special Steve hooked me up with this awesome bracket generator via email today.  It's done by an Iowa State fan, so unfortunately he has to generate brackets with his team near the bottom, but we thank him nonetheless.

Just fill in the blanks with different scenarios for Saturday/Sunday and click "Submit" to see what those games would yield in terms of seeding.

Bumped from the diaries...TB

For all the lucky K-Staters who will be in Bramlage tonight, I have one favor to ask; Do the right thing and honor and support the real seniors tonight. Clent Stewart, Blake Young, David Hoskins, and James Franklin. I tip my hat to all these guys. Clent Stewart's presence on and off the court has been without a doubt a difference maker. David Hoskins, which I hope this is not the last time he steps on the court, was a beast. Before the likes of MB and BW came to town, Hoskins was the one doing all the dirty work. Let's hope he can make a full comeback and get a medical redshirt.

As for Mr. Beasley and Mr. Walker - if they decide to dart to the money and the NBA, honor their contributions at a different time. Hold a pep rally, tell them thanks when you see them passing by on campus, or shut the city of Manhattan down and call it Michael Beasley Day - hell change the name of the year from 2008 to the MB year. I don't care when just as long as it is not tonight.

They're called seniors for a reason. Don't ruin tonight's atmosphere by chanting, "Please come back." Honor these four men.

Do the right thing Manhattan