We'll Return After These Messages...

Man, I hate bye weeks. Everything seems to grind to an utter halt.

Bill Snyder had his regularly scheduled press conference Tuesday, mainly because he's a creature of habit, but little of consequence was discussed.

Oh, there were the usual platitudes about the upcoming opponent (including an amusing anecdote about the color red) and a discussion of our fracked-up schedule for the next two weeks, but not much else.

As you can tell, that doesn't lend itself much to sports discussion on a blog that's dependent on some modicum of news to sustain its energy.

DEPTH CHART ANALYSIS, KICKING THE TIRES, ROUNDTABLE and our other weekly features all will reappear next week in the run-up to Thursday night's game, but please bear with us until then. All three blog contributors' schedules are insanely busy this week and there's not much to say until we get a bit closer to game time.

But we'll still be posting FanShots like the one I just put up and users always are welcome to contribute their own content, as K. Scott Bailey already has started to do. Even if I'm not writing my usual long-winded crap, I'm checking the blog pretty frequently and maintaining it where necessary.

So hang in there. Don't think of this as the mid-season doldrums. Think of it instead as a rain delay early in the season — we'll hit the locker rooms, grab a bite to eat, break up into position groups, come back in a few days and start 'er all over again.

P.S. There will be an OPEN GAME THREAD for Thursday's game between Oklahoma State and Texas A&M, complete with my "Elsewhere in the Big 12" feature that usually appears in KICKING THE TIRES. We probably can carry that through the weekend, as well.