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Welcome, gentle readers, to the worst two days of your benevolent despot's year. It's just a couple of hours to the start of Big 12 Media Days, which means your fearless leader is about to write the equivalent of two longforms.
But before that, let's get the week started in the usual manner, shall we?
BracketCat's countdown landed yesterday on the most famous of all current Wildcats: number 48 himself, Glenn Gronkowski.
The team at The Oklahoman previews Big 12 Media Days, and puts their heads together to predict the Big 12 standings. Jenni Carlson and Jason Kersey have K-State finishing fifth, because Bill Snyder, you see. Kyle Frederickson has the Wildcats sixth.
The Star's Blair Kerkhoff also has a (brief) preview.
Randy Peterson at the Des Moines Register, published in a cornfield somewhere one presumes, leads into Media Days by discussing conference expansion -- namely, Iowa State's desperate need for it.
In other football stories not related to the Big 12, Clemson site Orange and White profiles Brent Venables
Matt Vensel of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune drops a long piece on Vikings first-round draft pick Tray Waynes of Michigan State, whose parents met at K-State while his mother Erin was on a cross-country scholarship and his father Ron was in Manhattan training for the 1984 Olympics.
And finally, in the off-beat column: Matt Zimmer of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader examined the prior career of University of Sioux Falls head football coach Jed Shugart... who used to be known as Jed Lance, and who once opened for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, among others. In a side piace with some outtakes from that article, Zimmer touches on the time Lance appeared at a country festival in Manhattan -- a show with Tim McGraw, Chris LeDoux, Lone Star, and Tanya Tucker on the bill -- and, deciding he had to do something to stand out, ran to the store to buy a Wildcat jersey. Really interesting stuff about a guy who went from music to football to music and finally back to football. Check it out.
Our colleague Emily Waldon at Bless Me Boys, SB Nation's Detroit Tigers blog, profiles former Wildcat Ross Kivett in her periodic Tigers Prospect Notebook. Kivett is tearing up the Midwest League this year.