The High Priest rides again

Before I was the Dean of the Institute of Higher Thinking or the Pimpmaster General of a horde of Miller Girls at a beer distributor I was a sports writer. And before I had this blog or my first one, Highly Sophisticated Rednecks, I wrote a weekly column for a website dedicated to Division I's football sub-classification called "The Cult of I-AA."

With football season approaching, I've decided to start writing that column again and posting it right here at the Lanier Drive Institute of Higher Thinking (which you can almost see at the top left corner of this picture of GSU's Paulson Stadium).

I know a lot less about I-AA football now than I did in 2004, the last time I covered the sport full time. Back then, I voted in the national I-AA poll, voted for the All-Americans, the I-AA equivalent of the Heisman (as well as the top defensive player and coach awards) and I generally kept up with the 110+ schools that make up I-AA. Now, I don't know the landscape quite so well.

For one, Georgia Southern—my alma mater and home team—has had two new coaches since I covered the Eagles. And the subdivision now calls itself the FCS or "Football Championship Subdivision." Excuse me while I continue calling it "I-AA."

Despite all the changes in how plugged in I am to the sport, I'm going to strive to post a weekly "Cult of I-AA" column. It will focus mostly on Georgia Southern and the Southern Conference but it will also have whatever opinions I've formed about the rest of the country's I-AA programs based on what I get from the web.

Just don't expect "The Cult of I-AA" to be just about college football.

When I began writing the column back in the I-AA.org days, I likened the fans of I-AA to a cult; a cult that followed a team and a sport not because it was popular or trendy or easily accessible on 20 different cable channels. Nope, I-AA fans loved their schools, their sport, their playoff system and seemed to revel in their perpetual underdog status (especially when facing schools with athletic budgets 20 times larger than their own, like GSU versus Georgia, left in 2004). That made them special, and made the subdivision special.

So my new "Cult of I-AA" will keep that title, but when football season ends (and during it, even) you might expect to see entries about my beloved Braves of baseball, college basketball, hockey, cricket or anything else I think is interesting and just outside of the mainstream. I hope all the old readers of my column will find their way here. I hope new readers will come. I even hope that this column spark interest in the rest of what I'll be offering at the Institute of Higher Thinking.

It's about to be college football season folks—a season so important I scheduled my wedding to avoid conflict with two Georgia Southern football games, one of them a road
game!!

The new Cult will premier next week, with new columns arriving weekly Thursday nights/Fridays. I hope to hear plenty of feedback from all of you. So until next Friday, don't share the secret handshake.