Eleven Warriors

Our focus group demands more of this

We had a chance to review the suggestions for site improvements, both in the comments and from the batch we received via email and we have picked the two winners of the birthday contest. Both winners not only had good ideas, but also featured suggestions that we could implement right away.

Dirty6 wanted us to add the following feature:

This would be like…Like the article over at the OZone that tells you who to root for in the games with BCS significance? You know, something that says “Hey, this week the Colts play the whoevers, and the whoevers have a shit secondary so watch for AGonzalez to catch a few balls” and “On Monday night the Ravens play whofreakingcares and Troy Smith will start….”

This will be a new Sunday morning feature, so you can wake up, set your fantasy roster and then catch up on what Buckeyes have the best chance to blow-up that day in the NFL.

BrotherBuck was the other winner with this suggestion:

My idea might help in some of the other ideas I’ve seen in the contest. Have an amateur day. Designate a day of the week where reader’s can submit their own piece’s and through your selection publish it.

We'll be starting a Reader's Voice (got a better name for this, let us know) feature, where readers can submit something they've written and we'll publish one each week. BrotherBuck was kind enough to provide the very first installment, which we'll run on Wednesday. If you'd like to be next, submit your post (PDF, Word or text file) via email to us by Tuesday at 5PM ET each week. We'll have further instructions when we publish the first one on Wednesday.

Congrats all around. Both winners will receive copies of Buckeye Battle Cry 2008 and the Woody DVD.

It's a shame we could only pick two winners because there were several suggestions we liked:

• UFR: We'd love to add an Under Further Review. The problem is the time it takes to put one of those together. With full-time jobs and families, it's difficult, but we're going to play around with game tapes this year, so we'll see.
• Uploads of Buckeye Original Music: Another great idea, although I'm not sure we have the reader base to really see this one take off just yet. Still, if you have something you want us to share, email us.
• Announcer Critiques: We're going to try to work this into another post on Sunday. If all goes well, we're looking to provide the announcing highlight and lowlight of that weekend's Buckeye game.
• More YouTube Videos: We'd love to do this, but again it's a time thing. We have a lot of games on tape and DVD, but it comes down to whether we'd rather write about the Buckeyes or edit and upload videos and we have to go with the former. Perhaps this is something we can look into in the offseason.
• Picture Page: Between fan shots of athletes, Buckeye hotties, drunks and other photogenic creatures, this could be a real winner. We're going to look into how feasible it would be to create a gallery. In the meantime, if you have something cool, send it to us and we'll get something up. All makeshift style.
• Messageboard: Quite a few requests for this one and we're a little torn. On one hand, we think it would be great, but on the other hand, Keith found out that it didn't work at Buckeye Commentary, so we'll put this on the "someday" list.
• Post and Comment Rating: Another great idea, but we'll have to dig into the tech that would be needed to integrate something like this first.

Okay, enough with the navel-gazing...

Some highlights of the media session on Friday included Beanie dreaming of football as an Olympic sport and Hartline calling out Robo for not being able to run over the middle:

"He definitely couldn't play the slot," Hartline said. "I can. I can play on the outside, too."

And it looks like we have our Michael Irvin. Save for the whole drug and prostitute bits.

Pfef hit up the open practice a week ago and shared his take-aways. Sanzenbacher burning Washington and Cam Heyward practicing at tackle are intriguing.

ESPN sat down with Heacock on Friday and although there's not much in the way of news or quotes, I do respect the way he keeps going to bat for his tackles.

Mediacom has a deal with the Big Ten Network. If nothing else, this should give Time Warner holdouts hope that a deal can get done in the dying days. Hawkeye fans are pumped, while Buckeye and Badger fans are running out of time (TWC offered the same PPV deal to Wisconsin, by the way).