So I just discovered that one can create and upload custom teams to NCAA 12 or download the team that someone else has created. Naturally this lead me to look for an all-time LSU team so I could play it against others. And I found one, but unfortunately there were a couple of issues. One is that it was last updated in 2009 (this was originally for NCAA 10). That means no Zod, who obviously is an all-time LSU great. Second, it was, not unexpectedly, chock full of blatant homerism. I like Brady James -- hell I taught Brady James! (good student, btw) -- but he's not a 99 overall. 

So what I have started doing is creating my own all-time LSU team, starting with the players I know, and one I did some research on to find out his tendencies. I have only started, and since this is a rather grueling process I would really appreciate help and insight from the ATVS community. I was hoping to use your knowledge. 

The template for a custom team has 35 offensive players and 31 defensive players, with one punter and one kicker. The template they gave me is all messed up (a spot for one fullback but nine wide receivers!), but since you can put players pretty much anywhere on the depth chart it's not really a big deal. 

For those of you that don't know (and a refresher for those of you that do), each player is rated on a scale from 1-99 on different individual attributes. Taken together these attributes determine an overall composite score of 1-99 that measure how good that player is. A 99 player is the best possible rating, while a 1 is the worst. In the game the very worst players are usually in the 40 or 50s, while the best are in the mid 90s. I think only Andrew Luck has a 99 rating in this year's game, though I might be mistaken. 

Given that this is a project that I want to be as objective and devoid of homerism as possible, I would like players to be rated reasonably. Only the true all-time greats should crack 95, and 99s should be exceedingly rate. In general 99s should be reserved for players like Hershel Walker, Tommy Frazier, Vince Young, N-Donkey Kong Suh, and the like. 

The individual attributes are as follows: 

Basic skills: speed, agility, acceleration, strength, awareness, stamina, injury

Ball carrier skills: break tackle, trucking, elusiveness, ballcarrier vision, stiff arm, spin move, juke move, carrying

Throwing skills: Throwing power, throwing accuracy

Receiving skills: catching, spectacular catch, catch in traffic, route running, release, jumping

Blocking skills: pass block, run block, impact block, run block strength, run block footwork, pass block strength, pass block footwork

Defensive skills tackle, hit power power move, finesse move, block shedding, pursuit, play recognition, man coverage, zone coverage, press coverage

ST skills: kick power, kick accuracy, kick return

Now it's important to keep in mind that only if someone is really good at something should they get a score over 90 in that skill. If I were to rate a receiver 95 in every relevant stat for a receiver he would rate a 99 overall -- overall rating does NOT indicate an average of relevant scores. And sometimes players have weaknesses, and we need to address that. Dwayne Bowe was a bit of a butterfingers, so I rated his catch score as 63. Glenn Dorsey was very prone to injury, so he gets a 30 for that. Zod cramped a lot, so his stamina was only a 65. We have to be honest here. 

The only other thing -- I am rating a player's best year, not a composite over his career. Usually this will be a player's senior year, but perhaps someone had an exceptional year as freshman (e.g., Justin Vincent), or left early for the NFL (e.g., General Zod). 

So far I have only rated a few players. Here they are, with their overall rating in parenthesis: 2007 Glenn Dorsey (99), 2010 Patrick Peterson (97), 2007 LeRon Landry (96), 1956 Billy Cannon (94), 2006 JaMarcus Russell (93), 2004 Marcus Spears (92), and 2006 Dwayne Bowe (85). 

The only other issue is who ARE the all-time LSU greats? I'm sure many we can agree on by consensus. Hopefully the players above are not subject to debate. (JaMarcus might not be the greatest all-time LSU qb, but he's in the top three.) There are also a few others that I think we would all agree belong -- guys like Kevin Faulk and Tommy Casanova. Others (like Justin Vincent or Jacob Hester) might be a point of disagreement.

I think the best way to go about settling the borderline players is to have people rank their top five of each position: QB, RB, FB, WR, TE, OL, DE, DT, OLB, MLB, S, CB, K, P, and KR. Some of you guys know a LOT more about LSU football history than I do, and I would greatly appreciate your feedback to make this an accurate and fun team to play with. 

Feel free to suggest ratings, or provide a top five list for any (or all if you like) positions. If you want to rate a player just give me relevant ratings. (Like for a DT, there's no need to give me his receiving or throwing skills; basic and defensive skills should be fine. I will need things like catching skills for backs and DBs, and ball carry skills for receivers though, for obvious reasons.) 

Anyway, I hope to use the insight and suggestion of this community to create an awesome all-time team for NCAA Football 12 as well as future installments of the game. 

Apologies for making this a fanpost as opposed to a fanshot. I tried to make this a fanshot but it insisted (wrongly) that the url was invalid. Whatever. 

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkEZU9CXw599dHo1RGg2YjNmTWs2cUZhSFBwRmY0WGc&hl=en&authkey=CPSR97gK#gid=0

This is made up of polls from various sources. Looks like there is going to be a lot of hype/love/expectations this upcoming season. I don't think this surprises anyone so much as it confirms what most of us were already thinking. 

There's been a lot of talk about Coach Les Miles lately. Everyone has an opinion about him, but how well do you know the man and how he thinks? Well I thought I would develop this little quiz where you, the intrepid reader, can test your knowledge of the enigma that is Lesie Edwin Miles. 

1) As a child, Les admired which prominent American Civil War figure?

• a) Abraham Lincoln 
• b) William Sherman  
• c) Robert E. Lee
• d) U.S. Grant 

Answer after the jump. 

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As we wait for football season to start, I thought it would be an amusing exercise to share our own LSU motivational posters. Here are the suggested steps: 1) Find an image on teh intrawebs, 2) go to this site and make your highly amusing or inspirational poster (or Google your own preferred motivational poster maker), 3) save the your poster to your computer, 4) upload it to your preferred online photo album (I use photobucket), and 5) post it here.

Rules: there are none. these can be amusing or serious. They should just be something you want to share with other Tiger fans, though most of these will probably be humorous and ironic in nature.

Here's mine:

via i22.photobucket.com

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