Ah, Fall is in the air…

The 2007 Indiana State Fair is over, the kids are in school, football season is under way, my garden will have soon produced its last “fruits”, I’ve already been apple picking (twice), the stores are clearing out the “back to school” and any remaining summer items to make way for Halloween candy, costumes and decorations, and best of all, after a seemingly long hot streak of 90+ degree days, the weather is starting to get back to normal…

While it only lasts for a very brief 6 weeks or so, I love Fall in Indiana and look forward to it with anticipation every year. Due to the hot weather the leaves probably won’t be as vibrant this year, but they should still put on a show. (If you’ve never been to Indiana in October, I encourage you to do so…especially Southern Indiana where we have a ton of trees.)

And while I’m thinking about Fall, we’re currently planning our October shows for Utter Oddcast & the Trolley Dodgers Podcast and we will need your input and help in the coming weeks for stories and such, especially for our themed Halloween podcast(s). Feel free to send items our way. And also, please check out both shows this month. We released a new Trolley Dodgers episode yesterday and will release one more episode this month. And we have a total of nine (yes, you read that right…9!!!) Utter Oddcast episodes that will be release in September (as of today, three are currently available and the other six will be released over the remainder of the month). And please leave us feedback via comment, e-mail form (td, uo) or voicemail at 317-565-4250.  I’ll post more info about that within a few weeks.

In our usual fashion the Indianapolis Colts lost a preseason game, but considering that the offensive starters played a whole three minutes I’d say that we actually didn’t do too bad by only losing by 13 points to the Dallas Cowboys.

While it’s a little hard to tell where you really stand in preseason games, it’s clear that the defense needs some improvement, but overall didn’t do too bad by only giving up 16 points.   While 16 points isn’t a stellar number, with our starting offensive we’ll win almost any game that we can hold an opponent to under 16 points so long as our offense or special teams don’t give away some free points.

That said, the time of possession for the opposing offense, especially early in the game, worries me a little.  We have a very fast offense which is useful, but our defense is a bit slow and allows teams to charge up the field with the run while chipping away at the clock.  Luckily our defense only allowed the Cowboys to reach the end zone once last night, but in the regular season I don’t see that happening.  Something must be done to give these guys a more level playing field as far as rest time goes.  But it is only preseason, right?

I can hardly believe that it’s already time for football to start, but boy am I ready for it along with some cooler temperatures and stove tops full of chili.

The WORLD CHAMPION Indianapolis Colts kick off the 2007 NFL preseason tonight against the Dallas Cowboys, and you can be assured that I’ll be watching even though it doesn’t matter for the season standings.

I think that our offense will be stellar again this season, but the “D” is a huge question mark. So seeing what sort of defense we can put together in the preseason will matter this year and if we can do better than the seasons in which we had to put up 35+ points to win a game,we should have a chance for another good run.

And boy, is our schedule a doozie with only a handful of seemingly “easy” wins. But that’s to be expected with wining the Super Bowl, so we can’t really complain too much, especially since New England is on our turf.

Here’s the complete run down:

Go Colts!

* All times local to Indianapolis. Kickoff Times may change after Week 11 due to Flex Scheduling.

We’ve wanted to add an Indianapolis focused blog to the Surge Bucket Media Network for a while now, so today we’ve launched Take Back Indy.  The focus of this blog will be issues that we’re currently facing in Indy and the subject matter will obviously vary depending upon what’s going on at any given point in time.

Many of the posts on Take Back Indy will merely mention specific issues and will encourage reader interaction to constructively discuss the issues at hand.   Also, the website will eventually include a forum component to encourage greater interaction.  Please stop by and comment when you have a chance.

Via the Indy Star…

A stormy eight-year relationship between Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Formula One ended today with the announcement the international racing series would not return in 2008.

IMS chairman Tony George and F-1 boss Bernie Ecclestone could not reach an agreement on a sanctioning fee to continue the U.S. Grand Prix. George had set today as a deadline for a new contract.

As long as the pompous Ecclestone is in charge of F1, that is fine by me.  I have never been to an F1 event as it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me (parade “racing” and team “racing”) and I think a lot of Americans are in the same boat.  The main downside is that it will lose the city quite a bit of business for that week, but hey, we’re building a bigger and better convention center, right?   And next year the MotoGP comes to town, so that should help out and hopefully that will be a bit better than the GP car racing.