Tailgate Food Vol 1: Garnet & Gold Slow Cooker Breakfast Casserole

Full disclosure: I’m a reformed tailgate addict. I used to tailgate with a bunch of friends, have a 20×10 tent with screens, friends that had tables, chairs and grills (oh my!). Basically, it used to be an all day affair for me. Now, not so much. I tend to enjoy the home A/C for as long as possible before heading down to Doak Campbell Stadium. With that in mind though, I observed some entertaining creations made by my friends and made some of my own when I started parking in the garage instead of going to an all day tailgate. One of the recipes that’s great for the parking garage (where you can’t grill) or out at an all day event is the Slow Cooker Breakfast Casserole. I absolutely love slow cookers. In my opinion, if... [Read more]

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An Interview With NOLE HULK

Sure, some other sites might have interviews with former players, coaches or in depth analysis. BUT DO THEY HAVE AN INTERVIEW WITH NOLE HULK (follow him on Twitter)? NO, I think not!!! NOLE HULK has very limited time to chat with us thanks to his obligations at the FSU Mag Lab, but he was kind enough to do this email interview with me. Do you have any predictions for FSU Football’s 2010 Record? Will they win the ACC? Will they win a bowl game? NOLE HULK PREDICT FSU WIN TWENTY SEVEN GAMES. SIX BOWL GAMES. BIG XII CHAMPIONSHIP. PONDER BECOME KNIGHT. FISHER WIN BRONZE STAR. FSU HAVE SHOT AT WINNING AFC EAST. ALSO DAYTIME EMMY. NOLE HULK KIDDING. BUT NOLE HULK HEAR FSU FANS TALK LIKE THAT. NOLE HULK THINK FSU WIN EIGHT OR NINE GAMES. ALSO... [Read more]

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Michael Frazier, a future Seminole?

Michael Frazier of H.B. Plant High School in Tampa is a player Florida State verbally offered a scholarship more than eight months ago despite being just a sophomore. And Frazier, a 6-4, 185 pound SG, is a player that FSU fans would really enjoy seeing play at the Civic Center. The statistics alone tell you why. Michael is a deadly rangy shooter averaging 26.7 ppg last season and was the first 10th grader in Hillsborough County history to score more than 1,000 points in a season. In addition he added 7.8 rpg to go along with 40 steals. Frazier is clearly not just an offensive player. But more than his statistics is his work ethic. Frazier is notorious for his early morning (we’re talking 6 AM) thirty minute workouts every day of the week.... [Read more]

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ScalpEm.com On Tumblr

Hi everyone, I wanted to alert you to a new link at the top of the blog in the menu “Tumblr.” What’s Tumblr? It’s somewhere in between the full on ScalpEm.com and my Twitter account. I plan to use Tumblr for a few things here at ScalpEm.com: Random photo posts – From time to time I see a shirt that is just too ugly to carry the Garnet and Gold or a weird item at a store or a weird fan. I’ve just never had a good way to grab my cell phone and post a picture. Tumblr lets me do that easily. So if I have a random photo I’d like to share with you guys, I’ll post it to the Tumblr site. Audio posts – I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do yet with my audio posts. Perhaps I’ll... [Read more]

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Ratcheting Back The Posting Schedule

Hi everyone, I thought I share some news regarding ScalpEm.com and my thought process about the site lately: For quite a while I’ve thought about closing up shop here for various reasons. The last year of my life vastly changed my outlook about what is important to me and what isn’t important. With that said, I always love the Seminoles so following my school will always have some level of importance in my life. So what’s happening? I’m not putting the site into archive mode. However, there will not be as ambitious of a posting schedule here as there was in the past. This is likely the last year that I will be a season ticket holder for FSU football and I’d like to enjoy it with out my own imposed feeling of obligation... [Read more]

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Thoughts On Mike Martin’s Jr.’s Possible Departure

Here are some quick thoughts about Mike Martin, Jr. and the possibility that he could become the head coach at South Alabama: First up, congratulations to “Meat.” Even if he doesn’t get the job, the fact that he’s being interviewed is great and shows that other schools know he’s doing a good job coaching up the FSU bats. Ultimately, I think Jr. leaving FSU hurts the Noles at the plate for the foreseeable future. Why? Unless another coach thinks that Mike Martin is bailing out soon and being an assistant on staff would leapfrog them into the HC position, I don’t see top assistants wanting the job. Another problem with assistants is the carousel situation, which can be bad on hitter development. It’s... [Read more]

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How Do You Feel About Sponsored Posts?

I was reading through my RSS feeds yesterday when I started to see the beginning of the EA Sports sponsored posts at SB Nation. Mind you, this isn’t just Tomahawk Nation, but a network wide sponsorship deal with EA guiding the topics of one post per day for the duration of the week. I’m curious, how do readers feel about that? Does it change your view of the article at all? How do you feel about it vs. regular advertising? Me? I’ve been offered similar types of posts and avoided them, however, I don’t have a problem with it especially when a site spells out the fact that it’s a sponsored post. From Tomahawk Nation’s post Where I Come From: This post is sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.Happy Independence... [Read more]

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Patriotic July Jimbotron Arrives Lower Than June

The July 2010 Jimbotron Fan Confidence Meter is showing a bit of patriotism this month, even though there is yet another decline in fan confidence. In fact, we’ve seen a steady decline since the beginning of March, when the Jimbotron was at an all time high. Why? News out of FSU continues to be great. So far there hasn’t been too much in the way of players doing stupid things (one theft problem aside). We haven’t heard about any awful injuries. The defense is gaining weight and strength. Pretty much everything news-wise is good. In fact, it’s been good news since Jimbo took over. So what’s up? Summer doldrums arrived. This is the absolute worst time of the year to be a college anything fan. The summer reminds us... [Read more]

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Hype Not Reflected In FSU Season Ticket Sales

The Pensacola News Journal has an article today from the Tallahassee Democrat’s own Corey Clark (I love syndicated content) indicating that when all is said and done by September 4, the first game of the Jimbo Fisher era, the Seminoles will have around 35,000 season ticket holders. That number is exactly the same as last year. It’s not all doom and gloom as you can read in the article linked above. The renewal rate is improved and the decline of sales stopped, but all of the hype out there in the FSU media and blogging worlds (myself included) talks about renewed energy in the program and how many things look rosy headed into the season. Evidently that’s not translated to the paying fan. So what does that tell us? I’m... [Read more]

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This could explain a lot about Solomon

As we saw last night in the NBA draft, Solomon was surprisingly selected 50th in the draft by Dallas who traded him to Toronto not soon after picking him. Even the few mock drafts that had him going in the second round didn’t have him going that low and most had him late in the first round. Now it comes out from the Tallahassee Democrat that Solomon was diagnosed with a rare medical condition (that is not life threatening thankfully) in the pre-draft physical exams which was shared with all NBA teams. That obviously had an affect as to where he was drafted with teams shying away from him coupled with his leg injury two years ago. How much this condition affected his game we don’t know. It sure didn’t help. So this helps to... [Read more]

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I’m Still Proud Of FSU Baseball

Yeah, last night’s meltdown against TCU looked bad. There are a plethora of meltdown Tweets, Facebook statuses and posts today. FSU fans will call for Mike Martin‘s head on a platter. They’ll scream for Shouppe to be fired. Rightfully so. I’m not arguing that there are problems. I understand the frustration that surrounds the FSU Baseball program. I’ve been watching it for years. The first few times it’s easy to wait for another season. The last few years it’s the same old broken record, up and down with mediocre pitching. Either way, I don’t feel like harping on that this morning. I’d rather focus on the players. Three weeks ago I figured the Noles had no chance to do much of anything in... [Read more]

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Tallahassee Democrat Website Moving To Subscription Model

I realize that this isn’t directly about FSU Sports, but this is something that will affect the readers out there. On July 1, Tallahassee’s only local newspaper, The Tallahassee Democrat website is switching to a subscription based model. As far as I can tell, that means the local beat writers for FSU Sports will no longer have their content at Nolesports.com available for free. I’m saddened by the Democrat’s decision to charge for content. I will not be a subscriber of the site. It’s not personal and I have enjoyed reading some things there, but with tons of free options available it doesn’t make sense to spend my money there. From a purely sports perspective, this won’t hurt the average FSU fan. Sure,... [Read more]

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Let’s Go Noles!

I’ve told you before, I’m a New York Mets fan. As a Mets fan I’m used to lots of disappointment. Sure there was 1986, but then there was also the implosion of the “dominant” team in 1988 to the Los Angeles Dodgers. I guess my point is that I don’t expect much from them usually, but I still watch. I still root for them. I still have hope, and I don’t get too wound up about what they’re doing. I just hope for the best at this point. The same premise goes for FSU Baseball this weekend in Omaha. Do I expect much from a self proclaimed bunch of nobodies? No. Does history tell me that it’s likely that FSU will lose two games and be headed back to Tallahassee quickly? Probably. Such is the life... [Read more]

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Spit Blood’s TCU Baseball Primer For Noles

(Note: This is a primer for FSU fans courtesy of Spit Blood, a TCU Horned Frogs blog. You can follow The Finch on Twitter for your TCU info. You can find my FSU primer for Horned Frogs over at Spit Blood if you’re interested in that. Thanks again to Spit Blood for filling us in on our opening game CWS opponent!) TCU Baseball 2010: 51-12, 6-1 on neutral field. Regionals- Defeated Lamar (16-3), Arizona (11-5), and Baylor (9-0). Super Regionals- Defeated Texas in 3 games (W 3-1, L 1-14, W 4-1). Head Coach Jim Schlossnagle led the TCU Horned Frogs to a school record in wins (51-12) and the team really seems to be hitting on all cylinders at this point in the season. TCU dominated in their 3 games in Fort Worth during the Regional, taking... [Read more]

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FSU, The ACC, The SEC And Why I Care

I know, I know. I tweeted the other day that I couldn’t care less about conference realignment. I was being a bit facetious because my Twitter home feed was crapped up with endless tweets on the subject. In reality, there are a billion reasons to care or not care. At the end of the day, as a small time booster and one fan of a program what I think about implications and / or repercussions of conference realignment has no influence over what happens. But, what matters is how this all could affect us as fans of Florida State University Athletics. How I Feel As A Fan: This IS about football and nothing else. The money is in football and money drives the bus. As much as basketball, baseball and every other sport under the sun are affected,... [Read more]

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