Gather around and witness the greatest spectacle in sports! College football season is nigh! As with the last season, I'll try to keep this beast updated weekly, with updates coming out on Fridays. I'm a one man show at the moment, and living on the wrong side of the globe for this stuff. Thankfully, that gives me approximately 12 more hours to reach my deadline (according to my very flawed math). Perhaps I should have paid more attention to Dooley's concept of time.

So, The Goose That Laid the Golden Quote continues to produce, coming out with this beaut concerning the brain development of a certain sophomore starting quarterback:

"I think it's just [Bray's] demeanor. He hasn't shown the mental fatigue of the day to day work, if that makes sense. And that's a maturity thing, it's something you have to condition your mind. We train our bodies all the time. I tell our guys that. We lift weights and work our muscles and our muscles grow. But if you don't work your mind and your brain, it doesn't grow. Your brain will grow. You get more mental stamina and you learn more, but you've got to go condition it. What they don't understand is, when my muscles get tired, they know how to push through it. But when my brain gets tired, they shut it down. But you shouldn't. You've got to keep pushing and keep grinding and your brain will grow some more cells. And get bigger. I think." -August 30, 2011

I'm not sure about the scientific accuracy of the above quote, but Dooley said it and I read it online so it must be true. Of course, Coach Derek isn't the only Dooley out there talking. News came out this week that he has asked Barbara Dooley, his mother, to give up her weekly gig on Paul Finebaum's show in Birmingham. However, Derek Dooley was the first to point out that Barbara would not be silenced under any circumstances:

"For 43 years, I've never been able to get my mom not to do something she wanted to do, so why would it start now? Nobody has banned Barbara Dooley from the airwaves, and nobody has banned her from speaking. People will still get their Barbara Dooley fix." -August 31, 2011

Barbara reasoned, "He doesn't like that I don't have a filter." Touche.  Other than all that, how is the team coming along? On the topic of our much-maligned special teams: 

"I've never coached special teams worrying about guys getting hurt. If they get hurt, you know, they get hurt. I'll probably say, 'I wish I wouldn't have done it,' but I've done it my whole career."  -August 29, 2011

And finally, on winning against Montana: 

"Well, our objective is to win the game. So I'm not going to go out there like it's a preseason game and evaluate guys. We're going to go out there to try to win the football game. So if that means playing a lot of guys, we'll do it, if it doesn't, we won't."  -August 29, 2011

On that note, enjoy the first weekend of college football; opening kickoff comes but once a year. We're all undefeated (unless you support UNLV, Western Kentucky, or Memphis, so sorry if that's the case). See you next week, because as Monday inevitably follows Sunday, so will Coach Dooley inevitably say something noteworthy between now and then. Go Vols!