Vegetables get no respect.  Sure they aren't as sweet as fruit, savory as meat, or fucking awesome as cheese, but vegetables play the important role of supporting cast to all those other foods.  They work their asses off and get little to no recognition for their efforts.  Give them some love after the jump.

We didn't have a good picture, and this popped up in Google Images for "conference realignment."

As you may have noticed, we haven’t talked much about the crazy conference expansion happening right now in college football. We aren’t really into speculation here at the NEZ, so we wanted to see how it ACTUALLY played out. I mean, the last time this happened, I went on vacation in Canada for a week, came back, and we were in the ACC.

So now we have Colorado officially moving to the PAC-10, and Nebraska doing something with the Big Ten (drunk dial, late night IM to come over and “watch a movie”, whatever). This will likely cause a domino effect in which other conferences try to grab other schools, or something.

But really all we care about is, “How does this affect Virginia Tech?”

The answer is we have no freaking idea.

If the Big East gets raided by the Big Ten, the ACC could try to pick up schools like West Virginia (OMG!) or Syracuse (meh.). Or the SEC could try to pick up a few teams… like Virginia Tech!!!

Gene Wojawakkazinski says,

Meanwhile, if the Big East evaporates, then I think the SEC cherry picks West Virginia and then adds Florida State, Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech from the ACC. And the ACC grabs some of the Big East leftovers.

Straight from some guy at ESPN: Tech is going to the SEC.

In all seriousness, no one has any clue what’s actually going to happen. The Big 12 could grab Boise State and TCU and that’s the end of it. Or there could be 4 super-conferences of 27 teams each. Who the hell knows.

But whatever you do, make sure to get out there on those messageboards and spread as many rumors as you can. We’re personally going with “Corey Moore requests to become Offensive Coordinator.”

This is your last chance to join in all the fun! The World Cup starts tomorrow, so get your entry in or forever hold your peace.

Click here to enter our World Cup Challenge. The password is now "hokies". I was forced to change it from "thenorthernerisadouche".

Prizes will once again include a copy of powerhour and a drink/wingman privileges from your humble editors. We think the winner from the NCAA pool may have been killed, so play at your own risk.

USA! USA! USA!

We move onto the meat region today.  Sorry about not posting this yesterday, but until you all start sending me donations, I have to work an actual job.  So, get those checks sent, but until then, deal with the delayed posting.  Not that anyone was complaining, but I thought I would nip it in the bud.  Anyways, to the meat! (and yes, that is a turkey made out of bacon).

Here is a challenge I put to all of our loyal readers today:  How long can you make it through this video without getting a piece of dust in your eye.  The video is 5 minutes long.  I made it to exactly 1:05.

Leave your time in the comments.  If you say 5 minutes you're either lying or have no soul and we don't want you reading our site.  I'm honestly shocked I made it past the dog part, but to be fair, I've already seen that bit.  And the first time I saw that I had to pause it for a good few minutes.  So 1:05 might be skewed.  OK, I think I need to go eat a raw steak or watch Generation Kill now to get some testosterone back.

Tonight, after a combination of cosmic happenstance and stupid, stupid loyalty to a terrible team, your humble editor will be attending the biggest baseball game in Washington history.

Stephen Strasburg, the most hyped pitcher in the past 10 years, makes his major league debut at Natinals Park this evening… against YOUR PITTSBURGH PIRATES!! I think it’s safe to say this is the biggest game the Pirates have played in since 1992.

How did a lowly blogger gain unprecedented access* to this event? Simple: his dogged loyalty to a baseball team working on its 18th losing season in a row.

*decent seats

Three months ago, I was promised tickets for two of the three games in the Pirates-Nationals series. My friends know how much I love/hate the Pirates, and apparently, felt bad enough for me to give me their tickets.

So now, I’m attending the biggest event in town, with my Andy Van Slyke jersey in tow. I will have a full report tomorrow after Jeff Karstens (he’s the Pirates’ starter tonight, has a uniform and everything) throws a no-hitte…. baaaaah, I can’t even say it.

LET’S GO BUCS!!

Editor’s note: I may have mentioned this before, but I’ve actually attended a Pirates PLAYOFF game. Let THAT sink in.

Editor’s note #2: A big thank you to Randy for the tickets. No one knows him, but he went to Clemson and Pitt, so I think you can go ahead and hate him. I already do.

Alrighty people, we move along with the Food Madness tournament.  Let me just say, as an overall summary of this tournament so far:  there is a lot of chalk.  Now this makes me happy because it means I'm fucking awesome at seeding foods based on how great they are.  But it also makes me angry because it feels like we're hosting the bracket from the women's NCAA tournament.  No excitement.  I'm not blaming you people out there.  Don't get me wrong, you all have picked these things (mostly) right by me.  But hopefully we get some more upsets moving forward.  Onto the voting!

It's a motherfucking Cheese-off, bitches.  We got a tie here in the Cheese Region.  First tie of the entire tournament.  Shockingly, it's between Gouda and Blue Cheese.  I don't know how this happened.  To be honest, I think I've done pretty fucking great with the seedings as you'll see next week, but this one got me.  A 5 vs 12 tie?! Damn, I severely underestimated the blue cheese lobby.  Or overestimated the gouda lobby.  One of them.  Anyways, voting ends today at 4 for this tie breaker, so get on it and vote your little hearts out.  If this ends in a tie, I'll have to figure something else to determine a winner.  But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

UPDATE: It's over!  It's over!  Gouda DESTROYS Blue Cheese 6-5.  What a following we have!  11 whole votes!  Have a nice weekend!  See you on Monday!

Here it is, your fourth bracket in Food Madness 2010.  Cheese Region.  I hope you have your Lactaid pills ready, this could get messy.