New Fiscal Year! I'm Liking Me some 2010-11!!!

Hey gang, well, I haven't been blogging too much, but I think folks will enjoy the reason for that. Well, the main reason for that...true, I took a little vacation with my 14-year old daughter to Colorado so she could see her first major league baseball games. Also true..within 10 minutes of being in the ballpark at Coors Field a Milwaukee Brewer bullpen catcher tossed her a baseball.

Also true, I took about 10 days to go to Los Angeles to get presented with my van (you can watch it and my perfect zinger on Michael Emerson on youtube) and then I spent some time in Mesa, Arizona as the official scorer for the Western Athletic Conference baseball tournament. However, much of my time has been spent on a special little project I think you fans, and heck, anyone associated with the Bengals should be excited about.

Go to this page here...look at that map where Pocatello is located. See it? We have officially joined the ICS/Sidearm family, and we have been actively working on the new site, which is now in the design phase.

This is really really really exciting, and what has already been a tremendous amount of work is only going to become more work for us down here, but in the end it will be so worth it. Without going too deep and boring you folks to tears, there will be an Ask the A.D. section, text messaging of scores if you sign up, conference standings on the sport pages, individual sport page headers (so football players are on the football page, women's cross country on the WXC page, etc.), a fan center (with all off our marketing and promotions information, facebook, twitter, blogs, photos, wallpapers, etc.), donor information area, and new live stat applications (including soccer and softball). It's going to be fantastic. Oh yeah....an ONLINE STORE for Bengal gear! FINALLY!!!!! And the heaven's opened and the choirs sing! I'm more excited about that then anything else actually.

Also, I should mention that we have had a wonderful relationship with CBS properties for eight years, and they have been great throughout this process. They got us into a solid web presence, and now we are taking the next step.

I'll try to post updates here as we are in the process of stuff, but ICS has all the photos for the headers and design, and they have the basic info on the types of layouts that we are looking for. Should be great stuff.

HOOP NEWS
This will be on the site tomorrow once I get all the info, but the men's basketball team will be headed to Canada for a preseason three-game tour. This tour in mid-August is a huge advantage for ISU with all the newcomers, and most will be able to make the trip since they are in summer school already. Should be three games in the Vancouver area, so Bengal fans in that area should be on the lookout for us.

FORMER BENGAL HOOPSTERS GETTING HIRED
As the softball coaching search continues here at ISU, kudos to former Bengal greats Mandi Carver and D'Marr Suggs, who each picked up coaching duties in the last few days. Mandi, one of the all-time greats at Idaho State University and a no-brainer first ballot Hall of Famer in my mind, was hired at Cal State Bakersfield, meaning ISU might get to see her when we go there for basketball on December 7. D'Marr got hired onto to Louis Wilson's staff at Adams State as a graduate assistant. Two years ago D'Marr came to our game with UNC in Greeley, so this is a great opportunity for him.

SCHEDULE STUFF
Both basketball non-conferences are pretty set (the men have one opening for a home game if they can swing it), so those schedules will get released once the conference schedule is finalized (it's new this year with a Thursday/Saturday/Monday set up). ISU has a home weekend the same weekend as the conference track championships in Holt Arena, so we are working on swapping out a date, and once that's done, we will be able to release it. ISU is a home team in the bracket buster, although that will be in Reed Gym due to the Simplot Games, and it will be a split doubleheader most likely with the women, who host Montana that day as well.

OK, I'll keep you informed on the website stuff...keep sending in suggestions and thought on what you'd like to see....I haven't gotten much from you guys...

FM