It's Gabe's final preseason Powered Up!

Take a look at the rest of the nation's top teams and who they face this weekend. Ohio State opens with Youngstown State in the annual intra-state scrimmage. No. 1 Georgia takes the same approach facing Georgia Southern. Oklahoma faces Chattanooga, which I discovered about 20 seconds ago actually has a football team. West Virginia faces Villanova which, last time I checked, does not have Howie Long on the roster anymore. LSU welcomes Appalachian State. We found out last year that's not a cake walk, but if the Tigers are a legitimate national title contender they ought to take care of the best team in the Football-whatever it is now called-Subdivision. USC travels to Virginia, Florida hosts Hawaii and Clemson takes on Alabama in what can be considered at least viable opponents for the other teams who harbor legitimate national championship dreams.

But none of those teams has the chance to make a statement like the Tigers and the Illini. Coming out in week one on national television, against a legitimate top 25 team, and winning the game, puts an air of legitimacy on your team. Winning that game in week one would allow pollsters to look past the fact that over the next three weeks, neither Missouri or Illinois will face a team that has much right to step on the same field.

The P-D's Tom Timmermann shares similar thoughts.

Today's Illinois links:

• PowerMizzou: QB is the key
• Champaign News-Gazette: It's a battle of the QBs.
• Chicago Sun-Times: Mizzou where Illini want to be.
• College Football News: Big 12 game of the week (their pick: Mizzou 34, Illinois 27)
• Missourian: Mizzou defense looks to put squeeze on Juice
• KC Star: Juice tries to avoid--you guessed it--the squeeze.  Some puns are too easy to pass up, I guess.
• Dave Matter: going behind the numbers.
• Champaign News-Gazette: sophomore WR Brian Gamble (16 catches, 170 yards, 1 TD in '07...4 catches, 48 yards against Mizzou) and others kicked off the UI squad.

You've got to enjoy the stories about Chase Daniel being consistently "fooled and frustrated" by the Mizzou defense.  Guess that could be seen as a warning sign about Mizzou's offense, but...no.

Preseason hype: fans say bring it on.

Remember all that attention we were hoping Corby Jones would get in '98 or Brad Smith in '04?  Chase Daniel's getting that...and then some.

Daniel is a business school guy who visited Warren Buffett this spring in Omaha, Neb., with some other Mizzou business students and who now exchanges e-mails with America's most celebrated investor. As anyone who has ever read a financial planning brochure or paid attention to a TV ad for a brokerage house knows, past performance is no guarantee of future success. (For example: Ford. Or Nebraska.) The retail value of Mizzou's 12-2 season in 2007 is zero in 2008 dollars.

"Every single year is different,'' Daniel said. "You look at all the questions that need to be answered. It's all about camaraderie and how this team is going to gel in the heat of battle. I don't think you can really answer any of these questions until you go out on the field.

"This year compared to last year, media people like to say we have more of a question mark on the offensive line, but if you look at the guys coming in, it's just how you're going to gel and how you're going to handle adversity when it strikes."

Be sure to check out Big Head's weekly picks at Mizzourah...

For those who can't make it to the SEMO or Nevada games, they're now officially on PPV, which is cool.

Finally, Mizzou's volleyball season kicks off tomorrow night in Provo at the BYU Molten Classic.  Tulane tomorrow night, Utah State and #20 BYU Saturday.  Live stats and video here.