An Update on NIT Stu and The Barking Crow – February 2026

Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?

Whispers flit through the shadows. Hurried feet scamper across wet tile. There’s a crackle in the air. The ground swells beneath us wherever we lie to rest.

Nature hearkens.

The NIT approaches.

Last night, twelve minutes apart, two people texted me asking NIT Stu’s plans for NIT season. We’re only a month away now, and this blog has been conspicuously silent. But while the blog’s gone quiet, the streets are evidently abuzz, making today seem like the right day to start gathering kindling for our annual equinox feast. Muddy but welcome, spring begins its march towards home. Across the land, the faithful turn their eyes towards Indianapolis.


If you’re a new reader, God bless you, but a lot of this won’t probably matter to you. You want NIT Bracketology and NIT Bubble Watch and the NIT Bracket Challenge, and let me assure you, all those things are on their way in due time. We’ll update as updates become available. I recommend checking the site daily. Probably in the late afternoon on weekdays, for the NIT prince currently naps from 12:30 until sometime around 3. Unless he shits his pants. Then it can go later. Say what you will about pants-shitting, but when you’re one year old, it’s a relief.

If you’re a regular reader, God bless you even more. I’m sorry for the fits and starts, though by this point you’re probably used to them. I think the last time I gave a big update on The Barking Crow, I mentioned that this might be the blog’s last year. That’s still the case. The future’s still up in the air. I might get a different job soon in a different industry and have to shut the whole thing down. I might get a different job soon in a different industry and keep the blog going in a smaller, more Joe Stunardi-centric form. I might get a different job soon in this industry and migrate a portion or all of this blog’s work to my new employer’s platform. My latest get–rich–quick scheme (more on this in another chapter, if all goes well) might go well enough to keep this thing alive, either in the smaller, more Joe Stunardi-centric form or in a bigger way again.

In the meantime, The Barking Crow will resume as a part-time endeavor from now through the end of the NIT. This doesn’t mean we’ll have posts up every day. The get–rich–quick scheme can be a little demanding. Some days, it even resembles a job, which has been the one thing I’m trying to avoid! Also, the NIT prince is still in his first year of daycare and he is often home sick. Kids, man. Shitting their pants and getting ear infections. Someone’s gotta do it.


Sometimes when the child is home, we’ll still manage a post. Sometimes when he’s home, the content will fall off, especially when he’s home for a full week. On that note, a fun fact: If you get RSV bad enough in Austin, you get to meet four firefighters. In our case, they were like firefighter caricatures. One was a young guy with a sleeve tattoo and great hair who got the little man to smile from behind the pediatrician’s oxygen mask. Two were bald gingers with mustaches and stethoscopes they really didn’t need to use because the pediatrician was already using hers. One was a fatherly sort with a whiff of Jon Hamm to him. That one did the typing. The firefighters didn’t need to be there, but the thing about firefighters is that they show up anyway, and they show up really fuckin’ fast. God bless ‘em. Not as much as our regular readers, but more than you new ones.

Again, more to come and soon. I’ve been working on the bracketology model. We’re going to change how NIT Bubble Watch works so that we can post it sooner than the bracketology. We’ll have some NIT primers up for new converts or those considering conversion—things like the state of the NIT, the history of the NIT, and whether Tacko Fall could still grow taller throughout his 30’s. Things like that. The good stuff. The NIT stuff. In the meantime, thank you to those who keep the watch. Diapers need filling, ears need infecting, a blogger needs a moonshot wealth scheme, and the NIT needs our love.

Or rather.

We need the love of the NIT.

Because just like our relationship with God, this isn’t about us.

It’s about the NIT.

Or God, in God’s case.

Unless…

**

NIT fan. Joe Kelly expert. Milk drinker. Can be found on Twitter (@nit_stu) and Instagram (@nitstu32).
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