SO HE CAN CONTINUE DOING EXACTLY WHAT HE'S DOING.

Greg Schiano left Rutgers in immensely better shape after a tenure in which he rebuilt the program, beat Louisville that one time (VIVA SAN SAN TE), and is now going to coach the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Schiano, being a defense-first grinder who seemingly always went 8-4, seems perfect for the pro game while being an utter disaster as a resignator, leaving his team just prior to signing day. (To be fair, he alerted administrators with ample lead-in, and did his due diligence there by all reports.) Being under the gun and writing this in a hurry, we have no reaction but "Well, sure, and you'll go hire Mario Cristobal and keep going 8-4 and getting people to overpay for Big East tv contracts because 'Rutgers is New York's college football team.'"

A SHOCKING DISCUSSION OF SOMEONE BEING SHAMELESS IN A POSITION OF AUTHORITY. Big East Coast Bias points it out at length, but yes, Chuck Neinas, there is some deep irony in accusing Mizzou of being disloyal when you're in the midst of a pretty grand poaching spree yourself. YOUR GIRL CALLED ME, DAWG, DON'T HATE BECAUSE YOU CAN'T RELATE.

AN ATTRACTIVE STRUCTURE THAT CAN BE ROLLED. You do it to yourself, yes, and that's what really hurts, Auburn.

CREEPING SABANIZATION. Remember the maxim about generals always being ready to fight the last war? If Michael's expansion on the Creeping Sabanization of the SEC is accurate, then this is precisely what we have going on in our beloved league of dipstained hayseed champions all taking the wrong lessons from Alabama's success.

YALIES GONNA YALE. In every person's life, no matter their social station or education, one must choose between Harvard or Yale. Reading this expose of why Yale QB Patrick Witt's Rhodes Scholarship application was withdrawn, and you should be leaning slightly Crimson this morning, or at least until you remember that people from both schools are concocting elaborate plans to legitimate the sale of spare kidneys on the open market, and then rig a futures market on said kidneys to purchase a third estate in Connecticut.

IT'S ROUGH OUT IN PALO ALTO. 4.0 and a 26 on the ACT. GET STEPPIN', REDBIRD GROUP READER.

THIS IS NOT REAL. It is however truthy enough to enjoy, and then weep for the lack of reading comprehension one must have in order to not be able to suss out football by buying a book about it.

"These images take you under the ice of the Ross Sea in Antarctica for the reason I wanted to go to this continent."

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Even our vaunted Nation of SB is not fully protected from CLOWNFRAUDS like those at DawgSports who presented, last week, what can only be called a laughably childish set of rankings for the year 2031. Shame on you, Dawgs. Clemson at number 8? How can that even be when Clemson is stolen by Carmen Sandiego in 2022 and never found because I was too lazy to figure out where the Alhambra is?

Angrily, we present our own PRESEASON TOP 25 FOR 2031.

1. Ohio State - Many thought the death of Urban Meyer in 2025 would mean a swift decline for the Buckeyes, and, at first, that belief proved to be right. Three straight four-loss seasons, tumbling recruiting rankings, disgruntled boosters - it all spelled doom for Ohio State.

And then Columbus launched UrbanEye.

An orbital space weapons platform capable of wiping out an entire city in a fraction of a second, UrbanEye is powered by the late coach's brain and has received more helmet stickers than every other Ohio State ever combined. We tremble beneath its deathly shadow and rank it number one.

2. Ecuador A&M - It seems like only yesterday that Russian President Mikhail Prokhorov gave Ecuador to the United States after getting a little overzealous with a chainsaw and sending Rhode Island to the bottom of the Atlantic. Sure, Ecuador was all "um hello we're an independent polity and what are you doing," but here we are all the same! A&M continues to dominate recruiting in the Southern Hemisphere, and visiting teams struggle to contend with culture shock. (Guinea pig is really a very refreshing sideline treat once you get over all the fur.)

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HELLO GOD, I'M IN JAIL.

Mark Richt went to jail for a recruit, and it's not what it sounds like, but let's just assume that like any man, Mark Richt has flaws and the undying desire to get into a bar fight. Once in this bar fight, Mark Richt would then execute the dream maneuver of flinging a man down the full length of the bar and into the jukebox, which will then play Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog." (He was really just coming along on a bail bondsman's errand with the recruit's family, but shut up and let us imagine Richt brawling Old West-style. It's the offseason. We need this.)

ALABAMA JUST CONTINUES TO BE A STATE FULL OF AWESOME DECISIONS. We know picking on one Southern state for being stupider than another is like picking on one Midwestern state for being more dead inside than another, but really, it's just been a banner month for the state of Alabama. To assist you in differentiating them, we offer this handy shorthand guide.

• Arkansas: "I'll shoot you with this gun made of a black bear" stupid
• Louisiana: "I'll father a child with the bear, and then eat him in a sauce piquante."
  
• Mississippi: "What's a bear?" "Your mascot." "REALLY?"
  
• Tennessee: "I don't trust the bear because he's black AND doesn't go to church."
  
• Alabama: "I have filed thirty lawsuits written in crayon against the bear for no reason whatsoever."
  
• Georgia: "I ain't gone nowhere near Atlanta 'less there's a Braves game. Atlanta is full a bears."
  
• Kentucky: "That bear better not say shit about Calipari, or I'll slit his damn throat."
  
• Florida: "We feed the bears because they are cute, and then they eat us, and we are surprised because we are very dumb."
  
• South Carolina: "Bears? I'm sorry, I don't believe in dinosaurs." <---said in lovely accent
  
• North Carolina: "The bear, along with the rest of us, is looking forward to basketball season."
  
• Virginia: "I"m actually a Mid-Atlantic Bear, thank you very much."

We hope that clears up nothing for you.

TEXAS TECH IS CLEARLY GOING TO PAY SOME MONEY TO MIKE LEACH. On one side of the legal aisle in the Leach/Texas Tech/ESPN/Craig James case is the guy who got Mike Price $20 mil for the SI Story that turned out to be largely fictional, and on the other side is someone who writes "brain concussion." This is going to be awesome, y'all.

YET ANOTHER REGRETTABLE AND AVOIDABLE CASE OF NFLAIDS. You might be tempted to hire someone simply based on his name being "Clancy Pendergast," and this is why you will never be placed in charge of anything important or serious, because like many other unfortunate souls he suffers from a full-blown case of NFL-related football suppression syndrome.

HE MADE HIS DREAMS COME TRUE. Brady Hoke is the Dreamtamer.

ETC. No fawkin' way that happens if Mahky Mahk is on that plane. We retweeted this at Chris Brown this morning, and we'd like to thank Twitter for making it that much easier to make fun of assholes who punch ladies. Your government orders you NOT to have sex with Penelope Cruz.

If the oaks at Toomer's Corner die--and according to this week's estimate, that is a real possibility--then Auburn has plans. They'll look into the viability of replacing the oaks after a cleanup operation, and in the meantime make some kind of "temporary structure" for students to rally around, celebrate some shitty win by field goal*, and then do what Auburn students and alumni always do after football games: blow up dogs with commercial explosives.

They'll also roll the structure with toilet paper, continuing a tradition stemming back to whenever the tradition started. There being no demonic clocks--THE DEVIL'S EGG TIMERS, I TELL YOU--in Auburn, time and dates tend to slip a bit, but rest assured they have been doing this for a long time, and it is a respected community bonding activity in Auburn.

(Did you know the current head of Apple is an Auburn grad? They'll be happy to tell you this, and frown when you joke about the impending SEC investigation right hahaha get it get it?)

There are no definite plans for what that temporary structure may be, but we do have one suggestion that an alumni would happily pay for in American dollars.

WOOD DAMN EAGLE. It's a money maker and a landmark all at once, and if you put an ATM in it you can get money out of it 24 hours a day, any time, even if you were a prospective recruit just passing by the corner in need of a few bucks. Whoops! Did the Yella Fella spit out a few hundred extra! Well, I guess you better report that to the bank, and return those dollars, son!

[HUGE WINK OF ROBOTIC EYE]

PS. Do not trust anyone from Alabama's opinions about anything that could remotely touch football. Football touches everything there. Therefore, do not trust anyone from Alabama about anything.

We really don't care if the new bar for bowl eligibility is five wins, or eight, or two, or one. The bowl season can be whatever it wants as long as it doesn't claim it means anything besides whatever the team decides it means: a unifying experience for a team trying to finish a miserable year on an upswing, a disappointing and headless conclusion to a miserable roll in the trough of football sorrow, or what it means to most teams, a chance to get in a full slate of practices and hone their skills unimpeded by classes or other concerns.

Saying the number has meaning means bowl games have meaning, and that would undermine our entire argument about them having meaning, and is thus discarded instantly.

The only real objective downside to limiting the bowl games is for the communities that host them, an interest school presidents and ADs are anything but beholden to. The wanking motion school officials would make when told of the sorrows of the St. Petersburg, Florida economy without the Beef O'Brady's Bowl would defy description. We estimate it would begin somewhere in the crotch region, pinwheel wildly out past the shoulder, and probably hit any lighting fixtures in the room in the process of its travel along the gigantic invisible penis held by the speaker. Its motions would be dramatic, and its intensity undeniable.

The real obstacle in all of this--surprise!--would be ESPN, the entity that really weakened the quality of the buffet by slapping the tub after tub of unnecessary but irresistible condiments onto the salad bar: the sad ham cubes of the New Mexico Bowl, the bizarre bowl full of pulverized Captain Crunch you suspect someone lugged over from the ice cream condiments that is the Texas Bowl, the Beef O'Brady's MagicJack Bowl, a.k.a. the anchovies that may have been a good idea seven days ago, but that have long since sidled into some hellish slime located between "fish" and "fish food."

It's all filler, and yet you digest it because it's there and like most humans you have no ability to turn down free things. The bowl viewing experience is free. It requires sitting on your ass and letting the football meth pour into your veins through ocular administration. That is the worst part of this. You could put 5-7 teams playing, and someone would watch it because with no football to come for months on end, college football chooses to make you watch the final episode of the season ten seconds at a time with loads of ads in between.

The exact motivation for why schools want to move back to seven wins is unclear: either this is a direct refutation of ESPN's power in diluting the bowl system, and therefore a kind of defense of the bowl system's illusion of integrity, or this is pruning as an aftershock of a disastrous year for bowl ratings, and thus a defense of the product. Put like that, we'd wager on the latter, and not because we think the people running college football are terrible people. (We kid. They're terrible, short-sighted people.)