We’re off to Tuscaloosa bright and early tomorrow to watch a classic midseason “debunking” game between the Gators and the Tide, armed only with a flask and a dream of being a fan of the debunkers, not the debunkees in a matchup of two undefeateds.

We plan on doing everything you’re supposed to do in T-Town, including a quick jaunt through the supposedly epic Bear Bryant Museum and adjacent Ray Perkins RV Solid Waste Depository Shunt. We’re also going to meet up with Warren St. John, who’s understandably nervous about meeting a total stranger jacked on coffee, vodka, and the fight-or-flight adrenaline of a fan stuck behind enemy lines in a pair of jean shorts and a Gator tee. We promise to be gentle.

Stranko got me the ticket, so like the Wonder Twins, we’ll link our EDSBS power rings together and cry out “FORM OF…DRUNK HECKLER!” prior to entering the stadium together. And if we’re lucky enough to emerge victorious, you can be sure to get pics not only of the game, but also of us twiddling our mustaches in delight. And if we lose, you may very well get pics of us kicking out the back of a Tuscaloosa squad car months later on COPS.

Form of…drunk heckler!

Mark Shapiro–the man who brought you the Hollywoodization of ESPN, along with punchline ESPN film “3″–has left the network to work with Daniel Snyder. Good to see a wicked deed punished accordingly, since working for Snyder will surely result in his firing and public embarrassment. Adios, jackass.

Milsaps, a Division III football program has done one better than the Gamecocks this season. While last week saw the debut of a forty year old receiver for South Carolina, Milsaps played (4th string) tight end Jim Harper last week… who is 48 years old.

CNNSI OnCampus wants us to answer a few questions re: polls, so we thought we’d do it catechism-style, putting on a monk’s habit over our University Athletic Association-approved jean shorts to answer some pointed poll queries.

Q: What poll do you rely on most?

A: The MGoBlog-sponsored BlogPoll, of course! It’s the most transparent poll with the most open debate, and Brian does a great job quantifying the individual tendencies of voters. And because we love the Idaho Vandals we follow the Harris Poll, especially since they let Martha Raye, denture-wearer, have her say in the voting, too. If the dead can vote in elections in Chicago, they can surely improve the scanty credibility of the Harris Poll.

Q: What exactly is the blog poll? How does work, etc.?

A: We meet on an exotic but lethally dangerous island in the South Pacific on Tuesdays. If you find the one with the skull-shaped volcano and the shapely henchwomen in matching hotpants with AR-15s…well, you get a vote. As you can imagine, we’re all devastatingly handsome, and are each trained in jiu-jitsu, krav maga, and the art of memorizing Phil Steele’s guide to Football yearly.

Actually, only the Phil Steele bit is true. We’re still working on the henchmen and skull-shaped volcano, though. We’re bloggers who vote on college football. None of us voted for Illinois or Idaho this past week, so we’re automatically kick the Harris poll in the teeth.

The Blog Poll voters: still waiting for our hollowed-out volcano lair.

Q: Isn’t the Harris poll the BCS poll but the BCS people know they are hated and so they changed the name?

A: Um, no. Nothing to see there. Just stare into this light––see, whay you saw was actually some swamp gas reflecting off a weather balloon, not sports’ most grandiose sham scuttling into a new shell. Oh, and Chris Berman entertains you. Chris Berman really, really entertains you.

Q: Should polls be released in the preseason? (Oklahoma, Michigan falling out top 5)

A: Oh, absolutely. The sad truth is that millions of college fans have little else to do but compile lists in the offseason and pick up the threads of the lives destroyed from September to January; working to get wagered homes out of foreclosure, remembering spouses’ names, bathing, or in our case, waking in up in January and staring in horror at the six-foot pile of jean shorts we went through during the season.

For some, it’s a credibility issue. For us, it’s a public policy issue. Save the children–let us have polls, even if they set up unrealistic expectations and often have a significant role in the eventual firing of coaches. If we don’t put out specious preseason polls…well, then the terrorists have won, haven’t they?

Q: Should polls be released before October?

A: Yes, but expect them to be totally janked-up. Small sample size will make the ugly teams look grotesque and the good teams irresistable. Thus our ranking of TCU in week two after beating Oklahoma and our amorous childhood fascination with the perfectly average Justine Bateman from Family Ties–without a lot of basis of comparison, distortion is inevitable.

Q: Do people freak out too much about polls?

A: No. They don’t attach the tenatacle to the monster if they do, since the polls themselves are just mongrel hybrids of shoddy, completely un-statistical analyses and regional prejudices in service of the weasels in brightly colored jackets. Most people just care about their team, their rival, and maybe one other team they grew up watching. The rest is something to fall asleep to on a Saturday afternoon after nachos and a few beers.

Q: What’s so bad about polls? They are fun to debate, don’t be so uptight.

A: Nothing’s inherently wrong with them, which is why Brian started one. What’s bad is when they rob us of good football and force us to sit through trash like Utah/Pitt and the excrescence that was the Orange Bowl last year. What’s bad is that they help fund the Orange Bowl halftime show, the worst halftime entertainment at any sport event in the planet. The “Moon Over Miami” 1996 Show still gives us the shakes…all those hideous, capped teeth grinning on one field…(shudder)

Q: Is there a perfect system?

A: No, but an integrated bowl system with the smaller bowls as the first round games and the bigger bowls rotating between the second round and the championship game might come close. It’s nothing new, it’s been out there for years, and yet here we are as fans still wondering why ADs don’t just get smart and realize the payoff from the tv contract alone would eclipse the relatively meager payouts they get from the bowls. There would be a kind of Godfatheresque mafia war over the conferences share, with the SEC/Big 11/ Big 12/Pac 10 playing the part of Michael Corleone and the Big East getting the special boat ride as Fredo.

The other bowls wouldn’t die–the teams in the Motor City Bowl aren’t exactly banking their whole season on a national championship–and we’d get something like a national champion. But we’ll just be over here with our tinfoil hat on selling plastic flowers and walking our invisible dog until that happens.

This week our resident punter Solon lays down the lines, but goes a step further by laying down the line on Louisville, a team who’s burned him three times already this year. Take them out and he’s at .500, a promising fact that has him working on that second mortgage and contacting kidney dealers in Phnom Penh for leads.–ed

How much do I love Louisville? Well, let me put it this way–it’s one of only two cities in the entire world where I’ve never lived, but I’ve had multiple coital partners (Las Vegas is the other, of course). Seeing as how I do not look anything like Matt Leinart that list of cities will likely not get longer anytime soon. So, Louisville’s my kind of town.

That said, the city’s local college football team this season is an incomprehensible debacle. I’ve bet on them or against them every week they’ve played this season, and I’ve got absolutely no fucking clue what they are going to do next. They dominated Kentucky in the 1st half, and got dominated by them in the 2nd half (Kentucky, for fuck’s sake!). Then, an amazing performance, crushing a decent Oregon State team. They of course followed this up with a stanky-ass turd of a game against South Florida.

So, to hell with them. I’m not even touching these jokers for the rest of the season.

Though Louisville means multiple scores in two ways for Solon, he’s through with Petrino’s team.

(Additionally, regarding the rumor that two of my “associates,” both Louisville natives and U of L supporters–(1) “Brain”–who stands 6′7″ and weighs 270 lbs., and (2) “The Hit”–so called because he laid just about the most devastating hit in a football game ever caught on camera, and who, believe it or not, is even more physically imposing than the aforementioned Brain–told me in no uncertain terms to not play any more Louisville games this season…I have no comment.)

So for the season, I’m 19-19 in games not involving Louisville, and 0-3 in games involving them. It’s getting later in the season, and it’s time to get on the right side of the ledger. Here are this week’s picks:

LOUISVILLE (-38) v. Florida Atlantic
No opinion whatsoever. Which sucks because I think Louisville offers some good value here.

MICHIGAN STATE (-5.5) v. Michigan
Michigan’s O is rubbish. One suspects that if Hart comes back it will give them a jump but it will not be enough to keep up with the (not so) Spartan O. The tables are turned this year; usually MSU comes in fired up, ready to fuck up Michigan’s season. I am not sure Michigan will play the underdog role well; they must be gutted after losing the games they have lost, and they are running into a buzzsaw here. Add to this that UM was pretty fortunate to win at home against MSU last year, when their team was better and MSU’s was worse, and I think it adds up to a comfortable MSU win.
(more…)

We Are The Boys, the Joe Kickass of Gator bloggers, joined us for another anarchic roundtable where we broke down tomorrow’s jittery matchup between two undefeated programs, Florida and Alabama. Along the way we learned that Bama’s defense gives us all the shakes, that Orson will be wearing jean shorts on Saturday, and that jumping out of a boat moving at 35 miles per hour will break your nose. Enjoy–it’s better than Oprah.

Unless you’re a Navy SEAL, not a good idea.

Stranko Montana: How long before Brodie Croyle is injured? If not in
this game, then when?

WATB: Broken hip would be the obvious injury. Maybe a fall down the
stairs, or trouble in the tub. The guys, what, like 50?

Orson Swindle: 38, actually. You know the trouble with those Latin
American birth certificates.

Stranko: Brodie Almonte.

Orson: I was thinking, Croyel, Brodi. But that’ll do, too. Seriously, I
think he makes it the whole year on karma. (more…)

Sunday Morning Quarterback is back with a vengeance after Katrina, forecasting the whole weekend’s slate of games with panache. Of particular interest to this blog is his forecast for the UF/Bama game:

‘Bama’s defense is too good for a break out-type day from Leak, but the Gator offense will make some hay and the Tide will give up some turnovers that can lead to points. Close for a while, but the game will end with Brodie being just pounded by the Gator pass rush while trying to lead a hopeless comeback. Fourth quarter=Croyle Injury Watch.

As we showed yesterday, sometimes the press goes a long way to help young players out when they run their mouths off in front of the media before a rivalry game. Today the media–that damned mainstream media!!!–censors a football player’s remarks to protect them again, this time excerpting a sterile nugget of boilerplate from the colorful remarks made by Alabama Crimson Tide linebacker Juwan Simpson.

EDSBS sources have again given us the unexpurgated transcripts of his remarks, which follow the bowdlerized quotes seen below.

Juwan had a few things to say about Leak that you didn’t get to hear, including a detailed description of Chris Leak’s fondness for applesauce.

> Bama LB Juwan Simpson on QB Chris Leak: “I don’t see what’s so special about this kid. He’s a good college player, but I don’t think he’s any different than Brodie Croyle. If you let him sit back there, any college starter should pick you apart. I don’t see anything that makes him Superman.”

Now for what Juwan Simpson actually said:

“I don’t see what’s so special about this kid. Notice what I just said. He’s a special kid. Special like eating applesauce with a fork with a cork on the damn end. Special like listening to Michael Jackson’s albums after Bad. Special like Timmy, y’all. (Screams in ‘Timmy’ voice.) CHRISSAY! I’m bringing a short bus for his ass on Saturday and parking it on his forehead. Beep beep, bitches. Time for your applesauce, you second-rate Vin Diesel look alike. He’s a good college player, but I don’t think he’s any different than Brodie Croyle. Except Croyle doesn’t like applesauce or Michael Jackson and after Saturday he won’t be bleeding from his special little ears when this short bus driver comes calling. Brodie’s got better hair, too. Chris keeps it short. You know just from looking at him that he would have had the flat-top thing going for him if this was 1991. Brodie’s got that white-boy frat shag thing going on, which works for him, I guess. Dude’s got so much mileage with women he carries a AAA card for his dick. If you let him sit back there, any college starter should pick you apart. Unless you’re an apple-sauce eating, flat-top wanna-be wearing retard. We’re thinking of playing “Beat It” over the PAs just to see if he gets so excited he pees his pants and drops the ball. I’ve seen a retard do it. I don’t see anything that makes him Superman. Unless you’re talking about wearing tights and calf-high boots. I bet he does that. Just goes out in tights and red calf-high boots dancing to Michael Jackson and the Backstreet Boys playing on his “My First Boom Box” for retards on a street corner in Gainesville. People be throwing money and shit at him while he sings “Leave Me Alone” or “Remember the Time.” I might come down and throw a dollar at him after the season like this– (makes motion of peeling off dollar bills and throwing them, giggling to himself)”

Chris Leak’s role model, according to Alabama linebacker.

Delayed answers to this week’s Blogpoll roundtabling, found this time at ParadigmBlog.

In between attempting to kneecap old biddies wearing Michigan State gear on the street, Brent asks us the following questions of the non-burning variety:

1. We are now 1/3 of the way through the season and things are starting to shake out. With that in mind, who are your picks to win each of the BCS conferences, as well as your choice for an at-large berth from a non-BCS league (none is an option)?

ACC: Virginia Tech. Rippin’ and rompin’ and scaring the poop out of everyone in the conference at this point.

Big 12: Texas Longhorns. A tasty dinner AND the most compelling Mack Brown team yet thanks to Gene Chizik’s baby thug D. Bevo wants a veggie burger. (more…)

Josh Crockett of Fanblogs–who comes clean and owns up to being a massive Virginia Tech fan–says going to Morgantown isn’t even worth the trip anymore thanks to the violent Mountaineers fans and their version of Appalachian hospitality.

As someone who’s been spit on–twice!–in Knoxville, had part of a seat from Sanford Stadium thrown at our head (explains some of our posts), and been shot at at a high school football game in Murfreesboro, TN, you need to put on your Hokie-high heels and go watch the game. What kind of world is it where a few burning couches and loogies tossed your way prevents you from going to cheer for your team? The World Cup features teams whose nations have actually killed each others’ citizenry in recent history, and even they show up. (Albeit with heavier security than you might get at an Internazionale game, for example. )

It’s a cheap slap to paint all West Virginia fans as couch-burning rednecks, too, as many of the comments beneath the post echo. Some of them, we know for a fact, are degreed, intelligent, hard-working couch burners, and are probably purchasing lighter fluid and scouting the Goodwills and Salvation Army stores of Morgantown for suitable apholstered tinder at this moment. Should the Mountaineers pull the upset, we hope for nothing less than orderly chaos and carefully placed Broyhill bonfires across Morgantown.

All of it–the screaming rednecks, the couch burnination, the insults and yes, spitting–adds up to far less than the unequivocal heavyweight champeen of hardass sports environments: a soccer riot in Afghanistan at a match between Afghanis and Green Berets. A night game in Morgantown is patty-cake with velvet slippers on in comparison.

Nation-building meets soccer: feel the love!

CNNSI’s Stewart Mandel trots out his regular mailbag feature again. In his piece, he chronicles the disappearing act done by several young promising players. It is a must read for at least this classic line:

Tennessee QB Erik Ainge: Why did he wait until his sophomore year to start making freshman mistakes? Admittedly, Philip Fulmer’s constant yo-yoing of his quarterbacks probably hasn’t helped the kid’s confidence, but that interception Ainge lobbed out of his own end zone on Monday night looked like something straight out of a Chris Rix instructional video.

Here’s an idea. What if we have coaches who understand the game AND actually have time to watch other teams play rank the top 25. Well, we’ll get to see how that grand experiment works thanks to the Master Coaches Survey, which is premiering this week. The poll will consist of a veritable who’s who of coaching greats including Bo Schembechler, John Robinson, LaVell Edwards, Hayden Fry, Frank Kush, Dick MacPherson and John Cooper. Bama fans are still trying to figure out how the Bear can participate, but the science isn’t there yet.

Never fear, Tide fans. He’ll get the Bear on the ballot.

Hubert Mizell’s retirement from the St. Pete Times was a tragedy. It’s great to see him doing part-time stuff for Gatorsports, particularly this piece about the slippery but eminently likeable Urban Meyer.

Defensive end Jeremy Mincey proved to be a lively quote in Florida’s press conference on Monday. Actually, he proved to be several lively quotes, especially when asked about Alabama’s defensive talent.

To wit:

Mincey: “I would say Tennessee has more talent than Alabama, both sides of the ball. Alabama has a good defense, but I’d still say Tennessee has more talent.”

Mincey: “Tennessee’s (offensive line) was big and athletic and we came out and played them pretty good. We were a couple of mistakes from beating the crap out of (Tennessee). We were a couple of missed assignments from beating them pretty bad. The funny thing is we’re going to get better and better.”

Mincey: “Our defense, if we come out with the right state of mind, playing hard, we should come out with a good victory. I can’t say how (good). The way our defense has played the last four weeks, anything is possible. It could be a blowout or just a regular victory.”

Writers sometimes do a favor for young, reckless recruits by editing their somewhat rash remarks. According to EDSBS sources, this happened in this instance, as Mincey actually went further in his Bama-bashing than was reported. An unexpurgated transcript of the above remarks is reproduced below:
(more…)

We’re busy handing out names for our firstborn like candy lately–first Stranko goes and nabs us a ticket to the Bama game–handssah shakaiing ffromggm eexxcitementtt–and then Brent goes and finds this site, one not only devoted to the wonder of the masculine hair-based organic lip cover but to a specific kind of mustache: the Asian Mustache. There as devoted to a proper taxonomy of mustaches as we are (troubling to find out there’s others as obsessed as we are. Then again, as college football fans, why are we surprised at any obsession?)

Courtesy of their brilliant, disturbing site: The 7-10 Split.

Jia you, pengyou!