Although it is of little comfort to the Ohio State fans who saw how much more effective the offense was with Troy Smith against Texas, Smith is getting the nod for this week against San Diego State. Too little, too late Mr. Sweatervest, you can’t undo the Texas loss now.

I want a pile of Steak-Umms this high, Chavis. This fucking high, ya hear me? Mmm…Steak Umms…

Alonzo Horton, a New Orleans native and University of Auburn Auburn University football player, thought for days that his father was missing and his two younger brothers were killed by the wrath of hurricane Katrina. He’s never been happier to be wrong. Horton found out Sunday that his family is alive and well in Houston.
(Had to correct that Stranko, since our brother Cuddles Swindle goes to Auburn and would never forgive us for the error.–ed.)

Michigan State fans are hard like that, bitch, doing the whole West Virginia/English soccer fan thing on game weekend save the burning couches in the street. Enlightened Spartan, we suggest a new product for your shop: green and white-painted brass knuckles.

If the kids…are United…they will never…be divided!

Fanblogs has their usual down-pat summary of the media buzz surrounding the suddenly unstoppable Vanderbilt Commodores. They play Ole Miss in Nashville this weekend, and we’re hoping that for the children’s sake, Ole Miss wins. You won’t like Ed when he’s angry…

Spare the children, Vandy. Let Ed win this week.

Blue-Gray Sky covers the ludicrositude that has become the Harris Poll. They also mention a scene in Flash Gordon that gave us nightmares for years as a kid. Thanks, jackasses–like we need more fear and anxiety in the week leading up to the Tennessee game. At this rate, by Thursday the Conscience of a Nation is going to greet me at the door after work with a cattle prod, tranq gun and SWAT gear on–and we normally save that shit for Sunday afternoons.

Blogpoll #7 is up at ATL Eagle, and Bill’s got a couple of delicious questions about college media types for us to sink our platinum teeth into. Regardez:

1. What member of the mainstream sports media (preferably one who covers college sports) makes your skin crawl, blood boil, forces you to change the channel or hit mute? Why?

2. What writer, broadcaster, show, website etc. deserves more recognition? Who is someone we should all be reading, watching or listening to?

1. Chris Berman, of course, but they don’t let him get near the great game, if only for the fear that college students, born too late to fall for even an iota of his Huey Lewis-lovin’, I-got-straight-in-the-eighties, lameass-nickname-creatin’ schtick would storm the Gameday set and rip him to bad lunchmeat with their bare angry hands. We don’t want that to happen, mind you–we just want to throw a chaise lounge at him as hard as we can and let bygones be bygones.

In the college ranks, no one puts a soggier blanket around the game than joyless sourpuss Mike Gottfried. You get the feeling that Gottfried thinks the whole endeavour of being involved in covering the college game was the biggest vocational mistake of his life, taking to a broadcast with all the enthusiasm of a Korean nail tech scraping the fungus out from someone’s toes. Mistakes send him into quiet misery, so much so that you wonder if his broadcast partners aren’t given instructions to hide all the sharp objects and firearms before they enter the booth. (”Keep the windows bolted shut, y’all! That ain’t happening live on the Worldwide Leader!”) He does know his stuff, but who cares when he’s grumbling into his decaf coffee and praying for a massive stroke during a commercial break. A total drip. We’d take delusional Brent Musberger and his Olbuddyjackaruuuuute anyday.

Mike Gottfried, on right, willing the blood vessels in his brain to explode.

2. Who doesn’t get enough credit? Besides Bill’s pick, the inimitable Wes Durham of Atlanta Falcons and Georgia Tech fame? We’re torn here, since we seem to be awash in quality local and national talent most of the time, but a few picks from both will be as close as we can get to playing in the lines.

Nessler. So good he should go by the single moniker, like Cher or Bono. Hell, we get excited listening to him on NCAA 2006 for the XBox: “He can scoot!” We especially love it when he says that after a 300-lb lineman scoops up a fumble and coronaries his way down the field at 2 mph.

The Twang Twins: Terry Bowden/Bill Curry. Once the burning sensation subsides…okay, now we can talk. Much as we hate to admit it, it helps to have a tubby midget with a funny accent as a color guy. Bowden provides accurate and occasionally daring commentary in both writing for Yahoo! and on ABC as a studio and sometimes-in-game-color guy, and never fails to sound like he just got out of a 1956 Ford pickup loaded with illegal hooch while doing it. He also provides some humanity in a room dominated by the antiseptic John Saunders, who is almost too good as the slick point man in the room. (Saunders, by the way…doesn’t remind you a bit of Dr. Julius Hibbert from the Simpsons, eh, does he?)

Bill Curry is genteel, smarter than his coaching stint at Kentucky would suggest, and consistently teaches the viewer something they didn’t know. His work with Mike Golic on ESPN is a blast because the two actually sound like really intelligent football guys parsing out the game in their living room, interspersing the hard analysis with personal anecdote without ever overshadowing the action.

Radio nominee: Nick Cellini, 790 the Zone, Atlanta. We love the anger, but also the underrated wit. Por ejemplo: when Phil Mickelson bragged about training hard for the upcoming tour, Cellini suggested that his routine consisted of “I lift the party sub to my mouth…I release the party sub to the table.” Occasionally breaks down–literally–on air. Was half of the greatest radio show ever, The Bottom Line, which boasted about “being big in prisons,” interviewed O.J. Simpson, and featured a glorious amount of pro wrestling talk. We still experience chronic pain from its absence in the middle of our day.

Web nominee: Ian, Sexy Results. The nastiest one-liners in the business. A career on air would last five minutes and end in FCC fines, sure…but oh, what a five minutes they would be.

Bama Report chimes in a tidy summary of the Tide’s contentious victory over Southern Miss, marked most notably by the ovation Coach Mike Shula received when he took Brodie Croyle, the Tide’s oft-injured prodigy of a quarterback, out of the game with a lead in the fourth and allowed him to rest on his favorite fainting couch on the sidelines.

But we didn’t just write this to use the phrase “fainting couch” and “Brodie Croyle” in the same sentence–though it’s a nice side benefit. No, we wanted to quote Bama Report’s fascinating observation regarding backup qb J0hn Parker Wilson:

In the second half, the offense caught up somewhat but there’s no doubt that the loudest cheer of the game was for Coach Shula…for benching Our Blessed Saint of Rainbow City with a fourth quarter lead and letting John Parker Wilson (whose name could either push his career path toward Southern school’s quarterback or Presidential assassin) eat the lone sack Alabama’s prepubescent offensive line allowed.

We’d like to mention the famous “Wayne Corollary” to this rule, which proposes that if you give a male child three names with the middle one being “Wayne”, then said child will commit a capital offense of no less than first-degree manslaughter at least once sometimes in the course of their lives, or at least make an appearance shirtless and high on PCP on “Cops.”