Following their first losing season under the Fulmer regime, the house cleaning is in full swing. Offensive coordinator Randy Sanders turned in his clip board following the loss to Darth Visor and the Gamecocks. Now that the season is over, Fulmer has axed two more offensive coaches, Jimmy Ray Stephens and Pat Washington. Stephens coached the offensive line and Washington was the receivers’ coach. The new offensive coordinator will select his assistants at such time as he is named.

Fulmer used his experience in cleaning out buffets as he turned his attention to the offensive staff.

We have our own breakdown of the vivisection FSU endured in The Swamp on Saturday, but first the second half of our exchange with FSU blogger and all around sports savant, Corey from Sporting Fools. Corey was man enough not only to answer our questions following one of the worst regular season defeats for FSU in recent memory, but gave superb detailed answers to our questions. Cheers, Corey–frankly, we hope it’s a closer game next year, since there’s something inherently wrong with watching FSU put up less of a fight than Vandy did.

OS: There’s been a cottage industry of picking the instant defined as “FSU Officially Enters Decline.” Is this it? And why or why not?

SF: This is more like the instant defined as “FSU finally realizes how serious it’s decline is”. You know guys, we did a fun questionaire earlier this week and we really weren’t trying to take the game seriously because it didn’t mean anything in the great scheme of things. This game was hard not to take seriously in the end because it was such a shot in the head about how badly things have begun to fall apart. If I needed to find a point where I’d say FSU’s stuff finally hit the fan it would’ve been in last year’s FSU-Florida game. In this series it’s a rare day that the road team wins the game by sheer determination and last year Florida did that. The teams were about even, but Florida wanted it so much more. The problem was no one wanted to admit the program was in trouble, now there’s nowhere left to turn. The people who pay the bills for this program are finally going to step up and demand change. In all honesty I wish FSU wouldn’t have scored that touchdown, 34-0 was much more indicitive of the game.

Moreover this team lacked pride yesterday. Early in the game Jeremy Mincey took a cheap shot on Weatherford well after the whistle blew. When that happened I looked at the offensive line and none of them seemed to be aware that their QB got creamed were afraid to get into his face. I’m not one for cheap shots, but if I’m on that field, I’m taking a personal foul on the next play to send a clear message to Mincey and the rest of the defensive line. I’m not talking ripping a guy’s ACL, but definitely an innocent knee to the nuts. Unfortunately the FSU line seemed to be content with being bullied around.

OS: From the other side…how did this Florida team look in your first game in the Urban era?

SF: Defensively they look great. Florida has never really had a nasty defense in my opinion until now. They aren’t consistently nasty, but these guys get after it. Guys like Mincey, Siler, Nelson, those guys are the truth. The defensive line is stout and what the secondary lacks in experience they make up for by knocking the shit out of people. Ask me who the team’s MVP is and I’ll say Charlie Strong, he went back to the drawing board and got things right on this defense. He could’ve run away to Illinois like everyone else but he gutted it and he deserves a lot of credit.

Marcus and Scoop ask: Are you not entertained?

Offensively I think they still have a ways to go, Meyer probably needs to do away with a lot of the trickery because it doesn’t work at the highest level. When they ran the basic counters and isolation plays they were much more successful than option pitches and inside option handoffs and fake pitch to the reciever or whatever else they did. There are too many things involved in the offense that have nothing to do with getting the ball down the field.

OS: Will this game really have the watershed effect on recruiting that pundits say it will?

SF: Has it ever? People don’t realize that maybe 3-4 kids are REALLY torn between the two schools. Tim Tebow wasn’t considering FSU before the game started and Myron Rolle isn’t going to take a second look at Florida. (more…)

Iowa State wins the race not to win the Big XII North again in overtime. Last year the honor of bouncing the Cyclones from the Big XII Championship game went to Missouri, in overtime. This year went to…. drum roll please…. the Kansas Jayhawks…. in overtime following a missed field goal by Iowa State. Now Colorado, who just lost 30-3 to Nebraska, will have the honor of losing the Texas next week. Pathetic.

Barnett congratulated his team for earning their way into the Big XII Championship game again.

Florida 34, FSU 7.

King of the world!

Chris Leak’s coming back for his senior season! Yay! Er…BOO!…how ’bout BOO-YAY! No, too Stuart Scott.

Color us ambiguous ambivalent (damned tryptophan) for the moment.

Sporting Fools gives us ten hard ones in a row regarding the upcoming FSU/UF game. And we’re not even sore! Fun stuff from one of our favorite FSU fans. (Mother-in-law has to come first, right?)

After you are done giving thanks for all the important stuff, remember to also give thanks for the joy and pain of college football. If you are at a loss for what to be most thankful for, here is our list of some suggestions, in no certain order:

1) Joe Paterno’s resurgence.

2) Getting to watch two dynamic college players, Reggie Bush and Vince Young, putting on a spectacle to win the Heisman.

3) Steve Spurrier is back on a college sideline (even if it isn’t Florida’s)

4) We can remember Prothro for that catch and not just the horrific leg break.

5) Love them or hate them, Notre Dame is relevant again.

6) Great finishes …. ND v USC, UM v. PSU (or OSU), Alabama v. LSU….

7) Katrina dampened but didn’t destroy the college football traditions of the Gulf coast.

Tailgating at your alma mater.

9) A season full of surprises like Oklahoma, Tennessee, Oregon, TCU ect.

10) The season isn’t over yet!

Tell us what you are most thankful for.

1. Texas. Still number one.

2. USC. Shouldn’t this game have been easier for them? Without Reggie Bush’s out of this world performance they might have been an upset special.

Bush saved the Trojan’s season for the second time this week.

3. LSU. What could have been for them this season but for an inexplicable collapse against the Vols… who have now lost to Vandy at home.

4. Penn State. Joe is getting serious about trying to get back in the chase with Senior Bowden for the all time win lead.

5. Notre Dame. We think they took Syracuse lightly, which is understandable since they suck so bad.

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Thanks to Bill for our historical Thanksgiving mustache of the day. Posting will be light until our liveblog on Saturday for the FSU-Florida game.

The pilgrims were even down with the king of facial hair styles.

Solon, along with the rest of us, takes time to reflect on the truly good things in life, like going 8-4 for a week, eating pizza, and scoring all on the same day. Enjoy.

Great gambling weeks, throughout the years:

November 23, 1996: 7-2
If I searched through my records, I could probably find all the games I bet this day. As is, though, all I remember is the last game of the day chronologically; I had Iowa (-11) v. Minnesota, which I watched out of the corner of my eye at the Mellow Mushroom in Athens, GA, while I was out with some girl from my Ancient Greek class. Let me just say at this point (and you’d have to have read my previous columns to understand this), thank you Hayden Fry for a comfortable (43-24) cover, because I was able to pay enough attention to my ‘date’ that I didn’t blow my shot after the games were over. The best part of the story is (and I don’t want to get into details) the only reason I got the job done was that she was a philosophy undergrad student, I was an MA student in religion with a BA in philosophy, and the only reason I got anywhere is that I blew her mind with my knowledge of metaphysical systems. It’s tough to beat going 7-2, getting ass, and making that philosophy degree amount to something.

Scene of one of Solon’s better days and a tasty slice, to boot.

September 13, 1997: 8-2
Amazingly, though, it was only 10 months later that I had a better Saturday. Courtesy of my good friend and now semi-retired blogger CollegeFootballPundit, we had rounded up a bunch of investors prior to the 1997 season, and, since I was still in Graduate school and he was in LA, he flew out to Las Vegas every week to bet the games for us (keep in mind that Internet betting was in its infancy, and wasn’t considered anywhere near as reliable as it is today). We had some wacky-ass betting system, which I have now abandoned, that was very high-risk/high-reward (it required hitting 56% of your games to break even, but the payoffs at higher win percentages were exponentially higher than they were with straight bets; in fact, you can thank us for the Las Vegas Club only paying out 6-1 on 3-team parlays, because we pounded their ass when they were paying 13-2). Anyway, same thing, the only game I remember was the last one, where we had Utah (-4) v. TCU; they won 32-18, and when we added up the proceeds at the end of the day, our bankroll had gone from $18,000 to $41,000. Keep in mind that at the time I was a struggling Graduate student making something like $898/month teaching religion classes at UGA, and CFBPundit had a fixed income of considerably less.

November 19, 2005: 9-2
Years from now, no doubt the only game I will remember having last Saturday is the final one, where SDSU scored a bunch of late points to get ahead of the number, and then held on to win 34-21 giving 7 points, holding off a Wyoming drive that reached the SDSU 5-yard line in the last minute. Of course, no background story to this one, other than that I was on the phone with my good buddy Brain, who was telling me what was going on in the USC-Fresno game, while I was at the same time giving him play-by-play on the SDSU-Wyoming game (which I’m sure he didn’t give two shits about, but he humored me nonetheless).

So, while not as good a night as the others listed, in the end it was a better performance last week.

Let’s hope the run I’ve been on for the last couple of weeks keeps going. Lots of favorites again this week. My record for the season is 71-55-1, a winning percentage of 56%. Here are this week’s selections:

THURSDAY:
WEST VIRGINIA (-13.5) v. Pittsburgh
Pitt was a bad team earlier in the year, but they have recovered well and strung together 4 Big East wins. Unfortunately for them, all of those wins came at home and this matchup is scheduled at a difficult venue. Pitt has difficulty running the ball (averaging 106 ypg and 2.99 ypc against 1-A opponents), and while their passing game is decent, only Maryland and VT have had any success throwing the ball against WV this season and both of those pass Os are considerably better than this one. The strength of the Pitt team is their pass D, which held ND to 227 yds and Louisville to 247 yds; unfortunately for them, WV runs to set up the pass, and Pitt’s run D is considerably less able. Pitt has given up over 200 yds rushing to ND, Rutgers, and Louisville, and WV is arguably a more powerful run O than any of those (probably not Louisville, but definitely better than the others). Additionally, the WV RBs have been banged up but they should be fully healed for this, their first game in 15 days, so they should all run with purpose and get ahead of this number.
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