The man with the poon-hound name, Mitch Mustain, has been named the Parade Magazine Player of the Year. In an unrelated story, Arkansas has hired Marilyn vos Savant as the quarterback’s coach.

The newest addition to the Arkansas coaching staff.

Ben Troupe lives up to his school’s theme song by subbing for injured teammate and fellow Gator Erron Kinney on the field for the Titans AND in a Nashville Ballet production of “The Nutcracker.”
That’s him in the hat. (HT: Deadspin)

Ben Troupe dares you to laugh. When you do, he will stare at you until you die from fear.

Paul’s up to no good–which means nothing but good–over at Georgia Sports, where Paul’s beginning the search for the next Bill Brasky of college football now that this year’s freak, Leonard Pope, is headed for the NFL. Our personal fave:

Calvin Johnson (GT) - 6′4″ 235 lbs.
Pros: Has the body control of Jacquez Green, runs routes like Chris Carter, and uses his body to push off without getting caught like Michael Irvin. Can roll Yahtzee with just one die. Calvin Johnson wasn’t born. He shed a woman. Built the first Waffle House out of French Toast.
Cons: His QB has the field vision of Helen Keller, the height of Webster and the arm of Andreas Katsulas. Can’t beat Georgia.

Exemplary work, Paul.

Life’s not perfect–fortunately, though, our fantasies are. Here’s a few of the bowls as they should be played, each with their own appropriate setting, sponsor, and ideal matchups. When we’re in charge of things, the whole system will be first against the wall, of course—but in the meantime, what we can’t kill, we’ll mock ‘til it bleeds.

December 24, New Orleans, Lousiana: The Crestor/Nathan’s Mr. Creosote Bowl

Teams: Kansas vs. Maryland

Katrina, Schmatrina. A total lack of public sanitation can only help the festivities sure to result between two teams piloted by the biggest men in the business, Mark Mangino and Ralph Friedgen. Game will begin not with a coin toss, but instead with a competitive eating contest on the fifty yard line between the coaches, who will down tasty Nathan’s hot dogs until one coach gives. Vomiting, diarrhea, gastric torsion, foundering or death will disqualify participants. The winner of the eating contest effectively wins the coin toss, and gets to coach the game lying belly down on a couch on the sidelines.

Favored: Kansas. Mangino’s unchecked swelling will carry the Jayhawks to victory–the man appears to be in the grip of an unending allergic reaction.

Mangino’s the man to carry the Jayhwaks to victory in the Mr. Creosote Bowl.

December 26, Kingston, Jamaica: The Carnival Cruiselines /Visine Fog Bowl

Teams: Bowling Green versus the UAB Blazers.

Crimes abound, and one of them is the fact that both Omar Jacobs and Darrell Hackney will be staying home for the holidays. If there was a nanobit of justice in this world, the two would be playing each other in the Fog Bowl in Kingston, the first overseas bowl game. The game would feature a liberal concessions policy (fans will get hungry) , constant mellow reggae sounds piped in from the house band, and…well, something else that just totally slipped our mind, bro. But trust us, whatever it was, it was going to be awesome. The only logistical problem would be keeping the Miami Hurricanes from ditching their prior bowl obligation and crashing the party.

Favored: Bowling Green. Staying focused will be the key in a potentially sloppy second half, as both teams try to maintain poise in an aggressively relaxed atmosphere. Omar Jacobs has dreads, which confirms our suspicions that he’s played in this kind of game before, or at least has conditioned himself for the playing environment of Kingston in his spare time.

Hiring this trainer would suit teams headed for the Visine Bowl well.

January 1st, Tallahassee, Florida: The Sylvan Learning Centers/University High School Oscar Davenport Bowl.

Teams: Kansas State vs. Tennessee.

Another variation on the coin toss can be found in the Oscar Davenport Bowl, where teams pick their best and brainiest partial qualifiers to face off in a pregame battery of tests designed to push the cognitive limits of their signal-callers’ gray matter. (Davenport, by the way, scored a 6 on the Wonderlic.) Thrill as the Wildcats and Vols run out of chips in Connect Four! Gasp in stunned silence as they circle the board in Trivial Pursuit wedgeless for hours at a stretch! Laugh as home-schooled 8 year olds outspell the shit out of Division 1-A quarterbacks! A football game will follow the festivities, but who’s paying attention to that when you’ve got two lineman sweating out a game of Mousetrap on the sidelines? Or Eric Ainge staring blankly at a game of Boggle with only these three words written down:

ART

FART

FAR

Favored Team: In pregame, Tennessee, since not even the Vols can go as low as Kansas State can for historically abysmal Wonderlic scores. Who cares about the game? We’ll be stumping our opponent with our unstoppable Uno! technique and getting sloshed off our third egg nog.

Straight from those hard streets: Connect Four, bitch.

First, it’s Tim “TBone” Tebow now it is a pair of speed merchant wide receivers from Virginia. Percy Harvin (who some services have as the top high school wide receiver) and Damon McDaniel have orally committed to the University of Florida giving the Gators 24 verbal commitments and a consensus top 5 recruiting season. Not since Gator fans dreamed of Tim Olmstead throwing touchdown passes to Steve Shipp have the Gator fans been so excited about the future.

Caveat Recruitor. Don’t forget that some recruits never do much more than log playing time in spring football.

I was watching television with my wife when I could have sworn I saw our favorite metrosexual football blogger.

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They’re professionals, people: College Football News picks Rutgers over Arizona State in the Insight Bowl.

We thought we’d get in on this action with a few others, too:

–Palestine over Israel by a rock and a Molotov cocktail by April.

–Florida State over Penn State by thirty in the Orange Bowl.

–Cookies ‘n Cream South Beach Diet Bar over Ryan’s Family Steakhouse Buffet, 1:30 p.m. Phil Fulmer lunch break.

–Diet Pepsi machine over Reggie Bush in the NFL draft–by two spots.

–Errant Spanish nobleman over windmills in the early third round.

Rutgahs, eh…never freakin’ heard of it. Now get off my lawn.

The hokey, played-out ass end of the season is upon us, and with the electric sex of the GMAC Bowl glowing in the window, it’s hard not to sit back, kick off your boots, and think…well, just to think of how fucked-up this whole season has been for most college football fans. In August we sat, dog-eared preview guides surrounding us on every side, awake at the crack of dawn just seizing with excitement thinking: football. Goddamn, football.

Yet something cruel and addictive happens along the way to football Oz. One minute you’re cruising along in the halcyon daze of 3-0, 4-0, happily skipping along the Yellow Brick Road through fields of poppies…and then, without warning, flying demon monkeys come and mercilessly rip your precious dreamworld to pieces. For we Florida fans, flying monkeys wore crimson this year, and came screaming in on a sultry afternoon in Tuscaloosa to the tune of “Rammer Jammer.” For Virginia Tech fans it came in the form of a hell-for-leather Miami team who administered a jackhammering on national television. For others, flying monkeys beset their every step: Tennessee’s season became an exercise in defining new lows week to week, with the nadir coming in a loss—in Knoxville—to Vanderbilt, a team whose ass had been handed to them yearly by the Vols since 1983. Colorado endured a three game long troika of redass beatdowns culminating in a smiting in the Big 12 championship game, losing to Texas 7294-3.

Flying monkeys: they strike when a fan least expects it.

(Okay, 70-3. But really, what’s the difference, semantically? It’s like telling your wife that you’ve slept with ten other women. You might as well tell her a thousand—the effect is the same past a certain number, and will certainly seem more impressive.)

Individuals, too, had unforeseen devils besetting their seasons. Brad Smith, perpetual Heisman hopeful? Pinkeled into invisibility. Devin Hester? Ted Ginn? Bueller? Bueller?

With flying monkeys and the fog of disappointments past reeling in our head, we bring you our first WTF awards, dedicated to those teams, games, and moments in the 2005 season that made you say…What….The…Fuck.

WTF Award, Team:

Tennessee. Should win the national WTF award for disappointment, blown expectations, and squandered talent on a single 1-A squad. For sum total dysfunction, no team rivaled the toxicity of the Knoxville crew: an off-season straight from the scenes of The Program, top 5 preseason rankings combined with the coach’s very public high expectations for the team, and a mismanaged qb rotation between Casey Rick Clausen and Eric Ainge that became the locus for a season-long offensive catastrophe. Tennessee, traditionally brutal on the run and efficient on the pass, couldn’t even run its way through the Vanderbilt Commodores toward the end of the season, losing to Jay Cutler and the fancy lads from the West End for the first time since 1983…at home. John Chavis’ defense played heroically all year in the face of atrocious field position, but not even a late season shifting of playcalling responsibilities could jolt a stillborn attack into anything resembling life. It’s bad times in Outer MonVolia when Fulmer’s considerable waistline wanes rather than waxes during the season. Last we saw, Phil’s double-pleated Dockers were looking awfully baggy.
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I guess “homesickness” is not a factor in Portis’ seemingly strange decision to bolt from UF after his Freshman season as his sights are set on the Maryland Terps. It will be interesting to see what the Fridge can do with Portis.

Mount Union wins the Division III championship (what, the voters don’t decide?) for the 8th time in 13 years. For the details of the action, check here.

When there is no more high school football to watch, there is still Mount Union.