Having had no real accomplishments on the field in our lifetime, Texas AM is forced to relish in their admittedly bad ass 12th man traditions. To protect all that is holy and dear to the Aggies, the University has gone all Pat Riley on the the Seattle Seahawks’ collective asses by filing suit seeking to enjoin them from promoting the term 12th Man in reference to their frontrunning fanbase that suddenly has caught football fever.

Last Friday, we thought we might actually get off our ass and talk to someone who may know what they’re talking about in the brutal, Darwinian landscape of recruiting. Jeremy Crabtree of Rivals.com talked with us for a while about the time and a half hours recruitniks put in, the programs cleaning up on the road this year, and which programs seem to be losing a step in the handshake wars.

OS: How much have you been on the road lately?

JC: Let me put it this way: my little girl is five and a half months old, and for the first eight weeks of her life I was on the road for four of them. So, yes, a lot.

OS: Who’s whiffing in recruiting this year, or at least not getting their usual results?

JC: Lots at teams with a record of prior success. Virginia Tech’s not in our top 25 and they’ve always been there. They recruit a great state, they’re a great program, and I’m surprised they’re not there. Oregon’s usually big in southern California but this year it’s hard to discern what they’re doing there. Both NC State and UNC’s lack of presence in North Carolina—a state with loads of talent—is odd to me. For NC State the loss of Doc Holliday to Florida probably has something to do with that. He’s a great recruiter.

Tubercular, but effective.

OS: Who’s making a great debut?

JC: Well, you can’t exactly call it a debut, since he was such a good recruiter at Southern Cal, but Ed Orgeron at Ole Miss has surprised a lot of people. He’s an established recruiter, but he’s building a very good class there despite not having a lot of wins coming out of the season.
(more…)

Up in Deham, Mass. a dominatrix know as Mistress Lauren M was cleared manslaughter and of dismembering a corpse to conceal the death. The 53-year-old misbehaver suffered a heart attack in 2000 during a bondage session in a “dungeon” in which he was strapped to a replica of a medieval rack. The dominatrix was accused of leaving him on said rack for upwards of five minutes without doing anything to help. Apparently the spankee forgot the safety word in the midst of his infarction. Here’s where it gets really weird. Following the death, Prosecutors claimed that had the dominatrix had her boyfriend chop up the body of the 275-pound man and then they dumped it behind a restaurant in Maine. His remains have not been found.

Does this look like fun to you?

We’ve been accused of being Ohio State “haters.” Untrue–we just dislike Jim Tressel, who we think is as fake as tits on a badger. We should also mention that we don’t hate Tressel, either. No, we’ve seen what that looks like, and it’s not pretty. For the record, we hate Bobby Bowden, whose evil is both older, more established, and more formidable than Tressel’s Pastor of Disaster act will ever be.

Bucks fans: we hate this guy, not Cheatypants. Unlike Bowden, Cheatypants does NOT think Saturday night’s all right for fighting.

This guy, however, does hate Jim Tressel. We imagine he has a Michigan degree, or is named Maurice Clarett, which would explain why he writes posts with titles like “It’s A Pity You Can’t Stab Real Hookers.” Give him credit where credit is due, people: at least he understands that the word “hooker” has been scientifically proven to be funnier than “prostitute.” (Via Will at Deadspin.)

We’d love to have some excuse to really, really slam Tom Lemming for being Tom Lemming. He makes his life from watching high school football and hanging around guys who, in his high school days, likely would have poached the waistbands off his skivvies on a daily basis. We bet that for access to a blue-chipper Lemming would likely let a prospect do that to him today.

But reading the transcript of recruit Myron Rolle’s testimony to the Knight Commission, we can’t say that what Lemming did in THIS instance sounds all that scurrilous:

“He told me if I kept Notre Dame in mind, the NBC (TV) guy would interview me and they would showcase me during the game. He told me I’d have a higher chance of being MVP. I took it as having less of a chance of getting MVP if I didn’t keep Notre Dame on my list.”

True dat–NBC’s the network that owns the ND television contract, and it goes to absurd lengths to sell the brand. (”Check out the special episode of Joey tonight where that hot chick from the Sopranos gets a crush on her babyfaced neighbor–Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn!!!”) This makes enough sense on its own, and would signal that Lemming, though overstepping his bounds as a mere “analyst,” was at least talking some cynical sense into recruits attempting to spin the process their way.

But Lemming refuses to be smart and instead categorically denies the whole conversation, turning the analysis into a kind of bullshit scoreboard: recruits (Myron Rolle, Lorenzo Booker) 2, Lemming 1. It’s a game he can’t win, and Lemming’s descent from national prominence and a one-time ESPN gig will likely accelerate as a result. We’ll pause as you wipe the tears from your bleary eyes.

Lemming: running off a cliff of dumb.

What has become undeniably clear here: Lemming may or may not be a Notre Dame shill, but he sure as hell is anti-FSU. Perhaps they denied him a spot at the buffet, or very possibly Lemming has a conscience and wants to warn recruits away from the Crayola playbook of Jeff Bowden. Either way he retains a sort of plausible deniability, since FSU has taken several high profile offensive talents over the Jeff Bowden reign and turned them into draft day turnips, a difficulty reflected in this year’s recruiting. Would any sane recruiting analyst, pressed to advise a young man on his choices, declare them to be a good choice for an offensive player looking to make the NFL? And would any ethical recruiting analyst cross that line? Of course not, which is why “Tom Lemming” and “ethical” don’t appear in the same sentence without irony or a prominent “NOT” in front of the adjective.

Addendum: we typed that first bit quickly, so we naturally forgot some salient points here (we swear we have a few.) First, fault on Lemming for being so cynical about scholarship offers. (more…)

Rage on, Auburn fans. But you know this is fucking funny. You just know it is:

Nightmares. We’ll have them for a month after this.

Check out the explanation at MZone.

Perhaps inspired by Garrett Bushong’s desire to run the Purdue Campus, several UF athletes, including Tim Tebow and Brandon Siler, are staging a coup on the UF campus. The MVP party, as the athlete party is so called, is trying to use their celebrity status to get win control of the Student Government which has a colossal budget of 11 Million bucks to spend. Taking on SEC defenses may be tough, but these athletes may find out that taking on Florida Blue Key might be even tougher.

Oregon, ever the cleverest ducks in the flock, find another loophole in recruiting to exploit: the internet. The Wizard of Odds has the story on the website designed exclusively for recruits, as well as how the University spent $110,000 in an hour on recruiting without involving strippers and gold bullion and still didn’t land a recruiting class of commensurate value.

We are now in the dead period of recruiting that occurs in between the last weekend of official visits and signing day. What can we possibly do to amuse ourselves you ask? Well, how about checking out the top 100 Juniors in high school football. That is why, although we can’t help ourselves from following the saga, recruiting always remains a little bit creepy.

Jeremy Foley keeps Urban Meyer under control during dead period to keep his text messaging in check.

Feldman’s got his piece on the top ten closers in the recruiting game today(subscription required), a list littered with names one expects to see when you’re talking about convincing high schoolers that they are, in fact, God’s chosen axis for the universe to revolve around. Stoops, Meyer, Bowden, Paterno…they’ve all got their own flavor and manner, their own attitude they bring to the interaction. While we won’t steal money from the Worldwide Leader–we know they need to recoup the losses on Mario Lopez’s $15/hr contract for ESPN: Hollywood (hey, plus benefits!)–we thought we’d make our best guesses as to the tricks of the trade, presented here through the onstage correlative each coach best matches in the world of entertainment.

Urban Meyer

Closing schpiel most resembles…….an AC/DC concert. Cannons. Thunder. Urban in a schoolboy’s outfit bursts through the door and lays down the pitch in time to a pounding, lumbering beat. Points and fireworks explode behind him, setting the neighbor’s shrubs on fire in the process. “All the better to rock to,” says Urban, who commands those about to rock to salute him. A ten minute drum solo commences, and Urban pumps his fist and bangs his head in the face of the recruit’s parents until the mother flashes her breasts and the father submits to a jailhouse tattooing of “Meyer” on his chest. The stunned recruit stands up, puts on a “Ballbreaker Tour ‘99 shirt,” and marches out the door as Meyer points toward the horizon triumphantly to the boom of a cannonade’s salute.

Duh. Duh nuh nuh. Duh nuh nuh.

Bob Stoops.

Closing schpiel most represents……a dinner scene from Patton. (Full disclosure: we’re basing this on real-life experience, since we met Stoops and he was one of the most full-bore, type-A, gut you for looking askance at him people we’ve ever met.) (more…)

Matt Leinart? So ‘04. Reggie Bush? Please, we were big on him when we had an IPod Mini. We’re so into the Nano now, and the Nano equivalent would be Jay Cutler, who’s apparently not seen the end of his pre-draft boomlet. This year’s Alex Smith seeks to make jillions from NFL execs with his Senior Bowl workout heroics, which were enough to obscure his mediocre Senior Bowl performance. When the New York Post is writing about you like you’re Lindsey Lohan, it’s time to secure the services of a licensed financial advisor pronto.

We Google Image Searched him, though, and we’ve got one piece of advice for Cutler: back off on the bronzer. It can’t help your grip on the ball.

Now we know how he survived four years behind a Vandy line.

Yup. This guy, the man who brought you T.J. Hooker and Charmed, is being accused of sexual harrasment by his nurse who accuses Spelling of groping her and asking for sexual favors during her period of employ. How could she resist?

In a move to curtail Morgantown’s favorite celebration tactics, legislators in West Virginia are considering new arson legislation that would make it punishable by up to 2 years in the pokey to set a fire in a public right of way. Now, can they take up the issue of Urine bombs?

Enjoy this scene… it may be a relic of college football’s past.

The OnePeat and Three Peat Billboard wars reach a new fever pitch: Kevin Robl, a self-described “successful fatcat alumnus” of USC, is allegedly throwing down a gauntlet full of cash to put up something like this billboard in downtown Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Boudreau, get me some kerosene and a ladder…now!

Yay: he claims they’ll be cash for Katrina relief along with the cash earmarked for the sign. A boo for unwise, regionally-unaware taunting in the final bit of his blog entry:

You want to play, you despicable pack of lunatics? Well, bring it on! You are no match for the Trojan family.

This will all end in tears, or at least the sight of a flaming billboard and airboats and jacked-up trucks on lift kits fleeing a scene of mayhem in downtown Baton Rouge. Is it really that great an idea to taunt a Cajun? We know a few, and they’re the kind of people who build separate houses away from the main home on their property designed specifically for “drinking and smoking meat.” The same Cajun told us stories of how her daddy used to catch those mutant thirty pound catfish and nail them to trees to clean them. “They make a screaming noise when you do that to ‘em,” she said. They hunt alligators and play the accordion without irony. Hard people, man. Hard.

Haven’t they listened to Warrant’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin?” You know who put the bodies in the wishing well? A badass Cajun, that’s who. Again, we say this ends in tears and Heismanpundit calling us in fear for his life running pantsless down a misty, nameless road just north of Lafayette.

Check out Mandel’s piece on looking back at number 1 recruiting classes. Interesting read.