SEC spring practice capsules are up and running at the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Unfairly excerpted suggestive verbiage includes:

Shula said that Wilson…”is thicker than Brodie ever was.”
“Nutt’s love”
“can give his offense an injection”

Annoying registration required, but you know what to do.

LD started the meme, so don’t blame us for tacking well off-course with this one, but something has to fill the empty pages between now and September. With that, we answer LD’s “Worst of the Worst” challenge.

1) What is the worst DVD/video you own? Hmm…not to be too Clinton-esque, but it depends on what you mean by “worst.” We know that Joe Vs. The Volcano isn’t what you’d call a good movie, but we love it nonetheless, especially the scene where Tom Hanks buys his luggage. (”May you live a thousand years, sir,” never fails to crack us up.) It’s got Abe Vigoda! And Meg Ryan, pre-infected collagen deformity lips, in three roles! And Robert Stack! And Nathan Lane, dressed in little more than a suit of crushed orange soda cans!

Luggage, sir. Luggage.

Even the kitsch value–the whole movie sounds like it was pitched as a joke that no one caught onto until it was far, far too late into the process– we’d never inflict it on anyone we liked (besides the Conscience of a Nation, who’s seen it at least five times.) The worst DVD in our collection is Ass Lickers 4, a piece of horrid pornography we “won” at a party. (more…)

Jon Stewart can take two routes with the oscars: he can go cuddly and Billy Crystal on everyone (”Oh my, Sara, what a benign, friendly Jew he is,” says an anonymous viewer,”) or he can squat firmly over the face of Hollywood and deliver a one-year-and-out Cleveland Steamer of a performance a la Chris Rock or David Letterman. We’re hoping Stewart opts for the second option, which will be judged by whether or not Sean Penn gets premenstrual over a Stewart quip. (And he will.)

Jon Stewart, seen here sporting quality Jew-fro, could Cleveland Steamer the Oscars with zeal this week.

We thought of a few Oscars of our own to hand out around here:

Best Foreign Film: Mathias Kiwanuka, Boston College. Plays wicked awesome defensive end. Has the presdential seal of Uganda tattooed on his back, which has to be a tattoing singularity since we can’t imagine Yoweri Museveni getting loaded on palm wine and getting tatted up in Kigali one crazy Thursday night. The grandson of an assassinated Ugandan PM comes to play football for the Jesuits while earning two degrees and making noises about entering politics after his NFL career. If this isn’t globalization at work, nothing is.

Kiwanuka, seen here imposing an embargo on completions on a player who he outscored on the Wonderlic by thirty points.

Best Screenplay, Nominees 2006 Since Texas won this last year, ruining fellow nominee and big studio fave “USC Best Evah 4 Real,” they’re out of the running this year. This won’t prevent ESPN, CNNSI, or the media as a whole from doing some ridiculously contrived story-arcing prior to the season. The nominated memes are:

1. “Urban Renewal.” Urban Meyer takes Florida to a national title with the Ladyback at qb, overcoming the obstacles of year one and affirming his status as the new pontiff of college fb.

2. “The Mighty Quinn.” Articles proclaiming the Irish’s inevitable march to title begin in 3…2…1…

3. “And a Hovercraft-lovin’, Sweatervest Clad Gangsta Shall Lead Them.” Late season surge, emerging offense, a solid, mobile qb, and the ever-bankable defense will have sportswriters flocking to the Buckeyes for early picks.

4. “Sooner, Rather Than Later.” Predicted Oklahoma resurgence will gain traction with a healthy Adrian Peterson and a Rhett Bomar who knows what the hell he’s doing now.

Remember him? Sportswriters will.

Best Acheivement in Costume Design The nominees will be anyone turning down any one of Nike’s one-armed Power Ranger outfits they’ll no doubt test out on squirming, helpless marquee programs locked into unbreakable, sealed with unspeakable curses Faustian contracts with Phil Knight. Oregon stands zero chance of enduring a new low in a long series of uniform indignities, but Florida and Virginia Tech should know better. (BTW, the one-armed Gator undershirts? Marked down to 22 bucks at Dick’s Sporting Goods the last time we checked. And we still pulled it off the racks with a pair of chicken tongs and refused to buy it.)

The interesting counterpoint to Nike’s avant-garde futzing with unis is Adidas, who’s partnered with UCLA, Notre Dame, and Tennessee, among others. Adidas–with the exception of the new Nebraska unis–rides the “classic” look ’till it breaks, which can actually seem more daring in the face of endless revampings and overhauls than any of the Cirque de Soleil/Freddie Mercury duds Nike makes their athletes ball around in on Saturdays.

As if Leak didn’t go through enough this year.

Petty arguments rule: Onepeat.com finally got their billboard up in L.A., as verified by CollegeFootballblog.org. We wish one of our L.A. readers could actually verify this, too, since we honestly can’t tell the difference between real life and photoshop anymore. (We know, we know, the naked photos of Lindsey Jacobellis going around are fakes. Don’t spoil our delusions, hater.)

They’re also hiring an ad truck–one of those mobile billboard thingys–to drive around the ESPN campus in Bristol with a Onepeat.com message emblazoned on the side. Please let this result in photos of Sean Salisbury flicking off the truck, please let this result in photos of Sean Salisbury flicking off the truck…

The sign, seen here with an obviously unbiased party as witness.

The 7th Floor Crew comes to Gainesville! Miami and Florida will pick up their sporadically scheduled rivalry again in 2008 and 2013, dates which may as well be three thousand years in the future for the college football fan stuck surfing the airwaves for shreds of arena ball and the occasional ESPN Classic game. (UNC-Virginia ‘02! THANK YOU SWEET JESUS!) Since both admins seem to be reluctant to schedule this one consistently, we’ve put together a few things they might have overlooked as potential Miami/UF weekend pregame festivities.

–The UF/Miami Academic challenge, where Miami athletes would be asked basic skills questions while Florida players from University High School will be asked to compete in challenging activities like “Connect Four,” “Chutes and Ladders,” and “Candy Land Supreme.(Now with challenging pastels!)” (Note: changed due to undue cheap shot on ‘Canes. Yes, we just wrote that.–ed. )

–The 7th Floor Challenge, where the lucky ladies of both school will finally get the gangbanging they evidently crave from the 7th Floor Crue, who see nothing gay at all about having sex with a woman in front of a number of their friends.

–The Larry Coker Men’s Fashion Show. ¡Caliente!

–The Mossberg Gatorcane Marksmanship Exhibition, where volunteers from both teams show off their shooting skills by peppering old police cars, empty apartment complexes, and whatever else strikes their fancy with armor-piercing rounds. Participants will compete for the charity of their choice, with the prime beneficiary being the Dee Webb Youth Foundation, also known as “Gats for Brats.”

Just warming up for UF/Miami ‘08, that’s all.

Courtesy of BevoSports, former Texas safety Michael Huff’s fantasies of NFL wealth reveal themselves as…simultaneously weird and boring:

Since the draft is quickly approaching, I’ve been thinking about what I’ll buy with my first professional paycheck. A lot of people are probably expecting me to say that I’d buy a big house, and that’s partly true. But it’s not what you think. The first house I buy will be the one with the blue roof on it that says “IHOP.” It has been a dream of mine to own my own International House of Pancakes, and someday I will. Just last week I ate there five or six times, and about every time I got the same thing, pancakes and shrimp. It’s a cool feeling to know that someday I’ll get to eat at my IHOP whenever I want.

We see Michael Huff, bloated and forty, tipping the scales at 350 pounds, shoving sausage patties into his mouth and weeping quietly at Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles…

What happens to those who eat at IHOP five or six times a week.

Fulmer awakes from his slumber and devours the first hapless civilian in his path…Pat Hill rides in on his Harley, covered in the dust of Baja California with a cigarette in his mouth and three dollars to his name…Jim Tressel rides in on his hovercraft in a resplendent new sweater. It can only mean one thing: spring practice has started, the one breath of fresh air afforded to college fans before the long, cold, dark swim to fall.

Fanblogs has the whole list, but there’s one spring game we’d like to note in particular: April 8th, Athens, Georgia. We’ll be there–ATL bloggers represent! An EDSBS tailgate may be in order, though we’ll do as the Romans do and refrain from requesting swamp cabbage stew and Everclear shooters as we’re wont to do in Gainesville.

If you’re all there, we’ll show up wearing jean shorts. We promise.

It’s spring agaiiiiiin…

We wrote down our ten least likeable people in college football, so in order to balance our karma, we had come up with at least ten that we really, really liked. But such is the order of being a fan that you inevitably dislike more than you like, since an allegiance to one team and passing fondness for a handful of others makes the set of likeable things much smaller than the overall set of “BAD PEOPLE WHO COULD RUIN MY SATURDAY.”

With that proviso, we did come up with eight that we really liked. We’re sure some are hated, and that we’ve missed a few good ones on the way as well. Feel free to leave your own counterpoint, screed, and huzzahs in the comments section below.

1. Joe Paterno. An easy choice, but an inevitable one provided you admire longevity, spunk, dedication, charity, and drinking scotch, all things Joe Paterno stands for in over fifty years of coaching. Rather than running over the usual tired bunch of Joe Pa bromides—gobs of money donated to the uni, his remarkable record on the field, and the total team concept Paterno’s thrashed into the heads of Penn State players for decades—we’d rather tick off a few less heralded things about Paterno that make him the slightly abusive and lovable great-uncle of college football:

Shoes: struts the same old pair of trainers he’s been rocking for years: black Adidas with white stripes, his only concession to nouveau coaching fashion trends. Also the only guy besides 1983-era Michael Jackson to make wearing white socks look marginally cool.

Honest Grump. There’s got to be some media handling textbook circulating the rounds of AD’s offices everywhere: the one turning coaches into bland boilerplate machines, taking few chances and refusing to heed Barney Frank’s political maxim: “Never underestimate the value of speaking badly about someone in public.” (Speaking of the openly gay Frank, our new blogad looks like something he’d approve of. We move further toward our goal of cornering the gay football fan market!) Paterno’s rundown of a ref following the _____ game, the gruff remarks about officiating and the NCAA, the understanding that when he speaks he’s saying something straight up eighty proof curmudgeon…well, it will get you on this list every time, since we have our own ambitions of being a cat-kicking, gin-swilling eighty year old bastard someday.

Resemblance to mafia capo. Paterno totally looks like one of the guys guarding Don Ciccio in Godfather 2. This alone earns serious cool points.

Likeable? Suck my ass, fanboy! JoePa, keepin’ it real…old.

2. The Voice of ________ Football. College football without regional flavor wouldn’t be college football, and the passions and agonies of most fans’ emotional histories is etched not by image, but by sound, most often through the inimitable vehicle of their team’s radio announcer’s voice. Gene Deckerhoff for Florida State; the now retired John Ward for Tennessee(”It’s Football Time in Tennessee!” even gets us excited, and we haaaaaaaaate the Vols); Mick Hubert for Florida; their calls become part of team lore, the couplets and hysterical haiku of their speech summarizing a moment for history in the ears and minds of fans.

No one—and this is scientific fact, so don’t even attempt to dispute it—serves this role to the same extent as Larry Munson, the eighty-plus Minnesotan whose voice never escapes the label of “gravelly” in description. We would prefer to say that if you’d never heard the oldest Norwegian bachelor farmer on earth broadcasting a football game from the bottom of a well after three or eight drinks, Munson would be the best simulation of this you could find.

And like many local, single-team devoted announcers, Munson happily breaks every rule of journalistic broadcasting: referring to Georgia as “we,” getting so nervous he resorts to drastic oaths and at times even desperate prayer, and wandering all over the broadcast like a woozy Bedouin in search of water. The sum total is a kind of grumbly grandeur whose best moments are summed up in single touchstone phrases known to every Georgia fan: “Look at the Sugar falling from the sky,” “This place is worse than bonkers,” and our favorite, “We just crushed their faces.” He’s unhinged, old, cranky, idiosyncratic…and everything you must love about local broadcast. We’re Florida fans and we listen to his broadcast every year for the Cocktail Party; we can’t think of a larger compliment than that.

Larry Munson: Unhinged. Unprofessional. Awesome.

3.Pete Carroll. What the hell is this guy doing at the party? Everyone else is running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and he’s chatting up the kids and playing solitaire on his cell phone. When others punt in national championship games, he screams damn the torpedoes and goes for it. He could have left after this season, but after a little contract finagling, just decided that the college game is too much damn fun. Participates in pranks involving dummies being thrown from parking garages, which betrays both a robust and sick sense of humor and a keen comprehension of young, potentially primadonna-ish athletes in college. Refuses to be boring; hopelessly aggressive at all times; oddly chipper no matter what the time. Hated by Bill Simmons, too, which gives him points.

4.Mark Richt. With a baseline heart rate of 23 beats a minute and a primo post commanding a rival team, why the hell is the thoroughly unexcitable Richt on this list? For a slew of reasons: he’s genuinely likeable, wouldn’t get agitated if a nuke went off in his pants, and took control over a program sliding into disorder under Jim Donnan and turned it into a lock for nine wins yearly almost overnight.

Coaching-wise, Richt also does as efficient a job grooming qbs as any guru in the nation, taking a diverse haul of signal-callers over the years–everyone from waterbug Charlie Ward to the lumbering Chris Weinke–and turning them into cool, efficient automatons channeling the iceblooded calm from the sidelines. (more…)

The Red Raiders have announced a plan to add 10,000 seats and 19 luxury suites to their stadium in an expansion that is expected to cost 45 Million. Funding for the project is expected to come from a mix of places including 20 Million in gifts, a sizeable chunk from the athletic department and the remainder will be in pillaged pirates booty compliments of the head coach.

Mike Leach has recruited new fundraiser to Tech

Following some signing day family drama, the question of where top rated recruit Vidal “Sassoon” Hazelton would take his skills started anew. That question has been finally answered as Hazelton finally signed an official letter of intent to play in SoCal for the Trojans.

On the eve of spring football, the Crimson Tide have given Mike Shula a fat raise. Shula got a new 6 year deal that doubles his salary to a cool 1.8 Million. No word on whether he plans to share any with Tyrone Prothro after his comeback inevitably fails.

My Daddy never made 1.8 Million per year.

Marshall, always a strong contender in the race for the Fulmer Cup, scores some spectacular points with the arrest of signee Karon “Kirby” Watson for possession of both marijuana and crack cocaine this past Tuesday night. (Why’s the “Kirby” in quotes? Is that the alias he uses when getting a herpes test? Is he pink, spherical, and capable of swallowing objects equal to or larger than himself in single swallows? Can he fly for short distances? We have questions.)

Before we dole out base points and spicy modifiers, this choice quote:

When removed from the vehicle, Watson had a “strong, pungent odor of cannabis on and about his person,” police said.

Several small pieces of suspected crack cocaine and cannabis were found in Watson’s seat and on the floorboard beneath his seat.

I smell ‘dro all on you, homes.

We’ll use this opportunity to show how we’d give it a base score and then add modifiers. The base score doesn’t wiggle, thus eliminating a totally capricious system based on “whatever the hell we want.” We’ve got two charges: possession of pot and crack. Under the current system, we charge for both:

Crack: 3 points (the Biggums rule.)

Pot: 2 points

So you have a total of five points right there–but do they count with a recruit? Marshall as a school will exit this case with at least a point of association by guilt, the “taint rule,” since they recruited this kid in the first place and had to know he was an amateur biochemist or a fan thereof. The points would be awarded in full if Marshall plows ahead and takes the guy anyway, a rule known hereafter as the “Willie Williams Rule” for rowdy recruits who display atrocious behavior and get scholarship offers anyway. (HT: Devil Grad)

Ryno says we’re no longer the best blog on the internet. After looking at this, we couldn’t agree more.

Well, maybe we weren’t speaking of American Idol, but as the Fox ratings powerhouse is once again becoming ubiquitous in the “news” cycles we again want to point any of you who may secretly watch… and worse yet, vote… to a subversive concept that we whole heartedly support. Check out Vote for the Worst to see if it can’t be a fly in Fox’s ratings soup.

If only they could find a way to bring back Dunkelman.

In our favorite story of the offseason thus far–TURDGATE!!!–another shocking development: Ian Smith, the allegedly 21-year old UGA backup offensive lineman who fell asleep drunk on the toilet at an Athens restaurant, turns out to be just that: allegedly 21. Smith already had a public intoxication charge, and may now add giving false information and underage possession charge on top of that since Smith is actually 21 minus 2. Smith went from being full of shit to standing neck deep in it. (Whole offseason worth that sentence alone.)

Fulmer Cup scoring as follows:

Underage possession: 1 point.
Lying to cop: 1 point.
Police prodding you with nightstick as you slumber drunkenly on a toilet after passing O-ring destroying, eye-bulging turbo dump: 1 point (style counts.)
Second arrest: 1 point (A second arrest has to count for something, right?)

Total points awarded: 4. Appeals may be filed below.

The official universal logo of TURDGATE ‘06, courtesy of Georgia Sports, who’s squatting on this story like a pro.