Sure, your mascot might have “tradition.” But does he wear a beanie and get tackled by Steve Irwin? Albert makes a quality appearance in one of ESPN’s funnier commercials in recent memory, giving Steve Irwin the redassed beatdown he deserves.

Youtube: the best thing since penicillin and big asses.

The House Rock Built’s Dink and Dunk this week has to be linked by us, if only for references to obsessive NCAA 2006 play and to Leak running the option.

After a lull, a peppering of incidents necessitated a thorough updating of the Fulmer Cup scoreboard by our admin Big Mike. Courtesy of our benefactor, we present the updated full Fulmer Cup standings:

For the full list, check out this page, which has the beautiful sidebars complete with a new feature, “TEAMS ON THE BUBBLE.” Mike does, for the record, have a penis so large he can block out the sun, a talent he’s used to extort billions from helpless world leaders. (As part of his retainer fees for creating and maintaining the board, we have to say nice things about him on the blog, so there you go, Mike.)

Delaware, as you can see, is clearly the George Mason of our tourney, heads and shoulders above everyone else for the combined “breaking and entering/armed robbery/steroid robbery” incident they obviously cribbed from the lost drafts of a Tarantino or Darren Aronofsky script. Purdue’s small but determined pattern of incidents still has them sky-high in the standings, but even now at the end of March we’ve yet to see major substantiated incidents from Tennessee, Florida State, or Miami. Brian noted the other day that this year’s race for the BCS was “the most wide open college football has been.” It appears this applies to the Fulmer Cup, as well, though any crimes that unseat Delaware at this point may require the calling of the National Guard, a raising of the DHS Alert Level, or the announcement of Defcon-1 by the Strategic Air Command.

Enjoy your weekend, and please do Football Outsiders a favor by stopping by and reading their story on NHL athletes and their very, very personal involvement with autism research.

Alabama fans, enjoy A-Day–it’ll be the last time you see John Parker Wilson go through an entire game unharmed–we wish we could be there for the barbecue.

75 years ago today, Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne died in a plane crash in Kansas. His lifetime record at just the age of 43: 105-12-5.

.881 lifetime. Yikes.

The bizarre career trajectory of Ed Zaunbrecher, former offensive wunderkind at Marshall who followed [NAME REDACTED] to Florida and subsequent demotion, takes another unpredictable zag as the coach works one day of spring practice as quarterbacks coach at Illinois before quitting to take the quarterbacks coaching job at Purdue.

Zaunbrecher, who in case you haven’t been following his career was the guy who prepped Byron Leftwich and Chad Pennington for the NFL, joined Team [NAME REDACTED] in 2002 as part of Mr Better and Better’s first Florida staff. Under [NAME REDACTED], Zaunbrecher’s diverse spread attack all but disappeared, replaced instead with a clenched-buttocked attack that appeared to consist of:

a. Shotgun draw
b. Five yard curls
c. TE post
d. (Most notoriously) The bubble screen

Zaunbrecher, who was once one of the hotter assistants around, faded into oblivion as a three headed monster of Zaunbrecher, “perimeter game coordinator” Larry Fedora, and [NAME REDACTED] called games. The attack still had some teeth–after all, their 2004 O scored more points than this year’s Meyer squad–but suffered typically [NAME REDACTED]ish brainlock at critical points, disappearing for whole quarters whenever the head coach put his cursed fingers on the button and demanded that they “keep it close and win it in the fourth.” In his final season Zaunbrecher was relegated to qb coach entirely, with Fedora taking over playcalling.

Here’s hoping Zaunbrecher, like anyone leaving an abusive relationship, cranks up his chosen version of “I Will Survive” and goes on to success at Purdue. Like everyone else associated with [NAME REDACTED], he’ll hopefully recover from the incompetent sodomizing of his potential that passes for “effort” with that coach. (When reached for comment, [NAME REDACTED] claimed to be “excited” about the resignation, that Illinois’ offensive woes were “correctable,”and that Illinois would keep getting “better and better” under his watch. Good luck with that!) (HT: The Wiz.)

When he heard about the resignation, he headbutted a snack machine and called a bubble screen.

After a year of steadily weaker lattes and double cappucinos, Urban Meyer has had it with local Starbucks’ barista and UF graduate student Derek Woolsey.

“It’s time for Derek to nut up and show he’s a part of the Gator Nation. It’s time for him to show up and do his job. If I have to to, I’ll go to the Speedy Mart for a buck’s worth of brown swill rather than put up with the garbage I’m drinking now,” Meyer said from his car Thursday morning, sipping a cinnamon mocha double latte he described as “sex-in-a-canoe weak.”

Demands quality from his baristas.

“I’m disappointed that Derek hasn’t responded and shown the leadership we require of him. I’m disappointed he makes spindly caffeinated drinks. I’m disappointed that he hasn’t risen to the challenge. Sometimes I think he just doesn’t buy into it like other the on-campus baristas like Kelly the strangely attractive girl with the nose ring. She, now she gets it.”

Meyer put the cup down with a look of disgust. “Maybe when Kelly’s the manager and ordering him around at the Oaks Mall location Derek will get it, too.”

Derek, a second-year graduate student in public health, has been serving Meyer’s lattes on the early morning shift since the coach’s arrival in Gainesville last year. (more…)

Prepackaged and just waiting for the MSM to use them wholesale as a roadmap–here’s the Pac-10 bubbling hype for 2006 as determined by our own purely subjective reading of what columnists, pundits, and bloggers alike are divining eons ahead of the actual season.

Stanford Big shrugs for the most part in the early running for the fix on Stanford’s season, which means no one seems to a.) care much, or b.) have driven out to Palo Alto to see what Walt Harris is up to out there. Generally agreed that their run game is pathetic, with ESPN providing the best description of the morning:

The bad news is these guys were as soft as an overripe avocado in 2005.

Mmmm…guacamole. Good on chips. Bad if you’re an offensive line coach, which led to Stanford replacing John McDonnell with Doug Sams. McDonnell left for Purdue, a team shedding coaches like scales, so unless McDonnell’s got some seriously brilliant and unanticipated counterintuition going on here…well, we don’t want to say it was a bail job that Harris happily acquiesced to, but we just did.

Mmm. Guacamole.

Preseason bubble-hype rating: Tepid. Walt Harris makes noise with offense, so it’s hard for him to earn much a Q rating in a conference known for parabolic fades and the skinny post.

Oregon State Thinking “Mike Riley” doesn’t google up “excitement” in your head, unless we’re talking about gay sheep and beating up cab drivers as “excitement.” Using that definition, excitement’s been on the downlow in Corvallis, right where we imagine it usually is: no felonies, no extravagantly weird crimes, and no excuse for us to type the name Jimtavis when posting. (Shame, actually–as a commenter pointed out, the name “Jimtavis” itself should come with a Fulmer Cup point.)

Mike Hass is gone, so OSU qbs must learn how to throw to other receivers, but besides that we’ve heard nary out of the Beaver Nation aside from OregonLive’s dogged Behind the Beaver Beat Blog, one of the best paper-anchored blogs around. They’re the ones pimping the storylines: a three way battle for qb, the Hass-placebo story, and the dangerously large size of O-lineman Jeremy Perry’s arms.

Preseason bubble-hype rating: cold stove. Aside from almost losing to Boise State last year, OSU’s got little to no buzz surrounding it. Remember when they were on the cover of SI? That team’s coach is in Idaho now, and OSU’s back to baseline when it comes to prominence. One gay sheep theft, though, and that could all change in an instant.

USC Metric tons of hype, mostly of the imperial variety, surround USC. Booty. Sanchez. Tailback. Linebacking battles. The general read splits one of two ways: USC will plug and play with new parts, or USC will plug and flub as big programs sometimes do when retooling.( Retooling is what really good teams do; rebuilding is what gets coaches of bad teams fired.)

Preseason bubble-hype rating: Rolling boil. The marquee media team of 2005 and ESPN’s darling, they’ll be superseded by Notre Dame for the crown of most scrutinized team–”OMG what’s on Brady Quinn’s IPod I have to know GIMME GIMME GIMME”–but not by much. The qb battle would have boosted them to “frothing and boiling out of control,” but Sanchez for the moment has the snaps locked down thanks to Booty’s bad disk.

Brady Quinn: set to get the Leinart treatment in 2006. Complimentary starlet Alyssa Milano included.

UCLA. At least they don’t have to make a new jersey for the qb: it’s Olson again, this time with a “Ben” in front of it, and he’s looked great in scrimmages. He is playing against UCLA’s defense, though, which made quick-twitch geniuses out of every qb they faced last year. Lots of bluster about UCLA improving their defense has been bandied about with the arrival of new DC Dewayne Walker, who’s going to go pro-style and throw the kitchen sink at offenses. This could just mean big plays given up in the teeth of very interesting blitzes instead of big plays yielded to bland blitzes.

Preseason bubble-hype rating: simmer Dorell’s got media attention, but the writers and community follow the fans’ lead on Dorell: cautious optimism reigns.

Arizona Probably making the greatest gains in terms of media attraction, and seating themselves firmly at the potential dark horse candidate table in the eyes of the media. Stoops got the recruiting class and made just enough racket in the Pac-10 last year to generate some momentum, including the 52-14 embarrassment of UCLA in Tucson and nearly beating Oregon. Willie Tuitama gives everyone a marquee name to develop and hang on, while Stoops’ influx of jucos and blue-chippers fortifies the defense.

Preseason bubble-hype rating: simmer No one seems to be expecting a complete renaissance, but call them the Ole Miss of the West: a 3-8 team with a toughass coach, a developing defense, and a qb who’s just athletically freakish enough to garner media interest. Like the Orgerons, only without the ritual sacrifice and pitfighting sessions.

Pitfighting: not a required part of the Arizona training regimen.

Coming tomorrow: the remainder of the Pac-10’s bubblicious hype ratings.

Steal a PlayStation, earn a Fulmer Cup point…Marshall, always a strong contender at both the felony and misdemeanor levels of the Fat Man Trophy, earns a chintzy but still humorous point for Ahmad Bradshaw’s theft of a PlayStation 2 from a fellow student’s dorm room. To think, if he’d flat-out steal for an outdated PS2, what would the desperate Bradshaw have done for an XBox 360?

Ahmad Bradshaw: amused by any means necessary.

Award Marshall a single Fulmer cup point. Updated scoreboard up tomorrow, so tell Big Mike how sexy he is in the comments below and he’ll be quick with it.

The succession struggle at USC just tilted with the announcement that John David Booty, whose back was already a source of concern, will likely have to have surgery on his back. Mark Sanchez will take the majority of the snaps during spring, while Booty lays on a bed in a dark room watching film and raising his fist to the sky while screaming “SANCHEZ!!!” No word if the part Sanchez will be played by Robert Davi.

This may be the first and last time any blog anywhere alludes to License to Kill, which, like every Bond movie, we’ve seen a few too many times for our own good. It did have Talisa Soto, which means it wasn’t a complete waste of time watching Timothy Dalton acting constipated for two hours.

(Sung to the tune of “Canyonero”)

Can you name the form of essay that thrived
With dirty old socialists in ‘thirty-five?

Manifesto! (YAH!) Manifesto!

The House Rock Built has his own manifesto up, produced in response to Cowherdgate. We’re sending him his own modified Mustache Wednesday ’stache, the modified “Class Struggle Goatee” model, as a favor for his efforts. (We kid! Fine work. Seriously, though, send us your address and we’ll send you a goatee. We just won’t tell you whose goatee it is.

Bloggers of the world, unite! In a strictly libertarian, voluntary sense, of course.

Some of the best photoshopping around and a damn funny article covering the Cowherd bit may be found at MZone, who took pages straight from Thirteen Days and made their own Cuban Missile Crisis story out of one blog’s fight for hegemony in its own hemisphere. We look awfully short in that picture…

Joey, posting in his dual life on the internets on Schembechler Hall, revives the BlogPoll roundtable with this installment of searing, begging for topical ointment-urgent questions:

1. It’s early, but thus far, which offseason change or changes in college football are you most excited about?

Oh, without a doubt Myles Brand’s brilliant squad-size adjustment, since without it the University of Alabama would have been subject to academic violations this year, and thus could, without future improvement, have played a brewing revenge game against the Florida Gators in the Swamp this year that would have been wiped from the books when the penalties really started piling up on ‘em. We, as Gator fans, would reaaaaaallly like that one to leave a big smoking cattle brand in the record books, since it would not only avenge the 31-3 “re-education” in Tuscaloosa last year, but the three in a row they’ve taken from us dating all the way back to the Dubose Secretary era.

Here’s hoping he spanked her while wearing a Houndstooth hat.

Oh, you mean actual changes that mean something? Well, we can’t talk about anything connected to the NCAA, of course. Two things.

a. First, the overwhelming sense that the bowl system as we know it may finally have been written off by the parties of interest in college football. Not sure if this has any real empirical support here, but the television contracts and sponsorship moves seem to be building toward an eventual push toward a scaled-back playoff. Just a vibe thing; then again, we’ve been convinced since 2002 that Florida State’s Waterloo was just around the bend, and just like zombies, we’ve realized that in order for that to happen, the head must die first. And he’s still sort of there.

b. The continued blossoming of interconference scheduling. Like the retired comic book dork we are, we rejoice when the Ant-Men of the world (er, Vanderbilt) get to face off against the Hulks of the college football world (in this example, Michigan.) Tennessee/Cal, Colorado/Georgia, another blowouter in the Arkansas/USC series, and the most brutal of all intersectional games, Texas/OSU–when interconference games happen, there’s always some level of quirk raising them a few hairs above the average game. But when they happen in numbers, you start talking a base of comparison between regions, which fuels the message boards that fuel the blogs that…we’ve all agreed, indeed do something, though opinions vary on exactly what that something is. In netspeak, it’s more exotic content, and that’s never a bad thing for the college football fan.

2) With spring practice underway, what are the three concerns about your team that are causing you the most anxiety? (USC fans can’t just list the departures of Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, and LenDale White.)

The three things that make us clutch out plush Danny Wuerffel doll in the middle of the night are:

a. O-line. Zone blocking sticks, or it doesn’t. Either way it’s the linchpin for the Meyer offense, which puts so many receivers in play across the field that quick reads and protection dictate everything. The line got younger, but it may have gotten better with a year to pick up the schemes and get the persistently winded line into better shape. With the protection covered, there’s the issue of…

b. The wife-ahhhing dude making the reads, Chris Leak. Leak’s storyline this year comes in one of three flavors. He could have the Powlus: highly touted recruit who never makes good on his promise thanks to institutional upheaval and general overspeculation on their talents. Leak may also have the Brodie: a highly touted prospect who makes good in an improbable senior run, overcoming the plague, a swarm of locusts, and whatever other demonic obstacles ESPN wants to put in a soft-focus collage about his perserverence. Or finally, Leak has the Carson Palmer vibe where he takes an unanticipated leap to freakdom, throws a decent Wonderlic score’s worth of touchdowns, and stiff-arms a stunned defender to the ground on an option.

That’s the prime rib scenario, but given what we saw last year, we’re expecting sausage.

Meyer, seen here telling Leak that if he slides again, he will rip a baby koala to pieces on the sideline.

c. The secondary, which should be getting fat checks from Jay Cutler for boosting his draft status into the upper reaches of the first round for allowing him to incinerate them last year in the Swamp. Seeing Kyle Jackson at safety has been like watching old footage of Pedro Guerrero playing first base: occasionally a comedy, sometimes a tragedy, but always an adventure. Dee Webb Avery Atkins has some fuzzy charisma about him, but besides Reggie “KBD” Nelson, there’s little to keep us from freebasing Tums in the offseason just thinking about them lining up against South Carolina and a very observant and pass-wacky opposing coach in November.

3) Care to take a stab at a preseason top five?

What the fuck–sure. Here’s who everyone else will put in their top five, saving our own stunning top five for later when we’re really, really starved for content.

1. Ohio State. The win over Notre Dame, Ginn, the emerging Troy Smith Heisman storyline…if this were a stock, it would be Krispy Kreme 2002 at this point. Buckeyes fans hope against hope that the glazed curse doesn’t follow them…Speaking of glazed…

2. Notre Dame. Why work, when you could just plug the two Fiesta Bowl participants into the first two slots? It’ll sell like Diet Crack in the press and give writers loads of “wake up the echoes” stories to mine until they lose to Michigan State, Michigan, etc…again. Rewake those echoes when they take one loss into a matchup with USC in LA and win.

3. Michigan. Evidence? Nope. Just putting them in their traditional slot, seemingly reserved for the by-definition-underacheiving Wolverines.

4. Texas. It’s good to be king, if only for the preseason. Defend positioning with “he may be a freshman qb, but (insert Texas qb here) is a VY clone.”

5. West Virginia. Another hottness pick that will go down in flames the first time the ‘Eers meet a team that can stop the run. They play in the Big East. Which means this won’t happen.

You know who does play in the Big East? The Wannstache, whose visage will close this roundtable in honor of an extremely spotty Mustache Wednesday posting:

Overjoyed to see Pat White running ramshod over his defense. Happy Mustache Wednesday, motherfuckers!

UVA’s caught the shitstorm bug in a hurry: fresh from tossing three football players off the team for various hip-hop related offenses (read: smoking weed), Al Groh’s got Michael Brown, a UVA football player, arrested with a Wahoo soccer player for breaking and entering at the Delta Upsilon frat house.

Besides multiplying the crotchety factor in the Groh household–which already sits at an unmeasurably high level by most measurements–the wave of arrests presents a clear market signal to VA rappers and self-proclaimed pharmaceutical entrepreneurs the Clipse: a “budding” market for them is waiting in Charlottesville.

Fulmer points: pending. Depends on whether or not

In case you didn’t know, they rap and sell drugs. It’s what they had to do.

Of all the things to end your life as a football player in Tampa…homesickness is being cited as the reason JUCO stud (there are no juco flops, remember, only JUCO studs) Frank Harry is leaving USF and going home. USF is now out one quality line prospect, and you’re busily searching for ways to shoehorn the name “Jukko Studz” into your screenplay about a motley team of commandoes who foil a Middle Eastern terrorist plot to blow up the moon.

Maybe he didn’t appreciate the natural beauty of Hillsborough County.

Real world interferes–dead drop in Jo-burg at eleven, stakeout at twelve, throwing in a little waterboarding at three just for the hell of it plus that report we’ve got to write up on Chinese missile guidance systems–but we’ll be back by the afternoon for a bit of patter before returning in full force tomorrow.

Like Our Man Flint, we’ve got some things to take care of.