It’s on the way…the signs are clearer every day. Preview vid only confirms need to find wife hot gardener for three month tryst to free up spare time for hours of loving, uninterrupted gameplay.

From one viewing, it looks like our “all fake punts” offense from Madden ‘94 may return this summer.

Coaches all have their signature moves. Spurrier has the visor toss; JoePa, the hand clap; Charlie Weis, the [insert fat guy joke of your choice here]; Tommy Tuberville, the “Fear the Thumb” gesture. Though it’s early in his coaching career yet, our own Fearless Leader Urban Meyer already has a move most would identify as his best gesture–the point.

This finger destroyed Tyler Palko–fear it!

For our 1998th post, we thought we’d liven up what will prove to be the Rub Al-Khali of the offseason–the long, ugly, waterless stretch between now and the preview guides coming out–with a contest of our own: The Urban Meyer Pointing Challenge. We’re looking for our own pointing champion, so crack out the digital camera and take your own best shot at striking Urban’s trademark pose. Points will be given for:

Ferocity. Grrr. Get fierce and earn your own post here on EDSBS.com

Creativity. Point on the Great Wall of China with a lemur on your head, and we guarantee your victory, along with one of the inaugural EDSBS.com t-shirts that should come out sometime in the next week month year soon sometime!

Urbanity. Channeling the tight-assed white guy fury of Meyer will be key.

Send all submissions to harumphharumph at yahoo.com by May 15th. As we receive them, we’ll post them for reader review and commentary, which will play a large role in determining exactly who makes it to the finals and who doesn’t. Strike a pose!

Virginia has landed a verbal commitment from Peter Lalich, a highly regarded prototypical pocket passer. Lalich was reportedly entertaining overtures from the likes of USC, Florida and Oklahoma yet chose UVA. Since we refuse to believe that big time prospects would choose a school based on academics, save for Myron Rolle of course, we figure it was the charm of Al Groh that did it.

“We have alot of fun here at UVA. Let me show you. Here, pull my finger.”

In an effort to avoid jailtime and possibly missing the Egg Bowl, the six Miss Staters who gave a beat down to an off duty officer have plead to misdemeanor simple assault. That’ll cost them $500 and six months of a pretend suspended sentence. These types of legal games do not, however, get them a reduction of Fulmer Cup points!

They may have avoided the Rock, but they can’t escape the cheetos taint that is the Fulmer Cup.

Michael Michaels, the owner of Chez Griffin and one of the co-founders of New Era Sports, claims Bush’s family owes him $54,000 dollars in back rent, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. He also plans to sue for 3.2 million dollars in punitive damages related to…well, something Michaels doesn’t want to talk about.

Whether you should believe any of this or not is up to you, though we should let you know exactly what Mr. Michaels looks like and tell you about some of the company he keeps. To wit:

Bolo tie. What appears to be a velour shirt. Indian braids. And James Brown. (HT: HP.)

Keep in mind, this isn’t the first time Brown’s made an appearance in tangential connection to a college football legend of the sketchy variety:
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Sure, everyone’s got their guesses on the “Separated at Birth” conundrum that is Jimmy Clausen. And while House Rock Built comes damn close, reader Miguel deserves credit for a whale of a grab from the memory banks:

Clausen:

And…
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SMQ starts to sound more and more like the Gregg Easterbrook of our ideal memories every day–whip-smart, systematic, omnivorous in his intellectual tastes and yet unafraid of the cheap joke. (He made a Bone Thugs reference the other day, which in case you didn’t know is by universal law always funny. In case you don’t think this is true, sing this in your head and feel the truth: bone bone bone bone…) What SMQ manages to avoid is sounding like the nebbishy, overlong Easterbrook of our bad memories, which is good since it also means he’s likely to avoid making anti-semitic comments in other publications and boring everyone to tears by comparing an NFL offense to the MX missile program.

It is a truth universally acknowledged: Bone Thugs=funny. Why they kill my dog?

In the wake of ever-unfolding nastiness concerning the Reggie Bush case–extortion, Bush’s stepfather allegedly being in on the deal, and the inevitable lawsuits–the compelling argument remains: why should Bush get in trouble anyway for hedging money on his likely future success? SMQ’s got as good an answer as anyone’s put forth yet, and it’s a simple one: preserving the integrity of the product that is NCAA football.

In Reggie Bush’s case, agent access to athletes (or their families or friends) undermines the ‘amateur’ status of said athletes, which is not important for any esoteric or moralistic purposes - and certainly not just because the NCAA says it is - but for the ongoing success of the sport; the “value” being protected isn’t amateurism, but competition, and that is good for football or any other sport where the games, and not the individuals, are the commodities.

Read the whole thing, including I’m a Realist’s linked commentary on the pieces, brilliantly titled “Why Pay For Bush When You Can Get It For Free?”

We can only steal an nth of the nutritious embarrassing photo work unearthed by the internet warriors over at Burnt Orange Nation, so you’ll have to click over for the unearthly embarrassment of the photo of alleged sexual assaulter Mark “Dirty” Sanchez they’ve got their hands on today. But they do have a post on the potential Texas/Arkansas Southwestern Conference rematch game and its impending scheduling, which they seem to be looking forward to just for potential sideline material like this:

Hogs wild for Moore/Goode/Dick. Johnson unavailable for comment.

It’s done–again. Keith Jackson, like Michael Jordan, porn star Janine, and Walter Mondale, has announced his second unconvincing retirement from his profession. Keith’s been edging into incoherence for years now, but the internet’s made it even harder for ABC to cloak his long, slow slide into the applesauce and crunchy plastic pants years–since now you may email a whole focus group of your peers to verify that, yes, he really did call Jason White “Jack Mildren” in the late third quarter. The capper came in his grandfatherly and utterly addled patter during this year’s Rose Bowl. Keith alternately got names wrong, miscounted time-outs, and ran at least a step and a half behind the action while Dan Fouts ran interference and tried not to spoil the Old Testament-awesome sight of Vince Young raining fire, frogs, and pestilence on USC.

And we’d be lying if we said we could remember Keith at his best. In fact, we don’t really get the retirement since our primary heroes in the broadcasting business have always been:

a.) senile

b.) drunk

c.) deranged homers

d.) all of the above

In case you want an argument as to why announcers should be one of these (or in the gifted case of Harry Caray, the whole shebang,) take the gilded name of Joe Buck, the sanctimonious forehead whose bad punnery and “wit” nearly spoil the superb analytical work Troy Aikman does at his side. Buck is not only not Methuselah-old, he’s irritatingly sober on the air. Say what you will about the weekly Musbergame in the fall, but one thing remains certain: a man who cracks a beer in a car and then jokes about getting ticketed for it is definitely fine announcer material, as well as a guy you could obviously drink with after the game, which is all anyone really wants from the crusty play-by-play guy anyway. Joe Buck, on the other hand, sounds like a guy you’d get into a fight with at a church league softball game–and pound until his wife pulled you off of him.

The Blueprint: Harry, seen here in 1993 preparing to vomit up a pitcher of martinis and Vance Law’s career.

With that said, Keith–like William Butler Yeats in his “rag and bone shop of the heart” period–did have more than a handful late-life moments of eccentric greatness. Here’s our two favorites.

1. Big Ol’ Leg. Keith, as with all announcers weaned on field-position football, had a special affection for the punters and long snappers who made it all possible. The highest appelation indicating Keith’s esteem was saying in his Georgia drawl that the punter “had a BIG OL LEHHHHHHHGGG.” He’d draw it out in the baritone that stayed golden well past his critical faculties did, speeding up through the middle and leaning on the last word for a good one and a half seconds. Never failed to make us smile the same smile we’d get when our own grandfather would say the phrase “Get on out of here” in a single, unmistakeable syllable: “HITONOUTTAHEYAH!!!” Or when he’d do things like fall asleep while driving or in the middle of eating a stack of six slices of country ham. You know, the funny grandpa vibe.

2. Airplanes, Dan. Airplanes. This had to be from the OU-UCLA game in 2003, a 59-24 giggler that had Dan and Keith reading the rules of bridge to keep viewers awake. This territory kills lesser broadcasters in their prime, often forcing them to comb the stands for the most obvious displays of public tittery or sleeping children in between long, uncomfortable silences; for the declining Jackson, it was a deathtrap, and he waltzed right into it when the obligatory blimp shots above Los Angeles.

Keith: Our overhead shots today are brought to us courtesy of Goodyear Tires and the Goodyear blimp. Man oh man, have they changed things…fly from one city to the next…it’s just a whole lot different than it used to be, Dan.

Dan: Um…(long, long silence)…you mean blimps?

Keith: Airplanes, Dan. Airplanes.

The first thing that leapt to our mind: Ronald Reagan calling his memoirs “trees.” Unless Keith was remembering sharing a gin rickey with Myrna Loy on the Hindenburg’s Goebbels deck in 1932, we’re pretty sure Keith was conflating all forms of air transportation into a single word–which is a moment of senile greatness right up there with Harry Caray calling Lenny Dykstra “Richie Ashburn” in during a game in 1993. He even lost the ever-game Fouts, who completely surrendered to the incomprehension in this case.

Airplanes, Dan. Airplanes.

Give it to Marshall–champions win games when they’re on the line. And despite being miles down in the Fulmer Cup standings to the Insane Clown Posse that is the Delaware Blue Hens (hard to beat home invasion/armed robbery/steroids combo,) Marshall keeps plugging along with their three yards and a cloud of misdemeanors strategy of winning the Fulmer Cup. In this case, the offending player is senior defensive lineman Adrian Davis, and thanks to our crack sources the news steams so fresh from the wire that we don’t even have a clue what he was actually arrested for. Though points are pending, we know this much for sure: after a hyperactive week in the scoring, the Fulmer Cup scoreboard needs an update like baddddd. (HT: Devil Grad)

And that’s before factoring in whether any USC Trojans were the “20-stone men” from a certain USC fan’s posse flipping around bobbies “like pillows” in Heathrow yesterday.

“This is how it goes down in LA.”