Rivalry draws its reddest blood when it takes the form of…dueling punk bands? Yeah, sure; we’ll roll with that on a hectic Friday. (HT: John Doe.)

–The Wolverines entry: The Dropkick Woodys, who drop a Dead Milkmenesque bomb on Columbus with “I Spit on Woody’s Grave.” The lead singer sounds like a perfect facsimile of Rodney Dangerous, which merits points galore for reminding us of rolling on the floor listening to Beelzebubba.

–The Buckeyes’ entry: The Dead Schembechlers. As nice as “I Spit on Woody’s Grave” may be, “Ted Ginn” satisfies our Brasky/Norris/Hyperbole yen nicely with the lines:

Who built the Sphinx and Pyramids?
Who built the Eiffel Tower?
Then who tore down the Berlin Wall
With Marvel superpower?

Who fought off giant asteroids
To keep the earth from dyin’?
Who led the troops in World War Two
and then saved Private Ryan?

Ted Ginn! Ted Ginn!
Ted Ginn did everything!

Advantage: Woody, especially since the Buckeyes’ submission suggests that after losses to Ohio State, Lloyd Carr is left “to wring out his frilly pink panties.”

Fact: did everything.

Any guy who fits the breed description “tends to bloat” will hate, hate, hate this video of collegiate Greg Jones ordering two subway sandwiches, eating both, and still looking like Black Zeus with his shirt off. Sure, he’s a football player burning 8,000 calories a day (and was in college at the time) and appears to have won the genetic lottery body-wise, but the strength coaches had to pull their hairs out waiting for Jones’ metabolism to collapse, leaving them with a candy-chomping Pooh Bear Williams 2 on their hands.

Lot of mayonnaise. Lot a honey mustard. Lotta Ranch.

Minnesota Timberwolves center Eddie Griffin has been accused in a lawsuit of… and we’re not making this up…. being drunk and masturbating when he crashed into a parked car on March 30. Just drunk and masturbating, you say, doesn’t fully explain crashing into a parked car. Well, perhaps he was distracted by the porn eyewitnesses said he was watching at the time.

HT: Gatorsports

Prized Ohio State wide receiver recruit, Raymond Small, might not be suiting up for the Buckeyes next season after all. He is in a position that Michigan fans around the globe probably don’t believe exists… he’s qualified academically by the NCAA, but tOSU’s admissions are waivering on accepting him. Gator fans should feel symphathy for tOSU as we remember Lance Mitchell.

Sad does not begin to describe this: Randy Walker, head coach at Northwestern, died last night of a heart attack. The university’s set to have a press conference at 10:00 a.m. Walker had checked himself into a hospital for chest pains before, and had been diagnosed with myocarditis, a relatively rare viral infection of the heart.

Walker is survived by his wife and two adult children. Condolences to all at Northwestern and Miami of Ohio who knew, worked with, and watched Walker coach his rollicking brand of football. Shocking just doesn’t cover it right now.

Avery Atkins, Florida starting cornerback and amateur marriage counselor, will be granted a release from his scholarship at the University of Florida following an incident where he allegedly hit his girlfriend and babymomma upwards of twenty times and refused to let her out of a car. Meyer had refused the transfer previously, but the gaining traction of the story and Atkins’ clear inability to “keep shit together” added up to force Meyer’s hand in the case. He did, however, get to turn “kicked off the team” into something beneficent and magnanimous-sounding: “granted a release.” Excellent Newspeak work by the UAA there.

Meyer’s now lost two of his first recruiting gems in Atkins and Josh Portis. He’s also just lost his starting corner for real now, leaving the Gators with Reggie Nelson playing all four positions in the defensive backfield. That’s actually an exaggeration: we’ve got Ryan Smith, a former all-Mountain West transfer coming over to play under the new transfer rules stating that after a person finishes their career, they can play some more as a grad student without penalty. Did we mention how much we hate totally love that rule?

Say it while attempting to brim with confidence: Mountain West All-American and new starter. We’re not hyperventilating; that’s just us panting with excitement!

We hate the offseason.

Fire Mark May really is an amazing site. Not only do they get ESPN personalities like “Jim Rome” and “Trev Alberts” to post for them, but in picking what car would fit Florida best he opts for:

It seems like a great idea on paper, but it will probably take a few year’s to sort out in production.

Hovertank. Bad. Ass. They also have that Penn State dancing kid, who has likely already killed himself from shame.

Hovertank = Awesome.

Brent “Swingin’” Schaeffer, the transfer Ole Miss is counting on to show up and give them something resembling an offense this year, has still not completed his required coursework for the impending move to Oxford. Schaeffer only needs six hours of correspondence classes to complete his prereqs and should be in Oxford by the beginning of summer, according to his spokesperson/mother.

On a tangentially related note…reading back into the incident reports for both Schaeffer’s arrest and the Avery Atkins’ incident, this occurred to us: cell phones and text messaging have given the crisis management-impaired more fodder for wildly disproportionate responses to potential threats to their status. (Schaeffer’s case involved an argument over a cell phone, Atkins’ a text message that may or may not have been sent from his phone to another woman.)

For example, a normal person might have handled themselves thusly in the Brent Schaeffer situation:

Brent’s girl: Sir, I think that’s my cell phone.

Dude with phone: I don’t think so, ma’am. I bought it last week.

Brent’s girl: I think you’ve purchased stolen property then.

Dude with phone: Oh, my. Let’s call the proper authorities to clear this misunderstanding up.

Excellent crisis management! But let’s re-enact what likely happened here…

(The following is an EDSBS re-enactment. All participants are actors, and bad ones at that.)

Brent’s girl: I think that’s my phone, sir.

Dude: I don’t think so. I bought it last week.

Brent’s girl: Uh-huh. That’s my phone. Are you disrespecting me?

Dude: Wha–(Is brained by Brent Schaeffer before he can complete sentence and collapses bleeding to the floor.)

Not superb crisis management in that case. Since Myles Brand seeks to intervene in such vital areas as text messaging and offensive Indian mascots anyway, why has he neglected a crucial area as “Women and Digital Communication?” Important curriculum points would include:

–”Plausible Aliases: Never Break a Sweat While Never Breaking Cover”

–”Delete, delete, delete! The Beauty of An Empty Inbox.”

–”Case Study, Mike Vick: Hits and Misses from a Man With Two Cell Phones.”

Dos telephones por Senor Ron!

As an apology for this erroneous post about Marshawn Lynch, we promised a list of remarkable, Norris/Brasky-style things about the Cal phenom would appear on this site. Without further delay, we complete our penance for slandering Lynch with 27 Things You Did Not Know About Marshawn Lynch.

More talented than you know.

1. When ground to a powder, his toenails are an aphrodesiac. They may be found embedded in your ass, which he just finished kicking.

2. Owns that thing you want. Which thing? All of them, asshole.

3. Taught your mother how to hug with love, your sister how to fuck like a champ, and gave your grandmother a ride to the Safeway last week just to be nice.

4. Averaged 8.8 ypc as a freshman. (That one’s true.)

5. Won the battle of Tours in 732 by stiff-arming the entire Moorish army across the Straits of Gibraltar, but only after teaching them algebra first.

6. Is writing an eloquent thank-you card in your name as we speak which you have forgotten to do.

7. Made an A on his Industrial Design project last year. He called it “Assignment 3 in Papier-Mache.” You call it “the city of Tokyo.”

Stirring work, Marshawn.

8. Has 22s on his feet and perfectly shined chrome on his ass cheeks.

9. Appeared in a waterstain on the side of a bank in Fresno, drawing crowds of worshipers from miles around.

10. Regularly wins races as a driverless midget sprint car in California amateur circuits.

11. Sweats a nutritious liquid that tastes just like Jolly Ranchers and is high in Vitamin A.
(more…)

We cater to short attention spans. Rather than shoehorn an entire 38 minute interview into a single podcast, we bring you part one of our lengthy discussion with Bruce Feldman, writer for ESPN magazine and pro blogger extraordinaire.

The EDSBS Podcast: Bruce Feldman, Part One.

We recorded this a few weeks ago, but it’s all still current, save for the Ghana/Czechoslovakia update we give you in the intro. In part one we discuss Rich Rodriguez’s allure to other coaches, how much of a badass Patrick Willis truly is, and the fact that all possible texts ever written are contained within the Caddyshack script.

If you like to dance around like an idiot in public with odd white earbuds in your noggin, we’re up on ITunes, as well.

Bruce agrees that Patrick Willis is a complete badass. He’s seen here putting his skull through someone’s sternum.

We’d like to open this with a statement for the Silica Gel-eating crowd: we know Eddie Robinson was a great, great coach, and that it’s rumored he’s got Alzheimer’s and is not doing well. Honors, plaudits, and kudos to him and all that he’s done.

That said, like many a great coach, he made some terrible, terrible ads in the name of augmenting his income. Courtesy of reader JR, we present just one of his 15 or so shills for Oldsmobile.

Notes:

–The commercial reminds you that, once upon a time in America, a guy could appear on the television and take up to ten seconds to get to the main topic of conversation. Robinson talks about education, football, his wife Doris, the weather, his hat size, how Rodney his buddy caught a fish the other day…the ad takes forever to get to the point, which is that Eddie Robinson really, really likes his Oldsmobile.

–Eddie’s kind of a half-assed feminist in this commercial. He lets His Wife Doris drive, which is pretty cool of him, especially with a steely blue land whale of a machine like that at your fingertips. Then again, he does say this line.

It really smooths out these roads, because it’s big and solid, but easy for my wife to handle.

Actually, on further review, we’re not sure Eddie’s just talking about the car anymore at that point.

–It looks like it’s 8 zillion degrees in the commercial, but Eddie passes the old-school man test by wearing a full suit without obvious distress in the heat. Respek.

–Eddie appears to be climbing out of the car and into Amelia Earhart’s plane at the end of the commercial.

Rating: A-. Good on the fundamentals and sticking to his gameplan, Robinson manages to get his wife to drive him around, convince you to buy a living room on wheels, and impart warm fuzzies about education and opportunity all in the course of a single commercial. Fine work by a classic coach.

Sure, the media may be concerned about whether coaches circumvent NCAA rules by texting recruits. But why aren’t they worrying about the grammar and syntax the coaches use when contacting recruits? Why have coaches declared A WAR ON GRAMMAR?!?!?

Matt asks the important questions at Orange44.

Ground zero in the war on spelling. Don’t let them get away with it!

The past week or so’s been a great lesson in why the overactive immune system that is the message board community is both a blessing and a curse to the mundo del futbol de universidad.

Without gettting too wonky or nut-deep in information theory and other things that will never, never get you laid, there’s an ongoing debate about exactly what the role of the expanding, raucous internet medium surrounding conventional news media and wire services is. Some think it’s a replacement, a leaner, meaner, more economical spout for information to flow through, both critiqueing and supplanting conventional media. These are the Glenn Reynlolds types of the worlds, the Instapundits who believe that in the future, the news will be whatever people post on the web followed by a single word: “heh,” or “indeed,” or maybe “RTWT.”

Then there’s everyone else, the people who aren’t sure what it is but keep posting content and assuming that there’s some kind of role for websites, and that it lies somewhere between posting pictures of fart jokes and fact-checking conventional media. Or perhaps it involves both. Speaking of…

Take that, Les Miles. You’ve been nailed by the new media!

Whew, that felt good. For everyone, Les included.

Back to the other thing the interweb can do: exchanging information of both the accurate and inaccurate variety. The past weeks been illustrative of the strengths and weaknesses of the online vetting and confrimation of stories. First there’s the Avery Atkins story. Message boards were all over this story for weeks, bubbling with a persistent but surprisingly measured message that yes, Atkins was in trouble, but that things were still up in the air. We reached the fridge and actually pulled out our last moldy piece of respectability by calling the sheriff and seeing if Atkins had any warrants sworn out for him; he didn’t, and that was all there was to be said.

In this case, message boards were spot-on, insisting in many cases that he was gone due to family problems three or four days before the major media got a hold of it. In other cases, though, message board communities can run 180 degrees in the wrong direction with a story with amazing consistency with existing fan beliefs. This tendency warps even further when the story has to do with a rival school.

For instance (clearing throat, assuming creepy movie guy voice here) :

Did you know that a NCAA official visited Auburn recently? Hmm…whaddya think THAT means, huh? COULD BE A VERY INTERESTING SUMMER IN ALABAMA ha ha ha ha…

Bama boards went–and are going–nuts with insinuation, innuendo, scuttlebutt and calumny about Auburn. This is nothing new, since football slander is in fact the third largest export of the state of Alabama (#2, Automotives, #1 Alabama Freshman OL Andre “The 8th Continent” Smith, who will be 7 feet tall and 420 rock-solid pounds by the time he graduates.) Never mind that the NCAA official in question is Rich McGlynn, an Auburn grad who was brought on to work in the compliance department.

A dream job for an Auburn grad with intimate knowledge of the NCAA’s byzantine regulations governing football? Nope–a Bobby Lowder conspiracy to co-opt the NCAA’s men by buying them off, that’s what that is. Keep in mind that we’re not saying we don’t think there are Auburn boosters holding black masses and selling cases of AK-47s to janjaweed in Darfur to fund illicit activities–we would totally believe that about the strange, successful, and always shifty bunch of people who call themselves football boosters–but in this case blame Human Resources for selecting the perfect candidate for his dream job, not the Don of Opelika’s endless, sinister machinations.

Boi From Troy’s marketing his own “NOT AT ALL REFERENCING ACTUAL USC PLAYERS” t-shirts for the season. We like the “‘licious” one, ourselves:

In no way affiliated with USC. But guaranteed to come in smalls to show of your, um, abs. Or ab.

Is there a better way to kill the off-season than talking about ourselves? I think not. That is why this EDSBS edition of the blog poll roundtable for discussion is designed to either refresh everyone’s recollection about our fellow participants or give us a greater insight into the deep dark psyche of each of us.

1. Education. List the region of the country you were born in, what universities you attended and at least one other you would have attended if your alma mater didn’t exist.

Orson’s Example: Born in Nashville, Tennessee. Graduated from University of Florida with a BA in something useless. Also picked up a M.S. from Georgia Tech, but still can’t do math. If we had to attend another uni, we would have chosen the University of Washington, because it is beaaaauuuyoouuutiful.

2. Sports Affiliations. List your top 10 favorite teams in all of sports in decending order. For instance, your alma mater’s football team may be number 1, but perhaps there is a professional team that squeezes in before you get to your alma mater’s lacrosse team.

10? We’re not that diverse, sportswise. Five we can do:

e. Umm…did we mention the Florida Gators? Again, we’re rather focused.

3. Movies. List the movie you’ve watched the most, your favorite sports related movie, the movie you secretly love but don’t like to admit it (possibly a chick flick or b film), and the movie you were (or still are) most looking forward to from this summer’s season.

Most watched: Caddyshack, probably. It’s a generational thing.

Shame flick: The 13th Warrior. Vikings fighting Cromagnons and accepting fate like men.

4. Music. List your favorite band from middle school, high school, college and today. Also, as with the movies, include the song you secretly love but don’t like to admit. If Nickleback is involved in any of these responses, please give a detailed explanation as to why, god, why.

Middle school: the Beatles.

Shamelove song: “Since You’ve Been Gone,” Kelly Clarkson. Rocks ass despite jacking the bridge from “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

5. Books. Favorite book you’ve finished, worst book you’ve finished and the book you really should read but haven’t gotten around to it.

Favorite: the Brothers Karamazov.

Book we should read but haven’t: A Son of the Circus, John Irving.

6. Travel. Favorite city you’ve every been to and the one place you still must visit before you shuffle off this mortal coil.

Fave city: Bangkok.

City we need to go to: Rio. Have you seen the video for “Beautiful” by Snoop Dogg? You’re going, too.

7. What do you love most about college football in 20 words or less?

Love, beauty, violence, and singularity.