Someone please send us a photo or film of someone in a Florida, Michigan, Miami, or even a Harvard sweatshirt committing a crime. Please. Because at this point we feel like we’re just shooting fish in a barrel. If you’re going to commit a crime in the Midwest, is it a rule that you have to wear an Ohio State shirt? Or is this part of some elaborate conspiracy organized by Michigan alums to paint tOSU in a negative light? Or is Ohio like Sunnydale High School, a portal to hell wearing the disguise of a normal American town?

Whatever it may be, here it is: another Ohio State fan committing a crime and advertising his loyalties simultaneously. (HT: DevilGrad.)

I’ll be taking these huggies, and whatever you got.

The giant in hand–that’s what it means to carry Phil Steele’s baffling and brilliant college football guide. For those in the know, it’s crack on cheap paper, the bathroom reading keeping addicts on the john so long their feet fall asleep. For those who live with them, its arrival is akin to Dr. Rieux finding dead rats in the sewers in The Plague, a sign of desperate, hectic days to come.

Michael’s got a peek at Phil’s Top 25. From what we can tell, Phil’s reaaaaally bullish on offense, and reeeallyy hard for Louisville this year. For those not familiar with Phil Steele, he combines crack statistical research with an inscrutable home grown ecosystem of endless acronyms, including VHT (Very Highly Touted), RZS (Red Zone Scoring), and TWCID (Tijuana Weekend Causing Immediate Divorce–sometimes Phil plants little Easter Egg Confessionals in there just to keep you guessing.) It’s the best guide out there and wastes no time with “BEST LOOKING CHEERLEADERS” segments featuring glossy photos of women with their clothes on. (The EDSBS guide, when it eventually comes out, will follow the Garnett/Marbury rule for photo spreads: “all nude, but tastefully done. That’s important. To be tasteful. Yeah.”)

Oh, and Mike, just to satisfy your Braveheart fantasy:

“I have nothing. Men fight for me because if they do not, I throw them off my land and I starve their wives and children. Those men who bled the ground red at Falkirk fought for [Michael from Braves and Birds]. He fights for something that I never had. And I took it from him, when I betrayed him. I saw it in his face on the battlefield and it’s tearing me apart.”

Just remember who wins that battle and who ends up having the sadomasochistic fantasy death scene, right? We’ll clarify our belief in momentum–sloppily stated on our part, btw–in a post tomorrow.

But they’ll never take…MY INDULGENT CREEPY TORTURE SCENES!!!

Trolling message boards is full of vitamins and good for you ‘n stuff. Proof comes in Paul’s unearthing of an old MP3 file of the late Jack Fleming, West Virginia’s legendary announcer, reading through his awesomely deranged pregame screed against the “invaders” from Penn State and their leader “Darth Vader from Mt. Nittany.” Paul describes him as like Larry Munson “without the filter.” We weren’t aware Larry even had one, though if he does the contents of his mind must sound like the sonic equivalent of a herd of mandrills smashing bottles against an endless brick wall.

The clip is a must-listen for anyone cursed with a bland “voice of the school” who hesitates to add even an iota of color to the broadcast past the occasional “OH, MY!” And yes, we’re talking about our own Mick Hubert, who bores us to weeping, heaving gusts of tears. We’d actually draft Munson in the announcer’s fantasy draft before we’d take our own guy. We’d take Jack Fleming over him, too, if They do not and cannot make announcers like this anymore, which is a screaming felony against all that is good in life.

Betcha he liked scotch and broads, too.

In this week’s installment of the EDSBS podcast, we tackle the reeking, swampy heart of southern football, the region properly called “the Dirty South:” Mississippi, Alabama, and Lousiana. (Georgia, you will get your own dedicated show, since the ever-proliferating Georgia blogosphere deserves its own show. Plus, if we give you your own segment, this may lead to free alcohol being purchased for us in close proximity to our residence, which we’ll ask for shamelessly.)

David Banner says our podcast gets down on the flo’, on the flo’.

We got so much good material on the region we had to drip the thing out into two easy-to-digest pieces. The first 20 minutish segment features Paul Finebaum talking to us about Miss State, Auburn, and whether or not Mike Shula will eventually follow his brother David into the steakhouse business. You may listen by clicking the link below:

EDSBS Podcast 3: Finebaum on Bama, Auburn, Miss. State, and UAB.

The second part will be posted next week, a pair of enlightening conversations with Chris Lawrence (who denies the rumor that Ed Orgeron sports a pair of taloned wings from his back) and with Ro Patel of Al.com (who tells us what kind of ladies he likes.)

Enjoy.

Out Magazine features a piece written by Boi From Troy this month listing the top ten bois of sport considered most desirable for gay men–a piece we have to endorse since:

a. It’s essentially witnessing for sports, which is always a good thing, and

b. More gay men in sports = more easy gags in blog posts.

The cover reads “BIG BOUNCY BALLS…AND THE MEN WHO LOVE THEM,” and goes on to explain how “sports…became the new gay porn.” We lived with a gay guy in college for a bit–really, it was for money, not love–and having come home bleary-eyed at three in the morning to find him sitting on the couch watching gay porn, we can honestly say we’ve never seen anything resembling the genital acrobatics of man-on-man action in spectator sports.

Umm…yes. Totally straight sport there.

(Gay porn resembles high school wrestling gone tragically wrong. One minute it just looks strange; then you’re thinking, “no way”; then the unthinkable happens, and your thoughts as a straight guy run something like, “I bet that tickles” to “Aah, memories of Sunday School.” We’ll be over here crying in the corner if you need us.)

The news in all this, for those of you who actually made it this deep (heh, deep,) into a discussion of sports as gay porn? The four college football players cited by Boi at “Not on our team…but we’d sure like to be on theirs” are Notre Dame’s Tom Zbikowski, Brady Quinnn, and Jeff Samardzxqklgkta, presented with the caption

Who wouldn’t give it up for Notre Dame’s dreamy threesome?

…along with the Crimson Tide’s own NFL draftee Brodie Croyle, described as “a ringer for Ringo.” That’s right: you’re the ugly Beatle, Brodie.

Not mentioned in the article is the Conscience of a Nation’s pick, Chris Leak, who in addition to being a rock-solid gym rat of a man with green eyes that make the ladies swoon has also demonstrated his sensitive side by sliding to avoid hurting anyone on running plays.

Dreamy. Sensitive, too.

The Wizard of Odds brings us the real story behind the decline of Nebraska football–namely, the Big 12’s refusal to allow Nebraska to continue its practice of admitting an unlimited number of partial qualifiers. This story should make perfect sense to anyone who watched Nebraska football in the mid-90s go from “The All-Crushing Horde of Sagittal Crest-Blessed ‘Roid Beasts” to “We allowed a team coached by Gary Barnett to score 62 points on us”–which is a shame since we’ve honestly never met a more polite, genteel, and considerate fan horde than Nebraska fans. (We saw them in an elevator with Carrot Top at the Fiesta Bowl in ‘96, and they didn’t say a thing to him, which we doubt would have happened with any other fanbase, much less the hereditary smartasses that are Florida fans.)

Speaking of sagittal crests…what is Christian Peter doing now? Besides treating his gynocomastia?

Noted feminist Christian Peter.