Since we’re signing out for the day and heading over to Dodgy At Best to pontificate on another sport we love and know shockingly little about, we leave you on this sultry Tuesday with a short but powerful video from 1995 about why the Pac-10 is ten times more vicious than we wannabe hooligans in the SEC will ever know.

Note a few things, though:

–Solid mat work by Tree here, who clearly has some judo or Brazilian jiujitsu background. Call UFC immediately.

–Oski, despite some solid strikes, clearly could have used a standing start to the match. More of a boxer and less of a grappler, though what the hell can you grab on tree besides a couple of hula hoops and a googly eye?

–We think Oski remains the clear winner here despite suffering a countering head slam into the court. Note that Tree fights dirty but effectively by decapping Oski and slamming not the mascot head, but the actual head of the mascot onto the hardcourt.

–A mascot led off by security is almost as funny as a mascot being assaulted. Seeing the two in a single video is a package deal for the senses.

–We would also like to add that despite seeing him a decade-old video of him fighting in public, Oski’s reputation is solid in our book. You might even say stellar.

When trees and bears fight. Almost as funny as people busting ass on slides.

Burnt Orange Nation gets a grownup on the line, ESPN writer Ivan Maisel, he of the Stanford education and drawly drawl, for an actual “I-talk-to-bloggers-and-don’t-think-they’re-sewer-dwelling-mutants” interview. Peter does a very good job telling Ivan he’s wrong about Texas, which is exactly what we would have expected Peter to do.

Avery Atkins: felony imprisonment, misdemeanor domestic battery, and a big ol’ turd dropped right in the middle of a pretty clean offseason. If true he’s a batterer and complete dumbass. If partially true, he’s still a total dumbass. (HT: Corey) It’s still up for grabs, though, in terms of exactly what’s going on in Atkins’ evidently corrosive relationship with his wife:

Al Tolley, public information officer with the Daytona Beach police, said this morning that no arrests have been made in the case, which remains open.

“This is not a clear cut domestic violence case,” he said. “There’s been a recommendation that this is a continued investigation and (the police) sit down with both people again.”

RTWT for more nuance, but Avery and Mrs. Atkins have settled things with one form of mutually exchanged violence on at least two occasions, according to the article. Points to the message boards, who were all over this days ago in unspecific but in retrospect accurate terms. “He’s good as gone” was the mantra we saw associated with his name. If any of this is true, he’s in the bin with Taurean Green Charles and other felonious, wasted Gator players. Oh, and since it’s on the books as a case we’re forced to award points to our own dear University of Florida in the Fulmer Cup, who earn a four point award broken down thusly:

1 point–misdemeanor domestic battery
2 points–felony imprisonment
1 point–earning points for UF.

The only possible upside of this comes in the positive light it casts on Kenneth Tookes, who merely discharged an AR-15 in public. In comparison, what Atkins is accused of makes Tookes look like the poor victim of a bb gun design flaw.

P.S. Did we mention Mrs. Atkins was pregnant? Add a point for five FC total. It’s our party and we’ll add extra vengeance points if we want to.

Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The NCAA’s Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet (doesn’t the name just suggest “eh, cluttered kitchen drawer full of crap we don’t care about”?) has recommended limiting text message contact between coaches and recruits. (Maybe they should just throw a few more things on there, like Academics/Eligibility/Compliance/Office Holiday Party Committee/Sensitivity Training/International Outreach/Guy Who Knows How to Make ITunes Work On Your Office PC Through Firewalls Cabinet.)

Should the NCAA follow through and enact the legislation into something kind of like a law, a new spectator sport will be watching Urban Meyer twitch at the Starbucks at 3:59 while waiting for his grande holding his Blackberry like the steering wheel of a F1 car, thumbs vibrating and poised above the keys waiting for 4 p.m. to roll around.

Alternatives to text messaging are already being sought. We propose:

1. Graffiti. Cheap, inexpensive, and could lead to the sight of master recruiters like Trooper Taylor and Eric Bienemy covering each others tags and then settling disputes in tightly-orchestrated dance-fights.

Imagine Doc Holliday in the Whodini hat. Yeah, we’re totally on board with this.

2. Carrier Pigeon. Another cheap alternative, though may be ineffective in West Virginia, Tennessee, and other big hunting states. Problems may arise as result of 23mm anti-aircraft guns being purchased and deployed to kill incoming pigeons carrying rival schools’ recruiting materials.

3. “The Truman Show” strategy. Schools put entire towns on the payroll to subtly convince recruit that his destiny is to sign with [INSERT SCHOOL HERE.] Would be tipped off by wistful, obviously scripted speech by high school janitor where he divulges that he, too, was once a promising young VHT…before he committed to [OPPOSITE SCHOOL OF DUBIOUS VIRTUE AND INTEGRITY], where armed thugs broke his knees and cut his scholarship, leaving him in the desert without food or water to die. The weepy strings playing in the back would be a dead giveaway, too.

It worked with Tebow–never saw the cameras.

Despite the fact that we’ve been paying for it for years now, we still don’t feel quite like an Insider, dammit. Reading Bruce Feldman’s blog is nice compensation, though; it’s one of two reasons the whole painless addition to the credit card debt each month is worth it, along with the podcasts Ivan Maisel and others have been doing lately.

Feldman wrote yesterday about the grumbles Al Groh keeps earning with his handling of players, scholarships, and inability to communicate much besides grr…err…need grey sweatshirt worked for Bill Parcells…. And in response, Groh can cite the following:

–Has beat in-state rival Virginia Tech once in his six years at UVA, and lost last year’s game 52-14.

–Watched staff flee in numbers over the past two years.

–Has the charisma and pr skills of that sketchy ATM machine in the back of the 7-11. Unlike Groh, the ATM wishes you a good day.

Have a nice day, my ass.

–Mr. NFL did have seven players drafted in 2005, though the highest draftee went in the fourth round (Alvin Pearman, Jacksonville,) with the others coming in second day action in late rounds. (HEY! Don’t forget D’Brickashaw at #4 in ‘06, one of five drafted, though the remainder all came in the fifth and sixth round!–ed. courtesy of readers.) He can advertise with some verisimilitude that his recruits stand a decent chance of getting drafted. On the second day. Maybe. Unless they’re a total freak with a epochal name like D’Brickashaw. ***Or Heath Miller. Any other UVA first-rounders lurking out there?

–A declining return on his recruiting skills, with his top class of 2002 standing in dramatic relief against the following years, including this year’s disappointing class and “alarm” at top recruits leaving the state–for example, UF’s own Percy Harvin, poached from under Groh’s nose by loving text-messaging from Urban Meyer. (Apparently, Harvin enjoys being stalked.) Groh, tone-deaf to PR as always, had this response:

“Sometimes it’s a little challenging to understand what was on the minds of some of the players,” Groh said.

The headline on the article trumps the quote: “STATE RECRUITING PERPLEXES GROH.” Reading this you imagine Groh stuck like a Sim trapped in a corner of his house, waving frantically at the camera as he pees the floor, waves the flies gathering around him away from his house, and implores you to move the couch blocking his way before he dies of starvation.

Someone please move that couch before it kills him.

–Groh has also embraced the kind of nepotism reserved for coaches who’ve won national championships. His replacement for departing offensive coordinator Ron Prince: come on down, son! In all fairness, Groh was the quarterbacks coach when Matt Schaub completed passes at a Steve Youngish rate back in ‘02, and did a nice job developing Marques Hagans. Still, as a coach already struggling to keep recruits in state, beat your rival, and not suffer the periodic losses to supposed gimmes on the schedule, bringing your son on to commandeer an offense that mysteriously disappears on occasion (as in losing to UNC 7-5 last year)…it could just give a disenchanted fanbase another way to justify your professional obituary at UVA.

(Note: EDSBS hero/icon/worship object/angry vengeful God Steve Spurrier had his son on staff; so does Joe Paterno, and most rancorously, so does Bobby Bowden. See how well that’s going? )

Speaking of UVA, please read Ian’s latest piece on…something or other. As in life, reading Sexy Results is more about the process and less about the results, as sexy as they might be. Somewhere just down the page Ian wrote one of the best sentences we’ve ever read; the last bit refers to Jenn Sterger, FSU’s idea of a pinup girl.

On the other hand, I’m thinking that Myron Rolle’s decision to choose FSU prompted the most hilarious letter of intent signing since Stephon Marbury committed to “Georgia Tech University,” the greatest player in Seminole hoops history might be Bobby Sura and they continually get overrated in terms of student body attractiveness on the account of someone who looks like what would happen if Wilson’s Leather Store starting making floatation devices.

Below this is this picture:

You are a very dumb wasp. Here’s your target orchid.

Jenn Sterger and women like her are nothing new in terms of evolutionary biology: Chiloglottis trapeziformis, a type of orchid, produces a pheromone that fools male wasps into mating with it, thus pollinating the flower and leaving the wasp satisfied, dumb, smoking a cigarette underneath an eave somewhere thinking it’s just knocked up a hot young waspette and thus spread its genetic legacy successfully. Which it hasn’t. Which is exactly how a guy who just crawled off that sun-destroyed, silicone-wracked bag of mascara-covered leather must feel after pumping valuble cash and genetic material into an evening with her. Fraud comes in a thousand forms, and you’re looking at three of them right there.