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.