If we’re going to be a consumer whore, at least we’ll be stylish ones. We’ve finally opened the EDSBS t-shirt shopfor all your sexy liquid explosion football fashion needs. We met with designer Tim Gunn to “make it work” on both the runway and the run to the package store, and dare we say: we’ve succeeded.

Behold:

We’ll have tons more shirts available on request, but we chose the flaming couch for a number of reasons. One, it’s almost the kind of logo you could wear to a hipster institution without openly emitting college football vibes, a kind of code to broadcast to other EDSBS readers that “I, too, enjoy sodomy jokes mixed in with my fart jokes and smattering of football.” It’s also a combination of the things we admire most about college football, the conflagration of self-made fun, harmless hooliganism, alcohol, and manic fervor.

May we also recommend this gem for the Ultimate Frisbee player out there:

You’re not slow. You’re just a possession receiver.

Purchase! Consume! It’s the patriotic thing to do, and what better place to do it than here, where your proceeds will support our increasingly dire ProVigil addiction devotion toward blogging the living daylights out of the upcoming football season.

“The EDSBS Store: Because You Can’t Wear Child Support Payments.

There’s so many places to go with this one, but we’ll just let you all bat it to death in the comments section. The EDSBS Quote of the Week comes from punter Eric Wilbur commenting on the “gate” punt formation Florida adopted last year. (HT: Ken.)

“You look up, and now there’s 900 pounds of man right in front of you.”

Subconscious image roulette shows us the first results of our search, which surprisingly did not bring up the names “Ron Jeremy” or “Dirk Diggler:”

Eric Wilbur’s looking at 900 pounds of man right there.

Pat Forde needs to be cited for making far too much sense in this piece on Chris Leak’s senior year at Florida. Florida fans split into two rival camps on the topic of Leak: one that blames nothing on the quarterback and assumes that, with some stability and support, he’ll deliver in big games, and another camp that points to the lack of rings on his hand as evidence of his inability to win when it counts. Add message board punctuation and plenty of emoticons, and you’ve got an excellent summary of fifty percent of Gator fan discussion over the past three years.

Chris Leak’s mercurial career: sliding to a conclusion.

The truth is, for the most part when Florida managed to get in the red zone in the past three years we prayed for simple handoffs. First, running on first down in the end zone usually sets up embarrassingly easy play-action TDs later on when you really, really need them. Secondly, it also works remarkably well even when you’ve got Florida’s slappy offensive line making the holes for you and doesn’t risk the game-changing endzone pick that all too often winds up going 98 yards the other way. Bill Belichick, Meyer’s BFF and brain-pickee, runs in short yardage situations most of the time not because it instills toughness grit blah blah blah, but because statistically it’s the easy, sensible bet.

Yet a third reason lurks back there…Leak and his ability to win games single-handedly. Forde’s piece seems to pick up on something creeping around the periphery of our thoughts since the South Carolina game last year: his lack of initiative on the field. Most quarterbacks have to be taught to find the checkdown or the hot route after spending years heaving passes downfield; Leak’s tutelage has involved turning him from Checkdown Charlie to a passer willing to take some, any, please god something chances against defenses. He won’t throw many picks, he’ll slide when he runs, and he’ll throw the ball away if he runs out of options. He’s safe as milk and about as interesting to watch excepting the two or three times a game he lays a ball onto a receiver’s fingertips with smart-bomb precision and keeps his blue-chip mythos afloat.

Chris Leak, though, has never singlehandedly taken over and won a game Florida fans wouldn’t care to forget anyway. His coming-out party at Kentucky owed everything to Jared Lorenzen suffering a stroke and tossing a wild pass directly to a UF defender for a touchdown. Big victories at LSU in 2003 and FSU in 2004 relied less on Leak’s arm and more on defense and special teams. His only real memorable last-minute victory came in ‘05 at home against Vandy, and even then…do you really want that as your big signature win? That seems less about beating someone with superior guile and grit and more about avoiding complete disaster at home.

None of this says anything about Leak’s character or personality. He’s been the anti-Doug Johnson for Florida, a humble, polite, easygoing guy off the field who’s never been near a whiff of trouble and also happens to be the prettiest man on the field according to a sample of randomly selected Florida fans.* As Forde points out, though, he also does not have a ring of any sort despite gaudy numbers, residual recruiting hype from four years ago, and the ever-shining sirens of unfulfilled potential hounding him.

The closer it gets to the season, the more we realize: there isn’t any sort of reason why Chris Leak can’t be replaced by Tim Tebow if Meyer feels like it’s a better fit. Supporters of Leak would point to his track record. Unfortunately, going into his senior year, so can detractors. It wouldn’t be uncrazy to think it could happen.

Two months ago we thought this was preposterous, but if Major Applewhite could eat bench after his career in his senior year, there’s no reason why the same couldn’t–and won’t–happen to Leak. We suspect Meyer would turn Grandma into knockwurst if it meant winning a national championship. Why he would let Leak stand in the way if he thought he was an obstacle is beyond us.

*Sample size= The Conscience of a Nation.

We review Georgia Tech’s latest attempt to convince players, recruits, and alumni that Chan Gailey is not, in fact, a former Coweta County maintenance man yanked at random from the streets and placed in the position of football coach at Georgia Tech.

School: Georgia Institute of Technology

Ad Title: “The Right Thing To Do.”

EDSBS Title: “Bobby Dodd Ten Minutes Before Kickoff.”

Setup: Chan Gailey wanders around Bobby Dodd blathering on about academics and standards and stuff. The place is entirely empty but the lights are completely on, clues which can only lead us to believe that the film was in fact shot ten minutes before kickoff sometime during any one of the past three years of the Chan Gailey era. A single trumpet plays in the background, something supposedly evocative of the lonely grandeur of being a football coach dealing with the rigor of fielding a football team at an academically prestigious institution. For Gailey, the effect here is less “Great Man working alone in the darkness, and more “Taps.” The dialogue, read by Gailey, says something like this:

Combining strong academics and athletics at the highest level?
It is challenging.
But at Georgia Tech, it’s the right thing to do.

Subtext: Suck it if you ever expect anything past 7-5, because recruiting here is hard ‘n stuff.

Production values: Not bad. The music couldn’t have cost that much, since they just hired one guy to toodle some miserable notes on a trumpet in the background while Gailey read his lines and thought about oatmeal. (Mmm. Oatmeal.) The cinematography’s nice enough, with the turf of Bobby Dodd glowing an almost supernatural green underneath the lights of the stadium. (Yes, we know what you’re thinking, but they closed the reactor at Tech years ago.) All told, not bad, though we’re not sure that given the concept of the ad it could have cost anymore barring the addition of a CGI Buzz the mascot fighting off an Voltron-esque Al-Qaedabot against the backdrop of the Atlanta skyline.

Hits: The nuke-green grass is nice, but you don’t make a whole ad off the beauty of fescue unless you’re selling fertilizer. Depending on your opinion of Chan Gailey’s coaching ability, of course, this may be precisely what this ad is attempting to sell you. A big whooshy shot of the stadium light tower booming on is always cool, too, though a little too lifted straight from “Field of Dreams” for our taste. Chan Gailey’s suit has no pudding stains on it, either, which deserves mention.

Misses: The whole pitch and concept of the ad, which is that Chan’s just a lonely, hardworking stoic yoked to the strictures and burdensome responsibility of being a coach at a prestigious university. Rather than getting people excited about Tech football–like showing thirty straight seconds of Calvin Johnson winding in Reggie Ball’s scattershot passes instants before getting scissor kicked by onrushing defenders–they show Chandy Griffith in his suit pacing the stadium carefully whining about how difficult it is to balance academics and athletics in his job.

When George O’Leary had a problem, he’d do something crazy like hire Ralph Friedgen or Jon Tenuta. When Chan Gailey has a problem, he makes an ad featuring him walking around an empty stadium. Whether this is apology or a documentary of what will happen if Gailey coaches another three years at Tech remains to be seen.

Points off for relying on the central figure of Gailey, too. Just from a sheer stature point, he’s not the alpha-male linchpin you want as the emblem of your program. At the points in the ad where he’s supposed to look deep in thought while gazing at the stadium we just imagined this dialogue between him and the camera crew.

Chan: Man, that’s nice fescue.
Crew: Yes, it is coach.
Chan: Who plays here?
Crew: Your team, sir.
Chan: My team?
Crew: Yes, sir. The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.
Chan: Naw, that can’t be right. That job would be haaaaaarrrrrd, I tell you what.
Crew: …umm, would you just stand over there for a minute?
Chan: But that is some nice fescue, there.
Crew: Yeah, just…just watch the grass, okay?

Summary Grade: C-. The commercial equivalent of buying sushi at the grocery store: the packaging’s glossy, but the ingredients are old, dry, and mediocre. Still, just like Chan Gailey, it’ll get you through in a pinch if you really need it.

Lee Smith, the former Tennessee recruit accused of DUI and having sex with his high school assistant principal in the span of just a few months (we don’t want to give you the idea that he did those simultaneously, since we’d have to rename the blog “LeeSmithistheman.com”) will be transferring to Marshall. This doesn’t confirm anyone’s pre-existing stereotypes about Marshall in the least.

Marshall also had a player arrest over the past weekend, meaning you’ve got Geremy Rodemer putting Marshall within one point of Purdue’s seemingly unassailable lead in the team Fulmer Cup competition. (Ellis T. Jones, he of the one-man tasering and armed robbery ring, leads all competitors by himself with 34 points.) The charge was allegedly “loitering,” but any subsequent charges will take this into a tie or perhaps a clean lead for the Thundering Herd.

Marshall: clogging their way to greatness in the Fulmer Cup one misdemeanor at a time.

Sam Keller makes the quick read and opts for a transfer to Nebraska, where he will be able to mindmeld directly with Fearless Leader and certified Sooper Genious Bill Callahan. Keller will have one season of eligibility left to work with Callahan and learn his impossibly intricate West Coast scheme, the one with the slant, five-yard curl, and skinny post…you know those impossible concepts that no one else uses in their offense ever. Keller also received phone calls from Bob Stoops, who sort of needs a qb or two at this point in life.

Keller, if he should like to study, would be advised to check out NCAA 2007’s basic West Coast playbook. It’s about what Callahan uses…if he dares delve into its arcane depths! We advise a quick chanting of klaatu verata nicto before opening it, though. A quick point of the hand to his arm and an announcement of “THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK” to the other qbs might help, too.

Callahan: “Listen up, you primitive screwheads…”