Football rolls on by in three days, which can mean only one thing: YOU NEED FANCY PANTIES. Oh, how lucky you are that we know just the pair for your:

Fancy panties, flaming couch t-shirts, and all the rest may be found at the EDSBS store. CONSUME! It’s for the children, really.

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

Amen

Even as we welcome you today, dear parishioners, we must ask ourselves if you are prepared for what lies ahead of you. Are you truly focused on the task of watching 12, perhaps even 16 hours of football a week? Are you ready to lie, weasel, cheat, and shave time off other important activities to rush home and watch the Thursday night Nevada/Fresno State game, like basic hygiene, income-generating activities, or even time with your significant other?

Of course you are. And as we prepare to neglect family, work, and yes, even the proper flossing of one’s teeth for the next five months in order to satisfy the need–nay! the holy lust for football, let us praise one of its most noble denizens, a position so forceful, so destructive his very name is a mockery of his actual role on the field: the safety.

The safety: anything but safe.

Let us reserve today’s words of faith and praise for the safety. He strikes without warning, stealing passes from the air with outstretched hands; he concusses without mercy, running headlong into receivers like a thrown boulder; he leaps into piles without forethought and stuffs runs with the frenzy of a dying animal. He is the safety and he is concerned about nothing resembling his name, the man who gets the longest running start on any play in which to gear up speed and power abundant enough to knock third grade out of a player’s skull.

Let him be praised, in his order;

Laron Landry. He who is superbly named also runs like a third corner in the defensive backfield, whipping across elegantly designed pass sets like an eraser to intercept, break up, and other short-circuit the best-laid plans of SEC offensive coordinators. A negator of the first rank, Landry moves like the Snitch in Harry Potter but hits like a bludger, the picture of what we make our safeties at The University of Hell like in NCAA 2007: 99s across the board.

Kevin Ellison, USC: He who has not played down one one full year yet of college football and will undoubtedly play out of position to the tune of several enormous plays against the Trojans this year, since safeties hand out Hammurabi-esque punishment but take it as well in the form of long pass plays and runs made against them. Being the last line of defense has its drawbacks, too, since you’re it before six points and a stadium full of whiskey-charged and very unhappy fans. Yet Ellison bears mention for this reason: he’s a freshman sophomore with a chance to start at a position where freshman sophomores playing their first full year, dammit have thrived in the past on the basis of unlimited potential and athleticism overcoming the mistakes their green brains lead them into on the field. Ellison represents just that: potential in all its forms, nasty and magnificent, from the improbably swooping pick he might make in the clutch to the play-action TD he watches from his heels late in a crucial game. He’s playing a heritage position at a heritage school, and he’s one of the most agonizing and compelling things about collegiate athletics: boundless, unproven potential about to be put on the spot in grand fashion. Speaking of improbable picks…

Michael Griffin. Displayed the full range of physical possibilities in 2005 as a starting safety for the Longhorns. Imitated Nureyev with a delicate tiptoe of the foot in bounds on the game-changing INT against USC, a play so improbable it was initially ruled an incomplete pass by slow-eyed officials before being overturned on replay. Aped George “the Animal” Steele on countless brutal hits, including many of the Waterboy variety. Rounded out the physical repertoire by plucking a ball juggled off the hands of an Oklahoma receiver as he lay on the ground for a pick. This video really illustrates Griffin’s capacity for kinetic mayhem better than we can, though this stat comes close: against hated rival Texas A&M, Griffin logged 23 tackles, which is three more than the entire Aggie team had in 2005.

Michael Griffin. He’s the guy with the ball who’s not supposed to have it here.

Tom Zbikowski, Notre Dame. Living proof that Polish people can fucking fly if properly motivated. Something burns within Zbikowski, and we’re guessing it’s pure, undying rage, since playing football evidently isn’t enough to contain his fury. Yes, Zibby boxes. And plays special teams. And gets sewn into burlap bags with badgers and thrown down stairs for fun. Zbikowski keys the Notre Dame defense, which is a term for “we’re not sure who these other guys are, but damn that one dude is castrating people down there.” At the risk of saying this out loud and earning an ass-beating from a professional, Tommy Z. must play even larger and faster than he did in ‘05 for the Notre Dame defense. Nine tackles is his career high, and despite the pub and ooh-ahhing from the ladies Zibby remains less of a true safety and more of a corner playing free agent in the backfield.(Though he’s certainly got linebacker ‘tude in spades.) Boundless potential playing in a defense that needs boundless improvement, especially in the pass defense department, plus smaller linebackers in front of him means Zbikowski’s numbers should balloon this season.

Reggie Nelson. The tragedy of watching Reggie Nelson play corner has narrowly been avoided at Florida: transfer Ryan Smith has stepped in, allowing the dreaded, jack-jawing, smack-talking, helmet-spearing Nelson to return to what he does best: everything. Our man-crush is reaching its apex with Nelson, but could mutate to planetary size if Nelson’s flashes of potential-read the cruise-missile hit he put on Mohammed Massaquoi in the Cocktail Party–come to fruition in 2006.

Dreaded in multiple ways: Reggie Nelson.

Let the safety be praised!

Ite, missa est. Deo Gratias, football fans. Three days and counting.

Listen to Myles Brand answer our questions on Mondays with Myles. We submitted the questions about a month or so ago. He answers some of them…sort of. We’ll have to piece together a response when we’ve got time to parse through some of the geniunely Clintonian answers Brand puts out there.

We asked questions in the nicest way of Myles Brand. He answered.

On an interesting counter note to his answer on the meaning of the APR: only eight schools managed to get all of their recruiting class in without losing a recruit. Those schools were Boston College, Florida, Iowa, Northwestern, Ohio State, Texas, and Stanford, all schools with either a.) high academic standards anyway, or b.) bigass recruiting and academic support budgets. So when he talks about schools in “the equity conferences” rolling through the process…well, there’s one more bit of evidence hot of the presses for that.

Besides bragging on Florida (sound of shoulder-brushing should be deafening at this point,) special mention must be given to ChanPa and Georgia Tech. A few years of non-qualifying disasters must have led to an HR bloodbath in academic support, since whomever they’ve got now seems to be doing a superb job in monitoring incoming recruits and their academics. Get them through a whole year and we may have to put away our Colbert-issue wagging finger for a while.

Mike Leach–who in case you don’t know is totally into Vikings and not pirates this season–is solidifying his pillaging crew for this season. Last weekend he named Graham Harrell this year’s 4,000 yard human sprinkler, ensuring a third round NFL draft pick and a persistent case of tendonitis for the young man. This past weekend, he anointed Shannon Woods as this year’s draw fiend at halfback. Despite all the place-setting going on in Lubbock, Leach called his team “mediocre” going into the season, which means we can likely expect point totals wallowing in the high thirties from the Red Raiders for the first half of the 2006 season.

This was all reported to us by Don Williams, the “longtime beat guy” for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, the paper that crushed your once-idyllic mountain village and buried it in a cold, heartless snowy tomb. This is Don’s picture:

Don looks like:

a. A guy who set off a bomb in 1902 underneath the carriage of Nicholas II in Russia.

b. A Neal Stephenson reader.

c. Neal Stephenson.

d. “Loveless in Lubbock,” frequent Savage Love contributor and ass fetishist.

Last year, the college football season’s start was impacted (along with the lives of so many) by the ravages of Katrina as it made its way towards the Gulf coast.  You can’t help but be reminded of this as we excitedly anticipate a new season only to hear word of another storm approaching.  Thankfully, Ernesto bears little resemblance (at this point) to the potency of Katrina, but the question still remains what impact it may have on the kickoff of the new college football year.  Hopefully, that is the only major concern to arise from Ernesto. 

“When the hot dog came up, and some of it came out his nose, Kobayashi sucked it back down. To me, that’s the testament of a champion and great athlete.”

That’s the comment made by competitive eating judge and melodiously named gentleman Gersh Kuntzman regarding Kobayashi’s controversial vomiting of a hot dog back into his water cup during what eaters call “a reversal of fortune” moment in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest. Why wasn’t Kobayashi disqualified? “The effluvia never touched the table,” said (we have trouble even typing this) Kuntzman, whose name we shit you not is really Kuntzman.

Marshall, on the brink of losing the Fulmer Cup, dug deep down and did what champions do. They almost vomited up through their nose, ate the remainder, and plowed ahead to a likely victory in the Fulmer Cup.

Like Kobayashi, Marshall’s appetites have gotten them to the top.

The man who saved Marshall from second place? None other than starting wide receiver Hiram Moore, who manages to put a nasty dent in Marshall’s starting lineup and secure college football’s most ignoble distinction with a trifecta of an arrest for driving under the influence, leaving the scene of an accident, obstructing a police officer and driving on a suspended license. Even if you only tally up a single point for each offense–the bare minimum under Fulmer Cup scoring–Hiram’s early morning arrestfest overcomes what seemed like an insurmountable lead for Purdue and puts the Thundering Herd right where their rivals have been saying they belong: first in feckless feloniousness and multifarious misdemeanortude.

The effluvia never touched the table, and Marshall never gave up. Scoring closes at midnight on Wednesday, so it’s not technically over yet. But barring a human trafficking/cocaine smuggling ring shootout/season finale of Miami Vice nightmarre scenario, The Division 1 team crown should go to the Thundering Herd of Marshall. On an individual basis, though, don’t forget the outstanding individual work of former San Jose State player Ellis T. Jones, who by himself has been doing the work of eleven hyped-up VHTs.

The updated board will make its appearance soon, but for the record Marshall’s score should be at 15.

Rusty and Joel put up with a very caffeineated us on the Mostly ITP Podcast discussing anything and everything about the SEC East. Along the way we manage to make the following errors:

–Assuming Randy Sanders was the OC at Kentucky. (Joker Phillips still has play-calling, Sanders is only allowed near the quarterbacks. And he can’t do any harm there, right?)

–Forgetting all the running backs names at Georgia except for Thomas Brown.

–Forgetting all the running backs’ names at South Carolina.

–Mentioning “Jenkins” when we should really just let that die, right?

It was all tremendous fun, though one thing should be mentioned: you must see the fainting goats to get Joel’s best gag about Erik Ainge’s performance in 2005. It’s an uncanny resemblance.

Erik Ainge: recovering from ‘05.

Joel, by the way, has moved to Rocky Top Talk, which is like a pimped-out version of his old site complete with play clock to kickoff and new shiny graphics.