The finest collection of arbitrarily selected links and stories on the interweb, brought to you this morning by Geico, whose ads almost make commercial breaks tolerable:

–UConn coach Randy Edsall dismissed five players from the Huskies’ football team this weekend after the players brought beer back to their hotel room in Tampa the night before a 38-17 loss to South Florida.

This stands as further proof that Tampa is the real-life version of the city in Pinocchio where children become donkeys, enticed by shiny things and candy into getting into big, big trouble.


Go ahead and play pool and smoke–it always ends badly in Tampa.

–Lloyd Carr’s double-secret bubble of mumspeak notwithstanding, Mario Manningham is on crutches and will be off the field for a while for the Michigan Wolverines, per Brian and any Wolverines message board you’d care to cruise. This will affect the Wolverines offense, which has been using Manningham as their field-stretching play-action threat to great effect to this point.

–In more hearty, niacin-rich Big Ten news, P.J. Hill may be the heir to the “big-boned back” throne at Wisconsin, according to Bruce Ciskie, who follows football in parts of the country where drunks cannot pass out in ditches for fear of dying from exposure. He also thinks the Heisman is a meaningless beauty contest, just in case you wanted to know exactly how he feels about it.

–The Index wants everyone to just put down the syringe and hold off on euthanizing dynastic USC for a second, posting very compelling numbers about USC’s past hiccups during the regular season. He would also like you to know that Tim Tebow will probably run off tackle if he’s in the game.

–Georgia allows fifty for the first time since Spurrier? Paul blames the Cherrishinski.

–Firing coaches in the middle of a season is tacky, bogus, low-class…and just might be a move of suprising effectiveness, according to Pete Thamel of the New York Times, who recaps Florida’s midseason spiking of [NAME REDACTED] and the effect it had on the pursuit of Urban Meyer. According to Meyer, the firing and complete admission that the university was engaged in a job hunt seemed far more tastefully done than sniffing around behind a lame duck coach’s back.

“New synergies are created” alert: it may be catching on as a sports business practice:

“I think what Foley did was astute and showed clearly there was a strategy,” said Neil Cornrich, a lawyer and agent who represents numerous college coaches, including Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz and Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops. “I think that’s the trend. The smart athletic directors will follow Foley.”


Is thinking it would be “proactive” to just fire you now.

–In totally unrelated news: Dirk Koetter says “you don’t know the real Dirk.” The one who likes Jean Miro, and long hikes in the sierras, or the one who cried the first time he heard “X-Factor” by Lauren Hill, because you know, it could all be so simple, babe, but you’d rather make it hard. Did you know he likes peppermint tea when he’s sad? Did you? Or that he’ll get paid exactly $950,000 for each year remaining on his contract in the event of his firing?

–SMQ’s right: after Ohio State, spots 2-5 are “up for grabs.”

–SMU’s quarterback has a stalker–a male stalker. Justin Willis was suspended from the team indefinitely for punching the stalker, says Willis’ father, whose son is living a scene from The Talented Mr. Ripley sans the beautiful Mediterranean scenery right now. Stalking is an art, though; remember that it’s always important to give your victim their space, since stalking’s less of a sprint, and more of a marathon. They will love you eventually! Especially after you save them from the tiger attack you spent three years carefully orchestrating!

–Nestor calls Arizona a “cheap, white trash” program. We call racism! What about the black trash on their roster, huh? Or latinos? They’ll never get the coveted “ethnic trash” athlete with this kind of recruiting.