With the bye week coming up for Florida, we’re gearing up for the event you’re not supposed to refer to as “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.” We’re on record as saying that this is the most retarded instance of speech policing by the president of a university as we can imagine, since there’s a.) nothing wrong with cocktails, since they’re one of the things that makes this country great, and b.) the cause of all the ruckus over student drinking–the death of a Florida student in an assault–had nothing to do with alcohol consumed by tourists but was instead the byproduct of three local morons deciding to kick a visiting student in the head for no particular reason.

However, in the interest of team spirit, we’ll abide by both university president’s requests to NOT use the old language to describe the festivities surrounding the Georgia–Florida game. After all, we’re not smart enough to earn a PhD in Political Communications, so what do we know about language? In fact, we thought we’d go ahead and start selling a few t-shirts with our suggestions for new, alcohol-free monikers for the big game in Jacksonville.

We hope Dr. Adams and Bernie Machen like our first wholesome, teetotallin’ suggestion. Click on the shirt to purchase it and support clean, alcohol-free family fun.

We may all be football fans, but most of the readers of this blog did not, and probably at this point will not play the game we spend most of our waking hours dissecting, ruminating over, and drinking to numb the pain of all that dissecting and rumination.

One person is likely happy about your relative lack of athleticism–”HEY! BAND INVOLVED…MARCHING.”–your doting, worried mother, who would pat herself on the back if she happened across UCLA quarterback Patrick Cowan’s gory story from the Oregon game on the wire this morning.

Coach Karl Dorrell said Monday that Cowan got punched in the throat while being sacked, causing him to lose his voice on the final series. Dorrell relied on receivers to shuttle plays to the huddle and communicate them.

On the trip back to Los Angeles, Cowan’s throat swelled up and he coughed up blood, Dorrell said.

FSU fans plan on punching Jeff Bowden in the throat during his lunch break at Smoothie King every week for the rest of the season, too. The only question remaining is if Mickey Andrews will be standing there to hold his head and arms back for easy access to the soft tissues you need to hit to make the plan work.

The game plan.

We’re trapped in a meeting this morning studying the management lessons of Mitch Albom’s latest book, Why Everything Is Going To Be Just Fine No Matter What: Lessons I Learned From Senile People. Therefore, enjoy Blogtoberfest until our return around noon EST.

–Isiah Stanback, the entire Washington Huskies offense, is done for the year and career at Washington. Angry fist, shaking at sky at U Dub Dish.

–The referee hates your team. It’s in the Bible.

–Tim Brando makes the mistake of attempting to defend ranking Cal above Tennessee, forgetting that the most attractive, credible lunacy is free-standing lunacy. If you’re going to build a masterpiece as demented as Brando’s ballot, attach no supports or justifications. That’s just letting the bastards win.

Tim Brando fails to heed the lessons of Frank Gehry: if you’re going to be crazy, be big crazy and don’t explain.

–Andy Staples supports the short-yardage qb solution for Florida.

–Your status as a lesbian confirmed: The Wiz brings us his ongoing reports on OutSports’ tour of campus tailgates, including the best quote of the year from a pair of lesbians at the Red River Shootout:

“I asked them what brought them to the game and if they enjoyed sports. They dramatically turned up their noses and said that they were not sports fans but since they live in Dallas they ‘always!’ go to the Texas-OU games because of the ‘hot chicks, big beers, and even bigger boobs.’ “

Huzzah, ladies. Huzzah.

–The House Rock Built has the goods on why Northwestern’s Kafka lost his starting job.

More guesswork that despite all our protests rapidly molds into a shape much like others’ poll ballots. We refuse to bump USC down until they lose because they’re just the kind of jerk team to struggle through their season and then make us look like complete assfaces by blowing out whomever they face in a bowl game or key rivalry game. Florida also takes a dive, while the rest is the shambles you’ve come to expect in our poll. Notes and apologies follow the hott MGoBlog table code.

Again, pay little attention to the arrows, since they measure movement from a prior draft we must have done while extremely intoxicated, which could have been any time in the past few hours weeks never mind.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	—
2	Southern Cal	1
3	Michigan	1
4	Tennessee	4
5	Texas	—
6	Louisville	1
7	California	2
8	Auburn	4
9	Florida	5
10	Notre Dame	—
11	Georgia Tech	—
12	Wisconsin	14
13	West Virginia	7
14	Oregon	2
15	LSU	5
16	Clemson	3
17	Oklahoma	2
18	Arkansas	4
19	Nebraska	7
20	Rutgers	1
21	Pittsburgh	5
22	Texas A&M	4
23	Missouri	8
24	Boise State	1
25	Wake Forest	3

–Michigan would, we guess, cremate that USC team and shoot its ashes into space in a head to head. But that’s asinine Dungeons and Dragons fantasy ball, which we can’t rule our poll lest our imagination get the better of us and we find ourselves rolling the 20-sided die on a hypothetical Rutgers/Ohio State national championship game. (It’s also that kind of thinking that gets votes for “Chuck Norris” and “Boise State” in in the top ten, so there you go.) Until USC loses, they don’t budge, leaving OSU/UM as the San Andreas Fault that will shake this season into shape.

USC: has us playing 20-sided die fantasy ball in our head.

–Tennessee, Texas, and Cal are all one loss leviathans and in that order. Louisville’s rubbing shoulders though not as convincingly now that Miami’s celebrating victories over FIU, while Florida and Auburn enjoy one of those polling logjams after the weirdest game of the year. (No offensive touchdowns for the victor, controversial replay call, and a suppposed Heisman candidate self-immolating on national televison? Superlative earned.)

–Notre Dame camps at number ten because they’ve bought the place and decorated it tastefully in Scandinavian Moderne, though they plan to flip the spot for a healthy profit once they start playing competition again.

–WV, down, Wisconsin, up-dah. Why? Because Wisconsin’s brawny, plays good defense, has a senior quarterback, and a running game anchored by nearly a ton of beef on the line and P.J. Hill, a 242 lb. back who at this rate should be up to a robust 360 lb. Heisman-winning 9,000 yard rusher by his senior year.

Meanwhile, West Virginia looks less and less appealing as your oddball bet for the national title, especially with Louisville lurking in their inbox. The appalling dead spot in the middle of their schedule may be to blame, since they’ve done nothing but win games. Yet think of that team matching up against anyone with a disciplined, attacking defense and a precision offense like Louisville’s and let the cogs start spinning…they lose, right? Then again, are we playing 20-sided die D’nD ball with the ‘Eers here? -6 modifier for Swindle following successful casting of Fog of Ambiguous Ranking. Player may not counter.

–Plaudits for PIttsburgh and the Wannstache; demerits for Iowa for scorching faithful pollsters who bumped them despite evidence to the contrary.

–The rest is a sad mess. Comment, discuss, excoriate below.

Lamar Thomas doesn’t come into your house and talk that noise without getting his butt whipped! No sir, not here. Unless you can pay five hundred dollars in cash directly to Thomas, which we guess could get the now-former CSS announcer to your house to narrate even your most disgraceful actions with the inimitable style only a twice-charged batterer of pregnant women can.

Thomas, who as we mentioned was an announcer for CSS before his remarks during the FIU/Miami fight Saturday night, was unavailable for comment after his firing. We would like to rub salt into the wound that is Lamar Thomas’ existence by saying that like Isiah Thomas, you suck at life, and even if the stain of using a pregnant woman as a punching bag ever wears off, the magic of Youtube has preserved your second (third?) worst moment for all to see:

Teague’s got the ball!

Addendum: The suspensions for the game are out. FIU doesn’t seem to have enough people left to field a team, since they booted two off the team and suspended 18 players in all. The price at Miami for booting someone while they’re on the ground in a fight? One game, as in Brandon Meriwether’s stompfest on some FIU player’s head during the melee.

Expect at least three games when Meriwether re-enacts the opening scene from The Last Boy Scout, since shooting people while running an interception back seems to be the only reliable way Miami can score points on anyone this year.