Welcome to the Factor Six Preview, where we quickly preview games using six completely essential factors for victory:

1. Mascot
2. Head coach.
3. Team name.
4. General aura.
5. Best roster name.
6. The “Factor Six” factor. (Whatever the hell we care to throw in in the way of cultural add-ons, etc.) We could have called this the “Six Factor” preview, but it sounds so much more tuff and Tom Clancy-like the other way, like some sort of shadowy counterintelligence ops thing that uses a modeling agency as cover.

UCLA AT NOTRE DAME:

1. Mascot: UCLA. We are forced by the limits of the English language to select UCLA’s mascot over Notre Dame’ since the Irish fight for the glory of not an actual Irishman, but instead leap and cheer at the behest of someone dressed like a leprechaun. Having met a few verifiable Irishman, we can say that Irish people wear nothing of this sort. In fact, when the phrase Irish is mentioned, we tend to thing of…well, a different and very unfair outfit altogether.

UCLA in contrast, just has a bear who has a wife. Unsure on how plausible bear matrimony is, but we’re definitely sure it’s closer than Notre Dame’s Irish/leprechaun mascot dilemma.

They are bears. Bears with shirts on, yes, but still bears.

UCLA, you’ve been Factor’d!

2. Head Coach: Charlie Weis. Karl Dorrell is in many senses the anti-Weis; thin, black, and given a chance to be a head coach long ahead of his time. In opposition, Charlie had to slog along for years beneath the glowering eyes of Bill Parcells and Bill Bellichick, men whose employees have their empathy glands surgically removed upon employment. For someone whose undergone this operation, Charlie’s doing a magnificent job of relating to coddled star athletes between the ages of 18-22, though he could have gotten a new one south of the border for no more than 6 large. At least that’s what we hear from the organ salesman we know Uncle Rich.

Notre Dame, you’ve been Factor’d!

3. Team Name: Notre Dame. Inaccurately rendered as they might be, the Fighting Irish are still something people can recognize. Unless they’re big fans of archaic poetical terms, no one knows what in the hell a Bruin actually is, and worse still it’s hard not to see the fact that “you can’t spell Bruin without ‘ruin.’” Next time, just spare your rival the trouble and throw yourself on the grenade first rather than wait for them to pounce on this irresistable piece of rhetorical ammo.

Notre Dame, you’ve been Factor’d!.

4. General Aura: Notre Dame. Touchdown Jesus meets Fatburger. UCLA’s real downfall: Hugh Johnson is wandering somewhere around that campus. And that is what we call “Aura Syphilis.”

Notre Dame, you’ve been Factor’d!

Bringing down the whammy with Hugh.

5. Best Roster Name: UCLA. Sing along with the theme song of the baddest Serbo-Croatian crimefighter around:

Who fought against the Russians
And made them all feel sick?
Who saved the nation of Hungary
With duck tape, four bucks and his dick?

Please God, don’t let it come to this.

Factor Six Preview Result: Notre Dame. We are forced to pick the Irish here with one provision: they must choose the boxing match overtime shootout, since video evidence has led our experts to believe that the Irish would be at an extreme disadvantage in any dance competition.

Welcome to the Factor Six Preview, where we quickly preview games using six completely essential factors for victory:

1. Mascot
2. Head coach.
3. Team name.
4. General aura.
5. Best roster name.
6. The “Factor Six” factor. (Whatever the hell we care to throw in in the way of cultural add-ons, etc.) We could have called this the “Six Factor” preview, but it sounds so much more tuff and Tom Clancy-like the other way, like some sort of shadowy counterintelligence ops thing that uses a modeling agency as cover.

Texas vs. Nebraska:

1. Mascot: Texas.

Longhorns: majestic, beloved steer with mondo set of horns and, like successful rapper, his own posse.

Cornhuskers: inflatable ghoul capable of walking on its hands with fixed glaze in his eyes and whimsically Satanic grin.

AIIIIGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!

Advantage: TEXAS TEXAS TEXAS MY GOD GET THAT MUTANT BABY AWAY FROM US TEXAS. We mean this with all sincerity: if we ever see Big Red in person we will run screaming from him with both hands waving in the air. He just plain frightens the living shit out of us: the stilted, freeze-frame gait that makes him resemble the dead girl from The Ring, the maniacal glare of his gaze, the..(shudder)…tiny hands. Fellini in Hell couldn’t have invented anything more disturbing. ***Stranko’s 2 Cents… kind of reminds me of the King*** 

Texas, you’ve been Factor’d!

2. Head Coach: Mack Brown. Mack Brown lost weight over the offseason despite undoubtedly having to chow down heaps of barbeque on the recruiting trail that would kill a lesser man. (Or swell him to Manginoish proportions.) Lowcarbalicious living might explain the drop, but that still means Mack’s passing on the buttered Texas toast and bread, which still deserves serious points, because that shit is gooooood.

Texas, you’ve been Factor’d!

3. Team Name: Nebraska. Longhorns are a striking enough image, but there’s not enough team names that celebrate obsolete jobs that now are performed by machines, unless your local community college team is still called the “Telegraph Operators.” Nor do enough teams choose vocational names; we would go ahead and recommend a name change for Miami to “the Auditors.” The intimidation factor alone might scare whole teams off the field.

Nebraska, you’ve been Factor’d!.

Every team needs a badass accountant.i

4. General Aura: Texas. We requote to drive the point about Texas football home:

Heustess writes about meeting two “undercover” lesbians. “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.’ “

Yes, it’s in Lincoln. But we haven’t been able to unhinge the word ‘Texas’ from “big beers and even bigger boobs.’ And neither will you after reading this. You’re welcome.

Texas, you’ve been Factor’d!

5. Best Roster Name: Nebraska. Bo Ruud. This name was taken from a Patrick Swayze character. And if it wasn’t, it should have been.

Nebraska, you’ve been Factor’d!

The Factor Six Factor Six: Texas. Boobs and Beer. Advantage: Longhorns.

Factor Six Preview Result: Texas. The intangibles favor the Longhorns, whose boobs, beer, and boobs will power them to victory over the spastic nuclear-plant baby-worshipping Cornhuskers.

Yes, we watch Project Runway…and them, too.

Welcome to the Factor Six Preview, where we quickly preview games using six completely essential factors for victory:

1. Mascot

2. Head coach.

3. Team name.

4. General aura.

5. Best roster name.

6. The “Factor Six” factor. (Whatever the hell we care to throw in in the way of cultural add-ons, etc.) We could have called this the “Six Factor” preview, but it sounds so much more tuff and Tom Clancy-like the other way, like some sort of shadowy counterintelligence ops thing that uses a modeling agency as cover.

Alabama vs. Tennessee:

1. Mascot: Tennessee, though it’s a close fight here since both teams suffer from profligate mascot adoption. (We’ve got a dog! And some type of woodsman! And an elephant! And a…color-coded concept? Sure!) Smokey is a bluetick hound, though, and its breed description wins this contest easily. To wit:

The Bluetick has a fearless and warrior-like approach to the hunt. This breed may drool or slobber.

Fan/mascot similarity rating: 110%. Winnah!

This is pretty similar to what we imagine most Tennessee fans do on weekends: run around the woods naked and braying at animals.

Tennessee, you’ve been Factor’d!

2. Head Coach: Mike Shula, since he’s totally stoked about his jet-ski. See, there’s all this static he keeps hearing about his job, but man, that’s just how haters keep you down. It’s just football, jeez. He’s been in Tampa man, and that is the big time. This gig’s just what he’s doing Just head out to the lake, man, because being by the water, it just humbles you, man. Especially when you’re ripping across the waves at forty miles an hour, man, yeah! His dad, by the way, owns a steakhouse. And he will totally hook you up, man.

Alabama, you’ve been Factor’d!

3. Team Name: the Crimson Tide. As noble as the origins of Tennessee’s team name may be, it’s eclipsed by the anachronism that is the name “Crimson Tide.” Eschew the historical, and think about what it sounds like: a wave of unavoidable bloody rage headed your way, powered by the very movement of the solar system. With Tennessee, all their name signifies is a blanket willingness to do…something. (Insert joke about Tennessee women and loose virtue here.)

Alabama, you’ve been Factor’d!.

4. General Aura: Tennessee. Only Vol fans risk the multiple dangers of water transit to travel to the games of their beloved games, which take place in a huge white bowl situated between some ominous-looking hills at the bend of a river. Really: while you only risk crashing and burning to death to get to games, Vol fans throw drowning and being devoured by snapping turtles into the mix. Fiesta! If ever there were a college football Mordor, it would be Neyland Stadium, which at its worst and loudest does seem to be populated by Orcs made of mud and evil. Bryant-Denny, while very, very loud, does not have the same overcast pallor of doom surrounding it.

Tennessee, you’ve been Factor’d!

Neyland: Abandon all hope.

5. Best Roster Name: Tennessee. Chalk a third accomplishment up for the state of Tennessee, since they’ve given the world:

1. The Scopes Monkey Trial.
2. Salt-water taffy.
3. Jim Bob Cooter.

Tennessee, you’ve been Factor’d!

The Factor Six Factor Six: Tennessee. Their fans do not have Brodie Bama Bangs. +5, Tennessee.

Factor Six Preview Result: Tennessee. We’re queasy just typing that, but it’s science, and science is never pretty. Just look at this picture of Norbert Wiener for proof of that.

You’d want to invent cybernetics if you looked like that, too.

***WARNING! Project Runway spoiler-type information included. If you have no idea what we’re talking about here…well, it’s a show that both straight and gay men watch. And we’re not gay! Not that there’s anything wrong with that.–ed.

Highlight for spoilers: In honor of grumpy ex-junkie Jeffrey, who won Project Runway (watching this does not make us gay! We swear!) we have this morning’s Blogtoberfest, which will be wearing a stunning handbeaded evening gown with a plunging neckline. And a football helmet.

–Kanu decides to encode Phil Steele’s diaries into Steele-speak. The results are grand cru stuff for the initiated and addicted, which we know you are.

–Urban Meyer continues to pour haterade on the new clock rules. Florida only had three possessions in the first half of the game against Auburn, which might have been a different story if Florida’s d had figured out Al Borges mysterious “throw to the flats every down” sloth offense.

–Speaking of Auburn, they’ll happily pay the $5,000 fine for piping in what the SEC has warned is “excessive” noise in the form of a lame cat growl and the not so lame “Welcome to the Jungle,” which despite being nearly twenty years old still makes us want to burn the curtains. The next infraction would elicit a fine, which again, they would likely play by passing a hat around the stadium every game and then submitting in cash.

On this note, let me be the first to suggest Florida’s counterattack: sonic weaponry. Imagine the convenience of a concealed sonic weapon, undetectable amongst the thicket of cameras and microphones on the sidelines, sending pain-inducing waves of agony into the head of the opposing quarterback. If it’s good enough to disperse bloodthirsty Somali pirates, it’ll decimate Matthew Stafford.

Or you could just play Nickelback’s “Someday,” whose effects on massed crowds is similar to the brown note’s reputed powers.

We’ll show you noise pollution, Mike Slive!

–While the whole world is putting thumbtacks in Lamar Thomas’ cereal: The Wiz has a great, lost anecdote from the ‘Canes glory days. Apparently, even Gino Toretta thought Thomas was a shitbag.

–Bruins Nation may have caught Karl Dorrell in a lie. The solution to this is to fire him immediately.

–Peter’s got jitters about the Longhorns’ road trip to Lincoln. You know a team is rolling through its institutional salad days when they talk about getting nervous over a game where they might only win by ten points on the road.

–Lewis Grizzard would have been sixty today. Kyle King has a better, more personal memoir of how much anyone who read him misses him, but we still miss him, even if he was the faux-redneck, Izod-wearing, golf-playing, soft-boy we suspect all Georgia fans of secretly being.

Anyone who reads My Daddy Was A Pistol And I’m A Son of a Gun will find themselves thrown an artfully constructed curve ball; what starts as a standard short book of humor quickly morphs into one of the most brutal, scathing depictions of dysfunctional fatherhood/sonhood you’ll ever read. It’s Turgenev in boat shoes, and hits harder. It’s one of two books we cannot reread because it just hurts too much to think about doing again.

Lewis, R.I.P. Between you, Flannery O’Connor, and P.J. O’Rourke, we wouldn’t know what good was.

Lewis. We still miss him, even if he hated our team.