The latest in the folderol race to establish who’s going to be coach and who won’t where:

A strange flight from Tempe to Pyongyang? Rumors of the baddest man between the Yalu River and the 38th parallel–or at least the roneriest man jacked up on cognac and uppers between the two–coming to Tempe to beef up the perpetually sanctioned Arizona State defense?

Per flightpath traffic records yesterday, a most curious flight left Tempe yesterday.

Only one coaching prospect lives in the downtown Pyongyang area: Kim Jong-Il, a leader noted for his defense and ability to leave supporters starving for more. As odd as the idea may seem to outsiders, NFL and college insiders say the Dear Leader has long been on the wish lists of both ADs and NFL owners for a head slot.

“We almost had him back in ‘86,” said Raiders owner Al Davis from his home on Tuesday. “Everyone says he’s all defense, but let me tell you this: (more…)

We like the top ten, at least. The rest, as usual, is a sad mess.

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

Notes, Clarifications, and Mistakes We Made. Again.

–The hardest thing about hybrid polling–where you blend the results of matchups in the HYPOTHETICAL DEATH THEATER in your head plus a vague notion of a team’s absolute value at that point in the year–is settling on which factor to lean on for moving a team up or down.

Keeping USC at three instead of four makes the brain quake a little after watching Notre Dame blasted into teeny pieces by a team clearly intent on giving them a 10 point handicap. (The sign of a true predator: toying with its prey cruelly! The comment brought to you by David Attenborough.)

Playing with your food–something David Attenborough would approve of. Seen here vacationing with Ed Orgeron.

But yet…without a head to head or conference foes, we have to go on absolute valuation and their one shared opponent. (more…)

Bring out the EDSBS wagering stick, ’cause we’re a-swingin’: the next football coach at Alabama will be Rich Rodriguez, a blind guess made after hours of talking with people who know slightly more about ‘Bama football than we do as well as a few trips down the rabbit hole of Alabama/South Carolina/West Virginia/National Security Agency message boards. (If you’ve never been there, they’re great; the cryptography department’s recipe boards are to die for, especially their pastry suggestions.)

It’s Rodriguez by triangulation, which means you prove it’s him more by saying why it’s not going to be everyone else. The rationale, laid out in just as shaky a fashion as everyone else’s:

Hey! There’s a limb! Let’s walk out on it.

1. Spurrier said he’s not taking the job. Therefore, he’s not taking the job. He’s only left one job abruptly, and is generally a pretty ethical and fair guy. (And when boy tyrant Daniel Snyder is that guy, you’re looking for any excuse to gnaw your arm off, slip the million dollar chains, and skedaddle–which Spurrier did.) It’s a matter of public record, and he’d be caught in a lie, which doesn’t jibe with his past track record.

2. Saban’s not a failure as a head coach. His team is marginally in the playoff hunt, he’s being paid five jillion dollars a year–which Alabama could not match without scandalous spending–and Saban won’t leave until he’s fired. And don’t proffer the “college is easier and the pros are burning him out” argument; Saban’s happiest when he’s drinking a glass of his assistants’ tears in a four a.m. film breakdown session before grabbing a catnap and then reducing 300 lb. men to more tears.

3. Paul Johnson has a lingering steroid issue, which will keep him off Alabama’s list. (Though a wag would suggest that a faint whiff of scandal would attract Bama boosters.)

4. Jim Grobe is avowedely not interested, and would in truth have lifetime job security at Wake. Plus: he’s approaching geezerhood, something which might cloud ten-year contract negotiations. Alabama’s looking for stability, as evidenced by their clinging to the worst NFL offensive coordinator we’ve ever seen for four years.

5. Rodriguez has something like a million dollar buyout. He’s never going to have a higher stock than he has right now, barring an undefeated season in the near future, and that’s fool’s betting.
He’s young, he’s in a smallish market, and has succeeded at each stop he’s made in the Takeshi’s Castle obstacle course of a coaching career. The money he makes as one of the most ill-paid coaches in the Big East would be at least doubled by Alabama, a financial deal he may not be able to refuse. The only rumored sticking point in negotiations is keeping Joe Kines as DC, and he may be headed to Texas, anyway.

He has not disavowed the job, either: he’s said that Alabama has not contacted him, which may be superficially true. (Then again, a lawyer or the search agency or a booster may have, which is legalistically different, right?)

He’s the only public candidate whose all thumbs up in the resume department who has not publically said that he isn’t leaving his current job. Therefore: Rodriguez announces on Sunday after the Rutgers game and becomes the next coach at Alabama.

QEDMF! We’re sure this will look great when Alabama announces the hiring of John L. Smith as their new head coach after everyone else bugs out, thus setting the stage for mass suicides by the Crimson Tide faithful as they slap themselves to death.

After busting out most of the weekend in review yesterday, we do have some real life things to tend to today. However, please accept the opening salvo of Houston Nutt tribute, brought to us by the one and only Mr. Two Cents, who we legitimately believe is one of the most ruthless and brilliant graphic artists alive today.

Find more of this brilliance on The Return of Houston Nutt Fark thread, where Mr. Two Cents goes off on a theme and doesn’t stop ’til the Dexedrine runs out. Seriously, email us and we’ll buy you a shirt.

Gei ni kan kan:

Don’t touch his ears.

(more…)

The latest dubious, hold-at-arms-length-with-tongs Bama rumor: Rodgriguez goes to Tuscaloosa. As in most rumors, the deal’s done, the patsies have been iced, and your shadowy, conspiracy-ridden worldview has been confirmed. If you have a headache, it’s just a chip in your head. Might want to get that looked at.

Brian’s all over it, too, though cautiously so.

No one’s sourcing shit, so as usual, caveat gossiptor.

Bama’s spokesman had no comment.

Words fail, but images don’t: Reggie Nelson, concussion farmer, working the fields in savage fashion on Saturday against Florida State. If you’ll listen, Urban Meyer almost sounds awake with excitement.

(In case you ever decide to watch the Urban Meyer postgame show, don’t. It’s like one long Lunesta ad interspersed with sudden images of unspeakable violence, since Meyer’s monotone delivery makes the Phil Fulmer Show sound electric in comparison. The nightmares you get by watching it aren’t worth it.)

You can run on for a long time…

Via Huskerboard, we have the coaching neologism of the day thanks to the feverish speculation surrounding every single coaching position in the known universe today: Bogasm.

We’re going ahead and predicting the life expectancy of this term to be exactly 2.35 seconds.

(HT: Rudy. No, not that one. He charges too much.)

The finest haul of internet linkage you’ll ever see. On this website. Today. Yarr.

–USC’s Rudy gets into the game! And meanwhile, Notre Dame’s Rudy speaks to the Paramus, New Jersey Realtors’ convention at 11:00 before a 1:00 unscheduled call in to WFAN, where he will announce himself as “Rudy of Rudy fame.”

Rudy of Rudy fame would be Rudy happy to Rudy speak at your event or Rudy party.

–Your latest unsubstantiated Alabama coaching rumor: Frank Beamer. Are Alabama fans ready for the power of Jenkins? We think not.

–Mike Leach is our favorite speciously rumored replacement for Larry Coker at Miami. (more…)

Georgia/Georgia Tech had a lot of interesting moments, but like spectators on the highway, the attention tends to focus on the obvious disasters. Like Reggie Ball playing the University of Georgia at quarterback, a role of such abject misery and incompetence as to paralyze any conventional comparisons we’d care to make. For the past four years, him under center against UGA has been like looking at the fresh wreckage of a car crash for four hours straight and waiting for the gas tank to go off in a ball of flame and sizzled flesh.

Reggie Ball: set to go off at any instant.

For four years running, it went off with unreal frequency and regularity. Which means we’ve got to dig into the Douglas Adams archives to find just the right blend of unreal bad luck, shoddy execution, and futile self-mutilating rage to capture the career of Reggie Ball properly. (Warning: two minutes of internet research required. Gird that attention span, ADDers!)

First, the numbers: For his career against UGA, Ball went 45-104 with one touchdown and five interceptions. He was sacked at least six times, and tackled for losses on hopeless scrambles on innumerable occasions. He also lost four fumbles, including Tony Taylor’s squirrel/nut run giving UGA their first score in 2006 and signalling the beginning of the final catastrophe.

Worse than the number was the timing of Ball’s mistakes:

–2003: knocked out with concussion caused by running into own teammate.

–2004: throws ball away on 4th down on potential game-winning drive.

–2005: throws game-ending interception five yards shy of tying td.

–2006: loses crucial fumble for score AND throws game ending pick into triple coverage on final drive with over a minute left on clock.

Ball was a master–in fact, he got worse with each game he played against Georgia. The more the pressure mounted, the more success Ball enjoyed as a starter, the worse he played against the Bulldogs. He came back stronger each time, and yet could not stop improving on his masterwork of disaster. In fact, his senior year capped his artistry: not only did he lose a game-killing fumble, he also tossed his signature game-losing pick, a Matisse of malicious fortune and bad execution made worse with a 6 for 22 performance killing any potential of consistent passing offense.

The simile: Reggie Ball : Georgia as Agrajag : Arthur Dent. The story:

Agrajag is a piteous creature that is continually reincarnated and subsequently killed unknowingly by Arthur Dent each time. Agrajag first appears in the series as a falling bowl of petunias (although, if the books are read in sequence, the reader doesn’t know it at the time). In another incarnation, he was a prehistoric rabbit who was killed by Arthur for breakfast and whose skin was fashioned into a pouch, which is then used to swat a fly who happened to be Agrajag. In yet another, he dies of a heart attack after seeing Arthur and Ford materialize, seated on a Chesterfield sofa, in the midst of a cricket match at Lord’s Cricket Ground.

If there’s any harmony in this universe, Reggie Ball will end up in his next life as a pot of petunias, which will be dropped from a windowsill by an offspring of Paul Oliver.

Reggie, seen here in his next life plotting his soon-to-be-thwarted revenge.

Part three of an epic couch-straining weekend of football. We almost died from pleasure. Or gout. Both, actually. Samuel Johnson would have been proud.

Saturday

–We wrote the words “low wattage” in association with this game last week. A noon kickoff confirmed that for us, a suspicion only increasing as Florida swatted its way through a thicket of false start penalties to hop to a 14-0 lead over a Seminole team still captained by half a coaching staff and an old guy wandering around with an old hat on, wary of the EBay that had scuttled his son’s career earlier that month.

–Part of that 14-0 run included a play cribbed straight from Houston Nutt’s playbook, a quarterback draw with Percy Harvin under center. If you have not seen Percy Harvin play, it is likely because your eye can’t register his movements. A good way to do this is get a fast-motion camera that slows him down enough to see his legs, which are available through fine photgraphy wholesale shops. If you want to attract him, put out trays full of a solution made of 3 parts water to two parts sugar–it’s the only fuel that can sustain him calorically. Harvin flew out of the blocks and into the FSU secondary, running past fellow blue-chipper Myron Rolle, who apparently hates Harvin’s ass for one reason or another.

Harvin: visible with the right technology. Loves sugar water.

–It was nifty and fleeting revenge, since Harvin got accordioned between two FSU defenders on a hit and left the game on a backboard. (more…)