We can’t stop listening to really ancient Metallica lately, which along with the punk streak has been wayyyy fun for TCOAN. (“Alternative Ulster” by Stiff Little Fingers, in particular, won’t stop looping through our heads.)

So in an effort to exorcise the demons, we name mid-career James Hetfield as our mustache of the day. Really, we’ll do anything to get “Seek and Destroy” and “Blackened” to leave our brains at this point.

Your hair grows fasterrrr….obey your MUSTACHE!!! MUSTACHE!!!

Willie Williams recruiting opus–hidden behind the chintzy pay wall of the Miami Herald, but not forgotten–doesn’t really have an equal. It’s like Con Air: you might have thought you saw a better movie, and then realized you had, and then remembered: oh, yeah, it’s because I just rewatched Con Air.

For sheer recruiting-corruption-in-a-single-quote power, though, we might have a new winner: Chris Rainey, a top Florida running back and Gator verbal commit who may have scotched his amateur status in a single clumsy excerpt from a Miami Herald article.

Chris Rainey, Lakeland’s star senior running back, told The Miami Herald he received sports jerseys and jewelry from a Lakeland clothing vendor in exchange for an autograph. He also said he received cash from an unknown elderly woman. (HT: Mike, AUAlum, Chris, Elkon, and the fifteen other people who saw this before we did.)

”I didn’t even count it,” Rainey said in a story published Tuesday. ‘When I walk around, people are buying me food, giving me money. I’m like, `Damn, I’m glad I’m Chris Rainey. It’s real nice to be me.’ ”

We’d only contest one fact about the story: Rainey sounds like he’s saying “dang,” a la Joe Dirt, not damn.

Dang, indeed.

What the article leaves out that’s included in the audio is even better. After Rainey says this, the reporter says, “That’s awesome,” and eggs on Rainey to tell him more about the benefits of being a Lakeland High School football player. Dang, it’s good to be a reporter when a clueless high school kid stumbles face first into the wood-chipper of his corrupt football program. Listen to the audio for the full effect. Dang.

We update you on the ongoing oddsmaking going on in Vegas re: the Alabama Crimson Tide coaching job.

1. Rich Rodriguez: 5-1

2. Mike Leach: 14-1

3. Paul Johnson: 8-1 (more…)

In case you missed it, Ian–formerly of Sexy Results! and the funniest Wahoo-lovin’, Pitchfork-lovin’-but-somehow-not-pretentious blogger out there–has been doing hisself proud over on the Fanhouse. We’re particularly impressed at his coverage of the Al Groh Body Count. Ian makes the compelling case that while winning a game against Al Groh may not benefit your career, losing a game would kill its ass dead in 2006.

In an only slightly related note, we remind you that Al Groh’s favorite band is Foreigner, according to Kirk Herbstreit during a broadcast of the UVA/UNC game this year. That anyone ever bought a Foreigner album is funny; that four million droning souls forked out ducats for their debut–cleverly titled Foreigner–is beyond laughter, and proof that a zombie invasion of the United States might not be detectable even if it happened.

Anyway, imagining Al Groh rocking out to Foreigner should keep you warm and snug in the wintry cold for the rest of the day. Especially if you picture him fist pumping and falsetto-in along with “URGENT…urgenturgenturgent….E–merrrgenceeeee”

Bonus question: what senator wrote the “Saxophone Extermination Act” of 1990? At one point, the saxophone didn’t raise eyebrows as a standard piece of a rock/pop band. Now it would merit as much special mention as including an accordion player, or fielding a crack glockenspiel player as part of your lineup. Not that we miss it; we’re still mourning the loss of the Burt Bacharach trumpet solo as an acceptable musical interlude.

Delayed but hot off the Hipcast: Michael Lewis, author of The Blind Side, in part two of the EDSBS interview. We discuss how the Orgeron is a bit like Shakespeare, The Importance of Being Mike Leach, and other fascinating topics.

You may read/listen to part one here. Or you can buy The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game on Amazon, which would correlate the strength of viral marketing via brokeass blogger interviews and increased booksales. Which would be nice.

MP3 File

OS: Ed Orgeron is in the book, and he’s a very large presence both literally and figuratively. What’s it like being in the room doing an interview with someone whose dialogue is so colorful you have to write it in upper-case letters.

ML: (Laughs.) Well, I’m from Lousiana, and spent a lot of my youth in coonass country–in the bayous–duck hunting. And so I understand him, though it takes a while. Listening to him…he puts on a bit of a show being interviewed on the way to the lockerroom during games. He can speak in a way that’s a little more understandable. When you come at him fresh…I don’t know if you’ve ever been to see an English actor do Shakespeare, but it takes a little while before your ear gets acclimated and you can understand what the actors are saying.

Like Shakespeare…but scarier.

OS: About 9 minutes, I know what you’re saying.

ML: That’s the way he is. The problem is he doesn’t talk for 9 minutes–he talks for two, or maybe thirty seconds. You never get acclimated unless you know what you’re listening for.

I actually find him delightful. I really like him. And I thought he’s basically an honest character, straight. Now, if you ask me if I were running a football program, would I hire him as a head coach? Probably–in fact, he’d probably be fine at it.

But what he really is is potentially a great defensive coach. I would take the offense away and put it in the hands of someone completely different. His mind is not an offensive mind.

And I don’t think they’ve done that properly there. They have had offensive coordinators, but they don’t have the right guy. He’s either not independent or strong willed to say with is a separate operation that the coach has nothing to do with. That’s what they need to do there, I think.

OS: Speaking of coaches with one little concern for one side of the ball…this brings us to Mike Leach, another one of your subjects you’ve profiled.

That article–in case you don’t know–has circulated its way around the college football blogosphere and become part of the vernacular.

ML: Is it?

OS: It is. It’s very common for us to post something about Mike Leach and someone will post “YARR” because of his fascination with pirates.

ML: You know what’s funny about that? When you turn on their games now, you see all these students dressed up as pirates. I thought this might be my greatest achievement as a writer. He might singlehandedly end up changing the mascot of the university. And one day when you turn on the Red Raiders, there’s going to be a pirate on the back of that horse when the Red Raider comes out before the game.

But I didn’t realize that the article had gone around the blog like that.

OS: There’s actually a student section in Lubbock that refers to themselves as “Mike Leach’s Pirate School.” The eyepatches, the plastic swords…without knowing it, you helped to popularize the phenomenon.

Interviewing him…is he really just…that out there in real life?

ML: Look–if you were interviewing him, and it would take you a while to appreciate it, it’s not like he shows up to work naked. It’s not that.

OS: Are you sure about that?

ML: Yes, I’m sure about that. (more…)