But now it’s time to announce the winner of this year’s Best Regular Feature Award, a.k.a. the “Bran Muffin,” in honor of the regular, powerful, on schedule mental colon cleanser you look forward to as a reader.
First, the nominees:
Best Regular Feature
FOR: The best recurring feature of the year.
CRITERIA: The feature should be posted weekly and be generally good and stuff.
Deadspin correspondent A.J. Daulerio’s fungal growth, which we wouldn’t touch with a pair of titanium claws manipulated behind several feet of lead plating. That thing should come with a biohazard sign on it.
A kid in our middle school was once paddled by the gym teacher for telling him to “fuck off, drunk-o.” The statement was factually accurate, of course; our middle school gym teacher really was a drop-dead alcoholic on the Nicholas Cage, Leaving Las Vegas-style scale, and succeeded in drinking himself into an early grave. If alcoholism were the Boston Marathon, he would be the Paul Tergat of his generation. There simply were no equals.
Our coach, who could finish a case of beer in the time it took Paul Tergat to run 26.2 miles. Both champions.
Anyway, coach was fun–the evil kind of fun. He had a great speech he rolled off about three times a semester whenever we became dissrespektfool. It went as follows:
“Gettin’ jacked up is surrious. I jack my kids up. I jack my wife up. I jack my dog up. And I will…not…hesitate…to jack you up.”
So after the coach had replaced his testicles (more…)
ProFootballTalk has produced some of the most specious, unfounded gossip you’ll ever hear anywhere. They also have a clip of Nick Saban saying the following on tape, but have bleeped the profanity for reasons we can’t possibly explain. Who doesn’t want to hear Nick “Window Treatments” Saban rolling in the profanity pit as we know he really does? You don’t make grown men who play offensive line weep with goshdarnits, after all.
They have the audio here, but the dialogue reads as well as it sounds:
“My friends are okay with it. The rest of those guys? One of my, one of my guy on the board — you guys won’t be able to put this on the thing — was walking down the street, one of the Board of Trustees guys like these people around here and sitting up on the stage today at LSU, is walking down the street yesterday before the Sugar Bowl. He calls me. There’s a guy working in a ditch. One of those coon-ass guys that talk funny. I can’t talk like him but he can. Most people in Louisiana can. And he says, ‘Hey, you see where Coach Saban signed up with Alabama?’ You know however they talk. And the Board of Trustees guy says, ‘Yeah, I saw that.’ And he says, ‘That son of a bitch. I feel like he’s f–king my wife.’”
Coonass seems to be acceptable usage here as long as you’ve actually logged some time in Louisiana, but expect no serious flak from this. Expect some masterful signs from Auburn fans referencing this one. In fact, please accept our humble submission done with the magic of Microsoft Paint. Should Auburn win the Iron Bowl again in 2007, we beg Tiger fans to use it.
Kind of makes ‘fear the thumb’ take on lascivious meanings you hadn’t considered before.
The Dr. Z Award for Analytical Prowess:MGoBlog. One half of his brain is figuring out his acceptance speech. The other is applying string theory to an analysis of Mike Debord’s deceptively simple offense.
The Best Mainstream Blog Award:Dan Steinberg, for his DC Sports Bog at the Washington Post. Dan Steinberg once answered the phone and, after finding out who it was, still shot the shit with us for 20 minutes or so. That deserves an award all by itself.
And now our belated turn at the podium. I wonder what Deng Xiaoping is thinking right now….
Without further adieu:
The Jenn Sterger’s Rack Award.
First, the nominees:
The Jenn Sterger’s Rack Award
FOR: The best photoshop or other gag of the year.
CRITERIA: Could be a photoshop, a Motivational Poster, an On Notice Board, a fictional post, or something similar, as long as it elicited more than a mere smile.
Sunday Morning Quarterback responds to our Monday piece on recruiting, and of course does so in a cogent, intelligent manner. This of course means we understand none of it. Jos keeeding!
Ees good stuff, Tina Fey. Just look:
Still, athletes aren’t bound to go to college, and have the same option as any potential student: enter school, or enter the marketplace. NFL rules - probably wisely, though the sports’ inherent physicality ensures the “problem” is not on the same scale as the NBA’s - prohibit athletes from coming straight from high school, but there is no general rule prohibiting a player from entering another pro league in the meantime, or, if the exploitation were great enough, for many players to form a three-year developmental league that would serve the same purpose, in terms of the ultimate goal of signing an NFL contract, as college.
A very, very good point, though it may be cruel in the long run to insist on foisting the NFL Europe any longer than is absolutely necessary. (Think of Barcelona and those poor dragons. Those poor, poor dragons.) Athletes are free to enter the market. The Arena League in particular seems positioned to fill this role as a developmental league. Those non-academic qualifiers Michael Lewis and we opine over? Why couldn’t they try out for the Tampa Bay Storm or the local padded wall scorefestmeisters of their choice?
The original point of our post still remains though: we’re trying to explain why recruiting is creepy, not necessarily fix it. Really poor kids with few financial options are being approached by large financial entities offering them opportunity they aren’t prepared to fully exploit. In addition to this, they receive compensation grossly inequal to the work they put in as semi-pros. SMQ’s going to have some numbers, which we’re waiting with scalpel in hand for–warning, impending math use by liberal arts majors!!!–and we can’t wait to see it.
Sopressata for the sorrow-filled college football fan: Blogtoberfest.
Tree-huggers. Literally. Berkeley falls deliciously into its own pit of stereotype when the construction of Cal’s new athletic center and renovation of Memorial Stadium grinds to a halt thanks to…tree-huggers. SMQ suspects Stanford’s involvement, while Bruins Nation sees a Dorrell angle on the whole thing.
Oh. So. Sexy. Per.Fect For. Me. Treehuggers drag California stereotypes back a decade. (Photo: Lee Suzuki, San Francisco Chronicle.)
Well, if you ask sir. The police usually oblige the requests of inebriated citizens, as former Oklahoma star Charles Thompson found out this week. Thompson, quarterback of Oklahoma’s wishbonetastic 1987 team, pulled a Juvenile act this week in his arrest for public drunkenness. This means that he did precisely what rapper Juvenile once famously requested in a Miami club, actually a far funnier story than Thompson’s frankly boring request to “take me to jail.”
According a police report, several off-duty police officers were trying to break up a number of skirmishes just outside the Club Improv. The fighting apparently began when Juvenile got into an argument with twenty-eight-year-old Jackson Saint Ange inside the club. Upon leaving the venue, the rapper allegedly struck Saint Ange with a bottle of Moet…The report claims that upon the arrival of the officers, Juvenile grabbed Miami Police Sgt. Timothy Fell yelling, “Take me to jail. Take my motherfuckin’ ass to jail.” Another officer pulled him off of Fell and Juvenile fled, but was quickly apprehended.
Student, meet teacher. Class begins at double margarita hour at the Chili’s of your choosing.
We will give you whatever you want, just put Crystal Gayle down, Ed. Ed Orgeron (a.k.a. Vigo the Destroyer, Memnoch the Unholy, Murderface, the Horror of Yg, Coach D-B’O, The Old One, and Solomon Grundy) earns a contract extension with a 4-8 season, something we can only guess occurred via Ed Orgeron holding something Ole Miss holds dear for ransom. A list of possible victims follows:
–Crystal Gayle.
–The skull of William Faulkner
–Binkley Weatherford, the immortal magical talking catfish who’s secretly ruled Mississippi for decades.
–Ole Miss coaching legend Jon Vaught’s lucky penis guard.
Cough up the contract extension or the penis guard gets it.
The Orgeron’s contract carries him through to 2010, when he is schedule to take a sabbatical to Jupiter to kick some pretentious monolith’s ass.
Oh, and Rich Brooks, who got lowly Kentucky to the exact opposite record of 8-4 and a solid bowl trashing of Clemson? He gets a raise to a mil a year after most rational people had him sold to the glue farm of coaching. Would that we all receive such generous boosts to our packages.
Don’t dick around when talking shit about another team’s fans. I like using words and phrases like, “assholes,” “bastards” and “sons-of-bitches.”
We believe this to just be a starting point for a whole digression on proper usage of abusive, colorful, and profane verbiage to properly describe the opposition. Too often fans lean on the simple cromag insults worn thin by overuse: Gaytors, Bammers, Barners, Corndog-aroma’d LSU fans…there’s just no space for this in a tight rhetorical race between fanbases.
There should be some kind of initiative surrounding this kind of work. And six-figure NEA grants. To buy hot tubs. For important grantees and their “committee members.” If you’re thinking this is all part of some grand plot to get federal money to subsidize the EDSBS Fortress of Snarkitude del Sud in Costa Rica, where we would definitely not blow taxpayer dollars on vodka faucets, dirt bikes, and a giant statue of Jack Youngblood…well, shame on you sir/madam.
Because we’re totally willing to compromise on the statue. The rest is necessary for our work.
A completely worthy investment of taxpayer money, in our opinion.
Brian Jones hates college football.According to the CSTV columnist, he believes there aren’t enough minority coaches or ADs. Huzzah–as an industry whose labor force skews heavily toward black athletes and has done so for over thirty years now, this is an easy if not remarkable call. Then, he pulls his human mask off and reveals his true, football-hating reptilian visage:
Games were on average about 15 minutes shorter than 2005, with fewer plays and fewer points scored, and, looking back, I had no problem with last year’s rule changes affecting the clock.
Everybody was complaining about it all year long, but I was thinking, “You’re crazy.”
And then everyone just looked at me, like I was crazy. And here we are a year later, and nothing collapsed, which justifies my lack of a problem with the rules, my awesomeness, and my keen insight. It was like the time the Challenger blew up, and I’m thinking, like, “Yeah, but they’ll keep flying ‘em,” or that other time I told my friend Toby that McRib would come back even though they called it “The McRib Farewell Tour.” And just like that, last week, whaddya see on the menu? The fucking McRib. Take that Toby, you little mincing biatch.
Well, we’re hung like…um, a human? Doug’s leaping on the latest internet meme: saying five nice things about yourself, which in Doug’s case includes positive comments about the size of his genitals. Bully for Doug. Our own short–um, that is, perfectly average-sized list of five positive things we can honestly say about ourself follows.
1. We dance with great enthusiasm. Note: no mention of skill.
2. We type very quickly.
3. On command, can consume horrifying amounts of beer without getting drunk. This is a positive, right? We bat well above our body weight in beer drinking, which to be honest is so effortless it’s gotten too expensive to be worth it. Liquor, however is a whole other story, one that involves pepper spray, very poorly timed phone calls, and mysterious ATM withdrawals from ATMs in Dubai.
4. We’re unbeatable at NCAA 2007. Just unstoppable. To quote Hero: we have become the sword.
5. Dogs like us. All of them, and not just because we wear Armani’s Pancetta for Men.
Leave your own in the comments section if you like.
It’s Boise for two–Fulmer Cup points, that is, in the form of 2 DUI points for 19 year old Boise State Bronco Tristan Patin. Patin, a reserve defensive back, suffered from the bane of many a drunk driver: being stuck in a town with more than a few one way streets after a night of imbibing what was no doubt Idaho’s finest muscatelle wine. (HT: The Wiz.)
The car was traveling south on 5th, which is a one-way northbound street, according to police. Patin’s blood alcohol level was measured at 0.165 and 0.158 during a field test, according to police reports.
0.165 is good and drunk, for those of you not fond of using the in-bar breathalyzer to track your relative position on BAC Everest, which means that even if an athlete like Patin had given himself a modicum of sobering up before climbing in the car, he was likely good and hammered at one point in the evening. For someone living in Boise in January, we’d call this sober–a position the police don’t seem inclined to agree with, unfortunately.
Thus 2007 begins the same way 2006 ended for Boise: a two point score, a sure sign of their growing football influence and power, earning them a tie with West Virginia for the Fulmer Cup lead. They’re so good at two-pointers using misdirection, both those involving one-way streets or fantastic body language play fakes:
Today, our guest columnist is Slappy Traylor, ace recruitnik. You may recognize him from Slappy Traylor’s Recruiting Straight Shooting, his popular guide to college football recruiting, or from his work at a major network he no longer works for and would not like to talk about. Enjoy.
I’d like to introduce myself, ma’am, sir. I’m Slappy Traylor, and I’m here to eyeball your son. He’s thick. He’s long. He’s tough to catch from behind. And he penetrates with a spurt and power that, frankly, frightens even a hoary old asshole like myself. I want to write about him in my recruiting guide and make sure he makes the right decision on signing day, since I have something completely shocking to tell you. Please sit down.
Your son could be the next Curtis Enis…but faster. And yes, thicker.
Sit down if you have to–he could be the second coming of Curtis Enis.
I know, it’s a lot to take in, but bear with me. Let me say first, that I love your house. The drapes are to die for, ma’am. They wave in the wind like the rustle of money in the autumn breeze, something you seem to have more than a passing familiarity with, by the way. Just saying.
And you, sir? Your suit is of a cut so immaculate and fitted an army of tea-chugging Chinamen slaving over it for weeks couldn’t possibly craft such a fine piece of perfect career armor. In fact, people should pay you just for wearing it in public. Again, you must fart twenties and sneeze platinum snot rockets. Kudos to you for that.
I’ve been writing about college recruiting for…well, let’s just spare you the big math and say that it’s somewhere between one and a billion years. (more…)
The Onion had a great article on Bill Parcells’ this season summing up how many coaches actually seem. The headline read: “Bill Parcells: ‘I’ve Always Hated Football,’” and gave an in-depth and we have no doubt entirely accurate depiction of Parcells’ deep, unabiding hatred for the game he coached. He may deny it, but we’re sure Parcells is on tape somewhere uttering every word of the piece.
Bobby Ross has resigned at Army after going 9-25 in three seasons. It’s a fair enough ride for a coach to stay somewhere for three years in this era, especially at Army where even in a turnaround a few murderous seasons of losing are a certainty. Track records don’t evaporate overnight, though; Ross has shown happy feet wherever he’s gone, even when the getting was good and steady (see his work at Georgia Tech and San Diego, two prime jobs where he succeeded, reached or won championships and then left for little or no reason.) That he was anything but leftovers rapidly sprouting green hair in the fridge is a lie told by those who don’t remember Ross dropping the Lions’ job because he was “emotionally drained.”
The best thing about Ross being gone will be not watching his wizened, miserable visage pace the sidelines next season. Ross radiated bad vibes, pacing like he’d just downed black coffee with tacks in it. It was as if he were pissed off that his job kept him from the dog track or his garage shop where he was halfway through this great scale model of the U.S.S. Yorktown, and just needed to paste a few Hellcats to the deck to complete the damned thing.
Hopefully Army can get themselves someone capable and willing to replace Ross. Barring, that, though–there’s always EDSBS hero Hal Mumme, who could bolster his claim to the job by citing his deep and documented passion for fightin’ turrorists.
Bobby Ross: living proof that coaching the Detroit Lions kills your soul forever.
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Orson Swindle and Stranko Montana are two men pushing thirty who should know better than to run a college football blog, but evidently don't. Both graduated from the University of Florida, and both agree that college football is far too important to be left to the professionals.
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