Tonight we go retro on EDSBS Live, the most satisfying hour and a half of entertainment not featuring Skip Bayless being chased by wolves.

Who? Orson and Peter, of course. Over seven months of honest work between the two of us. That’s commitment, people.

What: EDSBS LIVE online radio You can also click the little EDSBS Live! banner thingy on the right sidebar to get to the show.

Where: At NowLive, where you can chat with each other and the show hosts throughout the broadcast in the online forum, where Orson demonstrates his awesomez in the ADD department by making frequent comments AND talking ninety miles an hour simultaneously. To phone in to the show, just call (310) 984-7600.

What: Tonight our guests will be John Lopez of the Houston Chronicle, bloggeresque columnist and expert on all things Texas, and you, hopefully cranked off three drinks and looking for something to punch.

Drinking? We encourage it. The beverage of the night? Vodka Tonic, please.

Four Questions: As always, our four questions for the night.

1. Who’s the best pre-1990 college football team of all time? Crapshoot of all crapshoots, but we won’t tolerate any Beano Cook-style “AHHHH ARMY ‘47″ arguments, because black people could not play on the same field as white people at that time save for a few enlightened coastal institutions.

2. Your favorite pre-1990 football player? Blasphemy incarnate here, but we’re handing that to Herschel Walker and watching him run over the universe. Dawg or not, he was Jehovah in cleats.

3. Get in touch with your inner Luddite: strike one aspect of the modern game and/or the way its broadcast. Dead horse kicked: commercial breaks, be gone.

4. In our quest to prove Angelina Jolie is the most overrated hottie of all time, we ask you: who’s your favorite retro babe?

Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep, any woman who ever appeared in a Federico Fellini movie…ah, there’s a long, long list. But our Ass from the Past is Pam Grier: hot, stylish, forever running around naked and shooting things in the name of vengeance.

See you tonight at 7:30 EST.

Multiple updates of collegiate football feloniousness and falderol follow…

Florida’s Keg Incident involving an unnamed player, an unnamed complainant, and an alleged failed theft of a beer keg has evaporated in a matter of hours. The alleged victim withdrew their complaint this morning without ever positively ID’ing the assailant.

POOF! Points be gone, though we still hope someone ends up puking their guts out for weeks on end during mat drills as a result of whatever happened in this case–and not because they’re hung over off all the stolen beer sloshing around in their stomach.

Hoping for something like this at mat drills.

Free money in Ames, Iowa! YAAAAYYYY!!! That seemed to the extent of the thought process for three Iowa State players caught pilfering goods from a purse left on a city bus. Caught either by witnesses or videotape, the three players (all redshirt freshmen) are charged with fifth-degree theft, which is just one degree of theft away from a White Elephant holiday party.

A point each equals three for the Cyclones in their slightly lame debut on the board. Welcome to head coaching, Gene Chizik.

Colorado State says fuck your couch, lawya. No Fulmer Cup points for basketball offenses, but we must mention Colorado State for something other than their ability to bulldoze four-year olds in spring scrimmages. Xavier Kilby, CSU basketball player, was arrested on suspicion of felony menacing and prohibited use of weapons following an incident early Sunday morning involving teammate Ronnie Aguilar.

…Kilby and Aguilar got into an argument in the living room and that Kilby pulled out a small revolver, pointed it at Aguilar’s head and then pointed the gun at a couch and discharged the weapon.

Fuck your couch, indeed. Kilby’s been suspended pending investigation. (HT: Rory.)

We really only mention this to take the spotlight off poor CSU receiver George Hill, who was making a diving TD catch during CSU’s scrimmage on Saturday when he encountered a 12th defender, a four year old who was quoted after the hit as saying:

“It was kind of scary ’cause I got bonked by the football. It kind of hurted.”

We pray the reporter writing this made this up, because children do not and should not speak like this. If they do, heaps of assy shame must fall on the parents, who no doubt egged him on by saying “OOOhhhh, isn’t that just precious?” It starts with accepted bad grammar; it ends with him stealing cars and slinging his seed around like so much confetti before ending up in prison or–heaven forbid–business school.

It hurted! Goddammit, bad grammar gets us peeved. You go, George Hill. Hit him again–this time, it’s for Strunk and White.

We read Summer of ‘49 when we were thirteen. It’s a baseball book, so there’s the requisite amount of sappy mythologizing and pablum surrounding baseball as a sport. It happens. Any football fan knows it, too–just compare the end of a baseball book to a football book.

Baseball book ending: “As he tiptoed across home plate, he crossed the geometric boundaries of the field and entered a new realm: an apotheosis, a one-way ticket to a Valhalla of the memory, something blah blah about timeless America death memory blah blah.”

Football book ending:”He went off right tackle. He scored. They won. They all got totally fucking drunk and banged some women. The end. Ooh-rah.”

David Halberstam, though, made the guys in baseball seem real, tangible, and anything but walking angels serving as the hokey projected mythology of a naive nation. Read Summer of ‘49 and you will fall in love with Ted Williams because as Halberstam so deftly shows, he could not be anything but himself at all times. He curses non-stop, referring to Yankee pitcher Ed Lopat only as “that fucking Lopat.” He critiques the driving of his teammates down to fine details (”Bobby, I’m a better driver than you because you use too much brake.”) He’s a scientist of a hitter who can’t seem to understand why his teammates can’t bat .350 and hit 30 home runs a year. He’s annoying, gifted, pigheaded, cranky, iconoclastic, petty, and overwhelmingly likeable, something no other sportswriter bothered to notice in the twenty plus years he played in Boston.

Halberstam was the guy who brought us into the cult of Ted, one of the last vestiges of our youthful baseball fandom. The galling thing is that Halberstam wrote sports books for fun in between his work as a Vietnam war correspondent, winning the Pulitzer Prize at 30, and writing The Best and the Brightest. He wrote about everything and wrote it all well.

David Halberstam: 1934-2007.

Halberstam died in a car wreck today at 73. Rest in peace, wordfreak. We’re off to get another cup of coffee and wonder why we haven’t finished that 2,000 word freelance piece yet…because Halberstam would have killed it off in between dispatches from Saigon.

It’s only a minute long! It’s practically boosting your productivity as we speak. Play it anyway, since it’s short, it’s the soundtrack to this entry, and someone gets knocked the fuck out by what appears to be a brick at the end of the video.

UConn football player Brandon McLean was arrested twice in four days last week, having a few bad days in a row, singing a sad song and not turning it around at all, if his behavior’s any indication. Two incidents both of the largish domestic variety got him the pair of arrests, putting him squarely in line for anger management classes behind Andy Bernard and Alec Baldwin.

Note this, as well, from the Hartford Courant article:

UConn police charged McLean, 21, with one count each of threatening, criminal trespass and breach of peace after Wednesday’s incident. He faces a second breach of peace charge for the Saturday incident.

Threatening? Nice pick, UConn police. This ordinance must be unenforced in Ann Arbor, Michigan, or Alan Branch would have gotten several a day just walking around looking like himself. A point for each offense and a bonus point for two arrests in four days takes UConn to five points total.

Auburn scores points for drunk in pub-LICK, as Octavius Balkcom (nice Bond villain name, there) is arrested at 4:40 a.m. this past Saturday in Opelika for public drunkenness. As you may know, if you are drunk and in public at 4:40 a.m. in Opelika, Alabama, then your blood may be used for rocket fuel, because you are likely drunk as haaaaaaiiiiiiiiil.

Powered by booze!

That out of the way…we have Florida points to report, though not so many as previously thought. Last night the student newspaper of the University of Florida, The Alligator, reported that five players were arrested attempting to steal a beer keg from a student in the Cabana Beach Apartments.

(Cabana Beach Apartments should not fool you with its name: it no more resembles tropical paradise than Camelot Apartments resembles the mythical home of King Arthur. Most apartment complexes in Gainesville have hyperbolic bullshit names like this. We’ll respect the one that just comes out and calls itself “Drywall Claptrap Where Your Sex Life Is Your Neighbors’, Too.”)

The details, from Carl Hiaasen’s student newspaper:

On Saturday, a UF student was taking kegs out of his truck when the men approached him. One 6-foot-4, 280-pound man attempted to steal his keg, cutting his neck in the process, according to the report. The cut was 5 to 6 inches long, the report states, and it appeared to be the result of a fingernail or ring.

The other four players on the scene restrained the attacker, who then broke away and assaulted the student again, slamming him into his truck, according to the report.

The Alligator changed its headline overnight, since the incident came out as one player demonstrating assholishness beyond reason restrained by four players who clearly failed in their goal of not ending up in the paper. This is, by the way, the only paper reporting the story.

Nevertheless…

One count of robbery= 3 points.
Two definite accounts of assault=4 points
One bonus point for fucking up at our university=1 point

That’s eight points right there, a substantial sum placing Florida well within striking distance of Illinois’ once impregnable lead. The charges, though, may not even stand. For shame’s sake, though, we award them in hope that our climb up the rankings will push Urban Meyer to do something, anything positive in the way of disciplining a football player for anything.

On the upside…at least he didn’t throw it after he stole it.