Okay, being the premiere football program of the decade may not be all humdrum excellence and hourly romps with ruthlessly waxed, polymorphously perverse and willing sex partners. There are thrilling, unpredictable things happening on the field, and one of them is sophomore cornerback Shareece Wright, one of our nominees for Concussion Farmer of the Year thus far.

We’re not saying he hit him in bounds, or even hit him in a legal or intelligent way. We’re not even saying he didn’t hit him off the bench, actually–judging from the video, Wright could have been chugging down a blueberry and asskicking excellence flavored protein shake on the sidelines at the start of the play and then rushed over to hit Locker, for all we can tell.

However, he did hit him really, really, really hard, and it certainly looked awesome enough.(Rules be damned!) Get him to pay attention to the white lines on the field and stop attempting to become the second coming of Kevin Everett by leading with the helmet as he’s wont to do, and we’ll be talking hot magical pain pancakes in cleats here. They don’t hand out new spinal cords, you know, though they do sell slightly used ones in Tijuana.

USC has become so consistently good that we, as observers, have cruised past the offramp to boredom and instead gone deep into the territory serviced by the highway of absurdity. It’s nice out here, really: instant #2 slots in polls, near-certainty in victory, and no hyperventilation when it comes to

For example. Pete Carroll dropped news today that would have been news anywhere else: that tailback C.J. Gable’s season is over due to season-ending groin surgery. (Anytime someone comes at your groin with knives, it’s definitely the end of something.) Add this news to the transfer of Emmanuel Moody to Florida, Stafon Johnson’s ongoing issues with a bruised foot, and the fact that Chauncey Washington can’t feel his right shoulder, and this might be a point of concern to any other school.

Fortunately, USC’s backups have backups that fart lightning and sweat pure liquid awesome into their silken robes of excellence. Sophomore Allen Bradford will get the start, and he gets to run behind the line that does this…

…against Nebraska. This week, they’re playing a team without their starting quarterback, Stanford, who’s coached by a guy who pissed off Carroll by suggesting he was leaving for the NFL after the ‘07 season, Jim “Wash Your Hands” Harbaugh.

Not that Pete’s sweating it. He’s just finishing up a great, just a great mesclun and wild salmon salad before a little gym time and then practice. He’s really, really jacked about the whole thing, and proud to tell you that, and proud to be so boringly perfect that the number 2 team is cutting through the waters of a season so placid they’ve scarcely raised nary a ripple on the surface of the national sea of consciousness.

Andy Staples has the police calls of the Tony Joiner arrest. They’re gripping stuff in that, “Hey, I can hear dudes yelling in the back” kind of way. The caller identifies him as “Tony Joiner of the Gators,” which shows that celebrity of even the local sort is the gift that never stops giving.

For the moment, Joiner’s case remains on the books pending a decision by the State Attorney regarding his case. The towing company wants to settle the deal out of court, but pressing charges isn’t completely in their hands–the state may decide to press charges anyway, a decision most message boards are happy to ascribe not to the dictates laws of the state and the evidence of the case, but to the football loyalties of the attorneys and judges involved.

Whether Joiner starts at LSU is up to Meyer now. We have a whole shiny dollar to wager that he will.

Joe Tiller, sex god.

Joe Tiller, you’ve stolen our heart and we just can’t shake you.

Don’t get me wrong: we’re straight, and haven’t slept with a man ever. Or in years. Whatever. College doesn’t count, right? Or Boy Scouts? Or Boy Scouts seen while in college? Those really don’t count.

We thought that was behind us…but then we saw that mustache again today for the first time.

That ’stache is almost as irresistible as your 5-0 record, Joe: fluffy as a freshly baked biscuit, yet bristly like a copper scrubbing pad. We bet it tickles when it brushes the skin, but in that “oh-tease-me” way, not in that “OH FUCK! A SPIDER! AAAHHHH DIE SPIDER DIE!!!” way. And jaunty it is, much like your “basketball on grass” offense that’s had the Big Ten periodically flummoxed for a decade. We bet you look like quite the rapscallion walking in, shirtless and rubbing your ample, sensuous belly with canola oil waiting for some post-game lovin’.

Oh, you’re a nasty, nasty hobo of a man with that mustache, Joe Tiller.

We won’t even talk about 2005. Or Ohio State this weekend. Or how you’ll probably do what Purdue always does to us: sucker us in early with glossy numbers before breaking our hearts and turning out to be just another 8-4 team bound for the Continental Tire Bowl.

That’s not now, Joe. We’re talking about now, and 5-0, and talking about…love. And we know you’re a lover–Orton told us you were, and we know he’s not just saying that because he’s drunk. (Oh, and he is, make no mistake, horrendously, vomitously drunk somewhere right now.)

We know you’ll break our hearts in the end, but then again…isn’t that what life does, too?

You’re still a mighty captain to us. Surely you’ll understand what happens in West Lafayette stays in West Lafayette. Call us. We’ll be waiting with the canola oil, Joe.

And whatever you do, don’t trim the mustache, baby. It’s like a heating coil for the sex machine that is Joe Tiller, and don’t ever, ever let anyone tell you otherwise. You can feel its midwestern heat through this computer screen if you try hard enough.

Not a despicable effort on our part, especially given that we’re still in the process of college football’s collective roof caving in on us. Arguments, clarifications, and apologies follow.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU	—
2	Southern Cal	—
3	California	3
4	Ohio State	7
5	Oregon	2
6	Boston College	4
7	Wisconsin	1
8	South Florida	13
9	Kentucky	4
10	Oklahoma	7
11	Florida	6
12	West Virginia	8
13	South Carolina	3
14	Georgia	1
15	Cincinnati	2
16	Missouri	3
17	Texas	8
18	Rutgers	6
19	Hawaii	5
20	Arizona State	3
21	Purdue	5
22	Clemson	8
23	Virginia	2
24	Kansas	2
25	Kansas State	1

Rule 138, sporadically observed: Quality losses count. Florida, Rutgers, Alabama, and Penn State, and Texas all plummet based on losing to unranked, unheralded opponents. Rutgers should have actually fallen further, given that they lost to a Maryland team seemingly incapable of completing a pass longer than six yards earlier this season; however, we’ll reserve some additional plummeting pending the result of their game against Cincy for next week.

Oregon, however, is a damn good team who lost at the very last second to the third best team in the nation by our and many, many others’ estimates. Go ahead and let a bit of head-to-head hypotheticals leak into your brain: do you really, truly think Oregon doesn’t beat Boston College at this point, or USF, or even Florida, given the massive structural problems the Gators are having right now? A noble loss to a great team doesn’t knock you too far down, say our five brain cells.

Remaining knots:

Big Ten knot: Ohio State over Wisconsin. We’ve let logic rule here and just admitted to us and the heavens that the Buckeyes have looked impervious while Wisconsin has been one of the shakiest undefeated teams in the nation. It’s safe enough at this point to let Purdue sneak in there at the bottom, too, since we’re looking at a giants vs. midgets year for the Big Ten, with the tallest midget at the moment wearing a Boilermaker shirt. We know they’ll disappoint…but a bit of sunshine on the face is nice, even if you know you’re just going to fall right back into the well just as it touches your skin.

SEC knots: Florida could fall further pending a decent performance versus LSU. Kentucky and South Carolina will shake out Thursday, allowing us and other voters to properly pop one into the top ten with confidence while confidently shuffling the other into tweener teendom somewhere around 15. Georgia remains average in almost every category statistically save for scoring defense and punting, which may be enough for them in an unbalanced SEC East.

The eyes of Kansas are upon you. Two ranked teams from Kansas is admittedly too many. Again, real life could shake this out, or the two could somehow play badly enough against each other in their rivalry game to make us de-rank both for shame. As long as Ron Prince dances we can’t get too worked up about the whole thing, though if Mangino attempts a counter-move on his sideline, we’re dialing 9-1 and waiting for the inevitable.

ACC knot: Virginia–really? An ironic vote, yes–but blame Groh-mentum for our passion for Virginia Cavalier football! It’s irresistable! They are undefeated in the ACC, and have just a solid a chance at the title as anyone else due to the fact that the entire conference seems to politely regard an undefeated season in conference as being extremely rude to their conference mates.

Bit bullish on Hawaii, eh? On the mainland we don’t say Mahalo! We say fuck you, as in “fuck you, after what you saw Saturday, why the fuck couldn’t Hawaii get a BCS spot?”