Firing Karl Dorrell, UCLA’s marvelously inconsistent coach, will be difficult for a number of reasons. The new coach will have to be good but cheap, because UCLA’s never really splashed out the cash for a head guy. Those are not easy to find. The new guy will also have to immediately pick up the recruiting trail from Dorrell against Pete Carroll, a move comparable in difficulty to handing off an F-15 mid-barrell roll to a novice pilot.

The administration, too, will face one possible claim: that they fired Dorrell and his 34-25 record because he is black.

Dorrell’s firing–not an inevitability but a highly probable event at this point–will evoke the Willingham saga all over again, but in a more diminished way because UCLA doesn’t have the gravitational media pull Notre Dame has. If there are whispers that Dorrell wasn’t given another year that a white coach might be given, the rancor won’t spread as it did when Willingham was let go. Also, Dorrell probably won’t go on ESPN claiming he was fired because he was black. He could, of course, but that all depends on how acrimonious said firing process is.

Nevertheless, those who would believe this will believe it anyway. Assuming someone was fired because they’re black/gay/fat/left-handed is an act of faith that can never be disproven, since the only evidence lies in the impenetrable inner thoughts of the AD and President who make the decision, or in a smoking gun memo that says “WE NEED A NON-BLACK COACH, SIGNED, UCLA PERSON.”

In that vein, we offer the following suggestion for a PR campaign for UCLA just to counter such rumors–since those who believe race played a factor will believe it no matter what you say.

There. Free PR, on the house. Sometime we’re astounded at how useful we are to this world.*

*Hey! It’s satire! Or an attempt at it, at least! We don’t actually think either of them was fired for being black. We’re making fun of those who assume anything involving a black coach being fired instantly equals racism! Now, Gary Barnett was fired for being black, and that’s the truth. Aren’t you glad you read footnotes?

…ass, if you’re reading from the title on, because we did bathe today. From his mailbag:

Stewart, seeing as how you’re the Internet’s premier college football pundit, is there any way you could contact the nation’s journalists, bloggers and message board moderators to orchestrate a complete moratorium on all conference supremacy debates until the end of the regular season? It was fun for a while, but good god. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and count to 10.
–Stephen, Athens, Ga

….
But I’m afraid you give me far too much credit in terms of my clout in the realm of cyberspace. Have you read some of the bloggers out there? Here’s a little sampling from the first few pages of a Google search involving my name: “SI’s Stewart Mandel: I get paid to write 2+2=4″ (jonathantu.wordpress.com), “Stewart Mandel is an idiot and I hope UGA bites him in the rear end” (Dawgsports.com) and “Stewart Mandel needs a long vacation” (thenittanyline.blogspot.com). I’m guessing you’d have a better chance getting these guys to actually shave and shower on consecutive days than participate in any idea that originated from me.

Oh, bitch, it is fucking on. Vaseline on the face, earrings off, and we’re leaving the rings on because they will cut you, dirt-tosser. We are motherfucking clean, Stewart Mandel. Clean like new sheets. Pristine as the uncut forests of Severnaya Zemlya.

And we just didn’t use soap. No, hell no, soap is for amateurs. We used Sonic Death Monkey, troglodyte. It smells like coffee, chocolate, vanilla, and the sweet stink of pelvis-bruising, eyeball-rolling sexual intercourse, Stewart Mandel. We use gobs of it, applied with a shower puff and spread across our entire body. We do this with the diligence of an Indian washer woman pounding the dirt out of a dhoti at a riverside, but naked and with cleaner water and a shower puff. It even goes in the industrial assembly, so that even our earthiest parts might smell of coffee-aroma and love.

Gay? A bit. Dirty? Fuck no.

That’s what we walk around all day smelling like, ape. You live in New York City, and likely wash yourself with the same stuff that cleans the Hot Pocket crust off your dish.

That’s it, we said it: dish, as in the singular. You own one dish.

And if that weren’t enough, we use other Lush products for men. No, it doesn’t stop with the Sonic Death Monkey. We use a touch of the Coconut Body Powder, too. It serves as a deodorant AND a reminder that being within smelling distance of us is like a trip to the islands but without touts bothering you about braiding your hair or getting you blow for cheap.

We’re totally gay for using either. You can say that. But don’t call us dirty, Stewart. We bathe every day, and even wash our goddamn legs. All of the leg, down to our filthy, hairy, misshapen feet. If you’ve seen our feet you’d realize that this is a testament not only to our dedication to hygiene, but to our bravery, as well.

And we do that with two jobs, sir. So suck our cleanliness, bitch. We’re cleaner than Henry Hill after he hides the gun he just pistol-whipped someone with underneath a car bumper.

As for shaving…um…well, he’s got us there.

The Mustache Wednesday ’stache of the day: Edward James Olmos, seen here styling in an icy polar bear fashion. You’re getting frostbite right now looking at him.

Happy Mustache Wednesday, motherfuckers!

BTW: according to Wikipedia, Sonny Crockett is a former University of Florida football star “best known for running a 90-yard touchdown in under 6 seconds.” Darren McFadden, suck Sonny Crockett’s exhaust fumes, son. He’s not only a vice cop with a pet alligator, but he’s the fastest human being ever born. (For reference, it took McFadden, a quark-fast runner, 10 seconds or so go 80 yards against South Carolina in mostly a straight line.)

Football, or Special Topics in Calamity Physics?

Doing the same thing for years and years, as the ESPN Gameday crew has, must get repetitive. It’s like marriage without the explosive arguments and firearms. (In case you’re wondering, the Swindle marriage works a lot like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, only with worse endurance, so we usually peter out one or two diving/shooting scenes into the firefight and just agree to order a pizza and make up. Machine guns are heav-ay.)

In an effort to break the rut of doing compelling, ABCSPNDisneyCthulucorp-broadcasted games every Saturday, ESPN’s come up with a noble solution: suicide.

ESPN’s “College GameDay” program, the network’s pregame show, will broadcast live from Williams before the Ephs renew the “Biggest Little Game in America” rivalry with Amherst. The show airs from 10 a.m. to noon, and is also the show’s 150th episode.

“It’s not every day you get a chance to be on ESPN, especially when you’re playing Division III football,” said O’Reilly, a senior middle linebacker for the Ephs.

No, son, it’s not every day this happens. It’s a quirky effort, and one which raises the suspicions that with oil possibly topping a hundred bucks a barrel today, the suits are restricting Gameday to a 300 mile travel perimeter from Bristol. (It’s 1932 all over again! Hoo-ray for old Navy! And go, go you mighty Princeton Tigers!)

The reason as stated by ESPN will enrage Georgia and Auburn fans, who being SEC fans trend toward rageaholism anyway.

“Every year, we look at different unique settings or places we haven’t been,” said ESPN communications spokesperson Michael Humes. “Something that has a compelling storyline. This particular week, there wasn’t anything in the Division I ranks that was a clear-cut top game.

“This is a great time and a great moment to visit this rivalry that’s clearly one of the oldest in college football.”

The game isn’t without its laurels: it’s the oldest D-3 rivalry, and once featured Amherst attempting to sneak a player on the field wearing a Williams jersey. Also, one time, at the Williams/Amherst game, Boopsie got so snozzled on sloe gin fizzes she fell down the bleachers and gave all the gents a good look-see at her bloomers! Oh, what halcyon times! Her negro manservant had quite a time getting her upended after that one!

For the size queens of D-1 football, you may as well skip the broadcast if this is any indicator:

“In my 10 years here, I’ve never seen less than 10,000 people at a game, even at the 0-0 downpour in 1995,” says Quinn. “It’s just a tremendous event — in the state, in the region and really across the country.”

Did we mention Corso might put on a purple cow’s head, though? If you take some mescaline or maybe enough jenkem, this could make it worth it. Almost.

With many clarifications thanks to reader input, as noted below.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	—
2	LSU	—
3	Oregon	—
4	Kansas	2
5	Oklahoma	—
6	Missouri	1
7	West Virginia	2
8	Connecticut	2
9	Arizona State	5
10	Boston College	2
11	Georgia	6
12	Southern Cal	14
13	Virginia Tech	7
14	Michigan	4
15	Texas	4
16	Virginia	7
17	Auburn	2
18	Clemson	5
19	Florida	7
20	Florida State	6
21	Boise State	5
22	Alabama	—
23	Penn State	3
24	South Florida	5
25	Arkansas	1

Examples of being taken to task properly:

The principal one from yesterday’s draft was the ranking of Penn State and Texas, pointed out innumerable times by readers. (Actually, that requires counting, something there’s obvious trouble with around here anyway.)

Seriously? How did Michigan drop a spot, while Penn State leapfrogs them from out of the top 25 to 17?

That’s just nonsense.–Bucktown Skins Fan.

You might want to rethink putting 7-3 Penn State over an 8-2 Michigan team that beat them earlier in the year.–Evan.

Fix it. Fix it now. For the love of god, fix it now.–Peter Pumpkinhead.

Pilloried is an overused word, but not in this case. Rightly done, too–the draft was a masterpiece of contradiction, illogic, and haste to rival Das Kapital for incoherence. It stands corrected now in all its beefy majesty. We’d add a Trogdor third arm to it, so beautiful is it.

Priority seating: We bow to our own obvious predjudices and put LSU at number two. Really, no other excuse remains considering Oregon and LSU are in many ways the same team: solid but not platinum OOC schedule, one very close loss to a conference team with three losses, a spread offense, and blitzing defensive schemes yielding largely good results across the board. If we have to go down the rabbit hole and pit the two teams together in the imagination, Oregon’s injuries at wideout probably put them a notch under LSU at this point. But that’s hypothetical valuation based on the injured list, not actual play, and that we do not like.

We’ll just plead SEC homer at this point, since that’s what someone will think anyway when we say one team is perhaps slightly less awesome than another awesome team.

Michigan is valued over Texas, and who the hell knows what to do with Clemson? Auburn re-enters on the shoulders of the BOOM! MOTHERFUCKER Tigerplainseagle defense.

Dropped: Cal, hilariously overvalued and losers of 3 of their last 4; Wake Forest, targets of market correction of our obvious mind-crush on Jim Grobe’s ability to make a degustation from the paltry ingredients at Wake; Penn State, because they bore us, Klytus; Hawaii, for playing no one; Purdue, for being Purdue and racking up a huge record on fluff before losing in-conference; and Brigham Young, because we’re black and have a thing for Mormon girls. Actually, because we ran out of room and really love Boise State running at full steam over them and a few other teams, too.