The departure of Rich Rodriguez won’t be a quiet one. Kick over a log, and you’ll find lawyers. Then, kick the lawyers over, and you’ll find clowns feeding on dead midgets. But inside those midgets? You guessed it: midget parasitic lawyers.

This abstract feeding frenzy describes the potential scene of Rodriguez’s post-departure litigationfest, beginning in earnest with the announcement that Rodriguez will contest having to pay the $4 million buyout himself for leaving for the Michigan job.

Ken Kendrick, a primary West Virginia athletics donor and close friend of Rodriguez, said Tuesday he had knowledge of lawyers’ intentions to contest the buyout.

“I will be a witness to any and all proceedings that occur,” said Kendrick, who is the managing general partner of Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks. “They baited and switched him. Rich was boxed in by a university and athletic department that was arrogant, mean-spirited and intellectually bankrupt.

Kendrick is the Big Name Rich Guy Donorman named in many of these rumors, but there’s a significant chunk of WVU’s boosterati who feel this way. This was one of the swirling rumors surrounding the departure of Coach DickRod: that he didn’t get along with WVU AD Pastilong because of unfulfilled promises and an overall high-handedness, including reneging on some basic, teeny little details like allowing players to keep their textbooks at the end of the semester. This doesn’t seem like big shit until you think of it in terms of say, your roommate’s inability to transport an empty coke can from the coffee table to the trash can. Do it once, and it’s an oversight; do it for six years, and it’s a testament to their complete contempt for you and themselves.

Lawyers! LET’S GET READY TO MUMBUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLL….and rack up those billable hours you’ve been wasting on the internet.

Snacking’s an art, not a science, meaning you can say whatever you want about it and no one’s ever going whip out some prissy little retort like, WAAAAAHHHHH did you have that peer-reviewed, or WAAAAAAAHHHH you should run this through Human Resources first.” Fuck that noise with a barbed wire Jeff Stryker/Bret Michaels/Peter North mold, because in the world of snack, you are the sole judge and jury, limited only by your budget, stomach capacity, and ability to withstand the consumption of mass amounts of processed corn. Allow someone to take your snacking czar scepter, but only from your cold, dead, snack-residue-covered hands, ruler.

Bowl season involves copious amounts of couch time, so you have important decisions to make. We’ll be reviewing snack foods for your perusal because what you need least is snack food after thousands of calories of holiday food, so that’s exactly what you’ll get, of course: more food to eat when you’re not eating. It’s all about paralyzing your body’s ability to process food through overconsumption, but then helping it out by making enough sheer bulk to force gravity to do the work for you. If dinner is the big ball of hair blocking the toilet, a whole bag of Funyuns should be considered the invisible hand of Drano pushing it all forward through your system like the very digits of the free market themselves.

Speaking of, snack food one:

Because they couldn’t call them “Whatthefuckyuns”" Funyuns.

Funyuns

Funyuns are: Corn. Almost completely corn, mixed with a bit of soy, some onion powder, and folic acid. We presume this was all part of some ploy to get Funyuns to be a pregnancy food, a plan so evil even Frito-Lay put it in the “too evil” pile along with the “Funyuns Make Healthy Young ‘Uns” t-shirts and posters. They’re formed into little onion-ring-shaped circles, so you can also throw them like hoops at the table, twirl them onto your finger, or try to toss them onto your erect penis in a festive game of ring toss. Combine the last one with a sexual activity, and you have just re-enacted 23 percent of the Federline-Spears relationship.

Described by their manufacturer as:

Funyuns Onion Flavored Rings are a deliciously different snack that is fun to eat. These playful rings have a crisp texture and are packed full of zesty onion flavor. Next time you’re in the mood for a snack that’s out of the ordinary, try Funyuns Onion Flavored Rings.

And next time you’re in the mood for a vacation that’s out of the ordinary, try Angola!

Organic? No, and most of the time you don’t care. Nothing save the most dire of rusts is actually the color of a Dorito, but you eat them anyway because they are salt, pepper, and fat congealed onto a corn shingle, and that is always so much better than that sentence makes it sound. Funyuns, though, stretch even the credibility of snack foods in delivering something one might reasonably call “food.” They’re hazmat suit yellow, have a disturbingly unctuous feel in the hand, and taste like you’re pouring onion powder and hairspray in a stream down your throat. They are organic in the sense that they contain carbon–we think they contain carbon, at least. Besides that, they’re Petrino. We mean fake.

If you eat a bag of them you will feel… Like you just swallowed a bag of styrofoam peanuts.

In their second life, they will… Turn your shit greenish-yellow like you’ve been living on a diet of Michigan football memorabilia.

Recommended dosage: None. There’s gutter snack food of a respectable nature, and then there’s Funyuns. You’d be better off bellying up to a hog trough and digging in, since for the most part it’s made of the same American Agri-trash pig feed is made from, which means you’ll probably eat a whole bag while watching the Meineke Car Care Bowl, anyway. This would be appropriate since after eating several servings, you too will feel like you need a wholesale fluid change.

The SN piece for Tuesday is up, and it includes important pointers on how to quit a job, plus further confirmation that Todd Graham is a bit of a shitbag when it comes to contract negotiations, and not in that cool, negotiating-chair Jack Donaghy way, either.

Excuse me, I have to go talk to my agent ER UM…I mean, defecate.

Florida State has suspended as many as 20 players for the Music City Bowl for taking an online course for credit cheating on an online course, according to ESPN and their “multiple sources inside the program.” The suspensions could extend three games deep into the next season, as well.

Excuse us for a moment while we check our soul-mirror…

Yes, that’s what we thought we’d see.

The suspensions are an extension of an admission and self-report by FSU of 23 students and their involvement in the online course, and blame two academic assistance employees for the snafu, which again has already been reported to the NCAA in a letter penned by T.K. Wetherell. We should note that amidst the schadenfreude we’re currently dining on here, it does mark a clear commitment to clean play by Florida State, who has been transparent and proactive throughout this whole process. It’s also a clear sign Bobby Bowden just shows up to wear a hat before returning to soft blankets, Civil War histories, and applesauce, and has no real power left to speak of in the day-to-day running of the program. Because this never would have happened in his prime. The reporting, that is.

We all get our start somewhere, and Rich Rodriguez’s start came at Glenville State, a school never described without the words “tiny” prefacing it: an enrollment of 1392, tucked away in equally tiny Glenville, West Virginia, and the wellspring of the Rodriguez spread offense that has spread across this great nation of ours like so many “McRib is coming!” promo posters.

Which brings up the point: that Rodriguez spent six years at Glenville State. Six years at a tiny school in a tiny place with zero glory and a videographer that set things to Michael Jackson’s “Jam.” (Considering half of all college football highlight vids are set to “Boom!”, we really can’t judge too harshly.) He then spent another seven at West Virginia, so any and all accusations of carpetbaggery should be shat out the window with disdain.

He may have executed the breakup in a discombobulated manner, but he certainly stayed long enough to make it respectable. Coaching-wise, he’s a responsible serial monogamist who’s weak on the breakup, which most of us are. Hell we cried when we changed cell-phone providers. (Damn you, Verizon, and your wicked, alluring ways. You had to bring the tears with you, didn’t you? )