Evil laugh!

…Bruce Pearl, only 6-5 in the cheeto-jacket? And if you’re waiting for us to show shame and not link shamelessly, you are waiting for shame, and will be waiting until the wind blows gray for it.

Money lines:

My one question – does Vandy’s win mean that we have to listen to SEC chest-thumpers brag about how deep the conference is? Yes? DAMMIT. Don’t we get basketball season off from that shit?

NOOOOO!!! EVIL LAUGH AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!

By Holly, who reminds you that when the zombie war comes, machetes do NOT need reloading.

Their names were shouted in exultation or bellowed in impotent rage across the SEC in 2007. You know their stats by heart, lived and died with their triumphs and tears. But in this age of bioweapons and nuclear experiments gone horribly awry, there are more important matters to ponder; namely, how each of these college football notables will aid your survival when the wrong red button is pressed and the zombie hordes rise to enslave us all. You’ll need the best of the best (SEC speed = fast zombies). The essential personnel:

Rich Brooks thinks the undead hordes are bullshit. This will not save him.

The Buffoon Who Got You Into This Mess: Michael Henig, QB, Mississippi State
How He’ll Save The Day: When jumping from rooftop to rooftop to reach the river/gun store/barricades, will carry the season to its logical conclusion by mistiming the flinging of his own form and being intercepted, so to speak, by a less than sturdy awning. As he is tugged with agonizing slowness from the canvas, the undead hordes will fall upon his flesh, allowing you to escape.

The Decoy: Blake Mitchell, QB, South Carolina
How He’ll Save The Day: Will be assigned as lookout while the rest of the party stocks up on ammunition/canned goods/fuel, and upon seeing an approaching zombie attack party, will inexplicably fancy himself a hero and run outside, waving his arms and capering about to distract them long enough for our heroes to lock and load and hop into an appropriately sized truck. The undead hordes are not amused by dancing, and will fall upon his flesh, allowing you to escape.

The Cloyingly Self-Effacing Hero: Erik Ainge, QB, Tennessee
How He’ll Save The Day: Sneaking past the gibbering masses in the dead of night, will slip on a discarded shotgun shell and break both legs in the fall. Will implacably insist on not being carried because He’ll Only Slow You Down, and will accept no comfort—but does gather all remaining grenades. After the explosion, the hordes will fall upon his flesh and the flesh of their shredded comrades, allowing you to escape.

The Hothead: Knowshon Moreno, RB, Georgia
How He’ll Save The Day: With tears in his eyes and an unearthly battle howl in his throat, by completely losing his shit and barreling into the penultimate wave of zombies at full force, ripping and tearing their limbs with his bare hands. A valiant effort, but the thing about zombies is there’s always Just Too Many. The undead hordes will fall upon his flesh, allowing you to escape.

The Shrewish Love Interest: Colt David, K, LSU
How He’ll Save The Day: After spending the entire ordeal displaying gradually more obvious signs of crumbling and generally slowing everyone down, will drop to his knees shortly into the sprint over open ground to safety, wailing that It’s Hopeless and We’ll Never Make It. The undead hordes will fall upon his flesh, allowing you to escape.

The Cheap Shot You Don’t See Coming: Kyle Jackson, S, Florida
How He’ll Save The Day: As you stagger over the final hill between your sleepy little borough and the haven of the convenient nearby military base/open sea/arms of Orgeron, will burst inexplicably into flames and fall in a shrieking, ineffectual heap at the crest of the ridge. Cold and raw or sizzling in the skull—brains is brains is brains to a zombie. The undead hordes will fall upon his flesh, allowing you to escape. Fade to black.

T-Tubb, if he can get his boys to aim those chop blocks at the neck, might stand a chance.

We’re conflicted over the best strategy of being caught for underage drinking: do you own up, hoping for forgiveness, nonchalant the whole thing, or do you do everything within reasonable and unreasoable power to get rid of the booze, up to and including tossing the beverage out in plain sight of the cops? Or, in short: what would John Nash do, besides claim he’d been given the idea to drink underage from messages sent to him by aliens through this morning’s crossword? What’s your optimal strategy?

Washington State tight end Trevor Mooney, caught as a 19 year old passenger in a car with go cups in hand, opted for the extraordinary effort to avoid charges, as champions should. And failed, of course:

Trevor Mooney, a redshirt freshman tight end at Washington State, was arrested and cited for being a minor in possession of alcohol early Saturday. Police saw Mooney pour liquid out the passenger window during a traffic stop, and found two cups of beer at his feet, Pullman police Cmdr. Chris Tennant said.

He didn’t lose the game, you see; he just ran out of time. Wazzou, already on the board for assault via contact lens, earns one point for the shennanigans.

“Are these yours?” “No, officer.”

Ron Paul: ’bout that bling.

Our guest columnist today is Presidential Candidate Ron “Dr. No-Huddle” Paul.

Thanks for having me here. I’m not sure who you are, what you want, or why I’m even here. In fact, I don’t know who I’m writing this to. Why do people send me letters? Why do people on the internet like me? I don’t know. Really, I don’t know. Someone picks me up from my house in the morning, takes me places, and I just start talking until someone claps. These are all things I don’t know. Where am I? Really, where am I?

What I do know about is freedom and 1970s standards of gynecology. That’s why I still believe in two things: the Dalkon Shield and the Constitution. Especially the Constitution. I may have had my hands in more vaginas than any other member of congress except for John Boehner, but at least I got paid for doing it, and not the other way around. Is that a joke? Why are you all laughing? I’m confused? Yes, I’m confused!

Hey, why’s my name on a blimp? A blimp? Really? I’m thrilled about the possibilities of dirigible travel. It’s one of my passions, but I’ll tell you this: you won’t see me telling you that the government should be involved in making blimps, unless they’re blimps equipped with machine guns to put up along the Mexican border, because it’s a well-known fact that Mexicans fear both guns and blimps. It’s natural law, just like the Constitution and the rules of Yahtzee.

Speaking of games that involve hitting your spouse: football. I’m here to talk about football? Really? Okay, I’ll talk about it. Ron Paul likes football, but doesn’t like a few things about football as it stands in America. (more…)

In the ever-expanding and poorly swept warehouse that is Swindle Industries…

Patrick is doing the quality work we couldn’t do over at Thirty Five Seconds. We’re especially fond of this.

Our piece on things the NFL combine should test for is up over at the Sporting News, and if you take nothing else from it, it should be this: Deangelo Hall’s episode of Cribs is the gold standard by which all other NFLers’ Cribs experience should be measured. That is, until D-Mac gets the signing bonus and two months with a decorator.

Like that, but a house.

Our poll question of the week is: which offense has the most suggestive name? As in, “sexually suggestive” name. The nominees are:

–The Spread Option”
–”The Wishbone”
–”Pro-style”
–”The Run ‘n Shoot”
–”The Cock ‘n Fire”
–”The Flexbone”

If you have any other nominations, please let us know and we will consider adding them. Don’t try to add in Don Coryell’s innovative “Thundercock” sets or John Mackovic’s “Donghorn Stampede” formations, either, because they did not exist. Cast your vote in the sidebar to your right over there.

In the meantime, we demand that EA–when not gobbling up innovative video game studios producing some of the last remaining innovative sports games around–change the racist terminology in their games at once!

That’s racist!

Violently emotional: Muschamp.

If you’re starved beyond belief and ready to seize without football, you could head down to Auburn and catch spring practice. (What? Opelika’s got an airport. Resisting cow joke telling urge resisting cow joke telling urge.) Auburn’s working in both new offensive coordinator Tony Franklin and defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads. Today’s shocking revelation: Rhoads is different than Muschamp.

“I can already tell he’s going to be a great teacher,” Powers said. “If you screw up with Rhoads, he’s going to let you know just like Muschamp. Muschamp might have let you know a little more violently. Just comparing the two, they are great teachers and great coaches. They are passionate about football.”

Violence: exactly what we look for in our defensive coordinators, masseuses, and gardeners. Auburn’s qb are throwing way, way more passes in practice than they had under Al “Gorgeous” Borges, up to hundreds of passes a game, according to practice reports. Pat Dye, on hearing the news, wept big fat old man tears.

Meanwhile: Texas is ideating like WHOA with new blood Muschamp and Applewhite.

Spatial mathematics. Topology. At its most abstract, football is math, and particularly wirebrained coordinators understand this. Gutty Little Bruins points us toward this old but still indisuptably essential slice of Norm Chow’s playbook squeezed into a basic article on his system, and again: the inside of Chow’s brain must be a tidy, well decorated room of baroque simplicity and variation in the decorating. This play alone gets the Chessmaster treatment:

It’s called 69 Weak, and Norm Chow has already scored three touchdowns on you with it. The space-brain calculations Chow’s capable of making deplete our word bank when we reach for awestruck adjectives, so just read the damn thing and be duly impressed. If the schemes leave you cold, then at least marvel at the simple genius of Chow’s philosophy.

For our basic passing game we have a strongside vertical, and we have a middle vertical, and a weakside vertical. We have a couple of horizontal stretches and we have a couple of man routes. We have a few one-man routes. We have a route to attack Cover 2, and we have the four verticals game. That is our basic passing game. There I have told you everything we do and I did it in two minutes. Again…we have one strongside vertical route, one middle vertical route, one middle vertical and one weakside vertical. We have two horizontal stretch routes, a man route, four verticals and a Cover 2 beater. That is all we basically do. We attack everyone we play with these basic plays. Our kids know these plays the second day of practice.

It’s just that simple. Now go score forty a game just like Uncle Norm does, and you too can be the premiere signal-caller of your generation. Dear Jebus, thank you for bringing him back.