We woke up at 3:00 a.m. this morning to finish a freelance piece. When you hear the quiet tone of an email bing! into your box at that hour, it is your good friend Xi Shuang Bo, who has helpfully sent you an attachment you should open without questioning or scanning from an anonymous server somewhere in Central Asia, or it is Google Alerts tossing five year old articles about Dennis Franchione at you. (”Franchione: ‘With McNeal, We Can’t Lose.’”)

So when, at 6:12 a.m., we heard a ding!, and would have ignored it had our spidey sense not been tingling. We were right; who else is awake at 6 in the morning thinking delusional thoughts of college football and hitting that Tuss early and often?

LSUFreek, of course. That’s who else is awake at that hour and cranking away.

As a semi-relevant bit of reader mail to tag to this, Dave writes in and notes:

I was looking over some stats today, and I noticed that UCLA punted for about 1,000 more yards last season (3,899) than Notre Dame racked up in total offense the whole year (2,907).

That does about sum it up, Dave. As we speak Charlie’s pondering tweaks as he walks among the endless aisles of virtual pie.