“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance — so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamor to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”

(Graham Greene is really brilliant shit, but so is Patrick, who has quality nonsense percolating with us in a guest star fashion over at 35S.)

Mike Tranghese invites you to play!

Mike Tranghese is retiring as the head of the Big East after this season, a bigger milestone than it sounds like at the outset: Mike Tranghese was the first and for a time only full-time employee of the conference, meaning lonely mornings at the office making his own coffee, bidding “good morning, Mike!” to himself, and then answering the phone in a high-pitched voice as “Phyllis, who’ll be more than happy to transfer to you Mike” before pressing pause and then answering in a much, much deeper voice as “Mike.”

Oh, those days have gone. Tranghese developed the conference into a basketball and football power, one that continues to grow in weed-like fashion even if he, in a fit of hyperbole, nearly announced its demise with the departure of Miami, Boston College, and Virginia Tech five years ago:

”They are going to have to factor in the irreparable harm that is going to be caused to the members of my league,” Tranghese said during a 30-minute news conference here at the Big East meetings. ”Aside from that, and this will sound self-serving, this will be the most disastrous blow to intercollegiate athletics in my lifetime. It’s wrong.”

So perhaps he wasn’t always the calm, unwavering hand on the throttle. In fact, in that case, be was the pilot running down the aisle of the plane screaming “BANANAS!” and running for the exits without a chute. (more…)

From Ragin Cajun, we have more evidence that LSU fans merc every tailgate they touch with their patented mix of overkill, lack of shame, and color combinations that would make the recently departed Yves Saint-Laurent weep into his sissy but stylish man-hankie.

Note the other SEC teams listed on the top. It makes the trailer faster.
(more…)

Our Continental Award goes to Zachary Marshall of Miami of Ohio.

The “not da U” Miami football player accused of aggravated burglary and assault, Zachary Marshall, has a waterproof, game-tight excuse for his barging into a strange apartment and allegedly placing a pillow over the face of one of the apartment’s female occupants.

The lawyer representing a Miami of Ohio football player accused of assaulting a female student in her dorm room says the player was drunk and entered the woman’s room thinking it was his own.

So, it’s customary for him to arrive in his own apartment and then smother whomever’s lying in his bed with a pillow. In the Jerramy Stevens guide to love, this is customary, but we suspect he might have just panicked, tried to shut up the girl once he realized he had a live screaming girl on his hands, and then realized he was actually suffocating someone before doing a mad Andre the Giant wind sprint out of the place.

All in all, the Continental would have been proud of the mucho suave way this was executed and handled. Jason Bourne would have handled it the same way, with the possible addition of killing someone with a phone book on the way out (but only in the most involuntary and remorse-inducing of ways, of course.)

(P.S. The Cincinnati Enquirer adds insult to self-inflicted injury:

Police say his bulky physique helped distinguish him from other suspects.

When he’s a tiny 180 pounds and in the throes of manorexia, we’ll blame your toxic sizism, you bastards at the Enquirer.)

You’re not happy with the “bullshit” printed about you in the October 11th edition of the Curious Index, which appears below in total in the form of a reader email sent to us by a very, very reliable source after the epic Florida/LSU game in 2007.

The pressbox gets a call from press will call saying that somebody claiming to be Rick Reilly is here wanting up to the press box. One of the SID’s goes downstairs to check (Reilly had not requested any credentials before hand) and in fact it was Rick Reilly. He appeared to be drunk/stoned and was accompanied by a blonde that my friend’s wife described as “looking like a stripper.” Given that it was Rick Reilly, he was allowed up to the press box. Where he proceeded to spend the whole game making out with his friend. One of the other SIDs was quoted saying “those two need a room bad.”

Rick Reilly, seen here on the left, is steamed at us. He’s a sportswriter, I think.

You have, on two different occasions in conversations with other bloggers, referenced this as evidence of some of the most troubling things a blog can do. To wit:

“Where’s the journalistic integrity?” Reilly asked. “He has my email — why didn’t he try to verify it?” Indeed, the blonde that “looked like a stripper” accompanied Reilly to the party Friday night, and he confirmed that she’s his live-in girlfriend.

We’re not journalists, for one. We’re bloggers, and as usual, we’ll have to tell you the definition of blogger by telling you that there is no definition. Yet, you mentioned it again to You Been Blinded recently, as well: (more…)