COUNTDOWN: 77 DAYS
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
June 13, 2008
CORRECTIONS, 6/13/2008
Monday’s feature “At Home With The Big 10″, profiling Iowa Hawkeyes coach Kirk Ferentz, listed “sensitivity” and “soft hands” among his most commonly recognized qualities. Our editorial staff has since been contacted by Ferentz’s wife, Mary, who reports that he is a cold and unfeeling lover. We regret the error.
A late-night breaking news bulletin quoting Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban as saying he had “no surprises” for his “extra” scholarship players was incomplete. The blurb failed to include Saban miming the twirling of a mustache he does not possess, and should have been accompanied by the following photo of a little-used Tuscaloosa practice field:
We regret the error.
VISITING LECTURER: MIAMI OF OHIO
Teams: there are a lot of them. In our effort to bring you the finest “bullshit” coverage of college football, we have begun the best method we could think of to write about teams we know next to nothing about: asking others to write about them for us. Our Visiting Lecturer Series today presents burly seaman Chuck of Miami Hawk Talk, talkin’ Hawks.
One: what color is your season? In other words, please explain the metaphorical state of your program through the metaphor of color:
I suppose red would be the obvious choice here, but it’s too obvious. Another contender would be pink, reflecting our embarrassment over the Zach Marshall incident.
The color that best describes Miami football right now, though, is probably verdigris. Paint tinted with verdigris retains its color for centuries, but verdigris is also used as a fungicide. So what does that have to do with football? Well, after a couple seasons far below expectations, the conventional wisdom is that Coach Shane Montgomery is in his make-or-break year. Either he recaptures the glory of seasons past, or he gets the boot. So verdigris it is.
Two: What historical nation and period do you resemble most right now?
Belgium, today.
At Miami, we’re big on history. Most wins of any mid-major program, with even more than johnny-come-latelies like Florida or the University of Coral Gables. And, of course, there’s the Cradle of Coaches: Weeb Ewbank, Sid Gillman, Bo Schembechler, Woody Hayes, Ara Parseghian, Red Blaik, Paul Dietzel, [NAME REDACTED], Jim Tressel, Sean Payton, Randy Walker, and Terry Hoeppner, among others, spent time in the Miami football program as players or coaches.
Belgium? At their peak, the Phlegms controlled something like a full eighth of Africa. But since then, what have the Belgians done? Finished second to West Germany at Euro 1980. As much as I hate to admit it, Miami is like that too. The RedHawks have exactly one MAC title in the past 21 years. 2003 was a magical season, to be sure, but it was just one season. And in the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of college football, 2003 is about as relevant as the Congo Free State. (Of course, Miami might make a splash in some unorthodox manner. Perhaps Butler County Area I Court will declare universal jurisdiction over crimes against sport and go after Jim Delaney.)
Miami: Nuremberg of the West?
FATHERS’ DAY EXCLUSIVE: SONG OF THE LUKEWARM POTSTICKER
The following is an excerpt from our upcoming memoir, Song of the Lukewarm Potsticker. It is about the father shared by both Matt Ufford and Spencer Hall: a poet, a madman, a city bus driver, a man fond of grooming himself with a soldering iron, the color orange, and the man who made us who we are today. For the first time, we share excerpts from the intensely personal story of our father, who is currently fighting a mail fraud charge we are sure he is innocent of in every way.
My father would drink. He liked to drink. When he became drunk, he became mean. He would curse at only the brown tiles on the floor, because he was a racist, and would slap my mother until she bled. And by my mother, I mean my father. He would slap himself.
It was indescribably brutal.
To please him, I played sports. At first, I tried diving. I remember my first diving match event. My father screamed at me from the stands. “Where’s your helmet?” I tried to explain to him that in diving, you didn’t need a helmet.
“The little man in the aquarium has a helmet!” he insisted.
“We’re not in an aquarium!” I screamed back.
“Don’t question me in front of your mother!” he said, pointing to a man in his mid-fifties named Harold sitting in the stands.
CURIOUS INDEX, 6/13/2008
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| Team Tiger! Our Fearless Leader runs down every fan’s essential offseason guide—Mascots You’d Want On Your Side In A Barfight—at The Sporting News. [UPDATE: And here's the list of those you don't.]
Tiger fights: Not just for candy-ass Discovery Channel eggheads. This Thing Is Like That Other Thing: The Big XII as potato chips? Never having heard of half these brands, we will rely on you, Dear Readers, to tell us how right or wrong this went. Via EDSBS indispensable cohort Ragin’ Cajun Rebel: Perpetual non-qualifying machine Jerrell Powe and new SEC regulations. “Basically, the SEC’s initial eligibility rules will generally mirror the NCAA’s, which allow some non-qualifiers to attend school and try to get their grades up before competing,” Boone said. “The one caveat is that any non-qualifier still has to be approved by the (SEC) commissioner.” Further: But with the change, it will become slightly easier for non-qualifiers to attend an SEC school for the first year and receive no athletic financial aid while focusing on the classroom - which is consistent with NCAA rules. If after the first year of college, the non-qualifier has satisfied NCAA academic requirements, he would be allowed to play and receive athletic aid beginning in the second year. This looks good for Powe. And no matter what your opinion of the matter is, you have to respect his tenacity. The Fighting Illini, enjoying their high expectations? This kind of thing has never ended badly for a Zook squad, ever, so they should feel pretty comfy. The Wolverine Liberation Army dispenses pretty much exactly the kind of propaganda you would expect, but with the added bonus of iconography. They also list EDSBS and Black Heart Gold Pants as “mouthpieces of the enemy”, which is never a bad sign. Careful video research indicates that wolverines aren’t all that into comradeship, but it’s Friday, brah; let’s all be brothers: |
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