We can has pass defense…possibly. Jon Demps can only be operated by one stuntman in the world. The punter just decided to take off on 4th and 15ish and well, hell, it worked. We won by eleventy billion, no one got hurt, and Chris Rainey earned his white girls for the day.

The Alphabet is up over at the Sporting Blog. We’re off to drink the sweet, nitrous-strong coffee of victory. We love you all, and will see you tomorrow.

Footloose and fancy-free, motherfuckers. We’re taking a little break to stretch and drink, and we’ll kick off the last liveblog of the evening around 8:00 EDT. Until then, warm up in the comment thread.

Again, how this works: A handful of the consistently funny will have their comments auto-approved; everyone else goes in the queue. If your comment doesn’t show up, please don’t repost–we’ll get to as many of the good ones as we can. If you’re not saying something relevant, at least make it funny, and no politics. [Hint: Typing WAR EAGLE WAR EAGLE over and over again, while adorable, is not Cutting It.] Orson is in the press box for Alabama-Clemson and would like everyone to know he just spotted a pair of Crocs with leather deck shoe tops.

Okay, the rules for the liveblog:

1. We have a cast of ten automatically approved commenters who are pretty much first come, first serve.

2. Everyone else will have to be approved manually. We will approve relevant, clever, witty, and irresistible comments. The rest will flow by. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that “YUP” and “Erin Andrews something something internet stalkery” don’t really tickle the ivories. Approving them all turns this into an IM thread, and if you want that, well, there’s IM. Plus, it almost gave us Parkinson’s trying to approve all of the comments in real time.)

3. Enjoy.

Liveblog, tomorrow all day and it don’t stop with Holly and ourself.

Set the chains. Check the clock. Alert the networks that the ball will be in the air whether they are ready or not.

Go.

The week’s picks, divided into the quasi-rational and nakedly irrational.

#18 Tennessee @ UCLA

SWINDLE: OPTION: QUASI-RATIONAL. Don’t consider this an endorsement of Tennessee so much as a suspicion that UCLA’s battered offensive line, JUCO starter Kevin Craft, and new offensive schemes will give Tennessee the opportunity to line up a few par 3 touchdowns thanks to turnovers. Tennessee will introduce the Clawfense, which is new itself and will feature spectacular, vurping hiccups. (Option route peekaboo: you run slant, I thought you were going the other way, we give six the other way ROCK.)

In a battle of two freshly molted offenses, though, Tennessee’s got better, less maimed tools to work with here. Our fanfiction ends with UCLA’s defense getting swamped by the offense putting them into untenable, unwinnable positions. Add in the unscoutability of the Clawfense–relatively unseen to this point–and the biggest winners of this game may be the Florida defensive coaching staff, who will have fresh gametape of Tennessee’s brand new dance.

(Oh, and because this is fanfiction, Ron Weasley is over in the corner tagging Hermione while Voldemort watches from his spank chair. That’s happening, too.)

HOLLY: RATIONAL/BLATANT HOMERISM Tut tut, looks like rain. Tennessee: New QB with mileage comparable to an Oldsmobile Alero never driven anywhere except to church on Sundays by your great-great-aunt. (more…)

Blogtoberfest: resting comfortably prior to frenzied Saturday activity.

BULLET HURRICANE BULLET: App State/LSU gets the boot up to 10 a.m. thanks to Hurricane Gustav. This means LSU fans will begin drinking violently at 3 p.m. two days ago to prepare.

Holly’s new column on Yahoo is up, and contains a Velvet Underground reference Yahoo commenters will miss, think is gay, or turn into an attack on TEHM LIBRLZ.

Losers With Socks pointed us to a South Carolina fan who, to be fair, is consistent with his hate. Even if you’re paralyzed, he still thinks you should go to hell and die.

They stop traffic and neglect burning fires for football? Yes, Hawaii, we do. All the time.

Necessary things: The schedule, easy, simple, and television-friendly. Read it before you go into battle. We talked with Cuddles Swindle yesterday, and his entire day is planned down to the second. We think the twins are even supposed to shit on schedule, and if they really are his children, for football they will do just this.

Illinois is faster than last year, but thin at linebacker per Behind the Stripes, who also gets more information about Juice Williams improving vastly as a passer. Thinking about putting Maclin on one of those linebackers in a matchup has Chase Daniels delivering pizzas with a fierceness, brah.

Cobra Commander has a Twitter feed. It’s necessary.

Todd, who should be doing hang cleans and drinking whole eggs in preparation for Bama’s opener, is instead divulging his girly shame/love songs list. Scandal does not belong on that list.

This, however, does (the video makes it so, so much worse):

God rains down his judgment on Arizona State because HE’S A DAWG! WOOO SIC ‘EM!!! Mind the trim…

Reader email begins this discussion of whatever the hell the Dr. Lou segment was last night. Mike asks:

It’s like the pep talk, but without the aspects of the pep talk that made sense. Please explain what I saw last night and help me prevent spontaneous cerebral combustion.

Some things defy explanation. The sublimity of the pep talks last year, where Holtz was allowed to leap around in front of the camera in his natural environment like lithe mercury-swilling madman he really is, have instead been replaced by a seated Holtz doing his best Leo Marvin-via-the-Catskills shrink routine. The results can only be explained by one thing and one thing only: the devastating effects of penis hookworm.

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