CURIOUS INDEX, 6/29/09

He will now broadcast rarely, and then only from the light towers.

Paul Maguire will take a "reduced role" in ABC/ESPN's college football coverage this season, doing the occasional game and some radio and studio spots. Part one: no explanation is given. Part deux: Paul Maguire is 70. Part three: there's your explanatio, Maguire probably just wants to putter around and do all the things old men do in the fall: futz around cleaning out the garden for winter planting, watching football with the kids, and holing up with the still, 400 shotgun shells, and some squirrel jerky in a handy cave until the county men stop looking for his shine-hole. Ah, Grandpa. We miss you every time we smell burning cordite.

If the notion of the Erotic Zorro of college football broadcasting reducing his role this fall makes you sad, let's engage in some immediate emotional transference and heal that sadness with "Irish empathy," aka pure, burning rage:

Other changes on ESPN's college football will include adding Matt Millen as a game analyst.

Yup. It's like that, and Gary Barnett wasn't available. EDSBS officially offers ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS to the ESPN analyst who first reminds Matt Millen of his complete inability to do anything correctly on air. Craig James, you're our only hope, and mostly only because you sometimes talk like you don't even know you're on air when you're talking.

Collapsed lung: Minor injury. Nate Irving, NC State linebacker and the team leader in INTs in 2008, ran off the road early Sunday and pinballed his car off two trees before coming to a stop in a ditch and not doing anything too terrible to himself--if you don't count breaking his leg and collapsing his lung as being too nasty a thing to do to yourself. Irving is fortunate to be alive, but after the backiotomy we realize that doctors are fond of the art of understatement and ironic omission when they diagnose your condition. A broken leg is indeed "non life-threatening," but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like a five hundred bee enema after a long bike ride.

Crunches, you say? "Yeah, crunches. I also do overhead lifts and stabilize the core while doing them." "Gotcha. I'm asking, 'cause there's just this last five pounds I can't get rid of, Dez. That's why the shirt stays on, even though I'm the extremely successful qb of a darkhorse national title contender." "Sounds to me like you've got some body issues, Zack. You gotta star accepting your body for what it is." "Easy for you to say, Ab-ominable Show-man." "Well, that is true..."

There will be no Marques Slocums for the Wildcats. Arizona athletes must have their Facebook pages set to "private" as of this fall. A violation of the policy could result in the non-renewal of their athletic scholarship, even if it's vitally important that the world know how well a starting linebacker is doing in their ongoing game of Mafia Wars.

Today, 13 year olds, tomorrow, promising fetuses. "His vigorous kicking and induction of painful morning sickness in his mother clearly indicate a fetus with a real potential for on-field domination." Eric Berry's 13 year old brother commits to Tennessee, gets long quotes in Rivals, and takes recruiting ever closer to the barren, rocky border between real life and Skeevy Internet Stalkistan.

In transit, again. Life returns to normal tomorrow, but we're in transit again following our spectacular second round debacl'ing in the Hardcourt Table Tennis tourney. Posting will occur when possible.