CURIOUS INDEX, 7/3/2009

Ladies and gentlemen......Enrico Pallazzo.

As moving a film as it always is, it is especially emotional for those of us who had fathers trampled to death by the USC marching band, too.

YOUR AMERICAN CLASSIC OF THE MORNING: Maize and Brew Dave's simply stunning appeal for a Cloverfieldtron for Michigan stadium. Quality runs in thick seams throughout the soil of this piece, but the term "free-range nerds" may be seared into our brain for all eternity now. Florida is adding new scoreboards, too, but mostly because the South Endzone's old vacuum-tubes-and-happy-thoughts design was finally breaking down after years of functioning in the purgatorial conditions of Gainesville, and not because of any commitment to the American ideals of overkill in the name of sport fandom. (That's what the UF athletic budget is for.)

Quien es mas despised? Kyle asks the question, and our answer is simple. The player most despised who is currently in action against Florida is Wes Byrum, because kickers don't get to taunt. That, in a universe devoid of rules or regulations, is a rule. The man whose job involves a tee and two bars on his helmet does not get to taunt, even if he has just delivered a nutshot of a game-winning field goal to beat Florida at home. We hope all the bad things in life happen to him and only him for breaking this bit of decorum, and that he attacked by wild hogs and eaten for the violation, and that those wild hogs are then eaten by a shark, and that that shark is then placed in a rocket and shot into the sun. No, we're not bitter over that game. Not one bit.

They've been robbed of one of the 1970s most prestigious honors. According to Darren Rovell, this year's Playboy All-Americans will not receive a party, and the naked women, and the filthy groping session in the grotto, because there will be no party, because the Playboy, she is out of money, because you can find the porn for the free on the internet, and because this is the universe punishing Hugh Hefner for making the most special of homing beacons, the femme-pelt, disappear after 1983. You die and go to hell for that, Hef.

That is strange. The Texas A&M athletic department cuts 17 staff members, and not one of them is Mike Sherman. That is strange. Meanwhile, former Aggie coach Dennis Franchione will be covering the Big 12 for Buster Sports, where his columns will consist of 200 words leading up to a promise to tell you the good stuff if you subscribe to his private newsletter, which is only $1500 a year.

College preparations: Get car tuned up, get cheap IKEA furniture for dorm room, buy condoms, sign up for classes, get a third-degree felony reduced to a misdemeanor. (HT: Crabapple Buck.)