CURIOUS INDEX, 7/7/2009

Happy Wuerffelmas. It being 7/7 on the calendar, we'll let you in on a secret Gator fan holiday, and one we don't share lightly: Wuerffelmas!

There's prayer sessions, shotput competitions in honor of Wuerffel's unorthodox throwing motion, and the ceremonial wearing of multiple knee braces, flak jackets, and extra helmet padding to honor our Lord and Savior's suffering under center before Spurrier decided he'd suffered enough for our sins, and moved him under shotgun for the salvation of Gator Nation. The one thing that sucks about Wuerffelmas: repeated random assaults by Peter Boulware. Other than that, it's all good, especially because Lutherans drink beer quietly but steadily, meaning if you get started around noon you can land a solid buzz on the runway sometime around 3:30 p.m. The holiday concludes by wearing a Saints helmet backwards and throwing footballs blindly until someone breaks the pinata full of chocolate Ditkas.

Negative Grohmentum: It's real, it's spectacular, and you need to prepare for it. Michael's piece does a nifty job packaging the otherwise drab, depression notion of "regression to the mean" in shinier clothing, particularly in regards to the Coach of the Year Award. Rhetoric that makes chingy cash noises:

So which teams are the lucky ones who have a four-in-five chance of seeing their records get worse this year? Alabama, Ole Miss, Vandy, Penn State, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Georgia Tech, Oregon State, and Cincinnati.

With Alabama and Ole Miss on that list working against an 80% probability of backslide, it's time to buy LSU futures like mad. (Though we suspect Ole Miss to be a subtle disappointment, as its schedule is a bit backloaded and features two D-1AA opponents. Like Texas Tech every year, but with less coherent quotes from the head coach.)

It's not an emergency until they lose three running backs. Iowa doesn't really panic until they lose 1,000 pounds worth of running back, but the potential injury to projected starter Jewel Hampton did rattle already meth-jogged nerves in Iowa a bit. Remember, though, it's not news UNTIL BLACKHEARTGOLDPANTS.COM SAYS IT IS:

If there was any chance Hampton's ACL was torn (as was initially rumored), he would almost certainly be in a brace, and would likely be unable to move, let alone run up the stairs of his house, a mere 3-4 days after the injury. This might be just a minor tweak of Hampton's springtime injury blown up into RUNNINGBACKPOCALYPSE by, well, people like us (you have to admit, we tried to limit the rumormongering here).

So they're waiting. Oh, and the regional drug of choice for Florida, should you be chapped about an Iowa meth joke, is freon tapped from an air conditioner mixed with weed shake smoked out of an emptied Busch Light can. We all have our variations on glory.

We hate everything orange and white......but even we look to the west and think of glory when we hear John Ward say "It's football time in Tennessee!!!" Then we swing a broadaxe at a cardboard cutout of Casey Clausen.

She'd be better than Crompton. The Wall Street Journal on today's hearings on the BCS, artfully trumped into something resembling legislative discussion by Orrin Hatch:

College football would be better off if those who run the BCS could recognize that the calls for playoffs are being fed by the precision their system implicitly promises but can never deliver. And Americans would be better off if Republican legislators devoted their energies to reforming our antiquated antitrust laws instead of looking for silly new ways to apply them.

Nonsense. Some of them are so devoted to reforming college football, they're joining the Tennessee football team.