CURIOUS INDEX, 8/3/2009

I'm Richie Cunningham, and this is my lovely wife Oprah. Allow myself to introduce . . . myself: I'm Doug Gillett, proprietor of Hey Jenny Slater, occasional contributor to Dr. Saturday, and jet-setting international jewel thief; along with the lovely Holly -- fellow Doc Saturday contributor, EDSBS associate editor, and L.A. Times Kitten With A Whip Award winner three years running -- I'll be gingerly manning the controls of this blog for the next week and trying like hell not to wrap it around the very first tree I come across. As a gesture of goodwill, I hereby promise to be at least 70-75% as funny as Orson at all times; if you'd like to send me tips, love/hate mail, or grainy boob shots, shoot them to heyjennyslater.blog at gmail.

You call it a "low bar"; we call it "reasonable goals." UCLA linebacker Reggie Carter is happy with the play of redshirt-freshman QB Kevin Prince in spring practice, as evidenced by this glowing praise:

"He doesn’t move around a lot and he doesn’t flinch," Carter said. "He stays in the pocket and he makes the right decision. If it’s there, he throws it, if it’s not, he keeps it. That’s all I need. I don’t want him to throw the ball to other people. As long as somebody on our team has the ball, I’m happy."

Even the venerable Los Angeles Times can't resist snarking off a bit at this comment, but there's a marketing opportunity here for UCLA if they want it: Give out "STOP FLINCHIN'" T-shirts at games and make that the theme of the 2009 season. It'll become the must-have wannabe-gangsta accessory in SoCal within days.

"Is this heaven?" "No. It's Waco." The buzz is slightly, uh, buzzier in central Texas, where Baylor fans are being treated not only to non-backhanded, genuinely optimistic projections for their football team this year but also to the delicious catnip no true CFB fan can resist: NEW UNIFORMS! Oh, to be in Waco, now that new unis and realistic bowl expectations are here!

He's so laid-back, it's intense, man. Things are equally sunny in Ames, Iowa, where first-year head coach Paul Rhoads "has transformed the button-down, strait-laced approach favored by Chizik and embraced a more relaxed, high-energy style." That seems like a bit of a tightrope walk there, and we have no idea how Rhoads is managing it, but either way he already seems to be more invested in the Cyclone program than Chizik, who, to hear his former players tell it, was frequently "relaxed" to the point of complete apathy. In other news, Rhoads says that teaching his "single-wing pro-style spread offense" has been a challenge, but that he's still trying to maintain an "intensely involved, hands-off" relationship with his players.

The University of Arizona: Slightly less desirable than a nut house. Accusations of having an "inferiority complex" get lobbed at places like Auburn and Michigan State and Georgia Tech all the time, but take heart, kids -- at least your alma maters weren't literally a consolation prize. According to the U of A's student paper:

"The University of Arizona didn't start out in a traditional fashion," said Theodore Gatchell, an aerospace engineering junior and campus ambassador.

Gatchell explained that the UA was born in Tucson in 1885 only because the Tucson representative of the Arizona Territorial legislature showed up late to a meeting.

"The city of Tucson had hoped to receive the appropriation for the state's mental hospital, which ended up going to Phoenix," Gatchell said.

The town was so mad that it got stuck with the university, that the Tucson representative to the Arizona Legislature was greeted with a barrage of rotten fruit on his return home.

Ouch! Tucsonians, take a lesson from the city of Tempe, which was faced with similar disappointment. They were chosen as the home of Arizona State University even though what they really wanted was Arizona's first legal brothel, but they managed to make it work for them, and in the end they got both.

I'M A MAN! I'M 220!!! Okie State QB Zac Robinson is bigger, more muscular, and more option-y heading into the 2009 season, says coach Mike Gundy. Other than kicking a puppy, Bobby Reid had no comment on these developments.

No, dammit, we want CONFLICT! Colt McCoy and Sam Bradford are friends. Yeah, that's real great for them and everything, but kinda anticlimactic, no? When one of them is caught banging the other's girlfriend, call us.