THE CURIOUS INDEX, 7/21/2010

THERE IS A SLIGHT CHANCE THIS FAT GUY TOUCHDOWN NEVER HAPPENED. Oh, Fat Guy Touchdown. Your pleasures are boundless, and your shelf life infinite, even if the player involved may be declared ineligible for poppin' bottles with an agent on South Beach 

Alabama's Marcel Dareus is the latest to be infected with Agent-borne Eligibility Plague, as the NCAA's rolling inquiry into the South Beach Bottle Massacre continues to claim victim after victim. Different people react differently to contagion; as Foucault wrote, a society's attitude toward sickness reveals much about their internal power structures. For instance, Florida went with a highly controlling approach, getting the police involved and working the PR machine while maintaining tight control, showing all the signs of a tightly controlled but discreet totalitarian state like Singapore. 

Nick Saban, however, is far more overt and public in his power display. 

"What the NFL Players Association and the NFL need to do is if any agent breaks a rule and causes ineligibility for a player, they should suspend his [agent's] license for a year or two," Saban told ESPN.com. "I'm about ready for college football to say, 'Let's just throw the NFL out. Don't let them evaluate players. Don't let them talk to players. Let them do it at the combine.' If they are not going to help us, why should we help them?"

A veritable threat of public execution, that. Diagnosed class: benevolent dictator/violent class. There is the slightest chance that if involved Dareus could be declared ineligible (if any contact happened before the title game,) a move meaning Alabama played an ineligible player in the national title game, and thus would have to vacate the national title game, and now we're all confused. One potential bonus, though? VACATING NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP WOOOOOO!!!

We repeat: go ahead and laugh, because a.) from our perspective if we'd won the SEC Championship game and gone to the title game Florida would have been in the same situation, and b.) if you're differently affiliated your team could still very well be next (unless your team has no NFL talent.) 

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: Mark Schlabach reported on ESPN Radio that Alabama is cooperating fully, and that the worst Dareus is likely to face is a three to four game suspension for the contact (which he supposedly recognized immediately upon arrival, and then left. We hope it's not longer than that, since he seems like a good enough dude and is a brilliant player to watch.) 

WOOOOOOO SEC MEDIA DAYS. We're typing this in the lobby of the Wynfrey, and there's at least twenty Bama fans here at 9:00 am CDT.  Twitter and SBNation madness to follow. 

RESPECT THE BELL. If you need instructions, Mississippi State, you best read them and respect the cowbell. Being the cryptoanarchist we are the notion of controlling noisemakers strikes us as antithetical to any civilized society, but the bastards take away fun and that's what they do. 

/vuvuzela'd

/air horns

/dog whistles that only 300 pound defensive tackles can hear

/running from Terrence Cody 

WELCOME BACK, SIR. Auburn's Zac Etheridge is back from his nasty injury, and good for him since being temporarily paralyzed on the field and recovering should always have the happy little "GOOD NEWS" sunburst they use on local newscasts surrounding it. (This is where Etheridge was.) 

GRAPH IT. Les Miles, orator.