Cody: hungry for long pig.

A classic game demands classic hatin’. The Third Saturday in October is here, and HA! HA! Uncle Verne is here to usher you through its wending and winding turns. Enjoy a game that will end 6-3 for sumarbgmuhumphlmubmlemble…

Good morning. Ricky is an Alabama fan. Ricky wears boat shoes indoors. Ricky takes Alabama football very seriously, and sometimes gets very excited about the games. Ricky sometimes uses words he shouldn’t, words your boss wouldn’t like, and one word that black people definitely do not like. Ricky doesn’t care for your table either.

(Seriously NSFW audio. Don’t even try it.)

Son, Nick Saban likes the intensity, but not the lack of composure. You have to put yourself through the process to become a champion, and in your case that process is probably a series of rubber restraints during the game mixed with some Haldol and half a handle of Jim Beam. It’s worked for us for years. If that fails, there’s always toaster abuse to take the edge off a tense moment in a game. Oh, and you won that game, Ricky.

Ricky, one last thing. The n-word can only be used by three white men ever: Will Ferrell as Robert Goulet–NSFW!–, Slim Pickens in Blazing Saddles, and Rex Kramer, Danger Seeker.[also NSFW] Otherwise, it is completely verboten, like wearing your goddamn shoes inside, you heel.

…they would come out to this version of “Thus Spake Zarathustra.”

Meanwhile, the Monolith leading Alabama to the next step in evolution, Nick Saban, was given a contract extension through January 31st, 2018. If Saban is still the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide at that point, he inherits the rights to all public land in the state of Alabama and all citizens dwelling therein, turning the state government and its lands nto his private fiefdom to rule as he sees fit. It won’t happen, but the lawyer just liked the sound of it, and once they get rolling withe the clauses and codicils, it’s hard to stop them. If that clause kicks in, all State Capital employees are to report to the conference room for the morning beatings and mat drills. Sorry. It’s in the contract.

The contract could pay Saban a total of $4.7 mil annually, or possibly more if/when another school goes bananapants and shells out more for a coach. From Chris Low’s report:

The contract guarantees Saban will be among the nation’s five highest-paid football coaches or the three highest in the Southeastern Conference, whichever is higher. His pay cannot fall below those averages.

Ball on, Coach Ahab. The contract has been in the works for a while, so it’s nice to see Alabama settle the man down for the long haul and make a commitment to a coach clearly harassed and pressured by Alabama fans’ refusal to accept only ten wins a year. He can finally start to get comfortable, especially now that they’re paying him a living wage at last.

Terrence Cody is sick with symptoms consistent with those of swine flu, something the 8995 pound Alabama defensive tackle acquired from any number of the whole pigs he ate yesterday. He and “four or five guys” are being quarantined to keep the virus (whatever it is) from spreading to the rest of the team, but let’s go back to the news that Terrence Cody is sick, and acknowledge that the single largest concentration of human misery in the world today is a mass of humanity straining the springs of a mattress in a dorm room in Tuscaloosa. His is the one with a hose hooked up to a tanker truck of Rib ‘n Gravy-flavored Gatorade snaking through the window.

“That’s the last time we take the team swimming at Pigshit Springs.”

Best wishes to our favorite national park/defensive tackle. In the meantime, swine flu has a 7 percent mortality rate. If you are a scholarship player at Alabama and you get a sudden switch of roommates, and that roommate walks in sniffling and openly sneezing all over everything? Consider that a message from coach, because scholarships don’t trim themselves, son.

THE INCIDENT AS SEEN BY AN ALABAMA FAN.

A serene morning on the Alabama Gulf Coast. A small, modest fishing vessel passes along the coast.

Mark: I’m so glad we’re out here fishing on this peaceful and serene water this morning.

Julio: Me too, Mark. But only after we fulfilled our duties as football players, and as student-athletes, and as people, first. Real, character people.

Mark: Which is why we’ve come on this fishing trip. Not for ourselves, though I’m sure I’m going to enjoy it. Won’t you, Julio?

Julio: Oh, of course. Hey, look!

They both land fifty pound tuna simultaneously.

Mark and Julio: WOW!!! (more…)

There really should be a collection of Nick Saban’s finest press moments cut together for the benefit of the general public. Nick Saban will not go off on a long, absurd tirade in the fine tradition of Denny Green or Jim Mora, or challenge other coaches to fights, or even berate a reporter individually in full freak-out mode like Mike Gundy. That would be too personal.

Nick Saban addresses a waiting media.

Instead, Saban just stumbles around a rhetorical corner, bumps into a crew of dudes, and just starts simultaneously swinging and pissing on all of them to mark his territory and let a horrified group of people know that even though they weren’t expecting to have lunch with Johnny Cockpunch today, they’re sitting at the table whether they like it or not. And for lunch, yeah: it’s cockpunching time for reporters who dare to speculate about the depth chart.

“We let you come to practice. If you’re going to speculate on the depth chart and who’s starting at what positions, then I’m going to close practice — for everybody,” Saban said. “So nobody’s going to get to come at all.

Saban said depth chart issues should be solved internally before they are dispersed to the public.

Saban then commanded them to all pee sitting down for the rest of the week, and told them they would be checking in on them at any second to make sure they were doing what he said. He then took a dollar from each reporter for protection, and then left the room while slowly walking backwards and doing the two fingered “I’m-watching-you” gesture, pointing first at his eyes, and then at them, and then back again.

We’ve been looking for this ad for the better part of five years. It’s been a Holy Grail of sorts, the source of countless internet searches, a few frantic calls to extremely confused corporate offices, and a largely ineffective sifting through of the internet. For the most part, we’d forgotten about it completely after giving up toward the end of last season to look for something easier to find like the West Virginia Mothman or Rick Reilly’s hymen.

This is another installment in life’s multi-part lesson about how to get what you’re looking for, and the answer is the same as ever: stop looking. Someone posted it to Youtube in April. The legend around the ad is that Bryant was supposed to say “Call your mama,” but then ad-libbed the last line, and thus sending South Central Bell’s stock through the roof and countless men running crying to the phones in a rush to obey the commands of the Man-Pope of Alabama.

At long last: The South Central Bell Ad where Bear Bryant demands that you call your mama.

The man could sell bacon in Mecca and bicycles to quadraplegics.

I’ve always wanted to hunt the most dangerous game . . . Ohio State fans.

Senator Blutarsky laid down the challenge, and T. Kyle King, who hates Auburn — boy, does he ever hate Auburn — responded with every bit of the gusto you’d expect and then some. So now the only question is, is 100 Things Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die just an Auburn thing, or is this book part of a series? Naturally, it’s the latter, meaning that in addition to a team-specific tailgating tent, leather sofa, or casket, you can now have a bucket list tailored to the college football team of your choice.

Even leaving out all the baseball-themed volumes — is “Stay awake through an entire MLB game” on any of those lists? It should be — we don’t have the time to slog through every one of these books, much less the resources to buy all of ‘em. But that ain’t gonna stop us from making some educated guesses as to what’s on each list. Here’s what we’d include, if we were instructing individual fan bases as to how they can optimize their respective fandoms before shuffling off their respective mortal coils:

ALABAMA
* Pick three random years out of the past century and make a case for Alabama deserving a share of the national title in each of those years in a letter to the editor, comment on a rival blog, or graffito spray-painted on an opposing team’s stadium.
* Get a houndstooth-patterned prosthesis or medical implant (i.e. hip replacement, pacemaker, or IUD).
* Cut off an Auburn fan’s ear whilst listening to Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You.”

(more…)

The local rabble who’ve spent much of the past couple weeks going nuclear on Paul Finebaum for daring to suggest any comparison between Urban Meyer and Bear Bryant will be gratified to hear: The Bear haunted Meyer on his first visit to Bryant-Denny! At least that’s how Urbs seems to describe it:

Urban Meyer remembers two things in particular from his first road trip to Alabama in his first season at Florida.

But that pregame blast from the past didn’t speak as loudly as the postgame critics. They saw Alabama 31, Florida 3 as a sign that Meyer wasn’t going to change the future of the SEC.

Not a painting by Larry Pitts but an actual, unretouched photo, evidently.

HA HA SUCK IT MEYER RAMMER JAMMER HEY GATORS WE JUST BEAT THE HELL OUTTA YOUUUUU! Yeah, the rest of the story is a lot of stuff about the spread offense and about how it’s changing the SEC and blah blah blah, but no matter how dominating the spread becomes, it’ll never match the booming, beyond-the-grave voice of Paul W. Bryant in terms of sheer pants-crapping, bitchmaking terror.

Orrrr . . . maybe it will. Later on in the article:

“I think Florida has a great offense. I think it’s very difficult to defend. So I’m not being critical. But it is different.”

Alabama surrendered a season-high 31 points to both the Gators and the Utes and lost both games.

Christ, Bryant, where were you for those two games, guy? Perhaps the Bear really is like God: He answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is no.