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…

(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.

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.

“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.

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!!!

Curtis Anderson: Thank you, boys, for helping an old, crippled man taste the sweet flavor of the outdoors again. It’s like I’m fully alive again. Thank you, boys, for making that possible.

BOOM! A sunburst appears, and a hole in the clouds opens to show NICK SABAN addressing them from the heavens.

Nick Saban: Don’t you mean men, Curtis?

Nick Saban: [/gives the thumbs up. Bear Bryant appears in the background with a sign and arrow pointing to Saban. It reads: UNSTOPPABLE BADASS. Saban puts arm around Bear Bryant, disappears.]

FIN

PART TWO: THE INCIDENT AS SEEN BY AN AUBURN FAN

A four hundred foot yacht. MARK INGRAM AND JULIO JONES arrive by helicopter.

Curtis Anderson, crippled international arms dealer and villain: Boys, welcome to my yacht…The Bear Essentials. Winks suggestively.

Mark Ingram: Are those ladies naked?

Anderson: No. Some of them are wearing money stapled to their genitals and nipples.

Julio Jones: I’ll take twenty.

Anderson: Not before you take a little…swim.

Ingram/Jones: A SWIMMING POOL FULL OF MONEY!!!

Anderson: Not just money, boys: money COVERED IN STEROIDS!!!

Ingram/Jones: That’s the best kind!!! WHEEEE!!!!

They dive in.

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.

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.

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.”

BRIGHAM YOUNG
* Attend a bowl game other than the Las Vegas Bowl, just to see what it feels like.
* Serve a caffeinated beverage at a tailgate.
* Utter a swear word while watching a game.

GEORGIA
* Get pulled over for speeding and respond to the officer’s request for license and registration by barking loudly in his face. (Extra points for doing so in Columbia, South Carolina, or Alachua County, Florida.)
* Find the suitcase containing Urban Meyer’s soul and sell it back to him.
* Give a Georgia Tech student his first glimpse of female genitalia.

What’re you gonna do, charge me with failing to defend a triple-option offensive attack?

LSU
* Track down the source of the “LSU fans smell like corn dogs” rumor.
* Become the first human being to record a blood-alcohol level of 1.00 or greater.
* Slip Nick Saban a mickey and take a picture of yourself giving him a pair of Norwegian goggles.

MIAMI
* Sneak a firearm into a major sporting event.
* Beat up a Florida International fan just to feel alive.
* Take a ho to the seventh floor.

NOTRE DAME
* Have sex with a coed without being intoxicated, with a condom, and without going to Confession afterward.
* Keep Jimmy Clausen from getting sacked for a full hour.
* Witness a Notre Dame victory over Southern Cal. (Just kidding. There’s no way you’ll live that long.)

OHIO STATE
* Spend an entire night, alone, in the Southeastern Conference’s headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama.
* Defecate in a styrofoam cooler. At a 4th of July picnic.
* “Dot the I” at Ohio Stadium naked from the waist down.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
* E-mail or call in a death threat to Jacquizz Rodgers, Jim Harbaugh, or Vince Young.
* Watch the Kim Kardashian sex tape in HD and pretend you’re Reggie Bush.
* Get re-tweeted by Pete Carroll.

TEXAS
* Break into the Oklahoma University athletic-department building, drink beer, and urinate in their 2008 Big XII Championship trophy. Continue until trophy is filled to the top.
* Play keep-away with the hat of a Texas A&M “cadet.”
* Play keep-away with the hot pants of a Texas pom squad member.

WEST VIRGINIA
* To get the feeling of what it’s like to be a fan of a major historic D-IA football program, throw a brick through coach Bill Stewart’s window.
* Have sex while wearing a coonskin cap.
* Set fire to a Rooms To Go store and burn the whole thing to the ground.

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.

Talk to you in a bit.

We will be celebrating properly, i.e. with wine and explosives, this afternoon. Remember us fondly.

Does the Pope shit in the woods? Quoth the Raven:

[Meyer] turned to me and asked. “Is it OK to make this announcement here?”

I knew what he was going to say because he said something similar when the speculative story surfaced three weeks ago.

Meyer turned back to the golfers and said, “I’m not going to Notre Dame. Ever. I’m going to be the coach at Florida for a long time, as long as they want me.”

OK. So we’re done talking about this now, right? Urban Meyer is coaching Florida. And will continue to coach at Florida. (Finebaum column forthcoming: “Unless he doesn’t!” Tee hee!)

That’s why they make the big bandwidth. There’s scraping by in the offseason content hardscrabble, then there’s getting 700 words out of the hairstyles at West Virginia’s summer strength workouts:

Connolly is no slave to fashion. In his five years here, he has gone completely shorn and shaggy. He is liable to show up with a goatee, a Van Dyke or full beard.

Lazear may be vying with Connolly strand for strand, but Davis’ ‘do, which the DB keeps pinned in with a flourishing pony tail may outlast both of his teammates. Tandy’s hair probably falls a tad shorter than Davis’.

We’re in awe. Truly, madly, deeply.

Still better than I, Robot. This is supposed to look like the Iron Giant or the Tin Man, and other than being made of metal fails completely in both respects. Still, there’s something familiar…ahh, yes. Alabama, the sub-Dreamworks knockoff of football: it ain’t pretty, but does it ever rake in the cash. (Trivia: Terry Bradshaw has a small role in this film as “Broken Arm Bot.” No, no need to thank us.)

The Lord’s work. It’s a buyer’s market for kickoff countdowns this time of year, but the 7th Floor is putting their own…particular spin on an old trick.

This is us, pointing and nodding approvingly at whichever corner of the internet Miami’s staked out. ]]> http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/07/14/curious-index-7142009/feed/ 34 http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/07/07/july-columns-are-the-most-fiskalicious/ http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/07/07/july-columns-are-the-most-fiskalicious/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:39:44 +0000 Orson Swindle http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/?p=10845

It’s July, when most people hit the beach for a week and give up on doing anything put picking sand out of sandwiches on the beach and collecting future melanomas. Except for brave football columnists like Paul Finebaum, who soldier through the heat, looking to start fires with the most inflammatory of column fuel. We’d call it stirring the pot, but stirring implies some training and skill. This is more akin to a crackhead slapping the side of a burning oil drum in an alley with an oar until someone notices.

We know. This is what Finebaum does, and it makes him lots of money. Like Nicholas Cage’s hair or watching a highly paid coach botch time management at the end of a half, It doesn’t make it any less point/laughworthy.

Sampled only as needed, with helpful elision provided to eliminate chaff (i.e. the sensible and factual parts of the column.) Also, consider the following things totally accepted as possible:

1. Urban Meyer could totally leave Florida at any instant.

2. Paul Finebaum has done fine work as a columnist in the past.

3. Paul Finebaum could really now be writing his columns by Mad-Lib.

The rest, vivisected as follows:

Lead: Easy plug and play political reference with link to college football, followed by:

Urban Meyer is probably leaving Florida after the season to go to Notre Dame. Meyer says he’s not going. He insists he loves it in Gainesville and has no intention of taking a position he once described as “my dream job.”

So how do I know Meyer is not telling the truth? Easy. Meyer’s lips moved when he denied the story.

Be sure to put that in its own line, because that one kills! He lies! There’s an edited version where he also says the same thing about Bobby Petrino, Lane Kiffin, and even Nick Saban. He’s just saving that for when the time is right, and he can put another Mad Lib column up accusing a coach of leering at another job. Seriously, you will see this paragraph in a Finebaum column in the next two years:

COACH is probably leaving after the season to go to NOTRE DAME/NFL/FULFILLING BUT SCANDALOUS CAREER IN GAY PORN. COACH says he’s not going. He insists that he loves it in COLLEGE TOWN and has no intention BLAH BLAH BLAH.

We’d do the same with columns, but when it comes to “Coach’s Name” we always fill in “FART” just like we did in third grade. Moving on:

Perhaps there was a time when Meyer was about what’s right in college football. They say he was just a normal guy out in Utah. Maybe he was even a decent cat for about 24 hours in Gainesville. Since then, Meyer has become obsessed with success and power…

Same guy so obsessive he used to do full-throated motivational speeches to nearly empty rooms at Bowling Green. Sure, it was exposure to the ambient creeping evil in the 352 that did it. That’s a much more logical explanation. Some twaddling on about how obsessed Meyer is with Notre Dame follows, and then some obvious notes about roster losses post-Tebow, and then the requisite manual genital manipulation of his audience:

Don’t think Meyer isn’t just a tad concerned about Nick Saban stockpiling warehouses loaded with blue-chip talent in Tuscaloosa. Meyer knows he dodged a bullet in the fourth quarter of the SEC title game last year.

“That’s raight, Paul. Grip it closer to the base. Yeah, don’t be afraid of hurtin’ it. Just don’t block my view of the Bear Bryant shrine over there. I can’t get where I want to go without it.” We just watched this game last week on CSS, and it was close, well-fought, and came down to Florida having a quarterback, and Alabama almost having a quarterback. The only bullets we saw in the fourth came off the arm of Tim Tebow to Louis Murphy against spectacular Cover 2 defense by Alabama. That wasn’t dodging a bullet: it was beating the second best opponent we played all year, and a fine, fine football team.

Next: INSANE CONSPIRACY THEORY ABOUT THE UTAH GAME. Not even worth discussing, unless to note that if the prior statement was blatant ball-strokage of the Alabama fanbase, this is the prostate tickle for Hoover-area conspiracy theorists. Meyer had a national title game to prepare for, his offensive coordinator to replace, a new OC to move in, and a pile of recruiting. Also, Utah needed little help against an Alabama team playing without its starting left tackle and a Utah defense all too aware of what pressure points to hit.

Nevermind the disservice this pays to Andy Ludwig, former Utah OC and current Cal assistant, who allegedly took issue with Saban’s insistence that Alabama should have won by three TDs in the game an off-season clinic. You could say, “Hey, that’s a message board.” Given the source text we’re looking at here, even wacky message board hearsay is just as admissible in this kangaroo court as a Finebaum column.

Former Utah OC Andy Ludwig was in attendance for Saban’s lecture. Ludwig, who is now the OC at Cal, presented Thursday morning and took a little offense to Saban’s remarks. Ludwig opened the lecture by saying “I try to keep everything simple. You know, I sat here last night and listened to a man say how he had 30 different ways to run cover 2, and I’m just sitting there thinking to myself, ‘geez, I only have one way to run a dig route’. But you know what? That one way was more than enough to beat him.” (he was talking about Saban)

Later, towards the end of his speech he said, “You know, I’m sitting in the audience and I hear ‘We should have beat Utah by two TDs’ and I almost stood up and said, ‘yeah, but you didn’t.’ It’s kind of hard to win by two tds when you’re down 21 points in the first half.”

It was easy enough to figure out how to beat a somewhat depleted Alabama team: play precise ball, pressure the left side and John Parker Wilson, and you stood a good chance. Also not to be overlooked: Utah 2008=really freaking good. So now that we’ve painted this as inaccurate in three different directions, let’s move on. Ninja says lazy streetfighter always follows with slow roundhouse. Ninja is right:

In case you don’t own a police blotter — or have the DVD collection of the television series “COPS” — the Gators recently celebrated their 24th arrest since Meyer’s arrival.

We recommend the 3-pack with “Bad Girls” for the seasoned viewer. For the novice, the third season offers a particularly moving episode involving a meth head stuck shoeless on an metal roof in Las Vegas. For the college football fan, we’d point out that everyone else got done spluttering about Florida’s arrest about two months ago, and that after that Finebaum probably edited out a reference to a Sarah Palin joke, because even he realized they’re played out, and that his primary readership would elect her and Elizabeth Hasselbeck to the White House, but only if they promised to make out at the inauguration ceremony topless. (Rich Lowry just shot off in his pants thinking about this. If you did, too, well…we don’t judge. You have that happy moment.)

Blah, Machen sucks…and blatant misleading factual presentation:

Meyer has four years left on a contract that pays him well north of $3 million a year. He works at a school that recently cut $40 million from its general budget.

UAA pays Meyer’s salary in full and runs a surplus. The budgets are only connected semantically, and UAA is in fact giving six million back to the school this year in a recession. But please: take the offramp to hackeneyedconclusionville in the name of your column. You’re losing the grip there, and may need more lube.

Then a bit more stroking of the Meyer-to-ND rumor, and calling Machen “megalomaniacal,” (irony! it never dies,) and then the coup de grace:

It is unlikely Meyer has to worry about falling as far as Donovan (who is no longer even considered the best coach in his division). However, for all of the beatings Meyer has put on and will likely continue to put on schools this fall, he will become the hunted next year. His arrogance (see Ole Miss debacle last year) won’t be able to handle that.

BECAUSE HE’S FRAGILE LIKE A FLOWER!!! Meyer plans on coaching next year wearing black and with his nose in a copy of Twilight, because he wishes his skin sparkled in the sun like a sexy but sensitive teen vampire, too! He may just go someplace where he can win all of his games easily, like…um…Notre Dame. Yes, that all makes perfect sense.

Suck it Myles Brand! HOW DYA LIKE MAH NOW!!!

Lubyanka on the Piedmont: Auburn.

(For sanity–if you’re into that poison–is at Joe Cribbs’ Car Wash, as usual. It’s slow and Tony Franklin likes to talk. Voila! Off-season piece!)

Only the finest niblets from the place Terry Bowden fled in the middle of the night with his binkie and sippy cup in hand from the article follow.

On the atmosphere:

“It was the most unusual place I’ve ever been,” Franklin said of the Auburn program. “No one liked anybody else. There was this deep distrust of everybody. The coaches didn’t trust the administration, the administration didn’t trust each other or the coaches. It was very strange and very unnerving. You would walk down the halls and there would be tension you could just feel.

On Auburn coaches and religion:

“That’s all they do is pray — and talk about praying and religion,” Franklin said. “It’s a constant thing with them, and it’s just overwhelming at times. A lot of people use religion as a crutch, and I think that’s the case there. Every word coming out of their mouths is something about religion, and most of it is just a joke.

It certainly explains their offense in the final years of the Tuberville era. (Florida note: Damn you to hell, Brandon Cox.)