#11 Ohio State @ Toledo
Ohio State IS Johnny Cash IN Walk the Line. Jim Tressel, you can’t just keep doing the same songs over and over? And you sure as hell can’t do it in front of a rabid crowd of people who’ve killed people? You are incorrect, record executive/football pundit. Sweatervest will trot out his shufflin’, two-note bass line lovin’ Tennessee Trio of an offense again and again until someone puts his head in the John Cooper memorial guillotine, confidently plowing ahead with convention in front of an audience condemned to imprisonment. (more…)

1. Catfish are wily. You know why some catfish grow to be a godzillion feet long under riverbanks, undisturbed for decades on end? Because they’re clever motherfuckers, that’s why. Won’t win any Academic All-American honors, but the catfish’s ability to quickly and accurately distinguish between friend and foe would prevent situations like, say, staring down and throwing directly to a UCLA cornerback when there’s a wide-open receiver ten goddamn yards away.

2. The physicality of a catfish is ideally suited to the Tennessee offense. We’re not asking for much this year. We have a stable of fine tailbacks, a depleted receiving corps, and a talented but overwhelmingly injured offensive line.   (more…)

The U.S. House of Representatives certainly has never had a shortage of complete nutcakes, but ever since former Rep. Tom Osborne (R-NE) declined to run for re-election in 2006 (in favor of an ultimately unsuccessful run for governor), it has been regrettably short on former coaching legends. According to the Orlando Sentinel, though, next year the House may have a shot at bolstering its numbers in both categories: Former Notre Dame head coach and current ESPN talking/babbling head Lou Holtz has been talking to national Republican leaders about the possibility of running against incumbent Rep. Suzanne Kosmas for the Congressional seat representing Florida’s 24th district. Granted, there’s probably a case to be made that Holtz couldn’t be that much worse than must of the fruit cups currently representing us on Capitol Hill, but the mere concept remains so intensely, willfully surreal on its face that there can only be one possible purpose for it: grooming a suitably bonkers running mate for Sarah Palin’s inevitable 2012 presidential campaign.

Palin/Holtz ‘12: In your heart, you know it’d be hilarious.

What kind of a representative/VP would Sweet Lou be? Well, we already know he’d be a big fat no on the Kyoto Protocols. If his continuing close relationship with Notre Dame is any indication, we can also assume he’d swing solidly to the right on all the hot-button social issues — abortion, euthanasia, the right of Michigan and Ohio State fans to intermarry, that sort of thing. As far as clues from his actual coaching career, we can assume he’d be dedicated to building a strong national defense, but that he’d also follow a fairly strict non-interventionist policy (unless you can find any evidence that his South Carolina teams mounted any offense whatsoever). As far as we’re concerned, the wild card here is health care: If he’s going to run as a Republican, the obvious assumption is that he’s against Obama’s health-care proposal, but you have take into account his unclear stance on drug benefits and his casual distribution of advice (as a “Doctor” on ESPN) that was, at best, quasi-solicited — there’s a possibility he’d be down for a lot more government involvement there than the GOP would like. (All together now: MAVERICK!)

As for potential appointments or staff members, it’s probably early to be speculating on those as well, but one name seems like a pretty safe bet: Beano Cook as assistant for national security affairs, the Scooter Libby to Lou’s Dick Cheney? Yeah, you laugh now. Just see if he doesn’t.

If you’ve devoured Michael Lewis’s endlessly fascinating The Blind Side (as we have) and followed the amusing updates of cameos by Saban, the Orgeron, et al in the upcoming film adaptation (ditto), then you’ve probably been waiting with bated breath for the film’s wide release in November. If that’s the case, then Chris Mottram is going to throw some very cold water on those dreams, for he’s got the film’s trailer up over at Mr. Irrelevant, and . . . well, see for yourself:

Got that? Did you count up all the things that looked wrong? Good, now check the answer key after the jump and let’s see how you did: (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.

Track guy: Here, Coach. Hold the starter’s pistol for the photo, okay? You ready to go?

Jim Tressel: Oh, I’m past ready. I’ve passed the point of no return. Do you know what that is? That’s the point in a journey where it’s longer to go back to the beginning. It’s like when those astronauts got in trouble. I don’t know, somebody messed up, and they had to get them back to Earth. But they had passed the point of no return. They were on the other side of the moon and were out of contact for like hours. Everybody waited to see if a bunch of dead guys in a can would pop out the other side. Well, that’s me. I’m on the other side of the moon now and everybody is going to have to wait until I pop out.

Track guy: Um, that’s just a starter’s pistol, Coach. It can’t kill anyone.

[/pause]

Tressel: Oh, um…very well. Great work you’re doing here. Have a great day. (whistles, walks away.)

(HT: Jeff via this.)

You’re damn right Woody Hayes did interviews in the nude. All great men at one point work in the nude in a non-sexual manner. Orde Wingate, mad chief of the Chindits in Burma in WW2, used to conduct meetings in the buff while cleaning himself with a brush. (Mike Bellotti does the same thing, but with a loofa and a toothbrush for the hard to reach places.) Lyndon Johnson would display his penis in Vietnam-era Oval Office briefings, point to it, and ask “Does How Chi Minh have this?” We ourselves never blog in the nude, a reason why this blog isn’t three thousand times better than it is. We’ll be sure to put this in beta testing after our vacation.

Woody Hayes nude: censored because he was illegally beautiful.

Go ahead and call him ugly, Leonard…

“If the team lost or tied, he would conduct an interview in the nude,” said Downie, as reported in The Lantern. “He was an ugly guy so it would clear the locker room out pretty fast.”

But can’t you balance that with the kind of womanly compliment usually following a statement like this, as in “he was ugly…but Woody was always sexy,” or “A post-loss nude Woody Hayes conference was like staring into the sun: so intense and powerful you could only endure a few seconds of its awesome grandeur?” Mighty uncharitable, as we’re sure Professor Hayes, while lacking physical grandeur, had his own ramshackle physical charm about him. (”He has nice forearms! His eyes: have you seen his eyes?”)

As opposed to a Pete Carroll nude press conference, where presumably reporters would leave in tears of joy and awe saying things like, “It was so…beautiful…”, “like David, but better hung,” and “It was like watching a new child enter the world, but without the shitting and hideous afterbirth.”

[hit play, then read on for maximum effect]

If you’re of orange-and-white extraction and a relative young’un like me, you’ve enjoyed respectable if not notable football success for most of your cognizant life. You are also threatened by change, and you may not know what to make of this young whippersnapper Kiffykins strolling the sacred halls of Neyland. He’s arrogant; he’s got a funny accent; he delivers his addresses like an under-prepared sixth-grader giving a book report, and oooohweeee, has he ever stirred up a hornets’ nest in the papers.

But here’s a fun little test. On one side of an argument are Paul Finebaum and Gregg “Greg” Doyel; on the other, Bruce Feldman and Matt Hinton. Who would you rather have in your corner?

(more…)

We’re off to the airport for Miami with the speed of angels driving a MARTA train, hoping to witness something as cold…as ice [/puts on sunglasses YEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!] in our beloved mythical national title game. With any luck, we’ll be waving a fistful of dollars at a cockfight by 1 a.m.

Demarco Murray’s hamstring asplode; Battletoads references ensue.

The horrifying wind tunnel sequence: watch at your own discretion.