Despite calling in another request for a game extension from their local Buffalo Wild Wings (sadly, no longer serving Weck) and getting exactly what they wanted, SEC fans will continue to complain about the officiating because they can, and because now with the advent of DVR and these fine internets even the most innocuous holding call can be scrutinized.

You should know the story has reached some kind of point of deflation when Nick Saban is telling the refs to go to the lake for a weekend, which we kind of would like to see a.) because it proves a point, and b.) because the resulting anarchy would make a soccer riot seem cordial in comparison.

“I just really do believe this: If I was an official, and I was making what I make officiating, because I love the game and I love doing it, and I was getting crit­icized by the media, includ­ing our announcers on TV, like these guys get crit­icized, I’d step back and say, ‘I think I’ll go to the lake this weekend. You can have this.’ That’s what I’d do,” Saban added.

If they did go to the lake they’d catch boots and call them fourteen pound largemouth bass, but that’s just the kind of year they’re having as a group. Officials around the nation will have another inexact and fallible day this coming Saturday because officiating is an art, not a science, and is practiced by frail, fallible humans who deserve your sympathy and understanding (after you’ve hit them in the skull with bottle from fifty feet away. Especially then.)

We have suggestions.

–7 freshly circumsised and adoptable Filipino baby boys. (No questions asked.)

“Yeah, seven. But it’ll cost you. Bob Tebow Ministries doesn’t run on prayer and happy thoughts alone.

–600,000 nickels delivered in cheap garbage bags.

–1749 copies of this (ON SALE) classic by seven-time Pulitzer Prize Winner and astronaut Mike Freeman.

–Check written from his Cayman Islands account. (Takes days to clear, sure to draw IRS audit.)

–Three live Siberian Tigers. Black market prices, and surely available on a moment’s notice in Miami.

–Coupon for five favorable calls made by SEC referees in the game of their choice.

All are roughly equivalent to $30K or so, and should suffice in making Mike Slive feel more Roger Goodell-ish by the moment.

IT LEARNS. Lane Kiffin may be staying above the fray for now, but Mike Slive may have an excuse yet to get out his suspendin’ stick yet. Sadly, Urban Meyer may play the part of the honors student who gets to serve as a warning to everyone else.

How else would one explain a leap from a 53% to a 57% completion percentage? It must be magical tape. As if a rivalry priding itself on pure hate didn’t need an additional spark to create a proper trailer park bonfire. Saban says Tiffin won’t use the tape since risking a five yard penalty would be too much, but let’s focus on the most impressive possibility here: in theory, the same crew assigned to LSU/Georgia and Arkansas Florida could end up working this game, too. Crazy Old Testament God is just begging for this to happen.

That policy document is out, and thunks into a PDF reader with the heft of a Gravity’s Rainbow with even less sense. Rocky Top Talk has the fully legalistic spread on the policy, but the relevant bits you need to know most:

You go there, and HEY! IS ANYONE LISTENING? I SAID STOP!!!

It’s all theirs. All of it. The policy document announces the kind of godlike powers the NFL claims over all content, language not dissimilar to anything you’d find in any other league’s

Video expiry date: 72 hours. You’ve got to wait 72 hours before using any video, which under their particular interpretation of fair use is kept to less than three minutes. Or, if that’s too long for you, you can just go ahead and pirate it, post it on Youtube, and keep the websurfers in Birmingham busy. In the interest of expanding the SEC payroll and stimulating the Birmingham economy, I encourage you to do exactly this. At any rate, it will at least encourage tighter editing for maximum effect, and the use of shorter songs. The only ones heartbroken by this: those who like to set highlight reels to prog-rock or Mastodon.

The SEC, like everyone else, points at Twitter and screams MONSTER. The policy fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of Twitter, but they’re not alone, since no one understands precisely what Twitter is going to be, what it does, or why it’s so extremely addictive. The policy curiously forbids credentialed media from providing commentary on the game via any kind of digital medium, meaning you can actually provide more thorough sanctioned commentary…

“… the determination of whether a blog is a real-time description or transmission shall be made by the SEC in its sole discretion.”

We understand this provision. After all, we know the steampunk-loving hip kids these days long for the days when they could turn off the game, ignore the troublesome images and sound, and just get the delayed events of the game relayed in easy text form. This is verbiage puked out by a lawyer attempting to cover the entire sphere of possibility under their reign, and is jibberish. You tweet or blog or post not to supplant the game, but to accent and supplement the game. This rule will be broken seconds into the first broadcast, rebroken throughout the season, and broken in the manner that any rule seeking to govern micro-content: rapidly, giddily, and with impunity.

Fans are forbidden to do this, as well, but the the first security guard who attempts to wrest an iPhone from the hand of an intoxicated LSU fan gets the David/Shaun of the Dead treatment. This would not and will not end well. Young security guards of the world: $13.50/hr on Saturdays is not worth being torn apart and feasted upon by an angry mob. Let them tweet, and policy be damned.

The Final Outrage: Oh, this is such bullshit:

“Bearer may not bring alcoholic beverages, bottles, cans or containers, laser pointers, irritants (e.g. artificial noisemakers), video cameras, strobe-lights, or any type of weapon (or anything which the SEC or its member institution may deem a weapon) onto the premises of the Event.

OUR STROBE LIGHT AND BATTLE AXE ARE OUR MUSES. Without them, the world is grey, sad, and lifeless. Don’t even ask us what they’re going to do about the Derringer Paul Finebaum wears in a garter belt on his right thigh. He’s had that thing for years, and you’ll have wrestle it away from his cold, dead hands.

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:

1. It’s all about Sandra Bullock. Not that the woman Bullock plays, Leigh Anne Tuohy, wasn’t an integral part of the story Lewis told in his book; she worked as hard as, if not harder than, anyone to lift Michael Oher up out of poverty. But she wasn’t the main character in the book; she looks like she’s going to be the main character in the movie. And that probably means that . . .

2. We’ve got another white-woman-saves-poor-aimless-black-people story on our hands. You could, if you were so inclined, condense The Blind Side down to that very cursory description, and to some extent film adaptations can only ever be stripped-down, USA Today versions of the books on which they’re based, but still, The Blind Side was so much deeper and more complex than that. We could’ve gotten at least an attempt at translating that complexity to the screen, but instead it looks like what we’re going to get is a lot more along the lines of Sandra Bullock being, in the words of Jack Donaghy, “Michelle Pfeiffer to your angry black kid who learns that poetry is just another way to rap.”

3. The “You threaten my son, you threaten me” scene. Is my memory of the book completely faulty, or did that never actually happen? Someone telling Mike Oher to “sleep with one eye open”? What are your cheap gangsta theatrics doing in my peanut butter?

4. The use of The Fray’s “How to Save a Life” in the first part of the trailer. Of the grown men I’ve known who have ever expressed any affinity for that song (or The Fray in general), all of them fell into at least one of two categories: a) Guys who had at least circumstantial evidence against their heterosexuality and b) guys who played it on their guitars so they’d look brooding and sensitive enough to pull in chicks. I’ve kind of gotten off topic here, but the point is The Fray has no place in any film that purports to be about sports.

Bright spots? Well, Quinton Aaron looks suitably mountain-sized to pass as Michael Oher (no mean feat), and Sandra Bullock is smokin’ hot as a blonde. And there’s always the cameos by Saban and Orgeron to look forward to. (Window treatments FTW!) Otherwise, it looks suspiciously like we’ve got some heavy football movie/chick flick miscegenation going on here, and the outlook, as the Magic 8-Ball might say, is not good. We’ll have to save the final verdict for November 20, of course, but this grand jury is still prepared to at least hand down an indictment.

Cross-posted at Hey Jenny Slater.

Things that TOTALLY happened in the first fifteen minutes of SEC Media Days.

–Bobby Petrino glamoured a reporter into asking him to recite all fifty capitals of the United States, because he’s still totally proud he can do that on command.

–Clay Travis got into a fistfight with an enraged Paul Finebaum, and was choked out in a matter of seconds by the Birmingham Battler, who then penned a column that every SEC coach would simply sit in silence for 30 minutes at the podium because they were SKURRED OF WHUT NICK SAYBAN GONE THANK.

–Rich Brooks enjoyed a fine scotch, looked to the east, and remembered the smell of jasmine in the air, the sultry air of Luzon on his flesh, and the eyes of Maria, the one he could never possess. A single tear streamed down his cheek, and on his lips a single, almost inaudible word: “Bullshit.” We saw this in person, we swear.

–Pat Forde walked by and smelled of money, hearty midwestern values, and well-aged beef.

–We acquired an itchy lanyard!

We swear at least one of these ACTUALLY HAPPENED. More is happening over at TSB and on Twitter, so strap in and enjoy the stream of non-news news. How crazy is it, you ask? We requested a peephole enabled room, that’s how crazy we are. You’ll all find out about handy 220 volt plug located on our inner thigh, an amenity we had way before the Pontiac Vibe bit our style.

The third team All-SEC starter? Brian Hartline/Steven Garcia, or as we prefer to call him, Stevian Gartline.

He’s a bitch, he’s a liar, he’s a conservative pocket passer who likes to embark on wild out-of pocket runs, he’s a Gamecat with feathers and claws, he’s fumble-prone and not, he’s got immense talent and a looming BUY rating as a former blue-chip recruit, he’s everything in between and no you would’t want an any other way. He has four legs, and all of them moving at once means trouble.

(Seriously: How could you not take Jordan Jefferson over either of these guys? And how much rhetorical cropdusting is it to fart upon the third spot by splitting it between two very mediocre qbs?)

Yeah. It’s Mike Hartline. We blame society and sleep deprivation for the error.

Left with the sad crop of mortals we have, here are the SEC’s quarterbacks ranked by their ability to perform well in a barfight.

12. Jonathan Crompton, Tennessee. Too slow to even compete here. What kind of slow? That kind, really. Which kind, you ask again? Oh, take the whole spice rack of whatever slow means to you. It’s all there.

11. Tim Tebow. Too pacifist by far, though he can certainly take punishment. Also, though you’d think bolts of divine lightning would probably level everyone arrayed against him, you’d be surprised at how far out on a limb the Lord will leave you no matter how much he loves you. Best to avoid getting caught in a gory Biblical plotline and pick someone else for a wingman in case a Kentucky Hailstorm breaks out one boozy night. Also: probability of Tebow being in a bar, much less one your ass is sitting in? Low.

10. Ryan Mallett, Arkansas. The good news: he will at least be comfortable in a bar. The bad news: he’s a big slow former Michigan qb once described as “a brain-damaged heron,” so a solid kick to the nuts could send him scurrying fast. Or threaten him with a transition to a running spread offense. That could do it, too.

9. Mike Hartline, Kentucky. A Kentucky quarterback, so automatically granted three spots due to surgically reinforced ribs required to play the position. A one trick pony fightwise, though: avoid the 6′6″ers haymakers, and pretty soon you’re whipping him around the place like a fun noodle at a pool party.

8. Jordan Jefferson, LSU. From Louisiana, so at least you know he’s an experienced bar fighter. (It’s taught in lieu of Civics as part of state curriculum.) Still a bit inexperienced, but elusive, and at 6′4″ definitely possesses the reach needed to keep opponents at bay. Also has the number of Herman Johnson in his phone, and if he gets to it quickly enough, The Biggest Baby Ever Born In Louisiana will just come there and stare at everyone until they get frightened enough to act right.

7. Greg McElroy, Alabama. Still a relatively unknown quantity, but at least he’s been training.

John Parker Wilson punched that same machine, and it failed to register anything, preferring instead to sprout roses and cooing noises. We quote: “DAMN THESE BEAUTIFUL BANGS OF MINE!!!!”–John Parker Wilson, every day of his life.

6. Larry Smith, Vanderbilt. Another selection based on his ability to take punishment as the quarterback behind an offensive line with an occasionally gracious style of blocking. He’s also named “Larry,” and it’s surprising how many guys named “Larry” from the South fight like pissed-off Huns when cornered.

5. Steven Garcia, South Carolina. Garcia is huge, and thus capable of imparting great force behind his punches and kicks. He has no idea where they’re going to do problems with accuracy, but that’s why he’s at five and not higher. Also prone to dropping things he’s supposed to hang onto, like footballs, or in a fight something like brass knuckles or a knife. Besides those things, he’s a solid choice, and one of our bets to withstand a chair broken across his back with ease.

4. Tyson Lee, Mississippi State. We know little about him, but we’ll take a flyer on him at four because if he’s willing to step up and play behind that offensive line, he must be able to take at least a few solid haymakers without falling down and throwing up blood. (If he were still around, we’d take Michael Henig here, because he really did come as close as anyone we’ve seen to bleeding internally out his mouth as anyone we’ve ever seen play football without dying.)

3. Joe Cox, Georgia. You never see the Ginger Ninja coming, unless it’s at night, when his red hair sticks out and his translucent skin practically luminesces, or during the day when he’ll ask you for some sunscreen before attempting to kill you, because it’s really bright out here and that’s not good for me, so could you sit still while I throw this throwing star at you from the shade, m’kay?

2. Jevan Snead. There’s a dash of danger to Snead, a quarterback capable of beating Florida on their own field while coughing up losses to Wake Forest and Vanderbilt. He’s wily like a fox, meaning he can sneak eggs unbroken out of a chicken coop, but will also sometimes put his foot into a bear trap lit with floodlights and big signs written in fox-language reading “DON’T STICK YOUR PAW IN HERE.” For fightin’ purposes, this means he’s all roundhouse, knocking out three opponents before falling for the “tap-on-the-shoulder, turn, and get punched by smiling opponent” move you see in old Elvis movies. Personally, he’d be our favorite pick, if only because he’d also be dashing enough to do the trick where you punch someone, take a swig of beer, duck, and then punch someone and finish the beer.

1. Kodi Burns/Neal Caudle, Auburn. Because you get two bodies in one fell swoop by taking the platoon, even if it is cheating. (Since when has anyone had a problem with “creative advantage seeking” in our fair conference.) Admittedly, neither has any proven ability to knock anyone out, but Burns is elusive, and if all else fails you can throw one of them at the opposition Mongo-style. Especially Cauldle, who is still young, lanky, and thin enough to hurl like a bolo in a pinch. Pulling him from around the neck of an incapacitated opponent will be like untangling a yo-yo, but the look on the guy’s face will totally be worth it. A case where the two-headed beast at quarterback really could help you, if only to use as a distraction on your way out of town. (It worked for Tuberville!)

Drink.

Holly: Continuing our “This Week In Imperialist Cocktailing” subseries, I recommend the Soixante-Quinze, or French 75. Gin, sugar syrup, lemon juice, and champagne. If you happen to be lolling about in my favorite 213 backroom bar, throw a brandied cherry in the bottom.

Orson: Fat Tire. Amber beers have the shortest half-life from the tap/awesome to suck/bottle. Abita Amber remains the premiere example of this, as it’s strictly meh from the bottle but guzzleworthy from the tap. When in Baton Rouge, I will drink draft Abita Amber from a gutter filled with decaying nutria, so long as it’s just been poured, and someone promises to feed me fried meat of some sort immediately afterward to kill the resulting bacterial infections and general -itis.

Fat Tire is here somewhere in Atlanta, and by Cthulhu it will be mine tonight. I’m going to drink three of them, play Team Fortress Two, and pass out like a gangsta in a wrinkled t-shirt at 9:30. Oh, beer snob? There are better Belgian beers? Really? I’m fascinated by your opinion, and would love to hear more about it why don’t you come closer and WRENCHES YOUR COCK IN A DOORJAMB AND SLAMS UNTIL SATISFIED. My child will be baptised with Fat Tire and a vial of Tim Tebow’s blood Dan Shanoff siphoned off him for me. It is delicious and oh my yes you know a lot about beer pet hug points stroke SLAP.

Comestibles.

Orson: The Hot Brown. If five sandwiches got involved in a ghastly industrial accident with bacon, cheese, butter, and frankly whatever the hell else you want to throw in, the grisly remains would be something close to the Hot Brown. The Louisville standard is a WTF-worthy dish I’ve never even eaten–cheese smells like cow ass to me, I can’t stay in the room if someone heats up parmesan, and the idea of drinking a whole glass of milk seems as appetizing as chugging an entire glass of antifreeze.

That said, even a quesophobe has to appreciate all that glory:

The X marks the spot where your cardiac well-being died, and happiness began. The first time I smelled one of these I nearly vomited: ergo, IT’S GOT TO BE GOOD, normal, cheese-eating people of America.

Holly: Foxy’s chilaquiles, Glendale, CA. Foxy’s is an odd duck. It’s been around for about 50 years, the A-Frame structure is dark and creepy and the Alpine scene painted on one wall is menacingly confusing on a Sunday morning when you’ve only just stopped drinking. Stick to the patio if you’re of delicate constitution and be of good cheer: Foxy’s serves its mimosas in pint glasses, and trying to stay upright long enough to make a dent in one will keep you occupied until these arrive:

Combustibles.

Holly: I advise right off the bat that you ignore the haircut you are about to see and soldier through, and while you will indeed be taught to make something explode onscreen before the video ends, we are far more interested in the “How To Make A Moving Severed Hand” tutorial up front:

Orson: The Yenshui Fireworks Festival, a.k.a. The Plague Expulsion Festival:

Transit.

Orson: Power Wheels.

Fuck you, little girl I saw on a pink Barbie jeep at Piedmont Park. I hope you’re trampled a herd of raging waterbuffalo crossing the street for having one of the few toys I didn’t acquire in my absurdly spoiled childhood. Object lesson, parent-tards: don’t give your children anything because people lack gratitude and an understanding of scale, both quantities extant only in dogs, Quakers, and the well-programmed Sims.

I got all kinds of ridiculous shit, including the apogee of all childhood toy acquisition in the 1980s, the G.I. Joe Hovercraft, the greatest toy ever made that had its own homosexual pilot, Cutter. (This nickname referred to his habit of cutting male strippers’ g-strings with his dive knife.)

Yet I wanted more. Never enough to satisfy the piggish brat inside, I realized I wanted nothing more than a Power Wheels of my own too late to get one, being both too large to get a parentally-endorsed Power Wheel Bigfoot (the preferred model, natch) and incapable of making a dollar as a drug runner in Alpharetta thanks to a slow 40 time and perpetually late deliveries. Those housewives demanded their snow arrive quickly regardless of the season, and this mule was perpetually five steps behind speedier competition.

By the time I was able to scam enough money off begging relatives to purchase one of my own, I was too big to fit in one and not big enough to ride one with Jackass-style irony. Also, I started wearing Husky pants, a horrifying development in childhood cancelling all plans in favor of a good three year wallow in television-fed misery.

(I remember relatives’ deaths that had less effect on my young life than the day I had to ask:

“Mom, is that Husky like the dog?”

Mom: “Um…yes.”

Me: “Like Balto! My pants are brave and can survive a snowstorm to save sick children!”

Mom: “Exactly!”)

So, yeah. Fuck you, girl-who-has-her-own-fake-car-going-five-miles-an-hour. You’ll get a real car someday and find out what a complete bore it really is when you let the Chik-Fil-A wrappers pile up in it for a day or fifty and a homeless dude decides to brick out a window to search your glove compartment for change when you park it on the street. Savor that pleasure, child, because real cars are a total pain in the balls, and because I’m going to steal the car from you the next time I see you and escape from the scene at 5 awesome miles an hour. Catch me, bitches. You’ll have to use the heavy stuff, because I ain’t goin’ back behind the wall this time.

Holly: Our automotive sommelier recommends the 1962-72 Citroen DS:

“So far ahead of its time it wasn’t even funny. Plus it’s French and looks like a fucking UFO, so it will confuse everyone. It’s a car that says ‘I’m so badass you can’t even PRONOUNCE what I drive.’”

Canon.

Holly: La Moustache. This is sitting pretty at the top of my Netflix queue, and while I haven’t actually seen it yet, I feel entirely confident in recommending it based on the trailer alone:

Quoth our tipster: “Leave it to the French to construct an intense cinematic thriller about a man who shaves his moustache. This is why movies exist.”

Orson: Agents of Atlas. Marvel took a whole load of very moldy characters off the scrapheap, gave them to talented writers, and said “doowhatchyalike” on an editorial hunch. The resulting product is a comic book series steeped in rich retro-irony, but I read it for the revamping of Gorilla-Man, who in this series is a former millionaire-turned-cursed-gorilla who lost millions gambling at the track in the fifties, wears men’s knit shirts from the same era, and who is the subject of the only piece of art I’ve ever seriously considered getting tattooed on my body. Superb comic book peekin’ overall.

If it doesn’t smell slightly of bourbon, rage, and fried alligator, they’ve done something drastically wrong here. (HT: RCR.)

Why just in week one: Alabama and Virginia Tech have their Skoal-off in the Georgia Dome again, meaning tasty free chicken sandwiches for your correspondent, and perhaps a misleading win for Virginia Tech early. This will prime the Hokie bandwagon for a hefty pile-on until everyone remembers Brian Stinespring can’t call plays, Tyrod Taylor can’t pass, and that Alabama will improve three thousand times from game one to game six after breaking in a new qb, and will likely look at their worst in game one.

Also see: NC State/South Carolina, where one team may actually play a competent quarterback in this game this year (Russell Wilson,) and the other will have Steven Garcia, who’s just gonna wing it, man; LSU at Washington, which will be both ugly and weird, and Georgia at Oklahoma State, where Mark Richt’s biggest challenge will be hiring goons to fend off T. Boone’s army of strength-sapping turbohookers piped in from Dallas to distract the Bulldogs.

Last time, this not well go so for State Oklahoma:

This will be Joe Cox’s first start, and the second part of a home-and-home that started with the Cowboys’ disastrous 35-14 ‘07 loss in Athens. Oklahoma State entered that game with high expectations, and left to go on to get annihilated by Troy in a thoroughly disappointing campaign. Now, two years later, people as knowledgeable as Bruce Feldman have them as a dark horse national title contender. If history was a farce the first time instead of the second, what will it be this time? Meta-comedy? Youtube clip set to Yakety Sax? LOLfutball in motion?

You know what’s sexy about Vanderbilt? The teams they play, according to this video. We would care about the lackluster narration, the slow pacing, and the choice of a rather obvious theme track, but we apologize: the instant Knowshon Moreno leaves the ground, we lost all rationality and starting tasting the sweet blood of football in our mouths. We’ll wait for you football wearing whatever you like. Just keep sending us the occasional bits of footage set to dramatic music, and we’ll be your sports Penelope forever. When you come back it will be worth all the lonely. [/takes final sips from Nyquil bottle, totters off to pharmacy.] (HT: The Wiz.)

We think we hear “BULLSHIT” after every play, and a smattering of “get off the goddamn ground!” Considering Tennessee’s season last year, though, the term “bullshit” stands less as a mindless curse directed punitively at a player, and more as an accurate assessment of overall offensive performance. We’re sure that’s what he was talking about. (That is Orgeron talking, right? “Talking” for him being “yelling enraged at the top of your lungs” for anyone else?)

The video has been taken down, because someone’s pastor might see it!

CUE SEC THEME MUSIC

Oh god…it’s their theme music…it’s THE SEC!!! RUUUUUUUUNNNN!!!

Unsaid is this: what’s really at the core of any argument about the SEC is why: why the money, the success commercially, the public notoriety, the Q rating of the conference in the national eye, the disproportionately large shadow the conference casts over college football more. The answer is an unromantic one.

We spend more money. This equals “caring more,” which we do in a very substantiated way by hiring coaches at higher salaries, pouring more money into training and developing football players, and in smoothing the way for academically suspect athletes by establishing lavish tutoring programs for them. In the case of Florida, you are literally dealing not just with a varsity team, but with a corporation whose sole operating principle is making the football team a richer and better franchise.

When the shakes set in no junkie is more desperate to tie off and blast into the sweet oblivion of football than an SEC fan, and they’re willing to spend the money to make it happen in large fashion. It’s not the horses, it’s the heated barns, frequent rubdowns, and excellent practice runs that make them shinier and glossier than the competition.

Just repeat this every time this issues comes up: we’re more willing as a region than others to expend interest and time on football, especially in cases like in Alabama, Florida, or LSU, places who go way out on a limb to feed the beast of the fanbase. The SEC’s loud because we’re the ones who went and bought a megaphone to bring to the party, not because our voiceboxes are any different. (Okay, they’re probably scarred by cigarette smoke a bit more than others’. Besides, that, no different.)