I promise this isn’t a metaphor (and if it were, it wouldn’t be a particularly good one), but I had a nightmare last night involving not being able to open my eyes (and some small woodland creatures, but that’s neither here nor there). I was jarred out of the second one by my phone ringing off the hook, and here’s why:

Janzen Jackson, Michael Edwards and Nu’Keese Richardson, all 18, were charged this morning after an armed robbery attempt at a Pilot station on Cumberland Avenue, according to the Knoxville Police Department.

Each player faces three counts of attempted armed robbery.

Additionally, several news outlets are reporting that it was a semiautomatic PELLET GUN, which is apparently a real thing that exists. And here’s the money shot:

A Volunteer TV News photographer on the scene captured the suspects while they were being identified. At least one of them wore a black University of Tennessee t-shirt with an orange Adidas logo and the phrase “impossible is nothing.”

Honestly, in the first few minutes I was convinced it had to be a perfectly executed joke (I’m reminded of the first time I met Fearless Leader), and then my phone rang again, and again. There’s a weird kind of symmetry to it. Jackson and Richardson had already been in trouble with Kiffykins, though not legal trouble, in the past couple weeks. If it’s true, I hope they’re all three gone by the end of the day, lockers empty and dorm room doors swinging. Richardson and Edwards wouldn’t be missed all that much from this Vawls iteration (minus their strategic value as recruits), but Jackson was praised over and over again as being better than Berry when Berry was his age.

It’s weird. I never thought I’d end up mourning our clean police records, but they’re busted, so the floor is now open for wailing, gnashing of teeth, and outright gloating. Let’s all take a few deep breaths, and—

IF PHIL FULMER WAS STILL HERE THEY’D'VE USED A LOT MORE THAN A PELLET GUN THIS PROGRAM’S GONE SOFT I TELL YOU WHAT.

I feel better already.

[Click to embiggen]

NARRATOR (V/O): You’re watching “When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong.” Percy Harvin was one of the most talented athletes in college football history: A five-foot, eleven-inch receiver out of Virginia Beach, he broke records as an all-purpose offensive player for the University of Florida, totaling 32 career touchdowns and helping to revolutionize the role of the wide receiver in the modern-day spread offense. He was drafted in the first round by the Minnesota Vikings and signed a five-year contract worth more than $14 million.

Scene: A classroom in a Florida high school. A dozen or so high-school football players are seated at the desks; PERCY HARVIN, flanked by the high-schoolers’ coaches as well as some of his own former coaches, stands behind a podium at the front of the room.

NARRATOR (V/O): Harvin had a speaking engagement at a high school in Florida to tell some potential Florida recruits about his time at the university and how it prepared him for the NFL, when one of the students asked him a fairly innocuous question.

STUDENT 1: So, like, I know the football program at Florida is one of the best in the nation, but what’s it like outside of football? Do they let you go off and have any fun?

NARRATOR (V/O): As one of Florida’s biggest stars, Harvin was used to making public appearances and giving pat, innocuous answers to the media about practice or upcoming games. As an NFL player no longer bound by the athletic department’s strict rules, however, he felt he had the freedom to talk more candidly about his time as a college student, particularly if it might help “sell” the university to an interested youngster. In other words, Harvin decided to “keep it real.”

HARVIN: Oh, hell, man, Gainesville is a blast. Let me tell you something, brother, high as the football program is ridin’ these days, people on campus know you play ball, you are the king. There ain’t nothing you can’t do down there: Go to bars, go clubbin’ until four in the morning, and the girls — good lord. They jump on you the minute you walk in the door, I mean, if you wake up in the morning and you got less than six girls in your bedroom, you weren’t even trying, son.

FLORIDA COACH (hurriedly): Yes, well, there’s time for socializing and everything, but the strongest bonds you make as a Gator are with your teammates, wouldn’t you say, Percy?

HARVIN: Oh, no doubt. Me and the guys, if we didn’t go out we’d just sit up in someone’s apartment, firing up jays and drinking and playing XBox — man, have you ever played 2K9 on weed? It’s hilarious! Me and Brandon Spikes were going up against each other one night, and he was acting the fool and –

STUDENT 2: They let you smoke weed?

FLORIDA COACH: Oh, no, no, that’s not a –

HARVIN: Let me? Man, they can tell you not to do it, but when it comes right down to it, what are they gonna do, babysit us every second we ain’t at practice? I mean, yeah, there was that one coach who barked at me because I was late to practice and showed up all bloodshot and everything, and I guess I kind of went off and choked him and whatnot, but it wasn’t like anybody was gonna let that get out. Trust me, you keep bringing home those SEC trophies, they’ll take care of you.

STUDENT 3: Can we go back to the girls for a second? Which sororities on campus are the biggest sluts?

HARVIN: Now y’all got your heads in the right place. Check this out: Me and Chris Rainey were driving down the street one afternoon and we saw all the AOPi pledges standing out in front of the house waiting on something, so he leans out the window and yells, “I haven’t seen that many white girls in one place since my . . . ”

FLORIDA COACH: OK, OK, thanks, guys! Thanks for coming . . .

NARRATOR (V/O): After being de-scheduled from Florida’s remaining recruiting visits, Harvin is back in sunny Minnesota, gearing up for his rookie NFL season with last year’s 25th-ranked passing offense. It doesn’t get any realer than the pros.

Scene: A quiet evening at Harvin’s condo. Outside, the weather is gray and drizzly. Harvin is on the phone with the Vikings’ offensive coordinator.

HARVIN: Yeah, you put me in wherever you want, man. Between me taking those direct snaps and then Favre throwing to me on those deep routes, we gonna be in the end zone so much we’ll be payin’ rent, baby. Huh? (pause) He didn’t? He’s staying retired? But I thought he was talking to . . . (long pause) Well, hell, who’s our quarterback, then? (pause) “Tarvaris Jackson”? Who the fuck is that, one of the Jackson Five? (pause) Whatever, man, whatever. Call me back later. I got weekend plans to make.

Harvin hangs up, pulls out a joint, and lights it. He then dials a number on the telephone.

HARVIN: Fuck Minnesota, I’m calling my boys down in Gainesville to see what’s up. I gotta go someplace real.

NARRATOR: Percy Harvin: Once a college superstar, today an ominous reminder of when “Keeping It Real” goes wrong.

FADE TO BLACK

F$#@ Sooners, get money. Packing two of the last three national-title trophies and gunning for another one in ‘09, Urban Meyer is getting a raise that will jack his salary up to an even $4 million a year, meaning that not only Urban but entire future generations of Meyers will be makin’ it rain for the indeterminate future. Before you ask, yes, Les Miles has a clause in his contract that entitles him to make at least $1,000 more than any other conference coach, but apparently it only kicks in if Miles wins the national title this year — thereby saving LSU from having to give The Hat a quarter-million-dollar raise for going 3-5 in the SEC last season. (See, if they just gave Les the highest salary in the conference, they’d only be spoiling him; this way, he learns the value of money.)

You know how to start a car, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow. West Virginia wide receiver Jock Sanders, last seen propping up an unusually weak Fulmer Cup effort by the Mountaineers with a DUI charge, may be able to bring an end to his indefinite suspension from the team if he “handles a series of requirements.” This includes completing an alcohol-awareness course, speaking with high-school groups about the dangers of DUI, and our favorite, having a “test lock” device installed in his car that will basically require him to breathalyze himself and prove he’s sober before he can start his vehicle. This is probably gonna sound weird, but I’ve always wanted to try one of those things — though my gadgetary curiosity here is of the singular ride a Segway/use an ejection seat/get Tasered variety that involves trying it once just to see what it’s like and then never, ever having to do it again.

Cue the “It’s not your fault” scene from “Good Will Hunting.” Louisville running back Bilal Powell is trying to put his fumble in last year’s game against Kentucky behind him and look ahead to 2009. Is it just us, or does it seem like he’s taking it a bit too hard? His fumble accounted for only a fifth of UL’s turnovers in that game. Trust me, Bilal, there’s more than enough blame to go around for the FAILsplosion that was Louisville’s 2008 campaign, and they’ll be coming after Steve Kragthorpe with torches and pitchforks long before they get around to you.

I don’t know the guy, but I’ve got two kidneys and he needs one, so I figured . . . Elsewhere in the Big East, Syracuse head coach Doug Marrone, charged with cleaning up the HAZMAT spill that is the Orange’s football program post-Greg Robinson, says he’s “been hearing good things” about the progress made by former Duke basketball player and not-ever college football player Greg Paulus, who allegedly is still in the running for SU’s starting-QB job, in summer conditioning. Be that as it may, signing Paulus period still strikes us as the kind of decision that will be very much in the running for inclusion in a Bad Idea Jeans commercial by the end of the season.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed GERG is king. Speaking of Robinson, the situation at Michigan is apparently so dire that the addition of Gerg as defensive coordinator is being seen as one of the team’s biggest bright spots heading into 2009. (Yes, we know Robinson was an exemplary D-coordinator with both the Longhorns and the Denver Broncos. But a 3-25 Big East record is the kind of failstank that wouldn’t be quickly forgotten even if he’d only been hired as the night manager at a 7-Eleven.)

What, by playing them within 30 points? Late entry in the race for saddest quote of the offseason: Washington State coach Paul Wulff’s insistence that his Cougars “have the opportunity to surprise some teams” this year. I’d like to believe that, Paul, I really would, but I’d also like to believe that Lacey Stockbauer is going to end up with two tickets to this year’s Texas-Oklahoma game and offer me her extra one. In other words: na ga happen.

Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!

From Al.com:

Asked for the specific charges, Kosloff said he believed the Brookhaven, Miss., native was arrested and charged with seven “drug-related” charges, including selling.

Police allege cocaine and marijuana are involved, Kosloff said.

Johns had moved from running back to “linebacker,” a term with numerous double entendres in light of the alleged charges. More to come, but we won’t use this as an excuse to post Dr. Rockso videos no we won’t we I DO COCAAAAAAAAAINE!!!! GONNA MAKE YOU A BALLOOOOOOON ANIMAAAAAAL!!!!

Seriously, he does a lot of cocaine.

Update: Mug shot with fierce beard. Worse news still: we’re going to have to have Brian rework the board again, because Alabama may have just taken a huge leap forward in the Fulmer Cup standings. (Five felony possession charges alone= FIFTEEN points. Digits, baby!)

One: Michael Crabtree, Texas Tech WR. Oh, sure, you say don’t draft him because he’s going pro, but here’s a surprise for you: HE PLAYS FOOTBALL, ASSHOLE. That’s right, and he plays it too well for even Mike Leach’s buttoned-down attack to hold his talent under wraps, friend. Crabtree’s line for last year looked like entire wide receiving corps’ numbers for theyear: 134 receptions, 1962 yards, and 22 TDs. Now let’s see if Mike Leach will trust him and stop throwing the ball only ten times a game. What is this, the Single Wing?

Two: Knowshon Moreno, UGA RB (Stands for “Rampaging Bastard”) Oh, no particular reason. FACT: This statement is a lie. If we just blew the head off your logic robot, then good: now you may free yourself from its clutches and draft Knowshon Moreno, who averaged 5.4 yards a carry last season and beat the bloody hell out of Florida in the worst Cocktail Party of my lifetime as a Florida fan. Give him the ball twice, and it’s a first down! Math is easy kids. Also, taking Knowshon allows you to take Matt Stafford, who may brilliantly audible to “run left/right/middle” when the defense does all that confusing jumpy stuff at the line.

Three: Jeremiah Johnson, Oregon RB. Could be the focal point for the Oregon offense next year, meaning he’ll get plenty of screens and zone read handoffs. Sadly, does not possess mountain man beard or pet bear, though someone could (hint hint) do something about both of these things before the season begins. We’ve always thought the bear was the next frontier for domesticated animals, especially home security bears. So cuddly!

Four: Colin Kaepernick, Nevada QB. If you have craved a gawky, discount version WAC version of Vince Young working out of the pistol, then Kaepernick’s your man.

Even if you apply the standard WAC to BCS conference conversion formula (divide roughly by 2/3, subtract five touchdowns), Kaepernick’s stats as a sophomore should improve from the 2175 yards passing and 573 yards rushing he piled up as afreshman in the eight games he started. Bonus! He works from the pistol, the formation that gets your qb disemboweled in NCAA Insert Year here but somehow chugs along nicely in real life.

5. Cam Newton, Florida QB. We’d bet a toe he’ll assume the Tim Tebow goal line battering ram role from Tim Tebow to take some of the hits off Tebow, meaning he’ll become the Mike Alstott of college football: a points vulture with an unnatural stat line skewed toward one yard TD plunges.

Remember: Illinois and Mizzou are both victims of one player’s outstanding contributions. Depending on your semantics, then they’re not really winning as a team effort. That award would, at this point, go to the West Virginia Mountaineers and the nine points they earned last week for a large “intent to distribute” marijuana arrest. Tennessee is just a disorderly conduct or DUI charge away from nipping into the team lead, however, a move that would restore the earth to its proper axis, return to the king to his rightful place in Gondor, and get Arrested Development back on the air again.

Missing in action: A few obvious preseason faves miss the list completely, making them sleepers just waiting in the weeds to explode onto the board, or otherwise tranquil programs with shockingly little to worry about in the discipline department. Where’s former champ Marshall? Or heavy preseason favorite Arizona State? Or even Purdue, a team with consistently high scores throughout the short history of the cup? And whither Florida, Florida State, or Miami? Florida’s already got a point for a piddling underage drinking charge, but none of the big three has anything to show in the way of taserings, drinking while flying a blimp, discharging weapons in crowded daycares, or trafficking in exotic animals.

The Florida points are on the way in an update, so don’t bitch about it in the comments. This ensures one person at the least will bitch about it in the comments.

It’s an alcohol-iday, motherfuckers! WOOOOOOO! Shots on me. Literally. I’ve poured them all over myself. My speedo’s wet! Someone get me a new one or I’m sunning my buckeyes. And you ladies saw that yesterday.

Alcohol-iday! HT: Tressel’s World.

The last time I heard people scream like that, I was running through some back alley in Rio with a flamethrower. You know how long a cat can run after you set it totally the fuck on fire? Thirty-eight feet. I know that because I just whipped out the old twatstand and marked it off myself. Took three lengths, but that’s an exact measurement.

(Surriously: Jim Delany always travels with a flamethrower. You should have seen him at the Hotel Ipanema that afternoon. He was like Peter the Great on PCP. He scares me sometimes. He thinks Turistas is both a comedy and a documentary. His eyes are the dead eyes of a killer! Great dude.)

Jesus. Two years in a row I gotta come down here and rage just to put the beast to bed. Fucking Robiskie drops a TD. I thought about that all night last night when I was in the pit. Fighting off three dogs and a guy named Jorge all at once ain’t for the amateur, but I didn’t get to where I was in life by not being able to lose three pints of blood and still snap a man’s neck in one move. Everytime I felt the darkness coming on, I just thought about Robiskie dropping that fucking pass, and suddenly I’m all hopped up on anger-crack again and sinking my teeth into the neck of a Presa Canario while a thousand Mexicans are screaming and throwing money at you.

The sweet moments in life are never enough, man. Never…but that poor, poor man. It’s what he gets for stepping in the ring with a poet-warrior like Jimmy T. I mean, I wrote this after I woke up this morning in the can. It just flows from me like money, man.

Their once was a coach named Jimmy
Who into the title game did shimmy
His kids shat the bed
And gave the Tigers cheap head
And now he’s in Mexico drinking his liver into a smoking pile of useless ashes and fighting anyone who gets within fifty feet of him because that’s just what he wants to do, motherfucker.

I didn’t even write that down. But a man shouldn’t leave anything behind him when he goes, which is why Jimmy T’s dying with zero in the bank account and sliding into a grave surrounded by the sheet of glass he turned his surroundings into. I’ve got a bargain basement Kazakh warhead in the Tresselbunker just for this purpose. Hook it up to the EKG, and when the cock-engine goes flatline, BOOM! Me and life, tied 1-1, baby.

Julio! Yeah, you! I promise you won’t die if you bring me 72 ounces of whatever’s in that machine over there? I could watch that shit all day: the little steel wheel going around in the machine. What has two thumbs and can drink you into renal failure? Jimmy T, that’s who.

And fuck the fucking AFCA. Like I’ve got to go there and choke on rubber chicken and hide when I want to slip down to Tiujuana for some real nightlife. You can buy your own penicillin over the counter there–now that’s a town that understands the kind of freedom a lone wolf like Jimmy T. needs. aaaaa-ROOOOOOOOO!!! Wolf callin’ here, ladies!

Julio! I won’t bite. Seriously. You see this cash? Get your ass over here and get me a drink. I know I bit Manuel, but he deserved it and the infection he has will heal. I’m not a fucking Komodo Dragon, man. Okay, only on my mother’s side. That’s a joke, because you can’t really fuck a Komodo Dragon. Believe me, I’ve tried.

SERIOUSLY JULIO! NOW! THIS GUN ISN’T LAUGHING, NOW IS IT? THAT’S BECAUSE GUNS DON’T LAUGH, AND NEITHER DOES JIMMY T WHEN HE’S CRAVING 72 OUNCES OF SLUSHY MARGARITA HAPPINESS!

Now let’s get this Alcohol-iday started, Julio! Greasy watermelon race comin’ atcha, Cozumel. And by watermelons, I mean my testicles.

On this day in 1933 prohibition was officially repealed when Utah, of all states, signed on to the 21st Amendment, paving the way for nearly a century of great tailgating. I’ll drink to that.

(BTW, our refusal to waste a Saturday during grad school watching Chan Gailey coach football looks better and better after last night. Tech is a putrid offensive football team, and in the middle of the third quarter the stadium was half-empty and resembled less a division one football stadium and more a European soccer stadium after a riot.)

So accept this joint project between Joel and ourselves involving the most bitter matchup this weekend, the LSU/Alabama game between the team that made Saban the 4 million commodity he is and the team currently paying the price tag. He was working as a football coach in Michigan–that much is true. But even then he knew he’d find a much better place, either with or without you, LSU

If your Youtube is blocked, click here for the Flash version.

Fine, fine work by Joel as always. The Viewer’s Guide should be up around lunch, so check in for Hannibal’s guide to couching it with the precision of a team of commandos and making the most of the waning weeks of the season.

Yet, as if that weren’t enough…the commercial contains not one, but two Coors Light commercials from 1983. Their motto at the time was “Turn it Loose!,” apparently an exhortation to consume Coors Light until your system began rejecting it in explosive fashion. There’s feathered hair, a mustachioed gay body builder, a jeep, a woman with gym shorts so short you can see lunch descending from her small intestine…it’s what the internet was made for: remembering the past, and then beating it to death with a mallet.

Beer after beer when you’re running around…Coors Light! Your beer for drinking and driving without that pesky drowsiness!

The Louisville Cardinals defense has played much of 2007 in a vague fog. Now we become aware that one member has been playing it in a very specific type of fog: marijuana smoke. And no, it’s not just any member of the defense–it’s Willie Williams, the troubled blue-chip recruit who was arrested at least ten times during high school, bragged of receiving fishy benefits in a recruiting diary in the Miami Herald, sprayed strangers with a fire extinguisher during his visit to the University of Florida, was under investigation at one point for “hugging a woman against her will,” had the president of the University of Miami excusing his admission in the press, bombed out of Miami when he couldn’t crack the starting lineup, and finally ended up in Louisville for his umpteenth chance.

And on cue–POOF!–it all goes up in smoke again as the bell tolls BONG, BONG, BONG for him again with an arrest for marijuana possession and eating the evidence on the scene.

About 9:40 p.m. yesterday, a police cruiser pulled behind Williams on West Broadway and attempted to pull him over, according to a police report. Williams failed to pull over for several blocks until he stopped at Second and Broadway, where an officer found him chewing on marijuana, according to the report.

Williams has been dismissed from the team, and could face up to five years in jail for the combo charges.