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We’re not saying he hit him in bounds, or even hit him in a legal or intelligent way. We’re not even saying he didn’t hit him off the bench, actually–judging from the video, Wright could have been chugging down a blueberry and asskicking excellence flavored protein shake on the sidelines at the start of the play and then rushed over to hit Locker, for all we can tell.

However, he did hit him really, really, really hard, and it certainly looked awesome enough.(Rules be damned!) Get him to pay attention to the white lines on the field and stop attempting to become the second coming of Kevin Everett by leading with the helmet as he’s wont to do, and we’ll be talking hot magical pain pancakes in cleats here. They don’t hand out new spinal cords, you know, though they do sell slightly used ones in Tijuana.

Why, yes, they’re leaking right now, thank you very much.

8. Dennis Franchione is under so much pressure his teats leak condensed milk constantly. (This usually requires some firm pressure with a gloved hand. Food safety starts with you!)

7. Up to fifty thousand people to attend, the second largest gathering that night in Miami and the largest not involving muscular chickens with razors strapped to their ankles. Wait, there’s a Mets/Marlins game? Okay, third largest, and second largest without the death chickens, okay?

6. Stephen McGee, dual threat quarterback, finally embodies all that A&M fans truly want in a quarterback: tough, fast, able to run the option, and white.

5. Aggie Corps of Cadets could be mistaken for immigration officials, causing thousands in stands to flee in panic.

4. Aggie Corps of Cadets could be mistaken for DEA officers, causing thousands in stands to flee in panic.

3. Aggie Corps of Cadets could be mistaken for Russian Tax Police, causing thousands in stands to flee in panic.

2. Kyle Wright is starting tonight, and will save the groundskeeping crew time and effort by trimming the grass one underthrown ball at a time.

1. 270 pound Jorvorskie Lane will score a diving touchdown. Sadly, the impact will shatter the limestone bedrock of Miami, spoiling the Florida Aquifer and making the city unsafe for human habitation. Unsurprisingly, no one living in Miami will notice this.

We give you chapter two of the Chairman’s manual with Reasons 1-25 Florida Rules and Tennessee Sucks Forever. Because they do, indeed, suck forever, sometimes as a football team, sometimes as a state, but most pleasingly to the Florida fan, when they suck together all at the same time in one sorrowful, audible slurp.

1. Tennessee is shaped like a parallelogram. Florida, however, is “America’s Wang.” And where would America be without its wang?

2. Florida great Steve Spurrier is a Volunteer State exile (Johnson City), meaning that the greatest coach ever born in Tennessee ran screaming from it the first chance he got, and never came back. There’s no humor there. It just really sucks for you, Vol fan, and makes us warm and happy inside.

3. Even after thirty years of government interdiction, Florida’s still putting the yayo on your glass coffee tables in piles, America. You’re welcome (sniff).

4. We gave you Creed in order to make you feel good about your own life in a fun way, as in “I’m not Scott Stapp, and that’s great, really.” Nashville gives you music to help you justify your sad, tobacco-stained penniless existence, prole…um, we mean ain’t it great scraping by on 22K with three kids in a place with terrible public schools! WOOOO!!! VOTE PAPPY FOR GUVNAH!!!

5. Our coach has won a championship in the 21st century.

6. Our fans are loud, rude, uncouth, classless, urine-tossing, sunburned, drunk, foulmouthed smartasses from the dregs of America’s sketchiest state. Tennessee’s root for Tennessee.

Advantage: Florida.

7. Miami Vice. Empty Nest. Golden Girls. Nip/Tuck. Florida’s rolling in television shows. Tennessee couldn’t even get fucking Evening Shade over for a few roadtrip episodes.

8. This is the first thing you see after the Florida state line sign driving south on I-75.

9. Dangerous wildlife in Florida includes alligators, several types of poisonous snake, sharks, and jellyfish. Dangerous wildlife in Tennessee consists of Pac-Man Jones, who would totally lose to any of these except the jellyfish, who Pac-Man could probably have a henchman paralyze with a stray gunshot or two.

10. Tennessee state flower: the Iris. Oh, that’s so quaint. Florida state flower: the gasoline fire ball from something blowing up in Miami due to civil unrest. Oh, that’s so…routine, actually.

11. Florida’s high murder rate explained? We’re outgoing! And armed to the teeth. And really, really hot and irritated at the moment. What? WHAT?

12. Bilingual culture ensures that Floridians speak two languages very poorly, rather than one as in Tennesseans’ case.

13. Tennesseans born knowing how to electric slide and boot-scoot; Floridians born knowing how to salsa, meringue, and file down the firing pin of an AR-15 so that that thing will blow doors on full-auto, motherfucker.

14. Our governor’s gay. There are no gay people in Tennessee, so Florida’s instantly more stylish by far on points automatically.

15. Florida Senator Bill Nelson is a former astronaut. Tennessee Senator Bill Frist adopted cats from the Humane Society and dissected them for “practice” during med school. Meow.

16. The weather sucks for five months straight in Tennessee during this bizarre thing called “winter.” From November to March it’s like living underneath Bea Arthur’s pubic hair: cold, gray, barren, and soggy.

Yes. A very accurate description you have there.

17. Danny Wuerffel never lost a game to Peyton Manning in college. Peyton Manning is the best quarterback of his generation. This should indicate that if Manning had played for Spurrier, he would have had nine Super Bowls by now, thrown for 237,000 yards, and impregnated a line of supermodels that would make Tom Brady look like a mediocre polygamist in comparison.

18. Our mascot has the unique quality of being something that eats you and that you can eat, in theory.

19. Speaking of…Smokey loses in the Mascot War. Unless it’s cold, and then we’d get torpid, and even then Smokey would likely break his teeth on Albert’s hide. And who wants to live when it’s below sixty degrees anyway.

20. Haven’t lost to Vanderbilt recently, have we?

21. No one does cancer like we do. Especially skin cancer. And cockroaches. In fact, the mayor of Apopka, Florida was at one time a huge, talking tumor who rode a tremendous Palmetto bug around on his daily rounds. Charismatic. Great with reforming local zoning laws. Helluva golfer, he was.

22. Corporate home of Outback Steakhouse, who brought you 36 percent of Phil Fulmer’s body mass courtesy of the chain’s trademark appetizer, the Bloomin’ Onion.

23. Tennessee brought you writers such as James Agee, who wrote depressing books about poor people. Florida has Carl Hiaasen, who writes about middle-aged white guy journalists getting ass way hotter than they should reasonably get and about people getting fucked to death by dolphins. (The best part is that this actually happened.) Boooo poor people! Yayyyy dolphin sodomy! Advantage: Florida.

24. Lost last year’s bowl game to a team coached by a zombie.

25. Beat Dennis Franchione in a bowl game prior to that, which may or may not count as a win, really.

26. In case of the Rapture, Tennesseans’ cars will be unmanned. Florida fans will totally steal them all and take them to this guy we know out in Bartow who’ll give us mad cash for them. Especially Lexuses, man.

More to come! Viva hate!

We have no words of comfort. For comfort, go to mom, or better yet, Oprah. Or better yet, fire your motherfucking coach once the nadir turns into the midpoint when you lose to Michigan State by thirty, or (Jebus forbid!) Notre Dame next week, or to whomever else would snap the creaky back of the Carr Administration at this point. You’ll still suck, but you’ll have cut off someone’s head–and coachblood makes the wounded fan’s heart sing every time.

Instead of comfort, we focus on one seemingly cosmetic but terribly important thing. We watched the Oregon game, hoping to be that Oprah type person: rooting for the downtrodden, pulling for the wounded little meerkat, you know, falling prey to our national genetic predilection for the underdog/comeback kid. And for an instant we were there, until we saw this:

!!!!

This would be less appalling if it were alumni…but STUDENTS JINGLING KEYS? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Young, healthy people with clean, fully-functioning lungs JINGLING KEYS TO MAKE NOISE!!!! My god, why don’t you hire Salvadorans to come yell for you? Or better still, they could just come in and cheer for you while you watch the game in the parking lot in peace and quiet and save you the trouble of screaming “DOWN IN FRONT!!!” (Because that would hurt your lungs, wouldn’t it?)

Yes, this is coming from a boorish, decorum-free SEC fan whose fellow fans bring cowbells to games and set off seismometers at the geology department during games in between handing out sociology and leisure management degrees to illiterate, well-muscled athletes. It is also directed at a school in a conference where some schools actually cheer their asses off and force teams into penalties with crowd noise. And some Michigan fans have been railing about this for way, way longer than we have.

Don’t blame the architecture either. Instead, scream. At this point, you should be screaming, anyway. Who cares if it’s at your coach? Notre Dame doesn’t have to know that. This is football. Blood. Screaming. Tribal violence. Bizarre rites and rituals. Put away the keys. Pick up the torches. Less Roman, more Vandal, dammit!

Derrell Hand, 20, a University of Notre Dame defensive end/nose tackle, was arrested and jailed Thursday afternoon for allegedly propositioning a prostitute.

Hand, who was suspended indefinitely from the team Friday, was released from the St. Joseph County Jail on $250 bond Thursday.

Go pimp one for the gipper, nurse. He’s fading.

Hand was picked up as part of a sting operation by the South Bend police department. His defense should be that he merely speaks like that to not only every woman he meets, but every man, as well, as part of an undiagnosed Tourette’s tic.

Judge: How do you plead, defendant?

Hand: Whateva, trick, fat dick that’s sick gotta spit one quick before I flip. How much?

We’d call it Irvin syndrome if we hadn’t cried like a pussy watching the Playmaker get inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and ask his wife and kids for forgiveness for being a less than perfect father. (Sniff.) Hand should just go ahead, transfer to BYU, get a DWC in Provo, and therefore unify the “inadvisable crime to commit at religious college” title belts.

We’ll open the bidding with a question: what’s hard, made of cocaine, and looks like crack and was found on the dashboard of walk-on Tennessee football player and rhymes with crack? If you said crack, you’re obviously a felon. Turn yourself in now. If you do it in Knoxville, you might share a bunk with Justin Jackson, who can now look forward to being sexed by inmate Barry and his delightful selections of homemade toilet wine.

It’s crack. It gets you high.

Tennessee football walk-on Justin Jackson has been dismissed from the team after he was arrested on charges of selling crack cocaine, university officials said Thursday.

He sells cocaine! Ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-kaayeaahhaawwwww!!! Phil Fulmer, who is very, very fat, has kicked Jackson off the team, a punishment Urban Meyer described as “harsh.” For actual selling of motherfucking holy shit CRACK, the Tennessee Vols will receive 3 points for selling narcotics and one point for the longstanding crack bonus. (Crack always gets a bonus point, because crack is…crack, worthy of a point unto itself.) He also got a generic weed charge, tacking two points on for a total of six points in all for the Vols.

Not enough to even get them on the big board amidst this year’s stiff competition, but enough to make us feel like the world is close to spinning on its correct axis. We feel like we just woke up to the promise of a new day, as if the universe were made suddenly whole and right in a single act. (Exhale.) We would like to ask you to join us by standing up in your office chair right now, clicking the jump, and engage in an office dance party to celebrate the circle of life, and deliver an important anti-drug message, too. Remember, people: you don’t have to smoke crack to have a good time.

Remember: we’re real cool, we chill to the max. We might act crazy but we don’t smoke crack. (HT: A few people, Doug, Jeremy, Holly…we’ll add links as soon as the internet tubes aren’t on the fritz.)

An eagle-eyed reader saved one such example of neverwas memorabilia for us, however, and sent it post-haste to the Swindle Reptile Farm on Highway 78. The taste is a bit fresher on this one, however, and endlessly sweet for us.

Busted Memorabilia presents: the “Make Florida an Urban Myth” t-shirt.

The front:

Available in brilliant scarlet.

The back:

Well, it did end.

And, in your “economics illustrated” lesson of the day, the price tag:

Da hao to ‘Fesser for the shirt, and for spending more money to ship it than it cost to purchase the actual tee.

And then, the children run down the street, clutching white papers with baby blue print on the letterhead: THE APR’S OUT! THE APR’s OUT!!!

Jump for joy, piglet! The APR’s out!

The NCAA’s attempt to quantify the reconciliation of athletics and academics did indeed come out yesterday, and it lives up to its reputation again as being one of the sternest, least forgiving gauges of academic performance in small schools never hoping to even play in a bowl game or sell a single piece of NCAA merchandise. The letters stand for Academic Progress Rate, but we can substitute any number of better source words for the acronym APR:

Abstruse Pedantic Ruse

Auburn? Pretty Ridiculous.

Athletes Placed in Remedials

Annual Pipsqueak Reaming

The last one is particularly apt. The schools receiving the most serious scholarship penalties and Myles Brand finger-wagging all come from college sport’s Christmas Islands: Northern Arizona University, Texas Southern, Tennessee-Chattanooga, San Jose State…and most snidely, HBCUs and schools affected by Hurricane Katrina. (Myles Brand doesn’t care about black people! ) Oh, and FIU and Georgia Southern. Those puppies got kicked, too.

The only big school of note in anything resembling trouble is the University of Arizona, which will lose four scholarships
next year following a dismal APR score. Everyone else skates, and will likely continue to. Why? Let Myles “the Hammer” Brand answer that query:

“It is important … to understand that the faculty of each college or university, rather than the NCAA, determines courses that will be taught, the standards for instruction and the requirements for degrees. They are also responsible for monitoring against academic abuse or fraud, and they take these responsibilities seriously. It is unlikely that any intrusion by the NCAA into this realm would be either practical, successful or welcome.”

Hello, prized linebacker. That D is being changed to a “C”, and as long as the University’s not looking or caring, no one else is going to sniff around no matter how rank the smell gets. The NCAA pads the natural loophole in the policy with yet another loophole cannily spotted by the vigilant attorneys over at Miami HawkTalk: the NCAA takes away the “squad size adjustment” next year, which makes next year’s APR look like a potential killing floor for dumbish teams, right?

You get nothing! You lose! Good day sir! The teams in question have to have a workable plan in place to improve–a plan and nothing more, really, creating a garage-door sized hole in the policy for schools to run whole convoys through. In truth, all a school needs to invest in to keep athletics free and clear of suspicion is a robust compliance office capable of running interference.

This post is therefore sponsored by the burgeoning field of NCAA compliance and the American Union of NCAA Compliance Officers. Through an increasingly incoherent and flexible policy, the NCAA’s done little more than subsidize the growth of an industry devoted solely to countering its own policies, and one that will likely require the services of that most pricey and ornery of professionals: the attorney. Schools unable to afford representation will gradually be razed out of sport, since the market will clip the weaker competition (HBCUs and San Jose States of the world) out of business.

In the future, the best defense in college football won’t be wearing a mouth guard and eyeblack. They’ll be carrying a valise and a J.D. from a top 25 law school, and their playbook will be much, much more complicated than that of its opposition for one very good reason: the other team faxed them the game plan before kickoff.

Of course you haven’t, because some grubby dude in a field is working his balls off right now spraying gallons of deadly, carcinogenic insecticide on zillions of tomatoes baking in the subtropical sun just to get you a huge beefsteak to crown your hamburger. We didn’t crawl from the muck to grow our own food. We did it because as fish with protofeet and sprouting lungs, we had the dream that one day we could cruise Rivals.com all day slobbering at the hypothetical games we’re going to be watching, being the unproductive monkeys all mudskippers dream of being.

And for us, graduate mudskippers, 2007 will be large, large, large. Like Maradona 2007 large. But like Maradona, you’ll get fat not just on quality nutrition, but on the junk food of the schedule, too. Here’s our pair of fattening, non-value games from week one that you’ll watch anyway for all the wrong reasons.

Like, Maradona-large. England points and laughs.

Washington at Syracuse. 8 p.m., ESPN.

Animal, mineral, or vegetable? Vegetable. But it’s the first day of the season, so trainwrecking will pass for entertainment. Syracuse’s horrible, no good, very, very bad offense (worst in the Big East) meets Washington’s crapulent defense (worst in the Pac-10, unless you count Stanford, which we don’t.) This means you may be experiencing physical pain at the end of the second quarter. Breathe deep and push through it, since the ending will likely entail something so gorily inept you’ll kick yourself for not seeing it. This year’s version of Iowa/Syracuse 2006, where you may remember the only goal line stand we’ve ever seen where we didn’t so much credit the defense as excommunicate the offense from the church of decent offense.

Animal correlative: Like watching a toothless old mountain lion attempt to eat a porcupine. Whoever loses last, wins.

West Virginia vs. Marshall. ESPN/ESPN2, TBD.

Animal, mineral, or vegetable?VROOM! Mineral, as in hammered steel pistons pumping out record lap times at Talladega. What had been a slightly substantial rivalry has dimmed to an annual skullknocking with last year’s 42-10 headkicking being a prototypical example of what happens to Marshall when they play a Rich Rodriguez team.

Everyone loves a good sprinting slaughter, though, which this promises to be. Let us remind you that Steve Slaton, repaired wrist and all, will be back with Pat “Meow” White, Darius Reynaud, and incoming phonics champion Noel Devine taking the field in one capacity or another. We haven’t even touched on West Virginia’s improving wideouts. Though Marshall knows exactly what West Virginia will do–run, run, run, run–a team that went “4-7…in the highly competitive Conference-USA” stands little to no chance of getting out of the first quarter without tasting the jet wash of Slaton or White busting multiple sixty yarders on the defense.

Ask the Wannstache, and he will say the same, twitching his mustache all the while.

Animal correlative? A leopard seal ripping a penguin in half.

From the superbly named Daily Skiff:

According to the police report, Willingham saw Henson holding a black handgun. Henson handed the gun to Hodge, according to the report, who “raised the firearm into the air and fired several rounds.” Willingham then identified himself as a Fort Worth police officer, pointed a shotgun at Hodge and told him to put the gun down, according to the report.

The conversation had to go something like this.

Henson: Whew, I’m tired, man.
Hodge: Yeah. Beat. Hey, what’s that?
Henson: My new nine. Wanna see it?
Hodge: Sure. (Takes gun) Is it loaded?
Henson: Nah, man. I’m not dumb, right?
Hodge: So I could take it like this and just (BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM)
Officer: FREEZE!!! POLICE!!!
Hodge: Um, you were wrong. That gun was loaded.
Henson: Shit.

Stop hatin’, five-oh. Those bullets go straight into space.

The Horned Frogs are assessed two points for the incident, as this is Texas and wantonly discharging a firearm seems to belong in a class of crimes loosely classified as “party gone out of bounds.” Henson did, however, have three outstanding Class C warrants at the time of his arrest, so perhaps a bonus point for stupidity is in order? Sure. Bonus point plus two for Kenneth Tookes Target Practice = three total for TCU, making their entry into Fulmer Cup 2007.

Addendum: don’t laugh! When frogs and guns meet, people get hurt.

Florida’s Keg Incident involving an unnamed player, an unnamed complainant, and an alleged failed theft of a beer keg has evaporated in a matter of hours. The alleged victim withdrew their complaint this morning without ever positively ID’ing the assailant.

POOF! Points be gone, though we still hope someone ends up puking their guts out for weeks on end during mat drills as a result of whatever happened in this case–and not because they’re hung over off all the stolen beer sloshing around in their stomach.

Hoping for something like this at mat drills.

Free money in Ames, Iowa! YAAAAYYYY!!! That seemed to the extent of the thought process for three Iowa State players caught pilfering goods from a purse left on a city bus. Caught either by witnesses or videotape, the three players (all redshirt freshmen) are charged with fifth-degree theft, which is just one degree of theft away from a White Elephant holiday party.

A point each equals three for the Cyclones in their slightly lame debut on the board. Welcome to head coaching, Gene Chizik.

Colorado State says fuck your couch, lawya. No Fulmer Cup points for basketball offenses, but we must mention Colorado State for something other than their ability to bulldoze four-year olds in spring scrimmages. Xavier Kilby, CSU basketball player, was arrested on suspicion of felony menacing and prohibited use of weapons following an incident early Sunday morning involving teammate Ronnie Aguilar.

…Kilby and Aguilar got into an argument in the living room and that Kilby pulled out a small revolver, pointed it at Aguilar’s head and then pointed the gun at a couch and discharged the weapon.

Fuck your couch, indeed. Kilby’s been suspended pending investigation. (HT: Rory.)

We really only mention this to take the spotlight off poor CSU receiver George Hill, who was making a diving TD catch during CSU’s scrimmage on Saturday when he encountered a 12th defender, a four year old who was quoted after the hit as saying:

“It was kind of scary ’cause I got bonked by the football. It kind of hurted.”

We pray the reporter writing this made this up, because children do not and should not speak like this. If they do, heaps of assy shame must fall on the parents, who no doubt egged him on by saying “OOOhhhh, isn’t that just precious?” It starts with accepted bad grammar; it ends with him stealing cars and slinging his seed around like so much confetti before ending up in prison or–heaven forbid–business school.

It hurted! Goddammit, bad grammar gets us peeved. You go, George Hill. Hit him again–this time, it’s for Strunk and White.

Notes, apologies, corrections, pleas for help…

Toledo possibly needs their points shaved…since the point shaving charges against them are “on hold” according to investigators. It’s unknown whether this is fishing for an immunity/plea bargain thingy to pursue the ringleaders of the points-shaving scandal at Toledo or just legal futzing around. For the purposes of Fulmer Cup scoring, we’ll hold them until something more definitive comes out regarding the case.

You don’t disrespect the roller rink without consequences. Arky State booms in the polls due to a parking lot brawl at a roller skating rink. They earned the points fair and square, but as someone with deep, lovely memories of rocking out to “Lookin’ At the Front Door” while clumsily bounce-skating, the penalty for violating the sanctity of a roller rink seems paltry.

LSU, up like Lexington Steele. With Illinois so far out as a result of the work of two very, very active “acquisition experts,” we’re resorting to NASCAR-style announcing and hyping the second and third place spots as “the real race.”

LSU has made impressive strides to climb to nine points. Florida and Michigan are in a duel for second place with no real challengers besides the Bayou Bengals. The lone rogue wave here could be the Penn State burglary case, which may or may not yield huge points for the Nittany Lions. We’ve given up on actually seeing any points from that or the Cory Boyd gun-waving case out of South Carolina.

Dennis? Where the Sun Devils are in all this is beyond us. Perhaps it takes a few months for Dennis Erickson’s mojo to spread around campus, but in a place with porn stars on campus and a reputation as being a Sodom and Gomorrah with financial aid, ASU’s absence seems very strange to us.