[click to embiggen]

You’re on the list, now:

Award-winning country music star Kenny Chesney, known for his high-energy stadium concerts, has written a song exclusively for ESPN’s college football game and studio telecasts during Dick’s Sporting Goods Kickoff Week (Sept. 3-7) and Championship Saturday (Dec. 5) as well as select contests throughout the season and bowl games. ESPN will have the exclusive premiere of the song during its pregame show Thursday, Sept. 3, at 7 p.m.

Needs editing. One moment please. [Sound of screaming, fire, steel clanging, tendons ripping.] Okay, here you go.

Shitty, meaningless Award-winning country music star prize dwarf Kenny Chesney, known for his high-energy stadium concerts lackadaisically humping the dead carcass of a long-dead musical genre pandering to humanity’s most fatuous and ignoble traits, has written a song misbegotten flaming abortion of ass-cramping tripe exclusively for ESPN’s college football game and studio telecasts during Dick’s Sporting Goods Overpriced Jockstrap Hut Kickoff Week (Sept. 3-7) and Championship Saturday (Dec. 5) as well as select cursed contests throughout the season and bowl games. ESPN will have the exclusive premiere public excretion of the song during its pregame show Thursday, Sept. 3, at 7 p.m. a date that shall live in infamy as the day suck conquered the universe.

What the hell is wrong with this?

Just play that, show some people hollering, a few shots of people getting knocked the fuck out, and then Fowler/Lieutenant Beautifulpants/Corso. There! There’s your new intro, not this crapulent piece of faux-cornpone pablum the marketing people pulled from America’s Milquetoast Mecca, Nashville, the home of country music that can go fuck itself in the ear with a wolverine.

She thinks your tractor’s sexy? Bullshit. You drive a fucking Honda Odyssey to work, Sonic, Bass Pro Shops, and that’s about it. God, please: if you exist, send 1988 Steve Earle forward in time to us. We will give him a flamethrower and a suitcase filled with blacktar heroin to burn country music to the ground and make people start writing honest songs about running from the cops, drinking yourself blind, and resigning yourself to your own doomed bastardhood before a premature and giddy death.

To Sam the Eagle, the commenter who will say, “Now, now, pish-posh, this is really all too much–” That dash is you being obliterated by our army of pitbulls. Do you have any idea how many times we are going to listen to this bullshit this fall, and the next, and the next? If Kenny Chesney loved college football at this point, he would go get arrested for a crime of moral turpitude and force DisneySPN to hang back with the old standard, “We’re Coming To Your Citaaaayyyyyyy,” known in our household as “The Song That Makes Daddy Fart Pure Flames Of Rage.” That’s how far you’ve beaten us down, Bristol: we’re rooting for the return of Big and Rich, who have spent years perpetually promising to come to your city without either fulfilling the promise and allowing us to ax a little ax-dang in their chest-tang, or put a little cyanide-tink in their drink-ink.

A bunch of brain-damaged, sub-moronic idiots. Baby. Baby. Baby. Please start football. Those in the heartland are clearly getting into the ergot-contaminated grain, and thought it has its benefits, like this video, it does not bode well for the long-term health of K-State fans. (Neither did Ron Prince, but that threat has been eliminated.)

(HT: Corn Nation.) The inspiration for the video is Make the Girl Dance’s “Baby Baby Baby,” a video shot in one take on a Parisian street. Please notice the women are not completely barefoot, which is a very good decision on their part. (Yes. We’ve watched it enough times to notice their footwear. You will too, so don’t judge us.)

No comment. I wouldn’t want to say he’s a total dick. So no comment. On that dickhead. Gene Chizik left Iowa State stronger than it was when he came in, forged lifelong relationships with players, and led Iowa State to a new level of football excellence during his time at Iowa State. You would write all of these things if you liked typing things that weren’t true, per this DMR piece. This is not, for the record, not a “no comment.”

“No comment,” Frere said. “Between workouts, coach Rhoads will come into the locker room and hang out with us, watch TV and sometimes talk about things other than football…

“There was a lot of emotion in that room. There was a lot of anger.”

Pretty sure that’s a comment. We’re going to try that same trick in a bar. Hey, “no punch in the face!” POW!

This year’s Richt: “Sleepy” Richt. Evil Richt was followed by last year’s Nanny Richt, the one who admittedly took it too easy on his team in practice and thus paved the way for a season of being bullied off the line by Florida and Alabama. This year’s model: “Sleepy Richt.” On the question of what he did to relax this summer:

Richt: Sleep. I actually took a couple naps this summer. Highly unusual for me. Anywhere from 30 minutes to, I might have maxed out at an hour and a half, here and there. It was during vacation. Even during vacation I usually don’t do that. It was good.

Feel better about it by referring to them as “power naps,” like the kind we like to take in the park. Our our eight hours long and use an empty bottle of Mad Dog Banana Red for a pillow, but they’re basically the same thing.

Blandishments. Player returning. Anticipates positive performance despite obstacles of schedule and roster turnover due to graduation. Detail from player’s upbringing. Supporting quotes from coaches, opposing players, and experts. Review of stats from prior year. Wrap with quote.

Free appetizer with charred couch spring. Former WV running back Amos Zeroue has his own French-influenced West African restaurant in New York. The kedjenou looks particularly good, and even better, Mountaineer fans: DRINKS HALF OFF FROM 5-7 pm.

We’re inclined both to believe that it’s fake and that the chances of the impostor being caught are exactly 1 in nofuckingwayleventymillion. (HT: Georgia Sports.)

It would take typing that a few hundred more times to drive home the point to Jason Whitlock that blogging is not journalism, and you don’t need that. (As you already understand, since you’re reading this, and likely naturally savvy to the notion that EDSBS will not bring you the verified truth, and will instead bring you mostly songs about Norm Chow singing in autotune about having sex with a dolphin.)

Whitlock and many older sports journalists fail to understand this point, so we will state it in clear English. It will be clear of the fancy parentheticals, interesting adjectives Orwell loved so much, or any of the sort of literary devices J-school seeks to beat out of you for no good whatsoever (besides cheap simile and hackneyed metaphor. Those are fine, apparently.)

1. A blog is a medium. A blogger is someone who uses it.

2. Bloggers can do very different things with that medium, and set their own goals. They are not, on the whole, journalists who want your salad fork. (Or pudding shovel, as it were. Damn you fancy parenthetical!)

3. Stop referring to them in a blanket sense without providing specifics. We would not do the same to journalists.

Example!

Sports reporters are lousy writers and worse thinkers.

Clearly unfair, and inaccurate writing based on evidence. This is much, much better:

Jay Mariotti is a lousy writer and can’t use think gland want candy.

There we are. Far more accurate, and very, very specific. We don’t care if Whitlock wants to reinvent sports journalism, because as he states to a degree of accuracy, we are not sports journalists. Repeating the oppositional canard that bloggers are sports reporters with frontal lobotomies and brimming bowls of Ritalin is tiresome and inaccurate. After all, if we wanted either of those we’d have a subscription to the AJC in its charming and burnable 20th century form, and none of us would be having this discussion in the first place.

Randy Peterson: I’m ready for your your questions, etc. How many games will Iowa State win? My over-under number is 6. Which, if last year tells us anything, is more than good enough for a bowl berth.

[Comment From Lance]Who are some people that could impress us both offense and defense that we have not heard of?

Randy Peterson: I heard some good things about receiver Lonzie Range while making my rounds in Ames earlier in the week. For one thing, he has two arms. What else do you need to catch a football? I mean this as an open question to you all, as I haven’t seen it done in several years by an Iowa State player.

Google Image Results for Ames, Iowa: Number One.

[Comment From Guest]It sounds like the Defense is going to attack and try to make plays as opposed to play bend-but-don’t-break. In your opinion, will this be a good move for their defense?

Randy Peterson: Anything will be an improvement from last season. The coaching staff have maintained their “just don’t break” philosophy throughout the spring, and are on schedule to start working on bending in fall camp. The reports as far as the number of players who have been able to walk off the field under their own power after plays have been really encouraging.

[Comment From ISUBILL]Which 6 teams will we beat, in your opinion?

Randy Peterson: This is just my guess…a way to stimulate fans heading into the summer…but I think the Cyclones have a chance to beat ND State, Kent State, Army, Kansas State, Baylor, Texas A&M and Colorado. Hear that, Cyclone Nation? A chance to beat North Dakota State? Is it stimulating in here, or is it just me?? [rips off shirt]

[Comment From cst8win]What about the O-Line??? We all know the foundation of a team is the big boys, and that much sucess in this area will lead to sucess as a team.

Randy Peterson: They’re learning a new system, just like the skill-position guys, so patience is needed. But, with the talented quarterback(s), running backs and receivers running the spread offense, if the offensive line can just knock a defender off stride, I’m thinking considerable improvement from last season. So all we need now are some talented quarterback(s), running backs and receivers! It always makes me feel better to make a little list. I tell you, things are lookin’ bright. [/staring directly into sun without blinking]

[Comment From ClonedAV]Have you heard any player position switches this spring?

Randy Peterson: Haven’t heard of anything major, and that’s a good thing. It’s tough learning a new system…from a new coaching staff. Also tough: Playing football.

[Comment From AltoonaKahuna]Okay, I’ll leave the ISU-Iowa game out of it, but how about the defense? From what you’ve seen and what you’ve heard, can this D actually come up with some stops and give the offense a chance?

Randy Peterson: The aggressive-style defense being taught is what other teams have used with success, therefore, I think it will eventually work at Iowa State. It’s a vast improvement over last year’s Tiptoe Through The Tulips Cover 1 scheme, and should see the Cyclones’ feet firmly planted on all Hawkeye throats at midseason.

[Comment From ISUser]So am I assume you think that ISU will get a road win this year? What do you think the odds are we get a conference road win?

Randy Peterson: Road wins will be so bountiful and emphatic that beginning in 2010 the Cyclones will play no home games. Jack Trice Stadium will be converted into an outdoor field laboratory for the biology department.

[Comment From cst8win]How many wins do you think will satisfy Cyclone fans this year? I think 5 or 6 would be a sucessful season, and one step up.

Randy Peterson: I’m not opposed to reporting on a bowl game. (There, I said it. Bowl! I’m as giddy as a schoolboy!)

[Comment From Guest] How do the young CB’s look? They are the key to a blitzing defense because if they can’t hold up, it’ll be a long year defensively.

Randy Peterson: Not just any bowl, mind. This team won’t be getting out of bed for a trip to Shreveport or Mobile. No, we’re aiming for sun, sand, and loose women.

[Comment From Bruce]Who won’t we see at the spring practice game on Sat. – be it due to injury, or just not on campus yet – that’s potentially a 1st or 2nd stringer by the time the season starts?

Randy Peterson: Of course, prestige is also a question. Who cares about the number of strip clubs per capita if all you’ve got to show for it at the end of the week is a ticket stub from the St. Petersburg Bowl? If Iowa is good enough for the Outback Bowl, they oughta be thrilled to host the likes of the Cyclones, am I right? High five! [slaps palm to computer screen]

[Comment From Guest]How do you feel the RB position will play out? Will Robinson get the majority of the carries?

Randy Peterson: My one exception would have to be the Las Vegas Bowl. Nothing like a little coin slot play to liven up a long cold winter in Middle America! Guys, you feelin’ me? Guys?

[Comment From Nate Booth]How is the communication style different between coaches and players this year?

Randy Peterson: No. You know what? Fuck that. My feet are on the ground, folks, but I’m about to reach for the stars. I’m calling it. Iowa State to the title game. ROSE BOWL BOUND, BABY!! WHO’S WITH ME?? THE SKIES SHALL RAIN BLOOD AND ALL THE WORLD SHALL QUAKE IN THE SHADOW OF THE CARDINAL AND GOLD. NO, THE OTHER CARDINAL AND GOLD. I CAN’T FEEL MY FACE — [runs around in circles, passes out]

After our presentation, a speech by this man on night navigation in small planes.

Also, we’ll buy you a cocktail if you show up. We will not, however, DAGGER DAGGER DAGGER with you. But Dan Steinberg, king of island rhythms most fierce, will!

*He probably won’t, but you’ll never know unless you ask.

Does Jim Tressel Tweet? Does a green-blooded Commie smoke Tarryltons and love big fake American ta-tas? Of course they don’t, and Jim Tressel will tweet when you put a poodle skirt on him and make him dance the can-can at gunpoint for the pleasure of a drunken and cackling Lloyd Carr.

Ohio State also had their unique kick scrimmage on Friday, which in Eleven Warriors’ description sounds like their spring game, actually:

Both sides exchange punts until one is in field goal range and each half contains scripted punts and FG attempts.

Should you think this sounds boring, please read further down and see that Ohio State’s off-field alumni special teams did superb work this weekend at Ted Ginn Jr’s birthday party in Cleveland, where a “near-riot” situation broke out resulting in the tasering of Donte Whitner. Once you taste voltage, you crave its spiky touch forever, and outside of Gainesville, Florida no student body is as frequently tased as the Ohio State peoplemass.

FLOOOOOOOAAAAAT. Georgia got prime-time coverage from messrs. Nessler and Herbstreit for G-Day, but we’ll focus instead on this bit of analysis from the Senator on qb Joe Cox’s performance in the scrimmage:

Joe Cox ain’t JT3, but he ain’t DJ Shockley, either. He really had to muscle up on the deep throws, and it showed.

Mmmm, floaty marshmallows. Georgia’s defense did look like a slight upgrade on last year’s unit, though the Senator notices the holes in Willie Martinez’s zone, which like a fine cheese give it both its unique character and occasionally make it reek like a dead rat stuck in a wall. Highlights here indicate the base plays of the 2009 attack are going to be the flea-flicker and the qb throwback. Believe your eyes!

If only we could get rid of this…Tee-bow. John Brantley had his best practice as a Gator, assuaging possible fears of a post-Tebow dropoff in offensive production at Florida because of his cannon/arm. Even the offensive line, functioning with several holes due to injury and maligned by Meyer throughout spring, performed well for both Tebow and Brantley. This includes Matt Patchan, a.k.a. Red from Pineapple Express, the defensive lineman turned o-lineman who has been shot, injured in a scooter accident, and who tore his pec in the weight room since arriving in Gainesville. He’s really sorry he tried to kill you, dude, but he was the only lineman to handle Jermaine Cunningham in Saturday’s scrimmage, and that should count for something.

Use the Forcier AGGHHHKRRGHhstrangled. The headline is killing Brian, but two things from Dennis Dodd’s piece on Michigan bear mention:

1. A cold-blooded pun on the word “break:”

His big break, literally, came when redshirt junior Nick Sheridan broke his right leg in practice last month. Sheridan is the only quarterback on the roster who has thrown a Division I pass. When he was injured, the thought running through Michigan fans’ minds had to be “Stay down, kid.”

We’ll shock you by not being outraged here, because outrage is cheap, and we’ve thought the same thing about players before, going so far as to spray friction-reducing industrial polymers on apartment steps to hasten the “accidental” injury of players we were convinced were waiting like sleeper cells of FAIL-qaeda in our team’s rosters. Someone’s going to email Dennis Dodd about this and call him heartless, and they’re wrong. He’s just being honest, and trying heartless on for size casually.

2. The only teams worse than Michigan in turnovers last season were…Washington State and South Carolina. When someone can explain to us what degenerative disease the Palmetto State gives to coaches’ ability to score points, please send us an email ASAP.

Most other coaches would recruit faster people. Not Hedley, whose genius dictated that he take one of Texas’ premiere pocket passing talents and turn him into a battered option qb! What sort of person would do this instead of recruit? Dennis Franchione, the only EDSBS-certified “Total Fucking Idiot” ever.

Torrey Davis, the Florida defensive tackle knifing in on the fourth and goal stand there, is not dead, booted off the team, bolted at the ankle to a tutor, or any other such foolishness as you may have heard. According to Jeremy Fowler of the Orlando Sentinel, Florida is not giving up on Davis, even though he’s in some kind of unspecified trouble of the sprained cerebrum variety. We will now give you the fair and balanced evaluation of such a case as viewed through the complete spectrum of sports blogging.

Pro-Florida: Urban Meyer’s not just about scoring on the field. He wants to make sure his players cross the goal line in the classroom, too.

Anti-Florida: Urban Crier just cain’t stop cheatin’ ARP! Top one percenna one percent my ass!

We congratulate our program for boldly demonstrating love and patience with a powerfully built, shockingly agile young man with academic issues. S-E-C! S-E-C! S-E-C!

[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?

Finebaum:
I flipped on ESPN over the weekend and heard a national commentator refer to UT’s 33-year-old football coach as “Insane Lane.” Certainly that had to make an impression on upcoming high school seniors who might be considering UT in a few months.

Doyel:
A sharper coach, one with a better feel for himself and his business, wouldn’t go out of his way to tick off the one guy in the SEC who has the players, the style and the cruelty to get even on the field.

Feldman:
…do people really think because of this, Florida is going to REALLY try and rub it in UT’s face? Meyer was going to try to blow up the scoreboard regardless.

Hinton:
So even though I have no idea how many games Kiffin’s going to win this year at Tennessee (well, I have some idea), on some level I have to think anyone able to cause rival scribes to spill this much ink and drive a usually sensible Alabaman into the arms of Al Davis before his first spring game at a school that just went 5-7 with a loss to Wyoming must be doing something right.

Look, it’s February. We’re all hurting for content. But Finebaum is clearly set on ginning up pageviews in the lean months, and Doyel is flat acting the fool. The idea that the Florida-Tennessee rivalry, in particular, isn’t operating at a full-time haterade zenith already is frankly preposterous, and while I don’t expect more from Doyel, his readers should.

And what if they’re right? I have often said that, were I not born into a through-and-through Tennessee family, I’d like to be an LSU fan. I admire their joie de vivre, their willingness to bodily threaten women and children of opposing fanbases, their sheer cussedness that is never altered by numbers on a scoreboard. We orange faithful could stand to learn from the fine example of Baton Rouge. Too long have we meandered along in (relative) gentility, content to cheer lustily when games go our way and fall dead silent when down more than a touchdown.

No more.

Brothers and sisters, it’s time to relinquish the mantle of “the Michigan of the SEC”. Let’s see some hustle in here. Let’s see some fire in those dead eyes. Let’s see us trailing the Gators, the Tide, the Dawgs by thirty or more and screaming, “THAT ALL YEW GOT??” at their nearest fans. And in the meantime, let us laugh long and proud at all the ruffled petticoats Kiffykins is leaving in his wake. His apology to Meyer was deemed half-assed and disingenuous by everyone with a hot mic? GOOD. The man is fantastic television, and for this bounty of offseason entertainment, at least, we owe him our allegiance.

He’s young. He’s inexperienced. He’s running into walls left and right, but bless his heart, he’s doing it at full speed. Would we really want it any other way? Kiffykins may very well get run out of town on a rail, but if he goes down he’s going Cossack-style, and in the meantime he’s ours. Think for a moment and name the most hated men in the SEC: Meyer. Saban. Miles. Anyone sensing a pattern here? Now rejoice, damn you, Knoxville—we done got our very own prince of darkness. Freshly hatched though he may be, I f’ing love him for it.

Vawls, our path diverges. From here on out, I’m gonna have some fun with this. (To wit: I just compared Lane Kiffin to the head coaches of Florida, Alabama, and LSU; it was not an accident, and you can go to hell and die if you think we’re not beating them all a billionty to three (and Georgia, too) at the very next opportunity. See?  I’m telling you, this is the only way to live.) I hope to see many of you spitting and hollering and damning the torpedoes from here to August and beyond. The rest of you—well, if y’all like being pantywaists so damn much, I’m sure Vandy’s bandwagon can spare a few seats by now.

Sports have gone too far. Wow, our priorities really are out of line. Spank, hug.

This thing in sports is reflective of this societal thing. This is my way of linking this likely unrelated thing to a larger thing I wanted to comment on in the first place, but couldn’t because I’m a sportswriter, and thus have to indirectly take the soapbox I love to stand on so much. (Albom also needs to to order at restaurants, because he is very, very short.) Point, spank, hug.

Sports can still inspire. Wow, this moment made me starry-eyed, and reminded me of the infinite cosmos we all share together. FUCK YOU STOP HUGGING ME YOU TINY BOUFFANT’D MIDGET.

Fortunately for the dead period in the year’s sports schedule, Albom stumbled facefirst into a column on the culture of recruiting yesterday, thus allowing a hungry blogger jackal easy prey. And if this column were a wildebeest, it would not merely be the old one at the back of the pack, but would instead be the bleating young obese baby of the herd with a broken ankle bleating loudly while wearing a series of blinking LEDs spelling out “EASY PREY YUMZ” in the endless dark of the savanna.

It is wrong and harmful and we should all be ashamed of ourselves and I guess I’m going to keep writing it until I’m the last person in this business saying it. This glorifying of high school recruits has got to stop.

Why can’t anyone else see? Is Mitch Albom the last person on the planet to see this? He’ll keep fighting for you, though, even though you can’t appreciate it, you cretin: turning off the faucet in between wetting the toothpaste and rinsing his mouth out, using his turn signals, nursing a thousand little grudges against humanity that he’ll turn into private virtue. We shouldn’t pay attention to this. Not at all. Even if it is interesting, because…um…

Last week was Signing Day for college football, which used to be a date known only to coaches. Today, it is cause for endless TV coverage, mountains of newsprint and an Internet gone wild.

The Internets. The damn internets. PREVIEW: Later in this column, Mitch Albom will make a point so stupid and pointless you’d swear he’d crapped the line out in 12 point sans-serif from his sainted asshole. It involves the internet, the source of all evil and the executioner of the industry paying Albom to write columns consisting of one sentence paragraphs and overmoralized bullshit substituting for logic.

What’s changed? Nothing and everything.

The everything is everything else.

Believe it or not, this is not that stupid statement. There’s dumber. Really, you might want to stop reading here. Everyone here will only lose brain cells for seeing what you’re about to see. Liability claims do not apply from this point on; like huffing gas from a brown paper bag, a moment’s levity at Albom’s expense will only leave you minus IQ points and plus a massive headache.

Skip some useless framing, and…

Never mind that many of these top 100 kids won’t even be factors four years from now. Never mind that there is no such thing as a sure thing in college football.

That doesn’t stop the glamorizing, analyzing, interviewing and, of course, the ranking of which school did the best, orchestrated by tout services and magazines that created this whole false fury in the first place.

Recruiting rankings do matter, if you’re inclined to look at the numbers instead of using the moment self-aggrandize your growing list of beefs against the universe into the fabric of an anti-Rivals/Scout column. You didn’t mow your lawn, and Mitch noticed, but he’ll let it slide. Really, no, it’s fine (scribbling down on mental tally of times you have slighted him by forcing him to finger-wag silently….)

A few examples of what this hype machine produced last week:

Really? It shows me Notre Dame has enough money to send a man commuting to Hawaii week after week at a time when many families can’t afford to pay tuition. How about taking that airfare and giving it instead to a need-based scholarship? What’s that? But then you won’t have Te’o making tackles next fall?

Rhetorical Foul: Improperly exchanged units of moral virtue. That’s football money, and it goes to the business of Notre Dame football. Every adult in the room assumes this is almost entirely separate from Notre Dame the fine academic institution. Every Mitch Albom assumes this could all be worked out if only the Pope and Batman met Charlie Weis at his door, and then asked politely for that television money to go to poor, jaunty orphans with tattered suspenders who spend their days selling Grit door-to-door in between performing charming musical numbers.

Notre Dame gives out plenty of needs-based scholarships, and fuck you for telling someone what to do with their money in the first place. This assumption that the concerns are somehow fungible—HOW CAN YOU EAT WHEN CHILDREN ARE STARVING IN DARFUR–is without value. You should spit it out like a dog lets a grape fall from its jowls.

Well, the kid is a Mormon and says he may leave after his freshman year to go on a mission.

I wonder if airlines do refunds.

Because they couldn’t work out a mission. Nope. Impossible. Not like BYU does it all the time, or that this has been a centerpiece of any and all reporting on the Te’o recruitment, and that his mission plans were a problem for none of the schools pursuing him. That would entail reading these, and knowing what you were talking about, and those are really, really hard to do when you have to get an encyclopedia to just sit on the chair at the reference desk properly and use the scary, mean computer to look these things up.

Height jokes aside, though, this filthy, reprobate world saved its harshest blow for the one–count it, ONE–time Albom actually went to an announcement.

Only once in my career did I attend a recruiting announcement. It was for Robert (Tractor) Traylor, a prep basketball star in Detroit who did the TV/entourage thing, chose the University of Michigan, and later became part of a recruiting scandal that led to his coach’s firing and the school’s NCAA probation.

I lasted five minutes at his event, left, went to the school library, and found a kid going to the same university on an academic scholarship, all alone, doing homework.

NURRRRRRRRRRDDDDZ. Why, the stink of the earthly greed of the affair caused me to pull the chrysanthemum from his lapel, and use it as a sort of primitive gas-mask! Albom would have no problem lauding the studying kid’s eventual acceptance into law school or business school, and would then cheer their entry into the workforce, and would then write about how greedy they were because straw men are easier targets than real ones, because real targets can dodge the fat, blimp-slow rhetorical ammo contained in a Mitch Albom column.

It’s like playing Grand Theft Auto: Retirement City when you attempt to set parts of an Albom column on fire: slow, hapless notions moving with the assistance of golf carts or larks, all defenseless as you set them ablaze with a flamethrower propped in the window of a speeding Lamborghini.

The 12 point sans serif bowel movement we promised, though? Regard, please:

The editors and writers in our business should, in my view, do the same thing. Walk away. Ignore this hype. Report the details and that’s it. Who cares if the Internet burns with this stuff? The Internet burns with porn — we don’t print that.

Who cares if these tout services and magazines sell a lot of copies? Are we here to mirror another business’ panderings? If so, why don’t we have centerfolds every day? Or is that next?

If the British media is any indication, the American media is twenty years behind in adopting that innovation, actually. Fortunately, you can preach while your younger, less pampered colleagues have to reinvent the business as it burns down around their ears, just as you can take the culture of recruiting–one that has arguably gotten cleaner and more transparent with the attentions of the internet–and assume it’s bad because the agenda was set not by chiding dictatorial eye of the columnist, but from hilljacks with modems wondering what kind of livestock next year’s class was bringing in.

Recruiting lives on gambling on talent, and clearly that’s the issue: gambling is good dirty fun, and good dirty fun annoys frill-collared Puritans like Mitch Albom. It also annoys him because he gets kicked out of casinos, even after he shows security his ID and screams “Don’t you recognize me from The Sports Reporters!“, because they assume he is a 12 year old with progeria.

*Writes one sentence paragraphs for exorbitant sums of money.
**The dying husk of the Detroit Free-Press
***”I’LL BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR” Screaming abandoned buildings dead guy frozen Detroit hellscape.

It’s still on their front page, if you’d like to check it for yourself. (HT: Commenter “Tedd Dupay.” You won this bet, Tedd.)

Orangebloods already had a fine rebuttal to the New York Times’ article by Thayer Evans on the recruitment of Jamarkus McFarland whichm while not exactly clinical in its approach, was certainly enough to poke a few holes in the story.

We at Pajamas Media think you have unfairly cast Mack Brown as a Satanist with this photo!

Now the NYT public editor decides to just pee all over the best passage of the story by confirming the lack of confirmation on the story. BOO REPORTERY THINGS:

Evans did alert the university just before his article was published on the newspaper’s Web site. Why didn’t he seek reaction beforehand? He said that if anyone at Texas had spoken to him, it would have violated N.C.A.A. recruiting rules. And, he said, he did not want to give either Texas or Oklahoma information they could use to try to influence McFarland’s decision.

Regardless of whether Texas officials would have commented, Evans should have given them the chance. As in each of the other cases, a phone call could have headed off much embarrassment.

Hrmgnnmppmhhh…you could say that a reporter has to bend over into pretzeloid shapes to present both sides of the story, yes; or you could say that Evans depicted this kid’s recruitment from his perspective, put it on paper, and then let the reader make up their mind. We agree wholeheartedly with the idea that he should have gotten Texas’ comment on the “girls romancing each other” story, but going too far to get equal coverage in what is essentially a narrative piece presenting one recruit’s subjective experience is asking a bit much.

We came away from the original piece thinking that the idea of someone seeing girls making out with each other at any college recruiting party is more than likely, and that McFarland’s mother sounded like any other of a thousand recruiting mamas whose sense of self-importance had been inflated ten thousandfold by the recruiting process, and who had decided her son was going to Oklahoma long before the recruiting process ended. These are people: ego, lack of perspective, lies, and exaggerated regard for your own opinions are the givens, not the exceptions.

Aside from the single error of not including a parenthetical verification of the story, finding outrage in the story on the part of a Texas fan–or any other fan, for that matter–seems like a case of willing or unwilling shitty reading comprehension. Read between the lines of the piece, and you’ll see what you see in most recruiting cases: people overwhelmed by the situation who respond as people usually do, which is in mediocre, average, and spotty fashion.

What more did you want? Evans putting a complimentary picture of Mack Brown saving a puppy from being crushed in a hydraulic press in the sidebar? You can’t worry about people as stupid to believe the cartoonish picture of Mack Brown as portrayed by McFarland and Adams in the article, an egomaniacal coach a few degrees shy of Jerry Jones, a portrayal at odds with almost every other single portrayal of the man we’ve ever read. (And make this distinction: that is not Evans’ portrayal, but is instead Adams and McFarland’s depiction as relayed through Evans. Again: shitty reading comprehension in the service of an outrage gland looking to flex is still shitty reading comprehension.)

The rest is overblown butthurt outrage over nothing, which on the internet is the second cheapest commodity and on our list of things to avoid for 2009. The first, you ask? Hentai porn. We’re looking at you, Punter.

Since the job of Willie Nelson is still taken, we assume being hated by someone means you’re doing something right. Also, we never read Reilly growing up and don’t read him now, since he largely comes from the school of hackneyed one-liners (occasionally scoring) and the aesthetic of Mitch Albom’s School for Guys Who Ponder the Beauty of Life, Put One Hand on Cheek, and Lean On Said Hand Wistfully. Pat “Fucking” Jordan drinks his milkshake anyday; P.J. O’Rourke leaves him in pieces in a carefully submerged bag in Haulover Sound.

Anyway, he’s being paid an astonishing amount of money to write one 800 word column a week. Too Short approves of this being paid 10Gs just to breathe on the mike, but Oliver Wendell Holmes wants a motherfucking word with you about your con law:

Call Myles Brand, president of the asleep-at-the-wheel NCAA, and ask him if he and his greedy presidents are going to stand in defiance of president-elect Barack Obama, who wants a playoff and wants it yesterday.

Rick Reilly is obviously a fan of the Unitary Executive theory of the President’s role in the Constitution, since he thinks–typing atop a pile of gold bullion while phoning John Yoo on the matter–that the President can force a playoff.

Us as David Frost: “Are you saying what you did wasn’t illegal?”

Reilly, clad in jowled foam rubber makeup: “I’M SAYING THE PRESIDENT CAN MAKE ROCK CANDY APPEAR FROM THE RECTUM OF A UNICORN IF HE WANTS!”

It’s flabbergasting to think this made it past the plausibility meter of anyone with a passing familiarity with what the President does, but two things are more galling. First, Myles Brand isn’t greedy yet, because wresting control of the BCS from the hands of the “greedy” would put it into the hands of…um…the “benevolent” Brand? Because he’s king of college sport land, and would rule with a fair and even hand?

We don’t want to defend the BCS, but this is a cartel. Cartels are brutal, unfair, and in principle foul creatures. So are dictators. If, through eight improbable steps, the NCAA ever became involved in the BCS on a serious level, that is precisely what you would have. Call it the Voltron Theory: what Reilly wants is a giant robot to come screaming from the sky and set everything right by cutting a Robeast or two in half. Thinking that either Barack Obama or Myles Brand could or should set anything right about this system is–and this is the kindest word we can use to describe it and read it in your best Christopher Hitchens voice–fatuous.

(BTW, you owe Reilly 900 bucks for that excerpt. And we’re not even going to talk about John Feinstein’s piece on the BCS. The word “fucktarded” can only be typed so many times before your fingers cramp.)

One statistic drives home the point. Alabama’s 12 opponents were a combined 23-17 (.600) before facing the Tide. After losing, those same teams went 31-39 (.442).

Only two opponents are still ranked, neither in the top 15…Of those three, only LSU is bowl eligible, and like many other SEC teams, they stumbled badly down the stretch.

So the secret is out: Nick Saban has been inserting depleted uranium shell shavings into the Tide’s morning meal of tiger meat and nettles, making the entire squad radioactive enough to induce low-level radiation poisoning.

I see what you are doing, Coach Saban. Vladimir approves.

A walking, Nike-sponsored Chernobyl, if you will. If you do come into contact with the Alabama football team at any point, you should cut off your clothes without removing them over your head, and immediately shower repeatedly with soap and hot water. (Couldn’t be a weak floundering SEC as a whole. Nope. We’re going with depleted uranium shavings as a more plausible explanation.)