Football used to be so much more…fatal. Frank Deford dusts off the fine year of 1905, when some 26 people were killed playing football in the era of the flying wedge, the legal shiv-block, and the “Paddy McDuffin” offense*, which was all the rage in its day.

Not seen: fullback with shotgun, dog devouring middle linebacker.

The article’s mostly quotes, but it will make you thirst for a day when one could spin a fine carriage to a game with a syphilitic lassie, take a sip of sight-destroying Virginia rotgut, and soil one of the three pairs of pants you owned while watching the youth of America engage in the kind of bloodsport that made this nation strong.

Few players wore helmets, and a close observer declared that as Harvard and Yale pummeled each other, “It was the most magnificent sight … every lineman’s face was dripping with blood.”

Since this does concern a team from the Boston area, we can only assume this was the reddest, most poetic blood ever and that no other blood has been bled so painfully or nobly from an athlete in any sport ever. (more…)

Tim Tebow uses Bible verses on his eyeblack, which crazy kidnapping rainbow wig guy did, and now they’re connected. Check, check, and blog post done.

The principle is transferable to so many other things, though. For instance, take Brandon Spikes. He is a fierce linebacker, swimming through blocks and sniffing out plays other predatory linebackers miss. He’s practically sharklike, we tell you. Sharks have a lot of positives traits. They kill things well. They never stop moving. They often RSVP for parties well before others and have a natural sensitivity to the issues of LGBT other fish don’t have. They’re sharks, they’re proud, and you can’t take that away from them unless you kill them and eat them. Then you’ve pretty much taken everything away from them, because you’ve eaten them.

Is this Brandon Spikes’ future? With the right insane associative rhetoric, IT VERY WELL COULD BE.

Sharks, who are just like Brandon Spikes and vice versa, can do the same to you, and that’s the problem. Sharks eat things randomly. You might see Brandon Spikes eating a license plate on the side of the road because it’s shiny one day, and then what are you going to do, Florida fans? Let’s not even get on the topic of what happens to pregnant sharks around other sharks.

A pregnant shark at a New Zealand aquarium was bitten by another shark, unexpectedly releasing four baby sharks as visitors watched.

An aquarium spokeswoman said stunned visitors saw the injured shark and alerted staff that they had also seen things float from the gaping wound.

What happens when Spikes finds shark love and then bites open his beloved because, well, he’s a shark and that’s what sharks do? Do you know how much shark day care costs? Or how strained your relationship with your shark in-laws will become, especially because sharks have such difficulty dealing with their emotions anyway? What about when he just begins attacking men who look like Robert Shaw? Do you know how many barrel chested sketchoid guys with mustaches there are in Florida? He’ll never have time for football.

(If this does happen, though, Chuck Amato should grow a mustache, and someone should film this for the benefit of NC State fans.)

WHAT THEN FLORIDA FANS? We’re just saying, he might want to switch to decaf, because then you’ll be stuck with all these shark babies you can’t eat at once, sharkbacker Spikes.

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

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

Lane Kiffin sometimes goes on runs before games. He claims he gets lost…or does he go somewhere else entirely? (Around the 10:00 mark)

KIFFIN jogs down a wooded Tennessee lane in the morning mist.

Kiffin: I got that boom boom wow/ tan checks and plaid turnstiles/ I’m coaching them up wow/ boom boom boom boom boom how…boom boom BOOOOOOOM…

KIFFIN notices he is lost.

Kiffin: Uh-oh. This looks as unfamiliar to me as

A bright light explodes from the sky above him. A charismatic man with flowing hair appears above him. The smell of Stetson cologne and cigarettes is overpowering and intoxicating.

(more…)

Burn…you will burn…you will burn in hell, yeah you’ll burn in hell…

There is a special place in our blackest of hearts for Tennessee, and it is entirely personal. We don’t especially like where we’re from, mostly because it’s one of those places where ketchup is considered spicy, the slightest wrinkle of oddity is cause for grave concern, and country music of deplorable quality bubbles from its pores like congealed fat hardening on the surface of fetid stew. You like it? Great. We don’t, and that’s why we live in Atlanta, home of Adult Swim, a quiet but huge adult industry, a horde of swamp real estate investors spending money poorly, and a crumbling infrastructure and half-assedness more suitable for our tastes. Interstates are magnificent things.

We have, from birth, hated Tennessee: the indigestible-to-the-eyes shade of orange, the somnolent pre-games, the sludgy brand of football designed to eke out wins by field goals, their abuse of a fine coonhound by putting an inherently curious dog in front of 100K and daring it not to go insane with overstimulation. (Watch Smokey sometime: he is seconds away from cracking into an insane rage. We can’t blame them.)

In terms of rivalry, though, things had gone limp in recent years thanks to Urban Meyer’s superior coaching acumen, Erik Ainge’s ability to cough up a game when you most needed him to, and Tennessee’s complete inability to score points when it mattered. It felt hollow, after a while: rivalry requires a certain degree of competence on the part of your opponent, a bare minimum of respect for their inability. It is difficult to respect an opponent who lets you play the part of Dr. Manhattan: you point, they explode, and suddenly you’re the child giddily holding the magnifying glass.

This all assumes you don’t find someone to genuinely loathe on the other team. Ahem.

(more…)

Arizona State beat the Idaho State Bengals 50-3 in their opener, paying the Bengals $400,000 for the privilege of getting a 47 point beating. The Bengals piled up 37 yards of net yardage on the night, and not all at once because you have to spread those out over the course of an evening just to be fair. They averaged 0.8 yards a play, but not on this play.

The next time an announcer reminds you that an overmatched opponent needs to “Move the pocket around, get the quarterback on the run, etc,” you can suggest back to him that the defense “Needs to send a screaming hellbeast like Vontaze Burfict in there to make the quarterback flinch at loud noises for the next three months.” Burfict just qualified academically last week to join ASU, but if the clip is any indication he has already chosen a major of criminal justice, and plans to be very hands on about administering it. (HT: Sean.)

Kenny Chesney, your midget ass. Our troupe of unstoppable pit bulls. A dark plain in West Texas borded by a river, and us in a monster truck with hunting lights and a shotgun. Let’s roll, shorty.

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. (more…)

Scene: a gray office in the Tennessee. LANE KIFFIN sits down with business consultant TAD SMITH.

Tad: Coach Kiffin, thanks for coming to your performance review.

Kiffin: No problem

Tad: So you’re in charge around here, is that fair to say?

Kiffin: Absolutely. I’m the coach.

Tad: Okay, so take us through a day in the life of the coach.

Kiffin: Well the first thing I do is… (more…)

Hey, kids. If you’re reading this, it’s because we were in the emergency room all night getting a pesky couple of broken transverse processes of the L1 and L2 lumbar vertebrae taken care of by the fine medical professionals at Emory Hospital. You ever had Dilaudid? It’s like morphine, but with robot arms, a trust fund, and a horrendous gambling problem. We met last night.

Play me off for 6-8 weeks, Keyboard Cat.

No permanent or lasting damage, as the piece of angry, disunited bones in my back aren’t load bearing. They do hurt like I swallowed a plugged-in soldering gun, which is why I’m waking up in a few hours to dust off some more delicious, nutritious Percocet.

Thanks to all the well-wishers on Twitter and Facebook. (Our phone doesn’t work, as the iPhone battery died last night, too.) It’s pill and sleep time, and we’ll see what “we” feel like tomorrow.

Urban Meyer wants you to know that an attack on one costumed superhero lizard is an attack on all of them. Especially if it’s on him.

Sentinel: Not sure if you’ve publicly commented about the Lane Kiffin controversy – does that maybe seem a little silly or humorous now in hindsight:
Meyer: “I didn’t find it humorous.”

Sentinel: For the fans, though, that certainly adds a little spice to the rivalry
Meyer: “I’m not going to comment on it any more than I just did. I guess you could say that.”

He’s going to pull a Comedian on the Vols in September. Slow-motion glass-exploding and everything. [/nerdgasmoverWatchmenconcluded.] You…you will buuuuuuuurn...