Rooftop like we bringin’ ‘88 back. That’s the line originally ringing through our brain while considering the new BCS pimp’s comments about bringing back the original bowl system. Fine, if you’re going to be a colossal dick right out of the gate and threaten us with straw men, then bring froth the body and make that fucker dance. It’s an idle threat, a straw man, and further proof of the odd insecurity felt by the BCS power structure as a whole. The checks are too big, the money too good, and conference already too far down the path of establishing championship games to eventually funnel up champions into something that will eventually be a playoff or playoff-like substance.

Just teach your kids the simple rule of “Authority figure says be afraid=be totally calm/authority figure says be calm=freak out and run to the bunker,” and they’ll be fine.

Gettin’ big money, playboy your time’s up: The thoughts over at Sporting Blog sprout a thousand tangents, all of which Matt Hinton carefully calculated, weighed, analyzed, and dismissed as unnecessary. We were IM’ing back and forth yesterday, a frustrating experience for us because he has this way of using “Facts” and “rationale,” while we prefer “blind prejudice” and “anger.”

One point of contention that remained unresolved: does the current system produce better matchups than the old bowl system? Our sense is no, not necessarily: the choice of matchups and their outcomes between the top ten or fifteen teams is a largely randomized process no matter what happens. Choosing them based on BCS rankings or on the whims of the bowls generates fairly consistent and random results. Sometimes you get the 2005 Orange Bowl, and sometimes you get the 2009 BCS Title game. Big old predictable bell curve in terms of points spread, we’re guessing, and in terms of subjective quality.

Like Pun said/You ain’t even en mi clasa: The one nagging feeling, though, re: the current BCS system: the conference tie-ins with bowls. If everyone is bothered by the Utah/Boise State category not getting its fair shake, then one simple wrinkle by elimination would vastly improve the BCS: eliminate conference affiliations with bowls. The only defense for these is tradition. The same could be said of female circumcision or our unfortunate habit of celebrating being in a new city by ordering the rankest porno we can find on the pay-per-view. (Or, in a drunken fit once, ordering “Housewifes And Garbagemen Ass Orgy” seven times. Don’t drink, kids.)

If a conference doesn’t belong in the top five bowl games, why continue to foist them on system, or worse still, putting two of them together in the same bowl game? (The Orange Bowl has been particularly slammed by this.) If teams aren’t in the same class by the feeble objective measures we have to lean on, they don’t deserve an automatic bid. Also worthy of elimination: the two team limit on conference. Be it the Pac-10 or the SEC or the Mountain West, if the numbers add up and the general consensus is that the teams deserve a BCS bowl–and the bowls deem their crowd as likely to show up and spend money–then let ‘em go.

Balla convention, free admission. There is no substitute for a playoff, but freeing up the requirements for the bowls does allow better matchups to happen. Open it up, and you mitigate situations like the recent string of putrescent Rose Bowls (aka The Pete Carroll Snuff Film Festival) and whatever the Orange Bowl has become. This is all completely imperfect in lieu of a playoff, which would be the ultimate balla convention where your record and quality was admission, and not a web of conference affiliations defensible only by tradition and other hobgoblins of of the past.

It’s not an open market by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s getting closer to it. And in the cartel situation we’re in, it would go a long way toward throwing the Orrin Hatches of the world off the trail of the BCS, if that’s what they want.

Soccer fields can vary in size without a defined limit, as can baseball diamonds, whose irregular shapes often influence the outcome of games themselves. Football and basketball, however, share a defined space. Play them anywhere and the dimensions of the field are the same, a uniform prison for the capture of competition no matter where you are.

This is not said at the cost of soccer or baseball: this isn’t a zero-sum game. But it does highlight the fundamental rigor of the game, a restrictive framework consonant with everything else about football. George Carlin once said baseball was a game of fun, while football was a game of “21st century struggle.” Football’s rules, protocols, and traditions are rigid, and even absurdly so. Consider the following criminal code of football behavior if you tried to explain it to a total stranger.

You must line up in this fashion; you must not do the following things in the art of blocking someone; a fumble is only a fumble if the prior conditions are met; an alignment may be declared illegal if proper motion is not shown and rules are not followed; defenses may defend using the following techniques and not these listed techniques; a pass must be executed in this manner; snap counts may not be mimicked; kickers must not be touched; certain players are in fact non-contact or regulated-contact targets only for the defense; certain defenses and offenses are illegal; uniform and equipment must conform with league standard; so many people may be on the sideline; behavior by players on the field is regulated, and must conform with league standard even in celebration, as dancing is not allowed.

(The natural affection of lawyers for the game makes so much more sense now. Used to operating quickly in a web of extremely particular legislation and code, lawyers get to watch a simulacrum of what they do, but one where their favored side sometimes quite literally knocks the other side unconscious. All very satisfying after a crap week of legislation, we’d assume. )

Thus the emphasis on efficiency in football. There are rules, and these rules can be leveraged with sometimes hefty amounts of strategic thinking. It’s one of the reasons the game can seem so airless and dry at the pro level: given all the time in the world to work on the mathematically optimal ways to play the game year-round with professionals, the game becomes calculus with concussions, and the rare mistake by a pro can determine his entire career. Why? Because compared with college athletes, pro athletes make so few errors. (See: Tony Romo.)

College features more error, yes, but with an additional limitation: the players lifespans are pre-established. They’re fixed, and their mortality in the game becomes a matter of fact the minute they sign the scholarship. Add in fewer games than the pros, and the seconds become the clock not only for the game, but for the very scarce time they have to do anything meaningful on the field. The average career of an NFL player may be comparable–three and a half seasons or so–but it’s paid with the possibility of extension. A college player knows his expiration date. Which one you find more frightening is a matter of death row debate.

This all comes back to your focal event as a fan, or the instant where you realized the game had some kind of parasitic, infectious grip on you that no amount of treatment would undo. The game’s rigid fatality had something to do with our focal event: when Patrick Nix heaved a pass into the back of the endzone against Florida at home and found the waiting fingers of Frank Sanders.

We’re in the opposite endzone left looking up at the clock and thinking: this cannot be it. The resounding feeling was pain: irrational but unmistakable pain underscored by the muggy heat and exasperated gasps of a crowd left reeling by what had just happened, the mass equivalent of watching your dog shot in front of you while you sit bound and powerless in a waking nightmare. (If this sounds like every other really important game Terry Dean ever played, then yes, it should.)

No injury time, no second chances: just a minute and change left on the clock bleeding because the rules dictated it and demanded you respond. Every football game dies one second at a time, bounded by a thousand rules, and played out by teams of fragile people working under pressure to be as good as they can possibly be under the circumstances.

Its stricture gives it its drama, its limits force creativity, and its scarcities give it is masochistic cost/benefit payoff. More relevantly, football’s economy gives it emotional resonance. If you’re watching it, you watch it because you see a neatly packaged simulation of life itself–ruled, defined by a beginning and an end, and often chaotic in spite of all the rules–with two satisfying twists.

First, an actual victor is declared, something very rare in life. Second, you know roughly when it’s going to end. Because of this football, for all its violence and terror, will never be as deeply terrifying as life itself. (Even when Terry Dean throws four interceptions in a single game.) Without the clock, without triple zeros set between the bounds of a field precisely 160 feet by 360 feet awaitig you, meaning is debased, and we’re not left staring at the death sentence spelled out in incandescent bulbs on the Florida Field scoreboard 15 years ago wondering what the hell just hit us.

Idiot…slow down… We can’t believe we’re saying this, but the offseason may be moving just a bit too fast in one respect: just poring over even an nth of Phil Steele’s 2009 College Football Preview convinced us we’re not prepared for the 2009 season, as in “going to an ant party wearing a suit made of honey” unready. We’re completely unprepared for a world where:

–Notre Dame is ranked 7th by someone other than Tom Lemming.

–Cal is ranked 9th.

–Ole Miss is ranked higher than LSU

There’s a whole host of other shocking but evidence based conclusions in this year’s edition of Phil Steele, including the suggestion that Bill Snyder will somehow have a better year than Mark Mangino. (Phil’s obviously underrated the flow and sick pimpness of Marky M.) You should pre-order and buy it so we can call each other on the phone and talk about after the movie like two giggly schoolboys.

The one thing that has always struck me as a misleading stat Phil uses–and admittedly, it’s one factor in a huge set of stats–is starts lost. It is not an entirely irrelevant at programs who have been relatively successful over the years leading up to the year in question. Good talented sophomores hopefully become well-seasoned and talented seniors, etc…but how useful this stat is becomes a legitimate question when you have mid-grade talent used by coaches over more talented up-and-coming talent sitting behind them simply because of the age difference. In other words: just because your team has more experience and returning starts as a group does not mean your group isn’t a bunch of relatively mediocre talent just aged another year.

Take a look at last year’s stats and you’ll see how random this really is. Florida had a substantial number of losses at 25, Clemson returned plenty of starts at 101st, Syracuse was even better in terms of seasoned experience at 118…it’s spotty correlation that begs for a bit of scatterplotting. It also highlights coaching aptitude: if a team like Syracuse returns that many starts and still fails to compete, the better question is “What kind of experience has your team had?” As scary as it sounds, data like this implies Syracuse players got little if anything out their time with the Syracuse coaching staff. (Then again: you already knew that, and this is just confirmation.

Drink.

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

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

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

Comestibles.

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

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

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

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

Combustibles.

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

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

Transit.

Orson: Power Wheels.

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

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

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

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

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

“Mom, is that Husky like the dog?”

Mom: “Um…yes.”

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

Mom: “Exactly!”)

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

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

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

Canon.

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

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

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

The other thing we wanted to say here is how reminiscent Mike Leach’s idea for a college football playoff is of something out of a video game, a multi-tiered Super Smash Brothers game, a kind of mathematical palace of trial and error done with a kind of enlightenment-era procedural logic producing a cold, logical, and perhaps ultimately unsatisfying result: a champion determined by bracket.

When we think about what we don’t like about a playoff, it’s probably this freezing logic. It’s the only rational way to determine a champion, but it kills the romanticism of a single game’s stunning verdict. Nebraska ‘95, the Megalodon of college football teams pre-2000, would have obliterated anyone in a bracket, but the mythmaking’s far more precious and undiluted when all you remember is one colossal crushing noise, a few muffled screams, and then the blood…my god, the blood. The mythos dies a little when you multiply it, and it’s taken us years to figure out exactly that point, but that’s it: one game is simpler to digest semantically than five, and is more epically compelling.

Not fair, no: but for the simpleton heart, the single game playoff means more, which is probably precisely why it’s doomed. The bowl system stripped of its financial sundries right now is a purely romantic structure, a jury prize for the most part. The Darwinian playoff is no such thing at all.

It’s a long offeseason. In an attempt to vary up the somewhat fatigued Friday rotation of non-sequitur posts called the Corrections, we will vary it with various lab experiments, including The Digital Viking: The EDSBS Guide To Spicy Living. The four categories are Drink (obvious), Comestibles (Food/Snack), Combustible (Shit what blows up), and Canon (essential films, books, and movies to understand reality as you know it.) Enjoy?

Drink.

Holly: Aviation Gin. They say: “With its full and weighty mouth feel, regionally inspired flavors of earth and spice, and a uniquely cool finish, Aviation is a rare expression of gin that shines both on its own and in one of a large number of resurrected and modern culinary cocktails colliding with ice and tin on the insides of Boston Shakers at discerning cocktail bars around the world.” I say: Aviation tastes like it’s crushed from juniper berries plucked from the titty of a naked angel of God. (I don’t know why the angel is sprouting things in this particular scenario, but this is the kind of hyperbolic bliss Aviation drives me into. Also, it renders the drinker completely comfortable with ending sentences with prepositions.)

Orson: The Harrier. God, we feel so ready to put on a pith helmet and oppress people when we drink this, and we mean that in the kindest, most polite and thorough way possible: the British way. None of this French piffling about where we intermarry/rape your natives, build a few half-assed cathedrals, teach the locals how to make bread and coffee, and then skate right before the inevitable country-destroying civil war/genocide. No, we’re going to bring some damn Britishness to this place if we have to die of malaria while playing a cricket match at noon on the equator, sir. There’s a certain way of doing things, and it’s that much easier to do when you’re subtly cranked on only the finest of gin cocktails, the Harrier.

* 2 oz gin
* 1/2 oz tincture of lavender (see here.)
* 3 oz fresh grapefruit juice
* 1 fresh lavender sprig

It’s essentially a Greyhound with Vodka, but it’s the lavender that makes this drink (gay–ed.) so completely effete, elegant, and British colonial. Also, like the Harrier, you take off in a hurry when drinking these, and sometimes crash spectacularly losing all personnel on board.

Comestibles.

Orson: Rotier’s, Nashvegas. No clue what makes the burgers at Rotier’s so crackulently addictive. We suspect it’s the middle finger to the health department on that whole “grill-cleaning” thing, and that if an errant spark were to strike the decades of built up burger residue crust giving their hamburgers such punch, the ensuing God-Fart of an explosion would make the Enschede Fireworks Accident look like the mere cheek whispering of flatulent cherubim. We mean this: Nashville would be blasted into a clean sheet of molten glass by the force, so better to keep the power making hamburgers so good you won’t slap your mother, but rather kick her through the nearest plate glass window in celebration. (She wouldn’t mind, provided you were kicking her into Rotier’s, and planned on picking up the bill.)

Holly: Meandering back to God’s country, I entreat your tired, poor, wee huddled masses yearning to breathe free to drag your carcasses down to Tuscaloosa on a fall Saturday. Find the Houndstooth, a reincarnated Crimson Tide bar, then look for the stand outside. This is run by the fine upstanding citizens of Big Bad Wolves BBQ.  They will make you something called “barbecue nachos”, a confection comprised, straightforwardly, of nachos with barbecue on them.  Proof of a benevolent sovereign hand of the universe, in snack form.

Combustibles.

Holly:

For today’s Digital Viking, having a good time doesn’t mean breaking the bank. Property damage is a must, however.

Orson: Not really combustible, but certainly goes boom:

This will come in handy in describing Auburn’s upcoming season, or in anything discussing Steve Kragthorpe.

Transit.

Orson: Joe Biden’s Hairpie Magnet of a Trans-Am, baby. Seriously, if we could own a Trans-Am without convincing ourselves that cash wouldn’t look better in our Great Hunger/Zombie Survival fund, it would be sitting on the street in front of Swindle Manor for all the crackheads of the world to break into at will…and discover our pet Gaboon Viper “Pokey” waiting in the climate controlled glove compartment.

Holly: Gentlemen, the PoleRider:

That’s a bicycle rickshaw with a pole-dancing stage welded onto the back. Your argument is invalid.

Canon.

Holly: The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation. Written by a former Secretary of the Air Force and a nuclear physicist. Lots of men in ties smoking cigarettes performing daring feats of espionage while looking impossibly dashing (or like nebbishes, you never can tell).  400 pages of bomb tracing, technology hustling, and sexy Commie paranoia. 

Orson The Ginger Man by JP Donleavy. At one point in his book, the protagonist, Sebastian Dangerfield, is at a party going seriously out of bounds with a too-young woman not named “wife.” A single light bulb lights a room full of people alternately starting to have awkward public sex or retching in corners. His date asks him what they’re going to do, and Dangerfield does the only logical thing: he takes the single light bulb keeping the room lit and smashes it against the wall.

What more does one need to validate the purchase of a book than this scene and the words “Banned in Ireland”? Dangerfield is the Simpsons to Tucker Max’s Family guy, the original Bastard’s Bible for Living Poorly and Unspeakably. The Good Dr. Thompson was obsessed with the book, and for obvious reason: its protagonist, Sebastian Dangerfield, is an ass-chasing, booze-guzzling, bottle-throwing glorious wreck of a failing law student in post-war Dublin who fails nearly every human being who crosses his path by carelessly fucking them, cheating on them, damaging their property, or by throwing bottles at their head and escaping on a stolen bicycle.

Completely amoral, violent, brutish, and utterly unadmirable behavior so deliciously illustrated for hundreds of pages the Pope would probably even soil a white caftan laughing up a bit of his lunch onto it. Delectable, double-barreled blasphemy, and a book that–in spirit–you should probably steal from a large corporate bookstore.

[/placeshandonATHFSeasonThreeDVDcollection]

I stand here before you humbled by your choice as your college football meta-chronicler. Literally hundreds of you stand before me today. I will not forget your choice; nor will I remove the annoying Zwinky ads, because they get us that paper, son.

We stand on the edge of a great precipice: the offseason. We have have faced such travails before, and will face them again. Know that we will face them bravely, and that with the help of discounted Spanish wines, drank, online pornography, recruiting service reports, spring football, and endless previewing and re-previewing, we will survive…weakened, sunburned, and likely with five new addictions, but nevertheless intact and ready for the sweet, nourishing magic teat of football to be thrust in our mouths once more.

We promise the following things as we take hold of another offseason:

1. We will uphold the Fulmer Cup. We will not yield to the urge to change the name, nor slacken our eyes’ fixed gaze on the point total, nor be held in thrall by the desire to be unfair to one team. As always, we shall be unfair to all and aggressively so. If this be our Old Testament, we shall play the smite-y god of this chapter with zeal.

2. We shall attempt to follow recruiting sort of maybe okay we’ll gloss over it. Recruiting is creepy and will always be, but it is all we have in this tired hour, so let it be covered. Sort of. As in, we’ll pay attention to the interesting bits about recruits with interesting names and flashy stats. Also, our top story is going to be whatever BARKEVIOUS MINGO is doing right now, which happens to be: dozing off in sixth period geography.

3. We swear to swear. We will invent and employ new profanities with fucking zeal and shitdamned enthusiasm. The key remains Rabelaisian, which is the frilly term for “obsessed with farting, fucking, and using words like fucking” It sounds better when you drop that at cocktail parties than saying “I run a website for the elegantly crude college football fan.”

4. We will unabashedly remain uncommitted on both the BCS and playoff fronts, thus allowing us to stab in all directions. We don’t really care about a clear champion in college football, mostly because we think the idea of being intellectually singular about almost anything at all is sort of peasant-y and tardbillified, and also because the idea of a playoff means you could have the Arizona Cardinals scenario where a middling team hits a hot streak at the end of a the season and steals a championship…all despite having an average season overall. Also, it allows for maximum stabbiness, and as long as Holly’s on board, that remains part of the mission statement.

5. Nothing else changes. Pretty much. There may be a site redesign, and there’s offseason projects a-plenty, but for the most part it will remain Freekery, profanity, actual stories embedded in the fourth paragraph of a mock dialogue between a sex offender Basilisk and a football-related personality, and the occasional thing so bizarre it frightens you a bit. We won’t crack on stupid bloggers or writers for the most part because we believe in the words of P.J. O’Rourke: “Never fight an inanimate object.” It’s like beating a chaise lounge with a sledgehammer, repetitive and always eliciting the same reaction from the furniture.

Let us remember the words of Cthulhu bless you, and may Cthulhu bless the United States of EDSBS, and postpone our inevitable destruction by his thousand eyed tentacles for another day. (It’s either him or Orgeron, and it’s inevitable either way.)

And now, for our invocation, brought to you by Rick Warren.

Rick Warren: Lord, let us–

[/hits Rick Warren in the face with the flat side of a fucking shovel.]

Amen, good people of EDSBS. Tim Tebow loves you.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama	—
2	Texas Tech	—
3	Texas	2
4	Florida	—
5	Oklahoma	1
6	Southern Cal	2
7	Penn State	4
8	Ohio State	2
9	Utah	2
10	Boise State	3
11	Oklahoma State	4
12	Missouri	6
13	Pittsburgh	11
14	Georgia	—
15	Michigan State	1
16	North Carolina	10
17	Florida State	9
18	Brigham Young	8
19	Cincinnati	2
20	Virginia Tech	6
21	TCU	12
22	South Carolina	4
23	West Virginia	11
24	Ball State	1
25	Tulsa	—

Yes, it sucks. To be frank, we don’t even like our number one at this point. Alabama’s offense has spells of crapulence, and their signature wins against Georgia, Clemson, and LSU look less impressive with each passing week of 2008 Georgia/Clemson/LSU football. (Defense: optional!)

Texas? Sure. Guesswork. It’s all just lunchmeat thrown on the asses of so many miserable groupies at this point. (PAPA ROACH YEAAAHHH!!!!) The randomized excellence of the Big 12 South right now forces us to put Texas above Oklahoma because they beat them. Otherwise Oklahoma score points like a mid-debate fired-up Christopher Hitchens on his second bottle of sherry on anyone they choose to annihilate.

The rest: hopeless. The easy crutches are all gone. Pittsburgh? Really? Michigan State? Don’t make us rank Virginia Tech, life; no please, do not make us rank them, or Minnesota, who has the thinnest 7-2 record in the nation. Michigan and Tennessee being decent made this 8 percent easier in the good old days, but now we’re left in the soup line ladling out Cincinnati and TCU gruel. Spare us a dime. This season has left us bereft of solid rankings, and a bailout is needed.

#11 Ohio St. at #24 Northwestern

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: Relax your bedtime grip on your Glocks, America. Ohio State has two losses, and the universe can breathe easy, safe from the specter of a third-straight Buckeyes champblahblahblahBig10bashing. Statistically, these teams are surprisingly well-matched, but….look, we’d all love to pick Northwestern, adorably ranked after a victory over Minnesota, but if pluck guaranteed wins, we’d be celebrating the single-digit ranking of Texas Christian (HOW DARE YOU PUSH US TO ACCEPT UTAH AS A LEGIT TEAM, HORNED FROGS).

ORSON, IRRATIONAL. The force is strong in the young one…

…but this is episode five, and he loses his hand to the Dark Lord.

Baylor at #4 Texas

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL. If Baylor had the chops on defense to hold Colt McCoy in check, we’d happily tiptoe over to the pond of tribute bets and salute Art Briles and Robert Griffin for revivifying Baylor football. We would, really, it’s just that Texas just lost to Texas Tech, something they’re not accustomed to doing, and will not play the part of scalded dog two years in a row. Baylor gets inflame-u-lated by a frothing mad Texas team.

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: Robert Griffin, most impressive. Howevah! Texas is clinging to their top-five slot with all their considerable strength, with the added incentive of having Something To Prove after last week’s heartbreak in Lubbock. Despite their sub-subpar pass defense, the Longhorns have more than enough personnel to keep bodies on Griffin all afternoon.

#13 Georgia at Kentucky

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: You could call this game on intangibles–Georgia will be as surly and smashy as they’ve been all year and have presumably reconstructed their collective throats since their most recent Cocktail Party debacle, plus their last visit to Lexington didn’t go so well–but why bother? The Dawgs are an all-right football team on their worst days, and outclass Kentucky in every category that matters. The Wildcats are bowl-eligible, to be sure, but it comes on the backs of such vaunted opponents as Norfolk State, Western Kentucky, and Loovill. This one won’t be close.

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL. Georgia is not the better team top to bottom; take THAT EXPECTED FOOTBALL CLICHE. Kentucky’s got the better defense, but too bad for them this is football, where sometimes one must score. Georgia can do that because they’ve got this offense, and do really well when they’re not giving up drives to opponents that start on their own one yard line. Kentucky fans prefer basketball ARP ARP ARP ARP.

Wyoming at Tennessee

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: Joe Glenn’s market value peaked long ago, and in a five game stretch prior to breaking universal slump-buster San Diego State the Cowboys were outcored 207-30 by their opponents. We feel some FAIL comin’ on hyah, and would take at least 90 teams in division one over the Cowboys sight unseen. Holly will explain further reasons why taking the Cowboys borders on the tardbilly-ish.

HOLLY, ACTUALLY RATIONAL: If you managed to sit through Fulmer’s press conference on Monday without squirming yourselves completely underneath the couch cushions, you got a taste of the general tenor of the UT locker room. The players are bound to be out for blood, and to not particularly care whose blood. Tennessee by a hundred and fifty or so.

#1 Alabama at #16 LSU

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: Instead of picking, let’s treat ourselves to a festive round of Nick Saban Projectile Bingo. Center square if he gets hit with an egg. Fill the rest of your card, in any order, with: bottles, batteries, dead bats, live snakes, pots of boiling peanut oil, actual shrunken heads, glowsticks, empty mace cans, and vials of plague strains. Oh, and here’s to an LSU win, because Alabama at number one is fucking awful, the end. Light ‘im up, Tigahs.

ORSON, IRRATIONAL. John Parker Wilson has taken the Brandon Cox Mantle of “OH MY GOD WE LOST TO HIM” Qb for this year. Bama Bang’d, rag-armed, prone to taking sacks with audible feminine shrieks, and with his supporting cast totally unbeatable thus far. The shame of victory will sting even more as he attempts 20 passes, completes 12 of them for piddling yardage, and yet gets to trod from the bourbon-soaked sidelines of LSU clothed in glory…and LSU fans’ spit, of course.

#3 Penn State at Iowa

ORSON, LUDICROUSLY IRRATIONAL SHONN GREENE SHONN GREENE SHONN GREENE.

If the weather’s awful, consider the Iowa victory a done deal due to the inverse relationship between crappy weather and the performance of white athletes. (Only remaining fields of dominance: cross-country skiing, biathlon, and blizzard wrestling.) We just don’t want Penn State in the national title game, are open about this, and don’t think Mark Dantonio and all the properly worn neckties in the universe can get the Spartans to beat the Nittany Lions.

(Final note: an undefeated Penn State team belongs in the title game. Logic overcomes homerism…just barely, though. It was wrong when it happened to Auburn; it’s wrong here, too.)

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL FOR YOUR OWN GOOD: C’mon, Penn State. Drop a game you shouldn’t lose and lose the ranking you shouldn’t have. Nobody wants to deny old what’s-his-name a title shot based on sentimentality and your bullshit schedule, so give us an excuse to slot in a more deserving squad and you’ll be free to enjoy a pleasant berth in one of the remaining big four bowls. Let’s not cause a scene, now.

Kansas St. at #14 Missouri

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: We owe a debt of gratitude to Mizzou for dropping out of the top ten and saving us from the effort of shoring up our rapidly depleting stock of Chase-Daniel-is-old-and-delivers-pizzas-in-his-copious-spare-time jokes. For this, Tigers, and because KState is f’ing woeful, we ch-ch-choose you. Prevail, if you please.

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL. K-State is horrible, Missouri is not, grab a shovel as Mizzou makes a minced ass pie from the butt-end of the Ron Prince carcass.

#21 California at #7 USC

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: Jeff Tedford, pre-season: icy genius, steely-visaged pro-style thinkbot waging cold warfare amidst the primitive ankylosauruses of the college football landscape, a technical scientist fighting against sloppy, emotive artists.

Jeff Tedford, mid-season: 6-2 and about to lose to Pete Carroll. Again.

HOLLY, QUASI-IRRATIONAL: Isn’t it entertaining, every November, to watch P-Car wax angry about how very number-one-y his team would be if they hadn’t dropped a cakewalk game for no reason? Like the return of the first robins of spring, only EVEN MORE REDDER AND AWESOME JACKED I’M LIKIN’ IT BRAH—yeah, whatever, USC’s complacent but they ain’t bad. Trojans.

#9 Oklahoma State at #2 Texas Tech

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: [Lazy-assed OOOOOH, TAKE TEH OVER Y'ALL LOLZ bit] Texas Tech. Texas Tech will win this game, depressing Mike Gundy just enough to accept a generous offer from the University of Tennessee to become the next head coach of the Volunteers. He will bring Trooper Taylor back to Rocky Top; recruiting cachet will soar, the new clock rules will be abolished, Rick Neuheisel will go rapidly and unattractively bald, and unicorns with lollipops for hooves will roam the sidelines of all D-I schools at will.

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: When faced with good defenses, Oklahoma State has refrained politely from scoring points by the gross: 24 against Texas, 28 against Missouri…strike that. Mizzou’s defense is not good,and they still sputtered against them. When let loose by the secondary and unpressured upfront, OK State will disintegrate a defense. With some pressure, though, they become only excellent on offense, and “only excellent” against Texas Tech will get you tortilla’d in Lubbock.

#5 Florida at Vanderbilt

Orson, IRRATIONAL. We’ll be there, and need tickets, because what has two thumbs, applied too late for a press pass, and wants to see Florida train a few orbital death lasers on an overmatched and offense-challenged Vandy team? THIS GUY.

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: Vandy has a proud history of playing Florida tough when they have no business doing so. This, however, is no ordinary Florida team. Gators saunter through this one at a casual, deadly pace.

Joe Paterno is dying in front of our eyes, and that is no overly dramatic statement. His body is beginning the inevitable decline he staved off for so many year by running, staying involved in his job, and leaning on the good credit his robust genes advanced him in his later years. This is not a sentimental judgment: it’s fact, as clear to the viewer as the cane he now requires to get from point A to point B or as obvious as his absence from the sidelines when he takes to the booth in the second half of games due to hip pain.

Brent Musberger may be annoying, predictable, and prone to over-excitement on the smallest play, but give him due credit for honesty in discussing the factors motivating Paterno’s insistence on remaining on the sideline.

He is fearful — and he looks back at Bear Bryant as the example — he is fearful that he would not be with us if he stepped away. He is a man that doesn’t fish, doesn’t play golf…he has no other interest other than his family and football. And he’s just afraid what would happen with the rest of his life if he walks away from it.

“What would happen” here is cloaked language for what happened to Bryant: death. If you feel a vague unease at all this, at watching Paterno slowly deteriorate physically, it should be a familiar creep: it is the same sensation the smell of hospital disinfectant gives us, since everyone we’ve ever known kicked off in the perpetually swabbed and sterile corners of a hospital. It’s the primate fear associated with anything reminding you of your own demise.

In the pilot of Six Feet Under, there’s a debate about how death is dealt with in America: that it is too sterile, too impersonal, too well-packaged to properly recognize the moment. Nate insists his father’s burial should be a more personal, emotional farewell than the standard packaged, gift-wrapped costume dramas they sell; David, the other brother, objects, but ultimately relents at the graveside.

We’re more on Nate’s side, as annoying as the character was, but would like to take it a step further: the unease surrounding Paterno is part of an overall gerontophobia, a fear of the old rooted in the fact that some deep, primal part of your brain recognizes that if you’re lucky, you’ll be tottering along in slip-ons and a robe at the end of the driveway as part of a four-minute ordeal just to get the mail. Many of you are scared of old people because they’re “creepy,” which we take to mean “close to death, and therefore death-y, and therefore ‘creepy.’

To be fair, some old people may scare you for legitimate reasons. Many in our part of the nation have both guns and cataracts, a great combination resulting in festive fun for the whole family. (”Don’t go over in the yard to get the ball, kid. That’s how people die.”) They do tend to be stubborn, they do remind you of death because they’re so much closer (by the odds, at least) than you are, and they do have a statistically significant propensity for causing horrific traffic accidents.

However, Joe Paterno, as morbid as it may seem, may be living the dream: he’s choosing both how to live, and potentially how to die. Most of our friends, when asked “how would you like to go,” usually choose the Willie Nelson route of “being shot climbing out of a woman’s window at 135 years old.” The more common answer, however, would be “doing what I do,” which in JoePa’s case is to die coaching football.

This may seem creepy, but the fault would not be on Paterno, who being a Classicist by education seems Stoic in his approach toward death. Musburger may have been plying inside information, but he may have also ignored another, more positive angle on this: Paterno’s fear of no longer being able to do what he loves, not what would happen if he stopped doing it. The fault is in the viewer, so insulated from aging and death that the sight of it in any real form obscures the fact that Paterno, in the form he’s chosen, is doing his job as well as anyone in the country right now…and happens to be very, very old.

This seems less like a man worried about death, and more worried about how he’s going to get through the rest of life in spite of the pain his body is experiencing–an Epicurean in the purest sense of the word to the end, and the current coach of the number three team in the nation. Let him live how he chooses. Whether anyone likes it or not, death will take care of the rest. The rest is useless worry, and a waste of precious life with the clock winding down.

The weekend in Gamblor-baiting, divided into half-reasoned predictions and blind contempt.

#5 OSU @ #1 USC

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: USC. We’ll all look like idiots for picking USC for the first quarter, the first quarter when Mark Sanchez struggles a bit, the Buckeyes actually stick to the run in a big game for a while, and the Buckeye defense zeroes in on USC’s innovative “first down boot PA pass” call, which they make every damn time they hold the ball.

Then, the ice weasels come for Ohio State, and they come at halftime. The run game will stall; USC’s offense will find holes underneath in the zone, or counter OSU’s blitzes with screens and slants; and then it’s all tears and replay from there as this rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem in the second half. Then, they’ll have to rely on Todd Boeckman passing them back into the game to survive. This means they die.

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL:  USC. Can the argument be made that for the past two weeks Ohio State has been operating out of a third of its playbook, saving all the fancy Pryor packages for the game that’ll swing their title hopes the most?  Of course.  But if Tressel’s got something that gamebreaking up his tiny sleeves, I find it very hard to believe he’ll choose the Coliseum as a staging ground to see whether or not any of it works.  If last week’s game had truly been the cakewalk we all expected, the Buckeyes would’ve been able to wrest control handily once things started to careen the way of the Bobcats.  They did not.

#13 Kansas @ #19 South Florida

ORSON, IRRATIONAL: Kansas. Matt Grothe was a spastic quadriplegic born to a large, poor Irish family. His mother, Brunehilde, recognized the intelligence and humanity in the lad everyone else regards as a vegetable. Eventually, Grothe matured into a cantankerous writer who uses his only functional limb, his left foot, to write with.

Apologies. This actually describes Christy Brown from <i>My Left Foot</i>. Grothe, though, can be just as effective depending on the night, and since USF’s offense is without a full-speed Mike Ford at running back they’ll just turn him out there to “make something happen.” Remember Rutgers/USF? It will be like that, except the other team has an actual quarterback.

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: South Florida. For precisely the same reasons.  Janie says having Grothe on the team is like starting a Magic 8 Ball at quarterback.  Tonight, the Bulls’ fortune reads, “It is decidedly so.”

#14 East Carolina @ Tulane

ORSON, IRRATIONAL: East Carolina. Pulling for East Carolina in order to watch the massive bump pollsters give them for beating the Green Wave like rented mules, and then the subsequent complaints from Alabama fans for same pollsters moving Bama down for a lackluster performance against said Green Wavers.

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: East Carolina. Because all West Virginia has left now is to characterize last week’s curb-stomping at the hands of the Purple Pirates as a Quality Loss. Move ‘em up and slake the misery of Morgantown, at least until they wake up on their porches and realize that no, it wasn’t a particularly milquetoasty nightmare, they really did hire Bill Stewart.

#2 Georgia @ South Carolina

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: Georgia. Cloned Spurrier’s diminished product will ooze sadness through the screen. We may not even watch, as you’ll be able to call it from the couch: oh look, wacky qb throwback that Smelley fumbles. Hey, a slant. A draw! Imagine. Wow, a fake field goal that goes for a pick. It will be like watching the T-2000 in its last death throes, morphing into glimpses of everyone it’s killed before succumbing to a molten death. If you wondered at what point we gave up on the universe, pronounced our youth dead, and took up with a bottle of Zybrowka for the duration, it is during this game.  Georgia by scores.

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL:  Georgia. Even after living through the late 90s-early aughts as an SEC fan under the reign of Spurrier, this isn’t all  that fun to watch anymore.  (All right, except the Vanderbilt loss.  Again.  Hee.)  Time to haul the OBC out back…to the golf course, where he’ll chase squirrels and get to run with his own kind.  “He’s my coach, Pa.  I’ll do it.”  (And admit it—you want things to go as badly as possible for South Carolina, bad enough for Stephen Garcia to be sent in.  The over/under for Gamecock quarterback rotations in this game is 4.5.  Gar.ci.a.  Gar.ci.a. GAR.CI.A.)

UCLA @ #18 Brigham Young

ORSON, IRRATIONAL: Brigham Young. Invaders in Provo? Ask Arkansan wagon trainers how well that goes. [/underthebannerofheaven’d!]

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: UCLA. This hinges largely on which iteration of which Bruins quarterback suits up for the afternoon, but lest we forget:  BYU was given fits last week by a Willingham squad.

Georgia Tech @ Virginia Tech

ORSON, IRRATIONAL: Generic ACC provisional score: 20-17 with three turnovers for each team and a missed field goal somewhere in there. Really, you don’t know what’s going to happen in this game either since Georgia Tech is still attempting to pick up the triple-option, Virginia Tech’s defense is still fishily inexperienced and young, and that Sean Glennon and Tyrod Taylor combined equal 70 percent of a competent quarterback together. Sing along!

EEEEEEEEXIIIIIT LIIIIIGHT!!!
CURL ROOOOOOUTE RIIIIIIGHT!!!
MAAAAAN TOO MAAAAAAAAN!!!
Sean Glennon throws it in the ground.

YEAAAAH HEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!! (BOOM!)

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: Georgia Tech. I’ma ride this BEEEEEEEES!! streak until the Stingbone offense gives me reason not to.  Just try it at your desk.  Go on.  Stand up, wave your arms like a startled E.T., and yell it.  Don’t you feel better?

Michigan @ Notre Dame

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: Michigan. As bad as both teams will look, Michigan will look better because of the feints, misdirections, and screens built into the Rodriguez offense playing out against the constant hail of blitzes from Notre Dame and TAH-NOO-TAH. But yes, on the whole this will be a cripple fight that Big Ten Alternate Reality Orson would reference as the end of his youth, but with the crucial difference being that he would do this while wearing a sweatshirt and without a considerable increase in already intense alcohol consumption. Oh, and I’d be straight I MEAN GAY. Yes, gay.

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: Michigan, walking away with this week’s “Will win by virtue of a) showing up, and b) bringing a football team with them” accolades.

Rice @ Vanderbilt

ORSON, IRRATIONAL: Vanderbilt. Vandy will roll because, having picked against them two weeks in a row, we want to see how badly they’ll lose now that we’re on board and saying insane things like “Vanderbilt: LIBERTY BOWL CHAMPIONS!”

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL:  Vanderbilt. I’m not prepared, emotionally, for this level of parity in the SEC.  Last week was supposed to be their Real Test As A Football Team, but they played South Carolina, so it’s hard to tell.

Southern Miss @ Arkansas State

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: Southern Miss actually didn’t look terrible against Auburn, as the score was deceptive except for the “superior talent manifested numerically” thing.

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: Arkansas State. You won’t have seen much of them on TV, but be warned:  this is one of those smaller schools with a deceptively pesky squad (see:  Louisiana Tech, Ragin’ Cajuns, and Southern Miss itself).

#10 Wisconsin @ #21 Fresno State

SWINDLE, IRRATIONAL:  Fresno State. Wisconsin enjoys this poll buoyancy as the third banana of the Big Ten that we can only explain with their performances in bowl games and active, effective lobbying of voters by Bucky the Badger. (Just stands in window, staring with his wise, beady eyes for exactly one minute at 3 in the morning. When you wake up, he nods knowingly, and then walks away silently.)

This game screams early season misstep for Wisconsin. First, it’s in Fresno, which is weird; second, it’s out-of-conference, and therefore highly unpredictable; third, this team is a slow starter, which is fine against Marshall but potentially deadly against a quality opponent like Fresno. They’re probably the better team, but the question is whether they’ll wake up in time to lean on Fresno with the hormone-fed beef on their offensive line and win.

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL:  Wisconsin.
9:58:08 AM Swindle: Marshall up 14-7 over Wisconsin in Camp Randall.
10:01:03 AM Holly: !
10:01:20 AM Holly: Remind me why I was bullish on Wisconsin 2 weeks ago?
10:01:38 AM Holly: Oh, yes. Here it is. “Coach’s head = perfect trapezoid.” Bad idea.
10:01:58 AM Swindle: That’s perfectly sound reasoning: he just let you down.
10:02:08 AM Holly: ….you’re RIGHT.

Bieleleeema came through big in the end, and I will trust in his singular geometry.  For now.

Georgia Tech at Boston College

HOLLY (QUASI-RATIONAL): What do you call it when you’re picking a team for completely unsound reasons but they’re the better team anyway? I like Georgia Tech because I also like yelling, “BEEEEEEEEEEES!!” on a crowded sidewalk, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

ORSON (RATIONAL) Tech by creeping strangulation. Even against Jacksonville State the flexbone moved with grinding, almost infuriating pace, like some kind of giant horseshoe crab filterfeeding its way down the field, except that this horseshoe crab could occasionally make huge leaps, so really, it’s like a tarantula in armor, but underwater, and…goddammit, just take Tech and Dwyer, and add in Tech’s defensive line to pressure BC’s suspicious passing game into mistakes. Money spent on the Tarantulaleapingcrab-Bot is money well spent.

Southern Miss at Auburn

HOLLY (QUASI-RATIONAL): Southern Miss is plucky, upstartish, moxiefied, and fresh from knocking off Louisiana-Lafayette. This will not save them. Auburn has the devil’s own luck when it comes to close games, but they don’t need it this week. (The chop blocks will continue, y’know, to stay limber.)

ORSON (QUASI-RATIONAL): Southern Miss to cover, but Auburn will pull this out despite some horrific staggers because, after Chris Todd puts them in danger of an upset he will save them from all evil by boldly handing off to Ben Tate and Brad Lester. If you have not seen Brad Lester run: he kicks up his knees to mid-stomach on every stride, making tackling him in close quarters as appetizing as bringing down an Emu at a full run. Emu knees for the win, since we’re so big on transmogrified animal metaphors today.

San Diego St. at Notre Dame

HOLLY (IRRATIONAL): Because I had a perfect record in picks last week until MY OWN SCHOOL torpedoed me, I’m allowing myself one PureSpite (patent pending) upset pick to meet my emotional need for suffering in others. The Irish are going down like sweet muffins. (Please?)

ORSON (IRRATIONAL): OH set forth the banners flying and send telexes to the relative potentates! Don your short tie, place your hat upon your head as a gentleman would, and catch the early train bound for South Bend to watch OLD NOTRE DAME and the floating, seventy-pound head of Tom Hammond plow one of the ten worst teams in all of college gridiron creation.

Note: not because Notre Dame is good, which we don’t know, or because San Diego State is bad. (Which they gobsmackingly are.) Mostly because we’ll do anything to get the mesmerizing head of O’Brien Tom Hammond off our television screen, and an early Notre Dame lead means clock running and a quick game.

Like Harvey Birdman if he were a Mexican street hustler/exotic dancer.

Oregon St. at Penn St.

HOLLY (IRRATIONAL): I’ve tried everything—hypnotherapy, electroshock, black tar heroin—but there’s absolutely no way, empirically, that I could care less about this game, barring Paterno cannibalizing an errant receiver on the sideline. Penn State. I mean, I guess.

ORSON (IRRATIONAL WITH CAPITALS WTF) Sometimes, you drop your pants and make the revolution happen. In a weekend where only the personal blood is on the line with Miami/Florida, you have to throw a few molotov cocktails around to keep things interesting. See, I’m a man of simple tastes. I like gunpowder…and dynamite…and gasoline! Do you know what all of these things have in common? They’re cheap!

Air Force at Wyoming

HOLLY (QUASI-RATIONAL): The Falcons had 508 yards of offense in their season opener (against something called “Southern Utah, but still, god bless the Mountain West). Wyoming had problems putting away Ohio (not the good one). Advantage: Air Force.

ORSON (QUASI-RATIONAL): Air Force runs the triple option with streamers and bells on it over Wyoming with gleeful ease. While we are not aware of any serious research on this issues aside from eyeing the box scores and saying, “Wow, you barely beat a Frank Solich Ohio team,” there is also the issue of critical escalator shortages in Wyoming, which just has to have something to do with their football difficulties as of late.

W. Virginia at E. Carolina

HOLLY (QUASI-RATIONAL): Pat White is a machine. And he’s getting smarter. [SFX: CHCH-CH-CHCH. Metal skulls and glowing red eyes appear on the horizon.] He also piloted much of last week’s offense on the strength of his passes instead of his twinkle toes. East Carolina’s no Villanova, but neither are the Mountaineers the Hokies. West Fuckin’ By-God Virginia FTW.

ORSON (QUASI-RATIONAL): East Carolina–not Eastern as we usually insist on calling it for Junior Corso points–enjoyed the privilege of facing Sean Glennon at quarterback last week. This week, as our colleague pointed out, they will be facing Pat White, who is to Sean Glennon at qb Jennifer Lopez’s 2000-level back-bumper is Lara Flynn Boyle’s buttular concavity: an entirely different species capable of performing witchcraft, serving as an air-traffic controller without wearing a headset, and currently serving as Minister of Culture in several African nations. Couches, ignite!

J-Lo, Stuff Magazine, the frilly rumba panties: Pat White’s that kind of quality at qb.

Arkansas vs. UL-Monroe

HOLLY (IRRATIONAL): Bobby Petrino makes this face when his team is in trouble that looks like he’s trying to clench a hot lump of coal in his ass. We get to see that face a lot. But not tomorrow. Hawgs (sp?).

ORSON (QUASI-RATIONAL) Arkansas big, but ugly, in the kind of way someone can become filthy wealthy, garner massive success, and still purchase a PT Cruiser because “It’s campy.” No sir, it is not. It is a Geo Metro covered in extra plastic. We may have found our metaphor for this year’s Arkansas team, a big, drive blocking lummox of a team going through it’s first week of kung-fu class under a very unpleasant and demanding sensei. Pain training continues.

Miami (FL) at Florida

HOLLY (QUASI-RATIONAL): Gators over ‘Canes, again just for showing up to the stadium. Reformed MIA, you begin to bore me with your “suspensions” for “violating team rules.”

ORSON (IRRATIONAL BLIND HOMERISM): Florida, if only because Miami’s got 13 freshmen on the two-deep and nary as senior to be found. Still, we’ll believe they’re dead when flames go out and we see the bones. Shame has no date of expiry:

Stanford at Arizona St.

HOLLY (IRRATIONAL): Programming note: I’ll be pulling for Arizona State the rest of the season, if only to prevent any more shots of Rudy Carpenter in HD looking like the subject of a botched-kidney-operation reality show. (Fridays on FOX.)

ORSON (RATIONAL) Arizona State, since Stanford’s all blitz-wacky and Arizona State spent the better part of the offseason running screens and quick hitters to keep Rudy Carpenter from peeing his very favorite kind of urine, blood. Lyle Moevao was pressured into grievous mistakes by the Cardinal, but he also made some dunderheaded ones himself that Rudy Carpenter will not make under pressure. Remember: Rudy Carpenter doesn’t make too many mistakes, mostly because he spends the majority of his games lying on his back holding in the tears.

Texas at UTEP

HOLLY (IRRATIONAL): Aww, hey there, Colt! Sleep well? What’s that? You want to play like a quarterback this season? Good on ya. Hook ‘em.

ORSON (QUASI-RATIONAL): Texas by miles and miles and miles and miles. Unless gunfire from nearby Juarez wanders over and nips any of the Longhorns’ starters, we’re looking at one of the more lopsided, gutted, bombed-out and depleted matchups of the weekend. UTEP, who at one point claimed to have “Carson Palmer’s brother” playing qb, lost to Buffalo this past weekend. When you put both Buffalo and Texas on the Winnar bench, you truly have diversified the degrees of suck in your possession.

Really, don’t even tune into this one. You think you like to see people on fire, because it’s funny in movies and stuff. Then you really see it, and well…it’s funnier. We mean not at all. Yes.

In the meantime, we have footage of the reception to my opening remarks.

May God have mercy on our soul.

9:04 a.m. We’re underway. If lanyards were feral pigs, this place would smell–they must be good for free lap dances at Mons, or free smoked mullet from Ted Peters’. Our professorial type is joining us from speakerphone from Denmark, and is booming like the voice of of the dead in the discussion. Remind self to make appearances like this from now on.

9:22 a.m. Bill Smith of Arkansas quotes Houston Nutt’s “those darn internets.” Nutt just got mentioned in the same sentence with Marshall McLuhan. We love the SEC.

9:29 a.m. “Bloggers amplify opinion.” We go to 11!

9:45 a.m. “What bloggers do we trust?” Um, me, of course.

9:56 a.m. Another watershed moment: just said the words “reality will win out in the end on the internet.” New mission statement is living to regret ever saying that.

10:08 a.m. The other guy in this discussion talking from the ceiling is awesome. It’s like having God in the room, but without having your face melted off like a Nazi.

10:13 a.m. “At the saturation point, will bloggers duke it out like in Thunderdome?” Oh, we can only hope this comes true.

10:24 a.m. Of course we’re blogging this. It’s not sneaky. We have the laptop open on the desk. It’s an intelligent, well-spoken conversation, and I’m very impressed by the discourse.

11:16 a.m. Okay, post-talk socializing concluded. No punches thrown, no Buzz Bissinger moment, and all the questions were fair, well-put, and thoughtful. But a legitimate question from the SID at a very, very large school: if we are going to have a civil relationship, what happens when you say something like “To Florida fans, [NAME REDACTED] was a liar”? Good question, and we’re not sure. The short answer is that for schools, handling blogs is probably best done with a long, well-padded stick. It’s what we would advice to anyone handling a blogger, ourselves included.

Jim’s been pumping iron. Doing hang cleans. Working the rings. Getting deep into some CrossFit shit. Jim’s been getting Ripped Fuel and whey protein shakes. Taking Sport Beans during his six mile runs. Jim’s got those sex muscle dents from all the tough love he’s been giving himself in the weight room and on the stairs lately.

JT’s gonna be ready, just like we’re ready for EDSBS Live, where we ask you if you’ve been getting cut and ripped like old acid-washed jeans for the next season, and what the four Golden Ticket games you’re looking forward to–that is, the games you want instant tickets to in order to maximize your college football pleasure in 2008

In case you can’t tell, JT’s looking toward the horizon with those bedroom eyes and seeing one thing: USC, brah. If Pete Carroll’s like a beautiful woman, he’s gonna make him him some Tresselation. One thing he’s not: safe, no matter how many Trojans you throw at him. The eyes alone tell you that.

Listen here and join the festivities at 9 EDT.