Never forget to twist the knife. Even in the article about his induction into the college football hall of fame, John Cooper gets this in his headlines in the Detroit Free Press.

Ohio columnist: John Cooper, despite 2-10-1 record vs. Michigan, deserves Hall of Fame nod.

“Thanks for the ringing endorsement, assface.”

Honey, love of my life, let us be buried together forever–even though that hot Cuban guy I slept with in Miami in college had a horsecock, and brought me pleasures you have never dreamed of giving me in bed. I really do love you best, Your Wife. Remember that one of the most savory points of fandom is never forgetting anything that happened ever unto death. Excuse us: as Florida fans, we have to work on taunting Miami fans about the only thing we can taunt them about, “The Flop.”

Myopic’s the only way we do, baby. Hunglikehussain on our SN APR piece:

Back to the subject at hand. Orson, it is easy to criticize and abase a statute.

Instead of myopic ranting, double the height of your soapbox. Really, if we are in a “Hyde Park cyberspace”, what are your proposals/solutions?

Welcome to one of the difficulties of column writing: at 700 words, you hit the ledge of formal limit and usually skitter some of your better stuff into the canyon below. The piece diagnoses the central problem of the APR, which is the eventual pruning of programs from Division One due to poor academic progress. (And to counter another comment, no, it’s not intentional. It’s the byproduct of many hands creating a compromise policy with unintended effects; see “no sinister volcano lair” qualifier in graf 10.)

Solutions? We’re not into silly metrics like the APR, especially when unevenly applied. However, if you insist on having one, make sure the mechanism includes viable mechanisms for recovery from poor academic performance and the ability to re-enter D-1 following a period of “demonstrated improvement.” Otherwise, we’d be fine not having one at all, or even–gasp–having a non-quantitative review process not dependent on one silly, easily manipulated metric.

This approach, however, requires both work and sense, commodities as rare as pickled unicorn eggs.

Analysis is for the bluecoats. When it comes to a color announcer, Bobby Bowden wants a PR man first.

“Your job is to be a PR man,” Bowden said. “You’re getting paid to boost FSU up. It’s not a high school offense. Some things, you don’t say.”

We suspect that if he had his way, Bowden would have Terry Bowden still pulling the strings of what he would like an announcer to call “a sophisticated but hard-nosed offensive scheme that has yielded amazing results for the ‘Noles.”

City Boyz, Inc.: gone, but not forgotten. We’ll mourn ya till we join ya, City Boyz, Inc: Iowa clamps down on Facebook and other social networking sites.

Kevin of Fanblogs almost died. Lessons learned: always carry aspirin, don’t ignore chest pains, and make sure your wife is awesomely composed. All of these will help you survive a heart attack along with some judicious use of Google at the right time. (We’re not joking when we type that, nor when we say we’re all too happy you made it, Kevin.)

The proletariat will rise, and you will beat the guts out of them at homecoming. San Jose State coach Dick Tomey called the APR “class warfare” on smaller schools like San Jose State, who will be docked nine scholarships and four hours of practice time weekly due to their struggling APR.

“There’s such a difference between the B.C.S. schools and those who are not,” Tomey said. “I don’t think it’s an intended difference, but it highlights financial things like not being able to throw money at the problem and solve it very quickly.”

To the streets, Dick Tomey! The midget corps has your back! Wait: widget corps? That’s not half as cool.

As part of college football’s Urban Haute Bourgeoisie, we light a cigar with a hundred dollar bill and tell you to get begging, urchins! Our carriage needs a lithe young rapscallion like yourself to clear the pigfilthy streets of this town for us, lest we get poor germs on our hansom! The little sweep-boy may have a point: of the 37 football programs hit with penalties by the NCAA, only two were from BCS conferences (Kansas and Washington State.

The apt metaphor for this may not be class warfare, even if Moscow’s involved. The better analogy for this may be No Child Left Behind: schools performing badly are sanctioned, then sanctioned again, and given little recourse–and even less if they have no swing or political clout within the NCAA. The Wiz is all over the particulars, including more Entertaining Fun with Mike Stoops, who loses football games and whose team has the lowest APR among BCS teams.

Pete Carroll thinks you’re lazy. Saban’s videoconferencing to get around the new recruiting rules, which Pete Carroll ascribes to sheer laziness rather than an interest in the recruits’ well-being:

“I don’t want to sound like a jerk,” Carroll told The Sporting News, “but other coaches… they’re just lazy.”

If Saban is videoconferencing, rest assured Pete Carroll is visiting recruits on the astral plane and bypassing this pesky technology.

Welcome to UCLA. Physical therapy included. UCLA’s having a positively Iowa-esque injury plague this spring, and it’s not just with the returning starters at quarterback. Walk-on running back Craig Sheppard had surgery to replace the AC joint in his shoulder and will be out 4-6 months. In addition to this, starting qb Ben Olson just had a screw put in his foot, backup Patrick Cowan is out for the season, and JUCO Kevin Craft will have to have his head bolted back to his shoulders sometime around the end of September.

Get in on the ground floor of UGA hype: Tony Barnhart has them at number one. No pressure! [/hurling cursing mindbolts with all our might and watching Knowshon Moreno dodge them effortlessly.]

Hey, we didn’t piss the shit out of him. Get your wonk on with our interview with Buzz Bissinger at the Sporting Blog. All pleasant, mind you: civil, polite, and discursive in that good way, which considering Buzz’s temper and our own tendency to be an irredeemable smartass is impressive, indeed.

Ana Marie, just say you’re proud, lady, and we’ll stop sending all those letters. (We’re running out of our own blood to write them in, but how else will you know how much we care!?!?!?!)

Wonk? We prefer Wonkette emerita.

LSU will make many top ten lists this offseason despite the loss of Ryan Perrilloux. Most of the publications have gone to press already, and fixing this would cost muh-nay like WHOA to fix. As fun as it is to put your chips on talent and let it ride, the list of losses for LSU is large, and that’s from a two-loss team, mind you: Glenn Dorsey, Perrilloux, Flynn, and the one that can be forgotten in all the hoopla over the Sixty Million Dollar man, their defensive coordinator Bo Pelini. It’s a transition year in Baton Rouge, even with the usual three-string deep mutant talent.

Florida and Florida State both lose linebackers to “life:” Jerimy Finch for the Gators and Marcus Ball for FSU were both released from their scholarships on Monday and are free to transfer to other schools. Ball was one of the eight thousand Florida State players suspended from the Music City Bowl, so academic improprieties or sprained cerebrum may be a possibility. Finch also suffers from sprained cerebrum-type difficulties, but also has two kids back in his home state of Indiana, a likely school for his eventual landing. Fun note of happiness! FSU returns only one starting linebacker now. CAN YOU SAY PLAY-ACTION?

SMQ sees Missouri and likes the fact that, for once, they have a defense and someone else besides a one-man extravaganza at quarterback. Chase Daniel, the 37 year old pizza deliveryman who made up the name in order to fulfill his dream of returning to college, ripping on the football field, and banging hot chicks, could not agree more.

Pec’d! A pec injury to Nate Longshore means Kevin Riley may have nabbed the starting job at Cal, a move surprising exactly no one who watched Riley lead the Bears back against Air Force.

We’re in Florida this week taking a working vacation, which rules because you still write and work and stuff, but you do it from hotels where you can throw your towels on the floor and order ten dollar hamburgers from room service. You can also get the St. Pete Times, America’s finest damn mid-sized newspaper, where actual reportage sits side by side with lists of the top ten worst beers ever.

1. Busch NA Non-alcoholic beers are bad by nature. Remove alcohol, remove flavor. But Busch NA seems to have gotten around the alcohol part of the beer by steeping corn husks in seltzer water to make a tea that Andrew Zimmern wouldn’t drink.

They all wither at the awesome, wrath-of-god flavor profile of Taiwan Beer, a heady blend of green peas, formadehyde, and a hint of phenol in there. Throw in a lingering flatness and lack of froth or bubble, and it crosses the line from tear-inducing horror to grandeur.

Pretty much, dude. The playoff proposal fronted by the SEC and the ACC died unholy, cruel deaths at the BCS meetings in Florida yesterday. First Delany pulled at its flesh with pliers; then he had minions whip it with electrified cables; then it was forced to swear fealty to the Rose Bowl forever before sitting unsupported on a bamboo spike. When it finally caved and spoke mercy, Delany then pissed on it, ripped its organs from its body, and had its head hung over the city gates as a warning to the citizenry.

As the Wiz wrote:

The formula for success is simple: Line up the nonconference schedule with home games against the likes of Tennessee Tech, Maine, Wofford and Villanova, ensuring four victories. Then grind out a 2-6 conference record and presto — you’re bowling!

There is hope in all of this for one team looking for an elusive bowl win: thanks to Central Arkansas, Notre Dame might win a bowl game this year. We think we said this last year, too, which shows you that just when you think you’ve hit bottom, the floor drops out and deposits you into a seamless concrete tank filled with lit kerosene and flameproof crocodiles.

Thugs don’t always work. Charlie won’t recruit those hoodlums and thugs you know and love, college football fan.

His plan has worked so far. Weis mentioned that he has had very little social problems to deal with in his three years as coach of Notre Dame.

“I could get hoodlums and thugs and win tomorrow,” Weis said. “I won’t do it that way.”

Weis still has not learned how to be a proper head coach, and this is further proof, because as anyone knows, Iowa tried just that, and look where it’s gotten them. City Boyz Inc NOT EQUAL wins.

We think that’s a myth. Shavodrick Beaver, hyperheeled qb recruit for Michigan, receives the ass-end of some awkward Tom Luginbill phrasing in an excerpt from Feldman’s entry from yesterday:

He is probably very similar to what Pat White looked like coming out of high school as a passer, but Beaver is much bigger and may be more explosive for his size.”

That’s all a myth, right? Further field research required.

It’s a road…you go…when you die… Take a shot from the mancannon of the internet in the face, Bissinger! Where else can you get bearded hipsters singing odes to the Rainbow Road level from MarioKart, a game we will waste at least seven hours this weekend playing.

Yeah, sure, you were about to say something. But fuck that shit: IT’S MARIO KART FOR THE WII, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

More violent that GTA IV. And the roadside hookers in Mario Kart? Far more alluring than the meth-hounds you bang in GTA, especially because they’re Japanese, and therefore disturbingly kinky and capable of morphing into blue tentacled fuckbeasts at any time.

Perhaps Columbia has an open date on their schedule. Notre Dame, rebuffed by Rutgers in an attempt to move their proposed six game series to the Meadowlands for “home” games for the Scarlet Knights, makes the New York Times sassy. And we warned you: you won’t like them when they’re sassy.

How humble of Notre Dame to have visited Ronald Reagan in the Rose Garden at the White House on Jan. 18, 1989, resisting all temptation to call for a meeting at a neutral site more to its grandiose liking.

Ooooooh, Notre Dame you got done EXTERMINGUISHINFLAMMANATED by that one! The writer also points out Notre Dame has lots of fans in the northeast, explaining why the Irish may be making eyes at Syracuse for a new series, presumably played in a custom blue and gold painted Carrier Dome with the Irish spotted seven points to start in the first quarters. (Against Syracuse’s offense, that might do it.)

We’d like to tell you that you can start immediately. Because here at UCLA, our quarterbacks should have had their knees injured in a plane crash, see, but they never got on the plane, and now the Ghost of Knee Death is stalking them all. Seriously: please come to school early. Laters, Rick Neuheisel. (Apologies: that’s COACH Rick Neuheisel, until he loses eight games.–ed.)

It’s like Georgia Tech, but with the possibility of having sex as an undergrad. Taylor Bennett, last year’s starter at qb for the Yellow Jackets, transfers to Louisiana Tech. Paul Johnson is looking like a coach with extraordinarily blunt player relations skills, and we don’t mean that in a bad way:

“He told me what his plan was and where I fit in and what he saw me doing and that didn’t look like something I was interested in,” Bennett said. “I thank him for being honest with me.”

“Son, you cain’t run. And you cain’t pass. And I plan on runnin’, and sometimes passin’.”

“Ruston it is, then!”

Roll, Tide! As in, “please, Tide, roll the urine the young lady just deposited in the Gulf away from my feet.”

I can tell you know how hard this life can be. But you keep on smiling for me.

Cee-lo, you are a beautiful fat little man.

West Virginia is concerned about all of those men crowding their box.

“A quarterback shouldn’t run the ball 20 times a game,” Stewart said. “Eventually, it catches you. … Now, if we can get the ball a couple of more places, make them defend the entire field, maybe we won’t have those safeties coming down [toward the line]. Maybe we won’t have people loading the box quite as much.”

Bill Stewart, please call Urban Meyer. Kthx, Orson. The WVU offense will look a bit more like the Wake Forest offense, but with nutsoid talent working it. Oh, and Pat White won’t be in a leaked nude photograph, either, as much as some of us might like it.

Nick Saban is officially a tool, per a minor league promo that was most definitely not concocted by an Auburn grad. Nope. Completely unbiased promotion going on here. If you believe in synchronicity, and we do, there’s blood on your hands today, minor league baseball promoter asshole. What’s “Roll Tide?” in Malayalam, the world’s only language whose name is a palindrome?

Lloyd Carr is down with the Dalai Lama clique. Carr attended a speech by the Dalai Lama, and has now ensured that if he ever were to visit China, he would be immediately arrested as a “splittist” and forced to work shirtless in a tannery until he died from chemical exposure.

“A website” has the Missouri Tigers in first place in something called the Fulmer Cup. A deplorable one, we’re sure.

Reminder: Mike Leach rules. Leach, on why he’s not giving up playcalling duties like Ralph Friedgen, Steve Spurrier, and Charlie Weis:

“Because I’m younger than those guys,” he said. ” … I got into coaching to coach. Otherwise, you’re just a handshaker.”

Joe Tiller is tired when he didn’t used to be. Oatmeal, Joe! Oatmeal!

“I feel my energy level slipping a little bit,” Tiller said Monday after Purdue’s workout at the Mollenkopf Athletic Center. “I still feel like I have energy, and I look forward to these practices and coming out here, but I don’t mind going home anymore. I used to want to stay up all night, watching tape. So if that’s slipping, then that’s me.

Notice he doesn’t say what kind of tapes, mind you. We take Joe to be a John Ford fan over a Howard Hawks guy, with a special affection for the gritty existentialism of The Searchers. (You were expecting a porno joke there well TOO BAD. He’s not Tommy Bowden, man.) This will be Tiller’s last season, which Joe plans to celebrate by going 7-0, then losing five in a row to finish at 7-5. He will be replaced by Danny Hope, the former Eastern Kentucky coach who’s in the Dauphin spot to succeed Tiller next year.

We spoke with a jail official in Lincoln County, Tennessee, and the story here is completely true: they really are wearing pink uniforms instead of orange so as not to blend in with all the Tennessee Vol orange on the street in Lincoln County. (HT: Ethan.)

Thank God Houston Nutt’s pink jerseys never took a practice session in Lincoln County, lest they be arrested on the spot and pepper-sprayed within an inch of their lives.

Alabama’s flipping a few guys around, which happens when you’re still having depth chart/personnel issues. If you’re the kind of person who likes stuffing an open container of milk deep in the file cabinet when leaving a miserable job and you happen to be a head coach some day, do this: recruit terribly in your last two years in the job, and then get fired. Watch the fun as your successor loses years off their life! (Last year, at the end of the season, you could see the outline of Nick Saban’s skull under his skin. He looked dessicated by the strain.)

Segue: Iowa football! Feel it! 15 of the 39 players signed from 2005 to 2006 have left the program, meaning Iowa’s APR score next round will be somewhere between zero and FAAAAAHHHHCK!

James Johnson, wide receiver for Georgia Tech, has quit the team because he’s sick of football. According to Paul Johnson, he quit once before, was talked into returning, and is now just done with the whole thing. Somehow, we don’t think he’ll suffer the pangs of regret like a John Ed Bradley–the afterglow of the Chan Gailey era won’t quite raise the goosebumps like that.