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.]

The Kentucky football programwill use its own plane for recruiting after Wildcat bigwigs approved the measure to help Kentucky keep up with other programs in both basketball and football handshakin’ and promise makin’. Sure, they could go the reasonable route and lease their own private plane, a reasonable time-share in the sky with some other contractor…or they could nut up and do the SEC proud by going the Iron Man route, getting a fly-ass private jet complete with stunning waitresses, disco lights, and retractable stripper pole. You know it’s only a matter of time before LSU does just that and puts a deep-fryer in the galley.

Or you could just go Google-luxe. Hammocks in space, bitches!

Not a balla till you pimp this.

Nick Saban was at Kent State when four Kent State students were shot by National Guardsmen in the worst recruiting campaign for the National Guard ever. Saban says it gave him “perspective,” a quote which makes you wonder why more sportswriters don’t commit death by wall/head collision in search of meaningful quotes for stories. In other news, our morning dose of Tussin made us feel “Tussin’d.”

Jabu Lovelace will freak you from the bench. The EDSBS Heisman Candidate ‘08 based on pimpish name alone, Jabu Lovelace, is the subject of another “hey, there’s lots of confidence and stuff about everyone around here because we’re all confident and stuff” offseason article. Rutgers should be confident: a name like Jabu Lovelace practically guarantees scoring both on and off the field. His full first name? Jabulani. That little rush of pleasure you just felt? Only a hint of the freaky pleasures that await you and your adventures in love with Jabu.

Strengths: ability to read defenses, take hits from linebackers and buildings. Live to win! Dartmouth qb Conner Kempe can’t make kiteboarding any less silly than you think it is…but he almost died trying:

Kempe was kiteboarding off the coast of Miami when he caught an unusually strong updraft. While updrafts are what give kiteboarders speed and time during a run, this current carried Kempe 60 feet in the air and flew him 300 feet onto shore, smashing him into the side of a building, dragging him to the ground, and throwing him into cars, poles and fences.

Kempe was read last rites at one point before his astounding recovery, and will start for Dartmouth this fall.

GRRRRR BARWIS. The cult of Barwis expands ever further. No, your 30 minute session on the elliptical machine does not necessitate the consumption of chocolate milk because you did not just do five sets of hang cleans followed by a ten minute plyometric vomit-circuit.

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.

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.”

Because you needed to understand no money man can win my love. It’s Wednesday, and you’re looking good in every way.

Don’t you get fresh with me. Now, the rest of the Curious Index.

Rudy Carpenter is having surgery on his thumb.It is the offseason because we are discussing minor surgery set to take place today on Rudy Carpenter’s thumb. This is how you know this. Cap’n Dennis doesn’t seem worried, and neither does anyone else, since it’s all very manageable and nothing at all to worry about, unlike ASU’s impending matchup with Georgia, which is something to worry about. Remember: Rennie Curran swam all the way from Liberia to kick your ass.

Durr! You got it all figured out! [NAME REDACTED] goes public with what everyone suspected anyway, since he’s now a head coach and is trying to prove to everyone how brainy he is.

“Because operator/writers for Internet sites, such as Rivals.com and Scout.com, are the only ones who have unregulated access to recruits when coaches can’t talk to them, it’s an area that’s ripe for corruption.

We hate it when this happens. Next, he’s wearing glasses and reading the Economist, and talking to you about this great article he read on the Congo in Foreign Policy,, and wondering what happened to the original energy that sparked the Dogma 95 movement, and getting the facts all wrong the whole time. (”So, just imagine the balance of power if Italy hadn’t run their colonies in Southeast Asia into the ground in that war with the Japanese!”) Dude, just stay dumb. We loved you that way.

Oh. One moment, please:

Accuracy remains a concern for Williams despite significant improvement from his freshman to sophomore year. He threw only one more touchdown (13) than interception in 2007 and ranked last in the Big Ten in passing efficiency (119.2).

“I don’t see why he can’t be a 70 percent passer,” Zook said.

Because Juice Williams with Rashard Mendenhall ranked last in the Big Ten in efficiency, and he won’t have Mendenhall there this year? Whew! You had us there for a second, [NAME REDACTED.] There’s the old anvil with legs and a whistle we know and loved. Hated. Whatever.

The Trojans weakest spot: offensive line, according to the Daily Trojan. They only return one starter, but even the new guys know USC does a play-action rollout pass on every freakin’ first down they get. So they’ve got that going for ‘em.

It’s a tiny sample size of six schools, but the stadium with the smallest allotment of seats for students in what appears to be a 15 minute survey of six of the SEC’s stadiums? LSU, who only reserves 13 percent of the stadium for students. In case you wonder which school is most upside down on the small student body/huge stadium ratio, the answer is as you suspected: Alabama.

Aggie Fashion: This concerns me. Texas A&M isn’t where we’d look for fashion advice (and we need it, since we’re stuck in the “Any outfit topped with a brown velvet jacket=liquid sex” look.) And judging from this advice, we’ll continue that policy.

To avoid being late to class, forget fixing your hair - just top off your outfit with a unique hat.

As bad as this advice may sound, it works gangbusters for Swedish soccer fans.

Ja, Svedka!

Plus, we’re decimated by injury. At least twenty dollars (in singles) of bonus cash to the person who managed to explain to Larry Munson exactly what Squidbillies is, and what he was going to be saying to whom in the episode.

But yes, that’s Larry Munson as the voice of God. (HT: Thad.)

There’s only two games between the PAC-10 and SEC this season: Georgia at Arizona State, and Tennessee at UCLA. The UCLA game could be an atrocity, but early on it’s not mad to expect the game in Tempe to be a real contest especially given Georgia’s traditionally slow starts and this whole new “going on the road thing” they’re trying out in the SEC. Fortunately, as a Florida fan “going on the road” means flying all the way to goddamn Fayetteville, so we don’t have to worry about these kind of odysseys.

California, Florida, and Texas. Demography rules your football, college fan, whether you like it or not, meaning grumpy Big Ten fans may shake angry fists not just at fate, but at the economy, weather, and the deity of their choice when it comes to protesting the gradual move toward football becoming more of a Sun Belt sport than a Midwestern one. The Big Three represent 26% of the U.S. population, but produce 34% of the talent drafted in the NFL, according to a report by USA Today. (It’s all that running from strip mall to strip mall that does it.)

Chewbacca! BANG. A great reason to fire blindly into a crowd of people: because one of them may, or may not have, called the woman you were with “Chewbacca.” The extremely logical and well-thought out reason for allegedly firing into a group of Cal football players back in 2005 is just part of what sounds like a colossally stupid series of events, excerpted below, that resulted in the death of a young woman shot in the chest:

“I really don’t remember anyone arguing I just remember someone saying no one called you bitches and hoes and then it was over,” Gray said. “I don’t remember no arguing in faces, it was never hostile.”

But as they were driving away, Crenshaw said, two of the women began to yell at Gray, saying he was a scrub.

All perfectly logical. In fact, we attempted to shoot a man for calling us a “Lando wannabe” last night, mostly because it hurt so much BECAUSE IT’S TRUE. We missed and killed a passerby. We regret the error.

Lloyd Carr’s health is still an issue, even after he’s gone. Carr and Michigan both looked healthy enough in their bowl game, actually. More public shaming of the Florida secondary, as seen below in action.

(No, this will keep up until well into the season, and they show they can defend a simple fucking post route.)

Steve Spurrier is not Joe Paterno, because Steve Spurrier uses a computer, will take his shirt off and ride a bike around campus, and has not had to run off the field to avoid crapping his pants. All of these things can be said of homeless men living on Ponce de Leon Avenue, as well. (Judging from the library’s homeless/non-homeless reader ratio, the homeless are the Bohemian scholars of our day, until you realize they’re all voraciously reading Auto Trader and People.) But pulling the nepotism card while falling into mediocrity definitely makes you Paterno-esque. Brian is cold, heartless, and mean–but he is rarely wrong.

When he gets the adult-trike with the basket on the front: THEN he’s JoePa.

Picture Me Rollin’ has an interview with Ian Rapoport, the reporter who set off Nick Saban with a question about the Tide’s scholarship limit. Rappaport then challenged Nick Saban to a fight! And they ripped each other’s scalps off and slapped each other with them like they were silk gloves OMG!!!!111. Or, the press conference ended abruptly with an emotional answer and an awkward silence, much like your last date, single people. Rapoport is the mature media type about the whole thing:

When we discussed “the question”, Ian told me that, there again, the taped segment didn’t show the whole story. Ian insists that Saban had a crack of a grin as he was going through his answer and also that he was joking after he left the podium. He also indicated that because of his belief that Saban really does care about his players that the answer to “the question” must be very complex. He said otherwise he would have just given a quick answer but out of caring about the outcome he seems to be troubled by it and that is what Ian took away from the encounter.

Ian’s very mature. A scalp-slapping contest would have been a better ending, of course, but that’s reality for you.

Our new rallying cry! Syracuse football continues to celebrate the little things:

“The most important thing is that we got out of here with no one getting hurt,” Robinson announced over the Dome’s public address system.

Dick Vermeil will end up crying over this whole thing before it is over. Mark our words.

Missing from the Aggies’s spring game: one 900 pound running back. Jorvorskie Lane did not participate in the spring game this past weekend, either because he had some kind of issue, is miffed over being moved to the fullback spot full-time in Mike Sherman’s new offense, or to save the structural pounding the stadium takes when he runs and shakes the lighting towers.

Or perhaps he’s just in musth.

Ape, baby, you have taken the red pill. A belated congratulations to the demented brain sitting atop the hairy, drag-knuckled frame of Christmas Ape for getting dooced by the Washington Post for his work on KSK. (Me rike!) Welcome to the Floating World full-time.

And our starting tight end is Woggy Patel. Iowa’s starting tailback in their upcoming spring scrimmage: Paki O’Meara. He has luscious hair and sensitive, huggy eyes, and his first name is an ethnic slur for Pakistanis. Iowa football, your magic ride into football absurdity is just one big log-flume ride of enchanted amusement.

That’s fucked up, Rich. Remember West Virginia’s Calvin Magee alleging that a West Virginia official told him he would never get the head job in Morgantown because he’s black? That guy was supposedly Larry Aschebrooke, who is heaving a steaming fresh affadavit of his own back at Rodriguez in the ongoing legal tussle over the 4 million dollar buyout.

Aschebrook also detailed a conversation between himself, Rodriguez and Magee. Aschebrook alleged Rodriguez made him a promise of employment at Michigan and added this statement: “This isn’t about you Larry, it’s about me. You can’t afford it, I can’t afford it. I don’t have $200,000 in the bank. I’m paying for [wife] Rita’s family, my family, and [West Virginia is] doing this to me. I’m sorry about this, but it’s business not friendship.”

Aschebrook’s response: “That’s fu–ed up Rich.”

How you pronounce that is beyond us: we think we that means is “fucked up,” and it would be. If it was true. We assume everyone is lying to some degree in this case, and that the mad monkey-squabble for moneybananas in the Rodriguez departure turned everyone into screaming, amoral apes.

Dan Hawkins is so straight-edge. Big X’s on the back of his hands, Vegan Reich tapes in his hand. A duh-RAG at parties, baby: that’s Dan Hawkins at your big 420 party this weekend.

NOTES: Dan Hawkins let it be known that he is not a fan of 420 Day. “I am a little down on that, I am a lot down on that, unequivocally down on that, in a big way,” said Hawkins. He said the team knows how he feels about the topic.

You’ll forget he was there anyway man, and just settle down on the couch to play a little Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, forget you were playing, and wake up to find you’ve been sleeping with a spilled drink in your lap for seven hours. At least, that’s probably what our 420 party will go like.

I hate you all. Not you; no, that you. One of the jackfucks pushing for a congressional investigation into the BCS is Lynn Westmoreland, who really is so dumb he thinks fireflies are the floating burning dingleberries of Satan’s ass. But Steven Colbert already proved this:

We are wearing a flag pin as we say this, so it’s okay.

Today is National Columnist Day. Hug one, but be prepared to reach wide and smell like onions afterward.

EXAMINE MY IMPECCABLE ORTHODONTURE!!!!

SI also fronts a rehashed story by Rick Bragg, who talks about how Nick Saban bought his momma a house, how good fried pies are, and other non-threatening cornpone truths wrapped around a story about the hard-drinking, no count bastard that was his daddy.

Oh, no, no, no, no. This makes our gorge rise just reading it: details from the death of Ereck Plancher, the UCF freshman who died suddenly following conditioning drills last month.

One of the four players who spoke with the Sentinel, a veteran, disagreed, saying: “It was the toughest workout since I’ve been here. It definitely was not a light workout…

Plancher was noticeably woozy and staggering as he tried to participate in the final jumping-jacks drill, the players said. The team finished those exercises, then huddled one final time. Plancher collapsed while walking away from the huddle, the players said.

There’s tragedy of multiple brands and tastes here. There’s also a quantity sure to become all too abundant for Plancher’s family and UCF: thousands and thousands of billable hours for attorneys.

Corn Nation informs us that the playbook at Nebraska–the 820,992 page Callahan-era monster–is still the playbook, only with the option, a few changes in terminology, some tweaks in the blocking scheme, and curly fries thrown in. Yay, complexity and curly fries!

Terrelle Pryor, bring hell with you. Because Todd Boeckman won’t go without a fight. That’s right, THE Todd Boeckman! You bring the beef, lawya, bettah bring you best, because TB is contagious, and there ain’t no cure once you get him, homey.

JoePa has not contract, and everyone’s okay with that. Did Julius Caesar have a contract? No, and that worked out awesomely for him.