The prospective mistress of choice, seen two seasons ago in a fantasy sequence.

Steve Kragthorpe is doomed, doomed, doomed, but if the true test of a man is his gallows humor, then Kragthrope has something to rely on in the shadow of certain firing. He opened his press conference like this today:

“Sorry I’m late. I was actually on the phone with Jon Gruden. He wanted to know how tall Will Stein was.”

Well done, Coach Ignominious Verb. (HT: Big EZ via Card Chronicle.) If Gruden does come to coach Louisville after Kragthorpe’s inevitable firing, the Cardinals can look forward to such evaluations of their performance as this:

–”You’re a player!”
–”That’s a football player!”
–”Play occurred!”
–”He reached out and caught the football. That’s a real football play!”
–”Declarative sentence of no analytical value.”

He would be missed in the broadcast booth like the citizens of London miss dear old cholera.

We think they may have actually gotten Drake to do this song.

(HT: Card Chronicle via TSB. ) The execution and composition really are stunning: a 90% accurate Drake imitation complete with autotune, high production values, and the fluid dropping of the phrase “Bet the Kroger ads will miiiiisss you” in the verse. We mean this: this is extremely well done, so much so you have to actively listen to remember it is a parody urging the firing of a coach with a IKEA furniture label for a last name. (Unlike the entire Iowa team, who really do all have fine Swedish gibberish for last names.)

It’s only fair at this point to say that when Kragthorpe was hired, we actually thought this would work out for the best. Hey, young coach. Hey, youngish program with offense to burn. Hey, young football coach setting that burning talent on fire and pushing it down a hill before it goes off a bridge and into a barge made of papier mache soaked in gasoline. Hey, the screaming and horror.

If you want a coach who can slide right into that Kroger slot then Tuberville would be your man. He pitched Kroger with great aplomb while at Auburn, raising his nose to the sky and, in reaction to the smell of hot dogs, recited the deathless line “Smells like…victory.” Jurich should get on the stick, though: the early running in the coaching coup-stakes for this offseason looks like a race for the Golden Flake pitchman extraordinaire, who if he really used potato chips as bait would get more of a response from his players than Kragthorpe gets from his. Tuberville coached at A&M, and will certainly hear a call when coach/walking bologna sandwich Mike Sherman gets fired.

Then it’s Jimmy Sexton, two fully charged cellphones, and you bending over and taking it for three days of solid negotiating Barbary Coast-style. Bring a good attitude, lube, and a cushion to lay over the barrel, because as savage as it will be, it’s better than the current madness going on at either school.

Conditions may be perfect for a good old fashioned Kragthorpe’ing involving none other than the Supreme Kragthorpe-r himself. According to ANONYMOUS INTERNET REPORT he’s been asked to resign, meaning Louisville Sports Buzz is gonna earn some cred, or look like a snitchin’ ass liar when Kragthorpe gets his ten-year extension on Saturday.

You know what we’re thinking? Encore performance, Herr Schnellenberger! Encore, we say!

(The most beautiful thing in the world came to us via the Something Awful forums and Twitter user @hasorey)

We WILL be liveblogging this game at 7:30 p.m. Join us then and taste the chaos of an EDSBS liveblog of a middling between an inconsistent but talented team and an inconsistent and untalented team. Adventure has a thousand flavors!

Welcome to our Factor Five Five Factor Preview Colorado at West Virginia. The Factor Five Five Factor Preview examines the necessaries and completely arbitraries of the official beginning of your weekend, the Thursday Night special. This week’s special puts the “special” in Thursday Night Special, because Colorado is playing, and as part of their continued sponsorship of slow kids who like to play football, they will lose this game by a substantial margin.

Enjoy.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. Colorado’s defensive numbers, presented as one would show slides of a murder, cakewreck, or explicit slides of cheap hotel infidelity in a divorce trial: (more…)

Bill Stewart, from his Twitter feed, and plated up without further commentary for your viewing enjoyment:

Stewart has a kind of Joe Bidenish charm to him, like you really could get a phone call from him out of the blue on Sunday night. Orson? Hey, Bill here. I just got this “Nash Bridges” collection on DVD, and the wife’s let me off the hook for the evening. Don Johnson is one smooth ol’ ace, ain’t he? You bring the pork rinds. I’ve got some Keystone in the fridge. See you at eight. And don’t lie: you’d be jealous if we told you we had spent Sunday night just hanging out watching Nash Bridges with Bill Stewart, because it would be kind of awesome in an “I played cribbage with George Jones” kind of way.

INVIZIBUL GRL ON SHOULDERS. If you questioned the future integrity of the coaches’ poll, well good for you, Mr. Suspiciousness. The original Mr Suspiciousness in this case, Andy Staples of SI.com, has been wondering out loud what kind of skullduggery might result from coaches’ ballots going secret in 2010 (something that might not even be legal depending on your state’s legal codes, but that is a whole other mailbox full of hornets for you to put a speculative hand into, lawya.)

Troy Calhoun, Brian Kelly, and Jim Leavitt have already sent Staples their ballots in requests for this year’s ballots, and it confirms what you might think: if you coach football for a living in a BCS conference, and spend every waking hour breaking down film, doing interviews, recruiting high schoolers, and doing the myriad other things a football coach has to do in the course of a day, that leaves you with very, very little time to watch football outside of your conference.

Leavitt’s top 15 includes four Big East teams in the top 25 where the AP top 25 has none, including USF at #18. Breathe deep the intoxication of two decades of sleep deprivation, and now consider that Leavitt has Florida State at ten, North Carolina at 12, and Oklahoma replacing four of its five offensive linemen over Florida for the number one spot. Jim Leavitt fears no beast, even logic! Get in the zone with Leavitt and taste pain, AP nerd voters.

Brian Kelly’s top 25 ballot is more modest, putting Cincy at 25, but still putting two Big East teams in the top 25 above the Bearcats. The Big East is not alone in blatant partisanship. Troy Calhoun of Air Force has three Mountain West teams in his top 25, something excused by the current bull market on Mountain West speculation in the AP top 25, but still spectacular in its degree, as Calhoun has TCU at #10, way, way above most ballots outside of the Mountain time zone. (His ballot is far more sane than Leavitt’s, but then again, you know that before you ever looked, because Jim Leavitt is barking madness in a visor and Dockers.)

Meaning, in summary: if you think coaches’ ballots in the AFCA coaches poll are flawed, partisan, regionally biased, and half-assed, you’re probably right, and in 2010 you won’t be able to see just how biased they truly are. (Complete of the coaches who vote in the poll is here, and it includes all three coaches mentioned above.

Steve Kragthorpe and Rick Pitino approach the door of a football recruit.

Kragthorpe: I’m nervous about this.

Pitino: Nah, Krags. Don’t worry. Everyone needs some professional development time. I know how recruiting is. So what we’re gonna do, again: I’ll walk in, show you my recruiting pitch, and then you’ll try the same.

Kragthorpe: Okay, okay. Hey, where’s the doorbell?

Pitino: It’s that shiny button there. You like shiny buttons, right?

Kragthorpe: Oh, you betcha. (more…)

With just a shade under four weeks left to go before the 2009 season finally, mercifully kicks off, the coaches — or, rather, their poor, put-upon assistants, with the exception of Steve Spurrier’s, who isn’t even being allowed to call in the OBC’s take-out orders anymore after the Tim Tebow/All-SEC foofaraw — have issued their preseason Top 25. The rankings are as follows:

1. Florida (53 first-place votes)
2. Texas (4)
3. Oklahoma (1)
4. Southern California (1)
5. Alabama
6. Ohio State
7. Virginia Tech
8. Penn State
9. LSU
10. Ole Miss
11. Oklahoma State
12. California
13. Georgia
14. Oregon
15. Georgia Tech
16. Boise State
17. Texas Christian
18. Utah
19. Florida State
20. North Carolina
21. Iowa
22. Nebraska
23. Notre Dame
24. Brigham Young
25. Oregon State

Others receiving votes: Kansas, Michigan State, Texas Tech, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Rutgers, Miami (Florida), Missouri, Illinois, Clemson, South Carolina, UCLA, Auburn, Nevada, South Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina State, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Southern Miss, Wake Forest, Arizona, Boston College, Central Michigan, East Carolina, Colorado, Maryland, Navy, Tennessee, Houston, Michigan, Minnesota, Troy.

Curiosities, travesties, and other things that struck me after the jump — along with y’all’s chance to tear this thing up yourselves. (more…)