Let’s all try to avoid doing that. Enjoy.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. South Florida has feasted on teams with no semblance of defense, and has feasted well. The problem comes when the somewhat flimsy dentures serving as South Florida’s offense must chew on tougher meat like the Cincy and Pitt defenses, and the BJ Daniels Sexplosion Attack fails to score more than 17 points. When this happens things get more lopsided than the final scores of their back-to-back losses to the Bearcats and the Wannstache would seem: USF was stopped on all five first half possessions against Pitt and trailed 31-7 at the half, while you may remember the Cincinnati game for a 72 yard dash Myron Pryor described as “sluggish:”

Collaros may have been a surprise for USF, but Pitt wasn’t, and they still ran for over 200 yards on the Bulls, opening up the passing game for an efficient Bill Stull. So there you go get your run game going, establish play-action, and then there’s a tidy four quarters, gentlemen.

We may have a case of the flammable man meeting the matchless arsonist, however. Rutgers has yet to find a new Ray Rice to run the kneecaps off of, and is seventh in the conference with 146 yards a game. The attack has been so lackluster they’ve built in their own Wildcat formation with Jabu Lovelace in the backfield, the WildLover, named that because anything with Jabu Lovelace involved is built for love and is inherently sexier than Christine Hendricks naked on a bearskin rug tossing hundred dollar bills into a roaring money-fire. That may be an exaggeration, but you’re not the one named Jabu Lovelace, are you? True fact: half of all vaginas in New Jersey have “Jabu was here” written in sharpie on their back wall. The other fifty percent are waiting in line for the autograph.

Anyway, USF has the number one pass defense in the Big East, Rutgers depends on the pass, USF lives and dies off the rush and is facing a Rutgers defense that only allows 106 yards on the ground per game, and we’re all at sixes and sevens here, now aren’t we? When we have a push, we go to turnover margin, where Rutgers is +18 while USF sits at +5.

Advantage: Rutgers. YOU GOTTA BE SMILIN’, SCARLET KNIGHTS.

Rutgers, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: When someone tells us there’s a guy with a fixed grin, beady, close-set eyes and a shirt with a scarlet “R” on it running around waving his arms willy-nilly outside, we assume someone’s escaped the special ed school down the street, and that the secret behind the State of Georgia’s Scarlet Letter-style labeling of the developmentally disabled is out in public for all to see. At Rutgers, it would refer to the mascot.

The people-suited cartoon Scarlet Knight is an underwhelming figure: he could have walked off a fifties bread company logo for all we care, or from some plushy nightmare orgy with a medieval theme. Now, the live Rutgers mascot? Excalibur, motherfucker!

Impressive, as it involves a stunning horse and a sword. In a perfect world, he and the Mountaineer decide the overtime of games by fighting to a mortal wound at the 50 in front of a roaring crowd. It would work in Jersey or in Tampa, because both places are seconds from embracing bloodsport at any point and you know it.

Rocky D. Bull, USF’s mascot…well, he just looks like Jim Leavitt with horns.

That’s intimidating, but it certainly lacks the style of a guy clanking around the stadium in a full suit of armor.

Advantage: Rutgers. YOU GOTTA BE DANCIN, SCARLET KNIGHTS!

Rutgers, You’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. Rutgers brings a decent crowd, though the 56th playing of “For Whom The Bell Tolls” wears out even the most dedicated fan of doom and thundering power chords. Rutgers fans do chant “You got fucked up!” at injured players and flick off ESPN cameras, so they deserve credit for being just as cannibalistic as you might expect.

Oh, and Rutgers is 3-1 against them in the brief history of their rivalry.

Advantage: Rutgers. YOU GOTTA BE SHAKIN’ THAT ASS.

Rutgers, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names.

Rutgers: San San Te, Al-Ghaffaar Lane, Jabu Lovelace, Al-Majid Hutchins, Zaire Kitchen, Andre Civil

USF: Kayvon Webster, Maikon Bonani, Devekeyan Lattimore, Leslie Stirrups, Sampson Genus,

Advantage: Rutgers. As tight a call as we’ve had all year, but Zaire Kitchen wins.

Rutgers, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? Rutgers certainly needs the conference win more at 1-2 in conference, but otherwise we’re looking at two 6-2 teams meeting for a matchup Rutgers usually wins. So, with the gearshift firmly stuck in MEH, we opt for the Scarlet Knights here.

Rutgers, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 5-0, RUTGERS You’ve Been Factor’d! The rare Factor Five sweep points to Rutgers, meaning USF should beat them by thirty on their own field tonight in one of the signature wins of the Jim Leavitt era.

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.

(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.

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)

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:

Rushing defense: 103rd (”Please note the bloodspray here, and the defendant’s signature in blood on the wall.”

Passing defense: 100th (”Happy Falker Satherhood!“)

Total defense: 101st overall in the nation. (”I believe Mr. Garner here is engaging in what we call ‘A Bangkok Necktie.’ Unless I’m mistaken and we’re looking at a ‘Polished Flugelhorn,’ an exotic variant of the ‘Rusty Trombone.’ Care to comment, sir, or shall we settle?”)

For West Virginia, that number is -2.33, their turnover margin thus far and the reason they coughed up a game the Mountaineers should have won versus Auburn. They will turn the ball over again tonight, but Colorado’s defense is so inept they may not even be able to take advantage of Jarrod Brown’s generosity, and will instead stare at the football like an exotic flightless bird while WVU linemen scramble to fall on it. Noel Devine could burn through two pairs of cleats tonight, and should since Aaron Opelt ran for 110 yards against the Buffs. If you’re looking for Colorado’s defensive line, they’ll be the ones lying on the ground.

They could give them four turnovers tonight and it would not matter based on what Colorado has displayed thus far as a defense.

Advantage: West Virginia. Don’t be flattered. You get this by Colorado defaulting on life.

West Virginia, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: Ralphie is a rampaging live animal run across the field with no fewer than five handlers barely keeping her under control at all times. So is Will Muschamp, and you don’t see us giving him free points in the Factor Five. In addition to that ironclad reasoning, Ralphie helped give the world an omen about Colorado football 2009 with this debut in the spring game.

West Virginia’s mascot is traditionally a burly, bearded trapper wearing an oily, perhaps still-bloody buckskin and a raccoon carcass on his head so fresh flies buzz around it. In between firing showers of oxycodone into the crowd, the Mountaineer whoops, hollers, distributes deer salad and ramp smoothies to children, and discharges his musket willy-nilly after WfVU scores. (Being hit by the buckshot is considered a blessing. Or a fatal injury. Depends on the range.)

The wrinkle this year: oh, a lady, you say?

Rebecca Durst is only the second female Mountaineer mascot in the history of the school, and has been received with somewhat lukewarm reviews.

Several students complained that Durst did not wear the traditional coonskin hat at Saturday’s game, and some criticized her push-ups.

I’D SHOW HER MY PUSH-UP—we’re dreadfully sorry. But she is a woman in buckskin pants and holding a gun. There are powers we can’t resist, and the notion of a woman who can make fresh bear jerky and her own bathtub meth while making animal hide look good is too much redneck fantasy to decline. Blame a childhood full of watching Urban Cowboy and Dolly Parton movies, but we like our women just a little on the trashy side.

Advantage: West Virginia.

West Virginia, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. West Virginia will be playing at Milan Puskar Stadium surrounded by a ring of roaring Mountaineer fans following a bye week, and covered by a thick smog of whiskey fumes blotting out the light of the moon above. Colorado will be playing half a continent away from home and without star recruit Darrell Scott, who has been carefully saved for use by the offensive staff at Colorado for sometime in the year 2018. (Shh. Don’t tell them eligibility rules. IT WOULD SPOIL THE FUN.)

West Virginia will makes some of the assy mistakes Bill Stewart’s teams make, but holy hell they’re not the Buffaloes, who at times have resembled tapes of undersized Commonwealth rugby teams playing football with American servicemen for the first time overseas. The amount of butt WVU brings to the table will pale in comparison to the assstravaganza of copious posterior CU puts on the plate. Horrible football team. Horrible, horrible, horrible football team. Flames. Burning. Side of my head. Hate. So. Much…

Advantage: West Virginia.

West Virginia, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names.

West Virginia: Logan Heastie (”There’s nary a Scotsman as burly in all’ a Glasgow!”), Guesly Dervil (”Ex’ceptin’ ay mighty strong laddie Guesly Dervil!”), Franchot “Boogie” Allen, Jack Crow (”Your brother is a fucking asshole!”–any black person,) Keith Coffindaffer, Ovid “The Transformation” Goulborne, the dastardly industrialist and land baron Selvish Capers, Scooter Berry.

Colorado: Maxwell Tuioti-Mariner and a few assorted exotic African names. Ironically, Colorado can’t even defend this angle of the comparison, either.

Advantage: West Virginia.

West Virginia, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? West Virginia lost this game last year in Boulder in the infamous HOW DO I MAKE TIMEOUT GAME. This face happened.

So, yeah. Bill Stewart probably wants to win this game pretty badly. So does Dan Hawkins, no doubt, but Bill Stewart’s not the one who clocks his linemen with sundials at high schools and relies on the I-Ching to determine his scholarship offers.

West Virginia, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 5-0, West Virginia You’ve Been Factor’d! This should mean to bet the other way given the dismal track record of the Factor Five Five Factor Preview to predict anything at all in any way whatsoever, but Colorado is a terrible, terrible prairie mudpie of a football team.

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.

Kragthorpe lays on the doorbell for ten whole seconds. An irritated mother approaches the door.

Pitino: Thanks for having us at your home, ma’am. Is Javon around? We’d like to talk to both of you.

Kragthorpe: [/nods]

Mother: Why, certainly coach. That is a nice suit you have on. [/flirts, bats eyes.] Let me get Javon.

Javon enters. They all sit at coffee table.

Pitino: [/in stage whisper to Kragthorpe] Watch, and learn.

Kragthorpe: [/nods]

Pitino: And take off your baseball cap. You look like a farmer.

Kragthorpe. [/takes off cap]

Pitino: Nice to meet you, Javon. I’m here to show you that when you commit to Louisville, which I know you’re going to do, you commit to the whole family, me included. Now, your mother loves you very much. And I know you love her and want her to be happy. I know of two things that would make her happier than she’s ever been, Javon.

Javon: Yeah. That’s true. What are those two things?

Pitino: You with a college education and a shot at the NBA, and me laying her right down on that couch over there and taking her to the Italian Derby for the ride of her life.

Kragthorpe is floored, and stares around the room. Javon, Pitino, and Mother all seem composed and unmoved.

Pitino: See that coffee table over there? now imagine your mother bent over that with her panties at her ankles Imagine how happy she’ll be. You want your mother to be happy, don’t you? Let me make her happy for you. Just sign here, Javon, and we’ll be halfway there. The rest is up to me, your mother, and the bottle of fine Prosecco I have chilling in a Styrofoam cooler in the car.

Javon: I dunno, coach. That’s a big deal, signing with a school. I’ll have to think about it.

Pitino: Of course it is. I want you to be serious about this, because we at Louisville are serious about you. I’d be happy to help with this brochure from our admissions office, this detailed portfolio showing the accomplishments of our football program, and these written accounts of my prowess in making rough, sweet love to the women of the world. Apologies–are you more of a visual learner, Tommy? Because I have some pictures over here in my attache case that might interest you.

Mother: They interest me, actually–

He stands, and takes a manila folder from his valise.

Pitino: Look at the leverage I’ve got on Delonte’s mom in this shot. That’s the good stuff right there.

Mother: Well, it certainly is.

Pitino: Ask Tony Delk’s mother. I took her out for a nice meal at Antonelli’s. She’d never had carpaccio before. Loved it. Delk went on to become one of the best players in Kentucky history. Mrs. Delk and I ended up against a dumpster in the alley. In the end we all got what they wanted most, Tony. Especially Mrs. Delk, if you follow my drift.

Javon and Mother are hypnotized.

Javon: That does sound good. Yes. I will commit to Coach Pitino and Louisville.

Mother: Yes. This all sounds like a good idea.

Pitino turns to Kragthorpe.

Pitino: Go ahead, try it. You can do it. Trust me.

Kragthorpe: I dunno, that looked hard. Plus you said you wanted to fuck the kid’s mom. I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that.

Pitino: Nonsense. You’ve got this. Go ahead. Cake, son. Cake.

Kragthorpe: Javon. I want you to come to Louisville. And I…

Kragthorpe pauses, and looks up at Pitino. Pitino urges him forward.

Kragthorpe: …I wanna do it with your mom, too.

Mother: AW, HELL NAW!!!

Javon: Fuck you, man! What the fuck is that?

Kragthorpe: I was–it’s just that when he said it, and–I…

Javon: YOU DO NOT SAY THAT SHIT! YOU JUST DON’T!!!

Kragthorpe: (gamely attempts to regroup) But I want to touch her breasts. They’ll feel like…breasts.

Pitino: Seriously, Krags, you crossed a line there. I’m sorry, Javon.

Kragthorpe: Does your mother like foreplay? Because there are some things I don’t do.

Mother: If you don’t leave my house, I’m going to shoot you.

Kragthorpe: I will, however, shave your mother’s..um…hoo-ha. That’s something we can all enjoy, yes?

Javon and mother throw the pair out of the house.

Pitino: I don’t know what you were doing in there, Krags.

Kragthorpe: I was just saying the same thing you were saying!

Pitino: No, no, no. It wasn’t the same at all.

Kragthorpe: I mean…does that work on everyone? You just walk in there, do it, and leave? Does that work every time?

Pitino: (sighs) Almost always Krags. Almost.

(A joint production with Unsilent Majority.)

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.

Urban Meyer isn’t going to forget this. It’s a big deal, and he’s going to make it a big deal. Maybe it’s just me, but I have to confess to a bit of shock that Florida wasn’t a unanimous choice at the #1 spot. Not that Texas, Oklahoma, and USC don’t have cases to be made, but with Tebow back this certainly seemed to be heading toward a year of “GREATEST COLLEGE FOOTBALL TEAM EVER?!?!?!?!”-type hype for the Gators, and it looks like at least a few folks aren’t buyin’ it.

Apparently some coaches are capable of coming to their senses. The rest of the top 10 conforms fairly closely to what we expected it would be based on compilations of the various publications’/sportswriters’ spring/summer top 25s from a couple months back, with a few exceptions: LSU has risen from a low-teens/fringey-top-10 pick to #9, eclipsing Oklahoma State and Ole Miss, trendy mid-top-10 picks a month or so ago but themselves languishing on the fringes of the top 10 this morning. (Cue Holly: “Like, ‘Hey, the Cotton Bowl was swell, but you’re still coached by Houston Nutt, right? Riiiight.’ “)

Rebuilding year? You might say that, yes. As befitting any conference projected to have a Wannstache-coached team as its eventual champion, the Big East failed to put a single team in the top 25; you don’t find any Big East squads until you dig down into the Others Receiving Votes category and find Cincinnati at a de facto #29, behind Kansas, Javon Ringer-less Michigan State, and Graham-Harrell-and-Michael-Crabtree-less Texas Tech. The Mountain West, by comparison, has three, tying the ACC.

Beano put you up to this, didn’t he? Yes, Notre Dame is in the top 25. Fortunately for those dreading another four months of “Are the Irish back?!?!” stories, we won’t have to wait long to find out whether they deserve it: After opening the season at home against Nevada, the Irish go on a three-week tussle with the Big 10 (at Michigan, vs. Michigan State, at Purdue), a loss in any one of which would probably be enough to bounce ND into Others Receiving Votes purgatory.

“Hope” is a four-letter word. Speaking of which, the coaches collectively exhibited enough charity to spare votes for: Auburn, 5-7 last year and still playing Death Is Not An Option with Kodi Burns, Neil Caudle, and Chris Todd at the QB spot; and Michigan, coming off their worst season ever and still a long ways off from having figured out Rich Rodriguez’s offense. Compared to these, the couple of votes cast for Tennessee almost look justified. (Your projections for what silly-ass comment Lane Kiffin will choose to make about this development, if any, are welcome in the comments.)

The times, they truly are a-changing. Does anybody else feel almost kind of empty inside not seeing Duke there at the end of the ORV category now that Spurrier has been asked to stop casting shits-and-giggles votes for the Blue Devils at #25?

So those are my immediate knee-jerk reactions; let the heckling begin. Audience, what say you?

F$#@ Sooners, get money. Packing two of the last three national-title trophies and gunning for another one in ‘09, Urban Meyer is getting a raise that will jack his salary up to an even $4 million a year, meaning that not only Urban but entire future generations of Meyers will be makin’ it rain for the indeterminate future. Before you ask, yes, Les Miles has a clause in his contract that entitles him to make at least $1,000 more than any other conference coach, but apparently it only kicks in if Miles wins the national title this year — thereby saving LSU from having to give The Hat a quarter-million-dollar raise for going 3-5 in the SEC last season. (See, if they just gave Les the highest salary in the conference, they’d only be spoiling him; this way, he learns the value of money.)

You know how to start a car, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow. West Virginia wide receiver Jock Sanders, last seen propping up an unusually weak Fulmer Cup effort by the Mountaineers with a DUI charge, may be able to bring an end to his indefinite suspension from the team if he “handles a series of requirements.” This includes completing an alcohol-awareness course, speaking with high-school groups about the dangers of DUI, and our favorite, having a “test lock” device installed in his car that will basically require him to breathalyze himself and prove he’s sober before he can start his vehicle. This is probably gonna sound weird, but I’ve always wanted to try one of those things — though my gadgetary curiosity here is of the singular ride a Segway/use an ejection seat/get Tasered variety that involves trying it once just to see what it’s like and then never, ever having to do it again.

Cue the “It’s not your fault” scene from “Good Will Hunting.” Louisville running back Bilal Powell is trying to put his fumble in last year’s game against Kentucky behind him and look ahead to 2009. Is it just us, or does it seem like he’s taking it a bit too hard? His fumble accounted for only a fifth of UL’s turnovers in that game. Trust me, Bilal, there’s more than enough blame to go around for the FAILsplosion that was Louisville’s 2008 campaign, and they’ll be coming after Steve Kragthorpe with torches and pitchforks long before they get around to you.

I don’t know the guy, but I’ve got two kidneys and he needs one, so I figured . . . Elsewhere in the Big East, Syracuse head coach Doug Marrone, charged with cleaning up the HAZMAT spill that is the Orange’s football program post-Greg Robinson, says he’s “been hearing good things” about the progress made by former Duke basketball player and not-ever college football player Greg Paulus, who allegedly is still in the running for SU’s starting-QB job, in summer conditioning. Be that as it may, signing Paulus period still strikes us as the kind of decision that will be very much in the running for inclusion in a Bad Idea Jeans commercial by the end of the season.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed GERG is king. Speaking of Robinson, the situation at Michigan is apparently so dire that the addition of Gerg as defensive coordinator is being seen as one of the team’s biggest bright spots heading into 2009. (Yes, we know Robinson was an exemplary D-coordinator with both the Longhorns and the Denver Broncos. But a 3-25 Big East record is the kind of failstank that wouldn’t be quickly forgotten even if he’d only been hired as the night manager at a 7-Eleven.)

What, by playing them within 30 points? Late entry in the race for saddest quote of the offseason: Washington State coach Paul Wulff’s insistence that his Cougars “have the opportunity to surprise some teams” this year. I’d like to believe that, Paul, I really would, but I’d also like to believe that Lacey Stockbauer is going to end up with two tickets to this year’s Texas-Oklahoma game and offer me her extra one. In other words: na ga happen.

The battery on TCOAN’s car died, so we’re off to the rescue, go-cup of Mai-Tai in hand. (When champagne comes in convenient can form–and we’re not talking that saccharine Coppola shit, either–we’ll take that instead.)

Quick things deserving address:

–Pac-10 Media Days, What! Watch the linked stream as every single coach and their players run back-to-back today. Steve Sarkisian, like Lane Kiffin, is a Carroll clone who speaks very quickly no matter the question. Oh, you can also tweet in questions here.

–Conference USA is having their media days in an all-virtual setting, and Graham Watson is doing an extremely entertaining job covering the spasms of doing a media event with live mikes and technical strokes happening all over the place. “One of the media members, maybe not know his line was open, just said, “This isn’t going very well.”"

–USF just became eligible for the Team Fulmer Cup award, and is now likely tied. No formal award yet, but if the usual one point suspended license sum applies, they would be tied at 17 with Hawaii. Since we don’t like ties, we’ll have to have some kind of method of breaking this unholy arrangement.

–Also: seen, and points to be assessed in separate entry.

If Florida does this, then we get to face the big green hologram of John Swofford and his assorted flying monkeys, or BCS Jambi, or the mixed mythological metaphor of your choice to represent the bag of snapping random events that is the BCS. If Florida mails in a a few along the way, those little cash-for-smash games along the way will stick out even more than Auburn’s oft-cited Citadel game in their 2004 year. Then you have the world’s angriest team facing some poor souls in the Orange or Fiesta, and no one wants to see that much blood on a single field. *

This all presumes a huge number of events: an undefeated Florida and two other undefeated BCS teams, a probable but unlikely option to pick up as a casual gambler. It has happened, though. The good news? Next year Florida’s home schedule is slightly improved, with South Florida taking the Troy slot. There’s still an D1AA team on there, because we must wean ourselves off the sugar fix slooooowly, but instead of the Fun-Dip of Charleston Southern we get the jawbreaker of Appalachian State. (App State as candy: probably won’t break your teeth, but you’ll at least you’ll worry about it.)

Miami of Ohio is on there as well, thus setting up the stage for the long anticipated thank you to the Cradle of Coaches so revered by Urban Meyer of only a forty point blowout.

*Except me me me me me.

This nightmare scenar

Pitt redshirt senior Adam Gunn earned the rare sixth year of eligibility from the NCAA after suffering a broken vertebra in his neck on a hit against Bowling Green. The helmet-to-helmet collision gave him a concussion and a fracture of the C-5 vertebra in his neck, eventually requiring surgery to fuse it to the C-4, put Gunn in a neck brace, and file the appeal for extra year.

Gunn may have decided to begin this second chance at football and a senior year as a starting linebacker by running headlong into the arms of the police and tackling an impressive array of charges: resisting arrest, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct, and public drunkeness, all done on Sunday morning in what reeks of a FnDC/Nightlife Decathlete case. As all are misdemeanors, so it’s four more points for Pitt, a school making a di-dangity-dang-dang strong run in the offseason-long barfight of the Fulmer Cup.

ps. Bonus fun comment from Pitt Sports Blather!

keep getting in trouble guys – anything to get the wannstache fired! Please!

So…cold…at…this…thought…no…Wannstache….in…life…we actually shudder at the thought of this happening. Pitt fans might not, but life without the Wannstache seems like a poorer, less macho place to be.