Cold winds sweep off the jagged teeth of the Hindu Kush. A UH-60 Black Hawk chops through the thin air; as it passes through the azure sky, it seems to be constantly recalibrating its flight path, listing slightly to the right side, correcting, and then listing again. It finally lands on a flat, dusty patch of land surrounded by razor wire, sandbag bunkers, and a lone American flag flapping in the bastard breeze.

The blades come to a slow crawl: four coaches exit from the left side of the plane. All wear black fleece vests and cargo pants. One coach remains in the helicopter, visibly rocking the chopper from the inside as the machine sags to the right.

(A muffled voice yells from the inside:) A little fuckin’ help here? Huh?

Randy Shannon: This place is NICE.

Tommy Tuberville: Smells like…Afghanistan.

Mark Richt: Guys, maybe we should go back and help Charlie.

Tommy Tuberville: Hell, no, padre. I didn’t fry fish in backwoods Tennessee for years just to help some gravity whore yank his whale-sized kiester out of a helicopter.

Randy Shannon: No, I mean it, y’all. This place is really, really nice. (more…)

We bring you the tastiest trawlings of the internet. Yarr.

–Spurrier is now going to Alabama, having hypothetically spurned the ‘Canes and President Bush’s entreaties to join him as the Secretary of Defense, and will now be joining Bill Oliver in Tuscaloosa along with other classics of the early nineties like Naughty by Nature, Rollerblades, and Mortal Kombat. Scorpion would make an awesome safety, man. Get over here! (None of this is true. Except for the bit about Scorpion, since a safety with a sharp grappling hook would be awesome.)

Scorpion: would be almost as intimidating as George Teague.

–Go Yang, indeed.

–The SEC will be outside looking in again in the BCS, which is precisely what happens when you schedule crapulence in your out of conference schedule and watch your offense throw a piston at the Auburn game. Florida’s schedule was rough on paper, but one more OOC game not involving a team you give your brother in a pick ‘em matchup in NCAA 2007 game would have made an overwhelming case for Florida’s inclusion.

Either way, Mike Slive will boldly shrug in protest.

–Fightin’ Amish introduces us to Pete Carroll’s website. We really, truly wish he hadn’t.

–Speaking of USC…Boi From Troy has his own mini-catch on the Cal/USC game. Brian Cushing evidently played a nasty role for DeSean Jackson, being one of two or three players the Trojans assigned to jam him off the line. From what we saw of the game, USC’s “jam” technique involves knocking the eyebrows off someone on every snap.

–BULLET BULLET BULLET!! INVEST IN TONGAN LINEMAN SHARES!!! Since the supply may be erratic for a while thanks to rioting and civil disorder in Tonga. Again, we repeat to Urban Meyer: recruit gay Polynesian linemen now and we will be rolling in Sears Trophies in no time.

–Peter admits that the Longhorns can’t win ‘em all: Texas A&M’s Meat Judging Team took home its fourth title in a row. We’re looking to field an EDSBS Meat Judging team, so female readers and gay boys, step on down and submit your qualifications below. We can’t have Dennis Franchione beating us at anything, especially judging fine pieces of meat of any gender.

Meat judge Morrissey would approve of A&M’s fine efforts.

–John Lopez, meanwhile, thinks A&M is dead meat in the game, which is but a shadow of its former self.

–Ivy Leaguers learn quick!

Ivy League leaders say they have protected the academic stature of their institutions, avoided the stain of recruiting and classroom scandals, and nurtured athletics as a truly amateur endeavor.

“Thank goodness,” said Derek Bok, Harvard’s president in 1981 and its interim president now. “The quality of football is not the primary objective of the institution.”

And that’s why you’ll never win SEC championships, Har-vahhhrrd: lack of dedication, dammit. (And, er, not belonging to the SEC.) That forty percent legacy admission rate doesn’t help, either: weak aristocratic blood will ruin a good blocking scheme every time. If you can get Yale alum and motivational master Aleksey Vayner, though, then do it: impossible is nothing for that guy.

Hahhvaad, which we’re told is a small private college in Boston, enters the Fulmer Cup Sweepstakes this past weekend. (See the updated board, sans Harvard points, here.) The team captain, senior linebacker Matthew C. Thomas, faces charges of assault and battery domestic abuse and breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony at a campus dorm, all stemming from mixing alcohol with ex-girlfriend.(HT: Bill) See:

The alleged victim told police she went to her room despite receiving a call warning her to stay away because Thomas was there. Police said she discovered Thomas passed out on the floor.

“She woke him to confront him about a relationship that he was involved in with another woman,” the report said. “She stated she poked him and yelling ensued between the two. He then jumped up and began to strike her about the body.”

Don’t poke Harvard! Because they will allegedly choke you, lift you off the ground, and knee you in the stomach, which is what the young woman in question says Thomas did to her. Thomas has been indefinitely suspended from the team, which we’re sure will prompt Dan Shaughnessy’s one and only column of the year on Harvard football where he announces the end of modern civilization as evidenced by the incident which he saw coming a long, long time before anyone else did. And though we’re sure they’re used to getting As–you don’t pay that much to get Cs unless your last name is Kennedy–they will pick up a mere blip of 2 points for assault/drankin’/girlfriend stuff.

Harvard alum Franklin Sherman is so appalled he’s singing.

Preseason top 25s are sprouting up like mildew patches in the summer heat. If you’re having trouble piecing yours together–and we know we are–use this handy guide to instant punditry we found just lying around the interweb, the EDSBS Pundit-by-Numbers Preseason Top 25 Assembly Kit�.

Make-Your-Own Top 25!

1. Number one. WHEW! Hard one here. Make things easier on yourself by just putting a.) last year’s champion here if they’ve got the same quarterback, or b.) Grab a team that won a BCS game last year and still has the same quarterback. You won’t look too crazy by doing either. If last year’s champ has lost their quarterback, move to slot 5 AUTOMATICALLY.

“Texas has to be the preseason favorite with Vince Young returning. Wait, we mean…um…they’re fifth. Yeah, fifth.”

2. Another easy one! Remember number two at the end of the year last year? You got it: just slide ‘em in here and keep rolling, rockstar.

3. Okay, tricky one at three, one that might require one or two GOOGLE SEARCHES. The team that won their big BCS bowl game last year by a shocker? Roll ‘em right in. SPECIAL NEW YORK TIMES PROVISION: this is where you put Michigan. Because you know a guy who went there, and he was pretty smart and cool and all that, and you didn’t really have a good football team where you went to school since lacrosse was really the thing there.

4. Another research one: take a team that’s a traditional power in the top ten. Did they go 8-4 last year? Or something like it? Okay, that’s your pick!

5. (RESERVED FOR LAST YEAR’S CHAMP MINUS QUARTERBACK. IF ABSENT, INSERT TENNESSEE.)

Fulmer sez: gimme five! Corndogs, that is.

6. A really easy one for the ol’ seis-spot: NOTRE DAME. They’re on television all the time and they had that movie with the kid from Goonies in it, plus they score like crazy these days. Even if they fall from the top ten you’re actually creating content for yourself, since you can then write one of your standard pairs of filler columns, the “wake up the echoes” preseason Notre Dame column/ “what the hell happened to the goddamn echoes” post-season Notre Dame column.

Notre Dame’s at 6. They’ve got Sean Astin on their side, and he was in White Water Summer, for god’s sake. You can’t deal with that, son.

7. Time to get bold here. Got a program that’s won a ton of games but never a big one? An offensive juggernaut whose almost beat significant opponents on a national stage but racks up fifty and sixty points on the midgets of the world? Seven is the place for them. It gives you BOLD pundit points and must be accompanied by a phrase of great certainty, like “This is the year they get it done.” If you hedge, just put Michigan in here and move on.

Boise’s good for easy BOLD points, especially after they beat lost horribly to Georgia.

8. Find out who the SEC champion was last year. Go ahead and put them here.

9. This is always a good place to put a Larry Coker-era Miami team. If not, have you considered putting Florida State here? They’re always a nice place holder, too.

10. Have you put all your Florida teams in the top ten? It’s essential to put them all in your to ten, if only to put them lower in your post-season poll, which then–thinking ahead!–gives you still more column filler in the form of “Sunshine State ain’t so sunny anymore” piece. If you hesitate to do this, again, just put Michigan here if you havent’ used them already.

One. Ten. We’re somewhere in there, guys. Where’s the friggin’s scotch around here…

11-25: A little secret of the trade….no one reads these. No one. The only people who will read them in total are basement-dwelling slobboids who will then write 13 page screeds in response to your critical underestimation of Clemson/Cal/Northwestern/Louisville/Tech/Florida/etc..

Plebe! Your ignorance regarding the worth of the (insert my team here) has forced me to answer at length on my blog. Prepare for a fisking!!!

In reality, you will simply take the next fifteen teams you can name off the top of your head and rattle them off on the page, just listing them in no particular order and tagging each one with the only thing you can remember about them at the time. Example:

#22: Fresno State: Bulldogs’ tough schedule will keep Pat Hill twiddling his mustache all year long.

See? No research required. You know Fresno plays a tough schedule every year, and that Pat Hill has a bitchin’ mustache. Combine the two and presto! Instant content.

After a lull, a peppering of incidents necessitated a thorough updating of the Fulmer Cup scoreboard by our admin Big Mike. Courtesy of our benefactor, we present the updated full Fulmer Cup standings:

For the full list, check out this page, which has the beautiful sidebars complete with a new feature, “TEAMS ON THE BUBBLE.” Mike does, for the record, have a penis so large he can block out the sun, a talent he’s used to extort billions from helpless world leaders. (As part of his retainer fees for creating and maintaining the board, we have to say nice things about him on the blog, so there you go, Mike.)

Delaware, as you can see, is clearly the George Mason of our tourney, heads and shoulders above everyone else for the combined “breaking and entering/armed robbery/steroid robbery” incident they obviously cribbed from the lost drafts of a Tarantino or Darren Aronofsky script. Purdue’s small but determined pattern of incidents still has them sky-high in the standings, but even now at the end of March we’ve yet to see major substantiated incidents from Tennessee, Florida State, or Miami. Brian noted the other day that this year’s race for the BCS was “the most wide open college football has been.” It appears this applies to the Fulmer Cup, as well, though any crimes that unseat Delaware at this point may require the calling of the National Guard, a raising of the DHS Alert Level, or the announcement of Defcon-1 by the Strategic Air Command.

Enjoy your weekend, and please do Football Outsiders a favor by stopping by and reading their story on NHL athletes and their very, very personal involvement with autism research.

Alabama fans, enjoy A-Day–it’ll be the last time you see John Parker Wilson go through an entire game unharmed–we wish we could be there for the barbecue.

Mike “son of Jim” Fassel has been named the Director of Football Operations at Princeton. Fassel was a walk-on place kicker for Boston College who received his degree in 2004… yes, last year. Man I wish my dad was an NFL coach.

In EDSBS.com’s infancy we had an early and promising appearance by our wondering correspondent, Doc Pedro, which was well received and even generated some of our first non-relative based comments. Well, he disappeared for a while but has resurfaced on my instruction to begin providing for our loyal readers our Ivy League preview. Today we begin with Doc Pedro’s own Alma Mater, Dartmouth.

IVY League Preview: Dartmouth College looking players (open tryouts) : by Doc Pedro

After a few months of intensely investigating the steroid trade in Tijuana; I am back to for EDSBS.com’s annual profile of the IVY League.

Doc Pedro didn’t find the steroids, but Viagra was aplenty.

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