It’s not much, but at the current prices for Florida we can’t own so much as a blade of grass on Ben Hill Griffin, so Boise State it is for the official owned team of EDSBS.com.

For $100 per share, anyone can buy stock in the new corporation, and will have the ability to vote on a board of directors that will oversee and make decisions related to the school’s athletics programs – including football and other programs. The initial share offering will be $20-million.

Boise State Broncos, Inc. will be modeled on a similar idea put forth by the Green Bay Packers of the NFL.

We’re in for a grand to own a chunk of a team we’ve never even seen, and for an investment we can’t be sure we’ll ever see back. Talley-ho, American investing strategies! Some changes will have to be made if we are to have any input on the future of the franchise.

Out with this…bronco. In with the combat bear ridden by a man in a Master Chief outfit with a flamethrower.

Wyoming plays BYU this weekend. This marks an important point in the season for Dave Christensen and the Cowboys, who can continue the upward trend in a rebuilding year by getting above .500 and defeating a powerful conference foe in BYU. There is historical resonance here, too: this game marks the 40th anniversary of the Black 14 game in 1969. 14 black members of the Cowboys squad were kicked off the team that year for planning to wear black armbands in protest of BYU’s policies of racial discrimination. (The official policy of discrimination was lifted in 1978.) Wyoming won anyway by a margin of 40-7, but the incident caused a national stir anyway, and led to further incidents like this one against Colorado State in 1970.

Most notably, when BYU’s basketball team played at Colorado State the following winter (1970), protestors threw raw eggs and a flaming molotov cocktail on the floor, and a piece of angle iron struck a newspaper photographer, drawing blood and knocking him unconscious. Approximately 50 blacks and whites charged onto the floor at halftime to disrupt a performance by BYU’s Cougarettes, and police were called in to quell the riot.

That’s how one properly storms the floor. Enough history: bring on the Cougar dong, please.

Ahh, that’s much better. (HT: The geniuses at Shaggy Bevo.) Nothing clears up a moment of solemn reflection like a poorly placed Cougar tail and one kid in an orange hat who looks reaaaaaaallllly psyched about his mascot packing furry womb wand the size of a Claymore in his holy undergarments.

Welcome to our Factor Five Five Factor Preview of Virginia Tech at East Carolina. The Factor Five Five Factor Preview examines the Thursday Night Game, featuring the Virginia Tech Hokies versus the East Carolina Pirates. Tonight’s game will feature YARRRRRRRRRRR pirates, so someone is surrendering the booty tonight.

Bad. Ass.

Enjoy.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. Virginia Tech’s offense has been better than its dismal usual this year for two reasons: the improved run blocking of the Hokies offensive line and the emergence of Ryan Williams, the freshman running back who enters the game with 930 yards rushing and 10 TDs. (more…)

Jonathan “JB” Gerald, the coach Mike Locksley punched in the face in a dispute two weeks ago, has turned in his keys and cell phone to UNM officials and is likely out in the completely logical and not at all insane next step in Punch-Out, Lobo Edition. For Mike Locksley’s next trick he will cheat on his wife and get half of her money, lose a game and steal your bowl bid, and make you fat by eating all of these delicious cookies over here.

(Alphabetical taking forever. Along in a bit.)

Legarrette Blount FALCON PUNCH!!!

Video after the jump. He’s as completely suspended as Byron Hout was completely bitchmade by Blount’s sucker punch. Unsportsmanlike? Oh, certainly. Dirty? Completely, yes, but shit, would you so much as step on Blount’s shadow without his permission now? Somewhere he and Ron Artest are walking through a suburban mall right now punching people in the face randomly and talking about how awesome smoothies are.

“They’re the shit.” BLA-DOW!!!

[/concussed fifth grader punched into fountain]

“No doubt. And with the immune blast? I gotta have my immune blast, dawg.” SPLA-KOW!!!

[/48 year old science teacher punched into Banana Republic plate glass window]

It’s terrible, but if Blount’s intent was to walk a-feared through this world like Mike Tyson and Ray Liotta forever, earning calls for the National Guard for routine traffic stops because this motherfucker is totally crazy, then yeah: mission accomplished, baby. That’s WWE heel script-reading portrayed perfectly.

(more…)

Throw to your wide receiver flying across the water at 40 mph all you like: the real wonder is in the clip above, where Tulsa’s Mike Bryan demonstrates the time-honored Okie fishing method of noodling, also known as “fishing for non-pussies.” Someday this concept will expand to grouper, tuna, and if you’re a real man, sharks. Take footage, send post-haste plz in Youtube-ready format.

The real miracle in there is Bryan’s girlfriend, Brittany, who not only goes out there with him, but is county fair hot and actually likes wrestling with fish for fun.

“I’d rather come out noodling than go out to eat and the movies,” Brittany says.

If we hadn’t already proposed, married, and had a wonderful relationship with a woman who knows how to properly dose the tranq dart fired from a blowgun that puts us out every Saturday night, Brittany would be be choice 1a for Madame Swindle. A woman who will watch the air bubbles while you fight a giant mutant catfish at the bottom of an Oklahoma lake is a special, special woman indeed. Promise her anything, sir, and never let her get away from you. (HT: Smoking Musket.

We don’t know what secrets reside in Howard Schnellenberger’s voice, particularly in its lower registers: the location of German submarines loaded with Nazi gold, the authorship of the Nazca lines, and the point where Amelia Earhart was abducted by aliens. Admit that you believe Schnellenberger could be holding onto all three, and also responsible for the events leading up to them, or you are a liar.

The question had Howard Schnellenberger lowering his signature baritone voice to a level where deep, dark secrets reside.

“I have one rented,” rasped Florida Atlantic’s 75-year-old football coach, “in Oklahoma.”

You think he’s lying, but when the Dapper Don swoops in like a Green Beret clad in Brooks Brothers into the stadium Saturday, you’ll all be at your knees for the number one stunna of the class of 1857. Schnellenberger did actually fly in a helicopter into a press conference at the 1984 Orange Bowl when his Miami team faced Nebraska and eventually spoiled an undefeated season for the Huskers, because if you give people money in South Florida, they like to do things like burn it in piles and take helicopters everywhere.

Also, please bow at the awesome contained here:

Next on the list after that might be how his wife of 50 years, Beverlee, wore a full-length white mink coat atop a fire engine while reveling in the ticker-tape parade for the Hurricanes down Biscayne Boulevard after they’d delivered Nebraska with arguably its most emotional defeat ever, a 31-30 outcome that spoiled an unbeaten season.

“She looks good in white mink,” crowed Schnellenberger, who since 1982 has worn a suit during games.

And a flurry of women’s panties hit the stage.

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.

For a time in our misspent youth, we wanted to work in national security. Don’t laugh: worse people have done the job at very high levels, with even the admittedly insane thriving in positions of great import. For a time, nothing was more fun for a compulsive list-maker than constructing lists of “States Most Likely to Fail,” something we did for a large non-profit relief agency specializing in these things. Unfortunately, this proved to be totally useless, since we were for the most part writing reports for people who already knew what was happening in the field, but couldn’t get through to management.

Us: “Yes, the current food shortage in Somalia does hint at some serious instability outside of Puntland.”

Management: “You don’t say? [/attends useless 3 hour meeting]”

Field office: “Thanks. We’ll use this report to paper the walls of our bombed-out office.”

Thus leading us to the only logical way to rank the relative values of the USA Today Coaches Poll preseason top 25, an exercise we’ve become increasingly opposed to as time wears on. (See: extensive arguments about the inflexibility of rankings, the need to rank teams after week three or so, etc.) Each team will therefore be ranked in terms of stability, and correlated to the country of their choice.

Benny Beaver, jacked on over-the-counter cough syrup. Again.

25. Oregon State. Taiwan. The Asian Tiger of the Pac-10, Oregon State is always a nice bid for a 25 spot, especially because most voters not named Steve Spurrier are completely out of ideas by the time they get to 25. Like the Tropical New Jersey of the South China Sea, Oregon State makes diamonds from the coal surrounding them, somehow remaining competitive and managing power transitions well. (The Riley-Erickson-Riley switch progressed without the usual “Dennis Erickson Implosion,” a move of underplayed skill on OSU’s part.) They run the daylights out of the ball, win eight or nine games a year with frequency, and generally manage their limited resources well. A solid 25 pick by any standards, especially with a healthy Jacquizz Rodgers.

Internal Stability: Good, save for the continual qb hedging between senior qbs Sean Canfield, who can throw the ball well, and Lyle Moevao, who can throw the ball well and good through the chest of a receiver, but has the man-bear willingness to take hits and dish them out on occasion.

Surprising thing you did not know about the team and the country: Both thrive despite the constant threat of nuclear destruction: Taiwan by China, and Oregon State by the periodic rumors of Mike Riley being hired away from Corvallis. (more…)

A few Fulmer Cupdates from the hot August home stretch on the Fulmer Cup beat. A reminder: the final day of the competition will be September 1st, with all points becoming null and void at noon. The traditional Fulmer Cup Amnesty Day of September 2nd will be observed in concert with Football’s Eve, so if you know someone looking for a day when their offenses will neither be tallied in points or reported as in-season shame, this is the day to do it. The current standings are here, but a full EDSBS Scoreboard will be up on Friday.

To the awarding of the points:

–Penn State has two boozy outstanding cases pending. Senior lineman Ako Poti decided to go-cart drunk, and substituted the go-cart portion with a car, which is illegal in all states everywhere. (Except for Arkansas, where it’s termed “breezy ridin’,” and punishable by a stern talkin’ to by the local sheriff.) Poti blew somewhere between a .10 and a .16, a formidable sum for a huge man and worthy of two points for standard and unexceptional DUI.

Penn State gets no points for recruit Glenn Carson’s drunk and disorderly, as he was not an early enrollee or on the team at the time of his arrest. He does get an appreciative nod from Joaquin Phoenix, who only hopes Carson belted out a response of “MONEY!!!” when asked any questions by the police.

–Occasional Fulmer Cup contributor Ohio University gives us nothing as grandiose as Frank Solich’s mickey-fueled DUI arrest or the punching of a police horse, but the theft of two laptops will give you four points in the Fulmer Cup: one for the misdemeanor plea deal Travis Carrie took, and three for the felony charges on the books for Corey Moncrief. Moncrief is also planning to major in criminal justice, and seems to be failing the fieldwork portion. Ironic juxtaposition, bitches! (HT: DevilGrad.)