Tennessee will graduate Jonathan Crompton next year, leaving Tennessee with no established successor to the Great Catfish under center. You can have your alternate theories, heel: blame the recruiting of Phil Fulmer or lack thereof, blame other quarterbacks simply not working out, blame the inability of Kiffin to snag a top-notch qb right out of the gate as a first-year head coach. (This being the least logical one means you as a fan will gravitate towards it.) All of these are missing the real cause of Tennessee’s quarterback shortage:

On different occasions and including July 26, the sports page has covered the fact that Coach Lane Kiffin had been having a tough time trying to find a top-quality quarterback to come to Tennessee that would be able to fit into his game plan.

I would like to offer a real possibility why he hasn’t been able to do so: 19 years ago, this child was killed by abortion, and so he is not here now available for recruiting.

Yes….BY TIME TRAVELING ABORTIONBOTS EMPLOYED BY THE SEC MUAHAHAAHAHHAHAH!!! You know all our secrets now, Tennessee. It’s part of the vast officiating conspiracy, which is co-funded by the SEC, ESPN, and the Elders of Zion. As we speak samples of Tim Tebow’s sperm are being turkey-basted into female sprinters in 1992, 95, and 98 in order to create an unbroken chain of succession between the Baby Rhino and his multiracial test-tube spawn. (Diversification is key; wouldn’t want it to be too obvious a ploy.)

(Auburn has the same project, but for some reason they chose to keep breeding different variations of Daniel Cobb over and over, including model 3.0, the “Chris Todd.” They must all smell like cookies or something.)

Daniel Cobb: his clones smell like cookies.

In news that will shock absolutely no one whatsoever, Tony Franklin does an interview that ran in the Montgomery Advertiser this past weekend where he suggests the overall vibe at Auburn is somewhere between that of Elsinore-in-regal-crisis and the KGB-era Lubyanka prison in full blossom. If this surprises you, congratulations: you are a deeply deluded Auburn fan, and probably already subscribe to the conspiracy theory of this having something to do with an impending ruling on Alabama. SPIES EVERYWHERE WE TELL YOU.

Lubyanka on the Piedmont: Auburn.

(For sanity–if you’re into that poison–is at Joe Cribbs’ Car Wash, as usual. It’s slow and Tony Franklin likes to talk. Voila! Off-season piece!)

Only the finest niblets from the place Terry Bowden fled in the middle of the night with his binkie and sippy cup in hand from the article follow.

On the atmosphere:

“It was the most unusual place I’ve ever been,” Franklin said of the Auburn program. “No one liked anybody else. There was this deep distrust of everybody. The coaches didn’t trust the administration, the administration didn’t trust each other or the coaches. It was very strange and very unnerving. You would walk down the halls and there would be tension you could just feel.

On Auburn coaches and religion:

“That’s all they do is pray — and talk about praying and religion,” Franklin said. “It’s a constant thing with them, and it’s just overwhelming at times. A lot of people use religion as a crutch, and I think that’s the case there. Every word coming out of their mouths is something about religion, and most of it is just a joke.

It certainly explains their offense in the final years of the Tuberville era. (Florida note: Damn you to hell, Brandon Cox.)

Reader Ian points out a frightening similarity between the Tamil Tigers logo and LSU’s own branding, as well as offering up his own hybrid of the two:

Please not the “Libation” slipped in there for effect. As he points out:

The Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group accused of attacking civilian villagers, employing child soldiers, and possibly deep-frying unusual local wildlife, have recently been decimated by the Sri Lankan government…Meanwhile, the LSU Tigers are also controversial. They’ve been accused of attacking civilian tailgaters, employing child soldiers, and bearing firearms…

LSU has two up on them: The Tamil Tigers are a big 0-1 on the year, and still have their prized starting quarterback. Both do share a love of spicy food, though Cajun and creole cooking have nothing on Sri Lankan food, a cuisine so heinously spicy it contributes to higher rates of stomach cancer in the country. (It also makes determining whether you have the shits very difficult, so ass-scorching are the resulting bowel movements. They could be normal, or they could be shigella, as friends of ours who lived there found out the hard way.)

Disappointment has five flavors in 2008. Numbers five and four are available for your inevitable disappointment, too.

Three: Auburn/Your New Diet. French ladies don’t get fat. Nor do they fire Tony Franklin.

Both are mysteries involving long walks, various forms of starvation, and cultural differences it would take years of dodgy research to fully flesh out. In fact, we suggest you contact the Ford Foundation and other luxurious research institutions fond of giving out fat grant money to let us research these. We, in turn, will take that money, move to Thailand, and do all of our important research on both topics from there face-down in a bowl of pad thai and with an IV of Chang Beer planted firmly in our arm. Trust us: it sounds unconventional, but all new science at first is indistinguishable from fraud. Or magic. We forget the quote.

Anyway, Auburn began 2008 as a consensus top tenth and a half team, getting ten in the AP and eleven in the USA Today poll on the basis of their fierce defense and the introduction of the Tigerbonesplitwhateverthefuckitwas Tony Franklin spread attack, which was double awesome because the Tigers had installed it early for the Peach Bowl to end the previous season. You were were ready, because you were doing this the sensible way, no?

Just like when you switched to sugar-free candy, or light beer, and began tapering into the diet–you didn’t have to start all at once! Just easing into it in a sensible way, and not like the time you just started eating nothing but bacon for three months back in 1997. Man, you smelled like one big piece of pig ass. (But my god, you could almost see that little D’Angelo man dent! It was there, you swear!)

Lookin’ good, Auburn. Just a few more pounds and you’ll be perfect.

Yet…something was wrong from the start. (more…)

Please give a surly EDSBS welcome to guest poster Monday Morning Punter, KSK Mafioso and Deadspin weekend rustler.

Alright everybody listen up! I believe in all of you. It’s a big home game, it’s on TV. So let’s get to practice and get down to business. Jake?

Yeah coach?

How’s that thumb of yours? Ready to practice this week?

You know coach, I was thinkin’. How come you never let us tailgate? I saw bunches of people tailgating last week. How come you never let us do that?

(more…)

This…this really isn’t Nick Saban heading to work on a normal day, is it?

The video–which for the video-impaired shows a 12 car, six motorcycle strong motorcade bullrushing through the middle of UA’s campus–was uploaded on July 28th, 2007, and the description reads:

Nick Saban’s daily routine, heading to work, on University Blvd here on campus at Alabama. We go jogging early and decided to bring a camera one day to catch a glimpse of our beloved coach.

We’ve seen the motorcades they use to ferry around members of the People’s Congress and the Chinese politburo around Beijing, and you’ll be sadly unsurprised to know that this is comparable to those. It kicks the stuffing out of the Laotian VIP motorcade, though; one motorcycle with a gumball light and three 1994 Mercedes do not prestigious, awe-inspiring display of privilege make.

Now someone please tell us this is a rare occasion, and that Saban doesn’t roll through like this weekly anymore, and we’ll go back to being oblivious about the obscene amount of power granted the head coach of Alabama. (For all we know, he’s signing death warrants and running his own jails.)

Update: Old video, of course. We still think he runs his own secret prisons.

Via Dawg Sports, of course, comes the side-splittingest breaking tale of the entire offseason: UGA mutant star Knowshon Moreno being forced to write a two-page essay last year on noise pollution following a writeup for loud music in the dorms. I cannot encourage you strongly enough to click through to the documentation itself. Before we even get to what he wrote, there’s the hyperreaction of the Boss Queen of the Conduct Review Board (naturally named “Brad”), who announced—go on, say this out loud without sneering: “…that Knowshon had not fulfilled the original conditions of the sanction regarding formatting of the research paper”. It gets better (emphasis added for spite):

On October 31, 2006, Knowshon responded to Brad but resubmitted the same incorrect sanction. Brad once again informed Knowshon that he needed to format the paper correctly and resubmit the sanction. In addition, he warned Knowshon about the possibility of having his record flagged…

And then there’s the essay itself. From the conclusion:

To show the responsibility that I have gained over this situation I was recently asked in my room one night after quiet hours if I could do a back flip. My answer to this was yes because I can, but I kindly stated that I would not be able to perform this act at the time because I did not want to disturb my fellow neighbors below and around me.

He goes on to state that he will resolve this issue by living off-campus next year. The document further informs us that Knowshon’s record “remains flagged.” Knowshon himself….does not.

Clearly, the wrath of Brad has had devastating and far-reaching consequences.

Joe Paterno, ah, that funny old guy! Just joshing on about how he could coach another 10 years, ho-ho! What drollity!

“I don’t even care if I get a contract. I’ll be very frank with you,” the 81-year-old Paterno said Saturday in his first meeting with reporters in three months. “I think the university will do what they think is right, whenever the time comes. Right now, I’m very comfortable.”

“What do I need an extension for?” he asked before joking that he could coach “just another 10 years.”

Blind peasant, you don’t even see what’s coming your way, do you? Paterno will survive to see the singularity on his Mediterranean diet, lack of exposure to radiation from portable electronic devices, and healthy insistence on not using horseless carriages to get everywhere. Then, just as Ray Kurzweil predicts will happen, he’ll have all of his organs replaced and coach Penn State football for hundred of years barring severe catastrophic bodily injury or murder.

That Little Rascal: Paterno to coach until molten lead rains from the sky.

Somewhere in that house are bags and bags of blue and white Nittany vitamins. We’d bet our head in a jar on it.

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…)

Swindle and I had enormous fun on EDSBS LIVE this year with the annual chaos and silliness that surrounds the coaching carousel in college football, but I must say I’m always a little bit sad when that last hire is made, the fun wheel comes grinding to a halt, and the beginning of the offseason really starts to sink in.

But I was thinking: why does the fun have to stop? Why not take the fun all the way to its logical conclusion:

The 2008 Coaching Hires: Handicapping Who Will Be Fired First

Get out your actuarial tables, scandal sensors, and unacceptable loss forecasters, ’cause it’s time to figure out which of our newly-hired coaches is most likely to get shitcanned first.

Paul Johnson, Georgia Tech – 50:1 You know the only thing hard about Paul Johnson’s new job? Christmas, and the agonizing decision of to whom he owes a bigger fruit basket: Chan Gailey or the rest of the ACC. Can one objectively say who set the bar lowest?

Bo Pelini, Nebraska – 30:1 A favorite in the field to have a nice, long stay at his new home. The man is following Bill Callahan, for Christ’s sake – a coach who was so inept at so traditionally strong a program that Mark Mangino and Gary Pinkel stopped, stared, and thought to themselves, “Holy shit. We can do this.”

Bobby Petrino, Arkansas – 20:1 Following the Nutt Job, he should be more secure than Fort Knox, but let’s not forget this is a man who’s kicked two teams in the balls on his way out the door. He’s slick like Mitt Romney, which means we really can’t rule out anything. Especially because he’s headed to Arkansas, where scandals breed like bunnies. Great value bet here.

Rich Rodriguez, Michigan – 10:1 On the one hand, he’s the coach at Michigan. It’s a pinnacle job and they’ll keep him as long as he’s doing well, which he should. On the other hand, he’s the coach at Michigan, which means the intolerance for sleaziness is fiftyfold what it would be at a school like, say, West Virginia. Or Ohio State. So we’ve gotta hedge here: if he’s a man of good character, he’ll be there forever and win many many many games. If there are skeletons in his closet, he’ll be cut at the knees faster than you can say Sweatervest.

Regrets skimming the fine print…

Mike Sherman, Texas A&M – 6:1 We’re talking Aggies, so we’ve got a special set of questions that need answers: Is he fascist? Would he sacrifice his daughter’s life for a collie? How adept is he at fending off pirate attacks? To what extent would he prefer the world be more like it was in the 1880s than it is today? Would he buy a nice bottle of Boone’s to get a farm animal into bed? And would he know that Orange Hurricane would be the flavor to do it?

Houston Nutt, Ole Miss – 3:1 Buyer’s remorse? We’ll see. We do know the good people of Oxford are dropping by Nutt Job’s new home three times a week to help try to mold him into an acceptable member of society a la Michael Oher, but can you really teach an old dog new tricks? Hillary Clinton advises, “Not old dogs from Arkansas.”

Bill Stewart, West Virginia – 2:1 West Virginia was practically forced to make the classic “We’ll Prove How Much We Won’t Miss You By Hiring Your Old Assistant And Also We’re Suing You” move. Though the sentiment is understandable, the WPHMWWMYBHYOAAAWSY move rarely leads to a lasting relationship. Let’s face it: we’ve all been there. The girlfriend dumps us for a hotter, richer guy so we thump our chest, down that liter of moonshine, file a lawsuit, and then immediately go to bed with the ex-girlfriend’s sluttiest friend. Before long, though, we get over it, slink away to our physician, and triple check for STDs. (You best win and win big soon, Mr. Stewart.)

Rick Neuheisel, UCLA – 1:25 In real life, Vegas would never allow this man’s name to even be on the books, so sure is his impending combustion. After all, if this were a movie, the pitch would go something like this:

Plot outline: Born again coach Supremely sketchy egomaniac with hubris that would shame Bill Bennett is hired to try to outshine and outglitz the indomitable crosstown rival coach.

Setting: Hollywood.

Dramatic Build: After federal agents use a Ryan Seacrest team gang bang videotape to coerce cooperation from the team’s quarterback, authorities are able to undercover an interstate heroin trafficking ring involving the team’s coach and eager recruits who want to earn a spot on the squad.

Climactic Final Scene: Troubled coach flees campus in explosive-packed Lotus with authorities hot in high speed pursuit. Unable to evacuate the targeted rival campus, Special Deputy Agent Peter Carroll is forced to make a daring move to stop the reckless coach from carbombing the rival university into oblivion.

Sequel: An imprisoned coach bribes wardens into transferring top inmate athletes to his prison so he can win the Penitentiary Cup.