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.

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.)

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.)

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. Maybe you should have cut certain old friends of yours. Oh, sure: you had defense-a-plenty. Trey Blackmon, Antonio Coleman, and a horde of no-name young ‘uns held the line with effort, just like you did puffing away on some desolate back street or on the elliptical machine. When you needed power, it was there; endurance, yes. In the name of holding it off, you had that part down.

That wasn’t the problem, though, was it? The problem came with your old friends, the ones who had just met this new “diet” person and weren’t taking kindly to him? Hugh Nall, Steve Ensminger…they were comfortable in their ways, ineffective and flabby though they were. Run-block, pounding the ball forward mindlessly regardless of the situation…that had to change just like your habit of buying a six pack designed to last the week but finishing it by Tuesday, didn’t it?

And there you were, wondering why your pants were still tight enough to split your balls into a sad camel nose–even with the new exercise, you were still eating yourself into a steady-state of ineffective flab when it came to how you did things day to day. You didn’t get along with this new guy, and frankly, you began to wonder if what he was teaching was going to work?

So intead of just diving headfirst into the project, you half-assed the thing. You built a half-assed zone read into the offense. You ate 1,000 calories of low-carb ice cream because “hey, it’s on the diet!” You put not one, but two quarterbacks into a morass of a scheme, ensuring neither would properly get a read for how it actually worked and felt under live fire. You drank wine because “hey, it’s an antioxidant,” and boy sure is it when you drink three glasses of it a night, you walking, talking tipsy, antioxidized bloated picture of health, you. Your habits and the new diet were as harmonious as inserting a chainsaw solo into the middle of a Schubert piece. It wasn’t working.

You let this roll on because you’re the laid-back CEO type when it comes to things–Captain Laissez-Faire, an attitude that has benefited you in the past, certainly. The adult in the room expected everyone to behave like adults, and when the Play-doh started flying across the room–first in tiny balls, and then unopened in the can to ensure damage–you flipped out and shut the whole thing down, letting loose and letting your old habits take you right back to where you were before.

Toss him out. And those Zone bars? Throw that shit out, too.

And if you watched the Auburn/Georgia game Saturday, that’s where Auburn is: back at Chik-Fil-A, sullenly ordering the 12 pack, with the fries, and the large Coke, and fuck it let’s just get a brownie, too, because it’s been a hard day, and I’ll make up for it….sometime. There was the Al Borges toss play; there was the bootleg pass, and the naked boot, and bootlegs of all sorts, and all of the greatest hits of the Borges playbook. Ultimately, after all that effort and expenditure (and Nutrisystem has nothing on paying two ex-offensive coordinators at the same time), you ended up with the same ineffective offense you had two years ago, reams of disappointment caused by a piss-poor offense, and ending up back where you were six years ago: on the hotseat and dodging bullets.

Maybe you should just work on loving who you are instead of chasing the latest fad. Who doesn’t like a little meat on a program? It’s cute, unless you’re clawing to the death with 14-12 games against fellow failed diet fad enthusiasts Tennessee. Yours ended up with disappointment, but that crazy-ass urine-drinking all-tofu diet they did? Holy hell, you’ll take the sad shortcomings of this season over the
total kidney failure and hospitalization they got out of their new diet.

Now where are those chips…mmm…old friend Doritos, you never fail when the sad comes…and when you lose to Vandy, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Mississippi consecutively, the sad comes fast and furious and by the pound.

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?

…Well, Jake, you’re…you’re playing in the games. The tailgates are for people that watch the games. You can’t tailgate and expect to do well in the game.

But I can’t play this week. I’m injured. So I can go tailgating this Saturday?

No, Jake. You need to stay on the sideline and keep up with the games. So you know what’s going on when you DO come back.

Oh.

Like I said, men. It’s time to get it into gear, and this will be the game–

Hey coach?

Dammit, Jake. Now what?

I don’t think I’ll make it back this year. So can I tailgate this weekend? You said if I didn’t come back, I could tailgate. So just scratch me for the remainder, k?

You like your scholarship, Jake? Because if you want to stay in school here, you’ll forget about tailgating on Saturday.

Okay…

So like I said, get focused and think about this game. We’re gonna need to make some plays and–

Hey coach?

Jake, if you just wait three weeks, YOU can coach this damn team and you can do whatever you want!

Good point, coach.

Oh, Jiminy Christmas. Let’s just take the day off, guys. Hit the showers.

But I’m not dirty!

Git your ass outta my sight!

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.

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.

“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.

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.

Mark Richt: I’m going back, guys. He really needs help.

Soldiers, looking slightly alarmed at the rocking helicopter: Coach, with all due respect, you are about to damage $5.9 million of taxpayer property.

Weis: So fucking what? I’LL BUY YOU A NEW ONE I’M SIGNED FOR THREE HUNDRED YEARS. Get me a fucking crowbar!

Tuberville: Have fun, Boy Scout. Me and Shannon are going on patrol.

Shannon: That sounds so much more pleasant than living in Miami, Tommy. And: safer.

Tuberville: Fuckin’ right, man. (They fist pound.)

Richt: Language, guys. Language.

Weis: Crowbar! CROWBAR!!! And a hot pressed sandwich, assholes. Doesn’t anyone have a hot pressed sandwich in this bullet-infested dustcrotch of a country? AND WHY IS THERE NO HAM TO BE FOUND???

Tuberville: Have fun. We’re going to blast some terrorist ass. HEY, CHARLIE! If you make it in five minutes, I won’t make you do the Truffle Shuffle later!

Weis: Up your ass, Tuberville! I hope you eat an RPG!

Tuberville: You could!

Shannon: Let him go, man.

Weis: Go to hell, TUBERVILLE! Who made these seats so frickin’ small….

Richt goes back to help extract Weis. Shannon and Tuberville suit up and join a battalion of Rangers on patrol. They creep through a ravine choked with boulders, guns at the ready. The icy caps of mountains are visible over the tops of the ravine, and pine trees on its edge whistle slightly in the wind.

Shannon: This is so relaxing.

Tuberville: Are you kidding me—oh, yeah. Forgot.

Shannon: I’m learning things this trip, Tommy. I think I’m meant to be an artist.

TT: Really?

Shannon: Yup. Mixed media, I’m thinking ceramics, fireworks, and woodcut. Perhaps with some old lithography thrown in there.

TT: Sounds like you’re collaging there, Randy.

Shannon: Damn right I’m collaging. I’ve never told you this, but Dada’s always been one of my faves. Not the fruity Dali dorm-poster surrealism, either: I’m talking straight Duchamp, man.

TT: Of course. You’re no dillettante.

Shannon: If they only knew what we really talk about in Miami coaches’ meetings, man. Remember Dave Wannstedt’s presentation on Volition, Will, and Chance in the works of JM Coetzee?

TT: I found it too precious. He’s such a close reader. No room for me as the subjective reader? Please. It’s—

Shannon: SHHH!!!

The soldiers stand at the ready, crouched over the lip of a huge boulder. Before them sits a camp. There are five men: four in traditional tribal dress and combat boots, and one in white, a tall man with an immense beard shot through with gray hair.

TT: Holy shit.

Shannon: It’s—

Soldiers: Lock and load, boys. Coaches, stay behind me.

Gunfire erupts, and the four tribesmen drop to the ground dead. The lone man in white looks around, panics, and then begins to run toward the dark mouth of a cave in the wall of the ravine.

Officer: Anyone feel like hauling some ass and capturing the most wanted man in the world? HUH?

TT: Lemme take him, lieutenant. I know just how to take someone down for good.

Officer: All yours, coach.

TT: CLICK CLACK, OSAMA!!!

Capture, Tuberville. Photo: LSUFreek.

TT: This terrorist capture was sponsored by Under Armour, motherfucker.

Osama Bin Laden, in Arabic: Oh, god! My knee! You’ve permanently mangled my knee!

TT: Oh, did I? Purely unintentional. I apologize.

Shannon: Yes, Osama. Purely unintentional. Won’t happen again.

Osama: Infidel scum, that’s clearly an illegal technique! I’m maimed now! MAIMED!

(They fist pound.)

Randy Shannon, Charlie Weis, Mark Richt, Tommy Tuberville, and Yale coach Jack Siedlecki will be touring the Middle East this May. This may or may not happen, but if it does it will be purely unintentional.

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.

Our guest columnist today is Presidential Candidate Ron “Dr. No-Huddle” Paul.

Thanks for having me here. I’m not sure who you are, what you want, or why I’m even here. In fact, I don’t know who I’m writing this to. Why do people send me letters? Why do people on the internet like me? I don’t know. Really, I don’t know. Someone picks me up from my house in the morning, takes me places, and I just start talking until someone claps. These are all things I don’t know. Where am I? Really, where am I?

What I do know about is freedom and 1970s standards of gynecology. That’s why I still believe in two things: the Dalkon Shield and the Constitution. Especially the Constitution. I may have had my hands in more vaginas than any other member of congress except for John Boehner, but at least I got paid for doing it, and not the other way around. Is that a joke? Why are you all laughing? I’m confused? Yes, I’m confused!

Hey, why’s my name on a blimp? A blimp? Really? I’m thrilled about the possibilities of dirigible travel. It’s one of my passions, but I’ll tell you this: you won’t see me telling you that the government should be involved in making blimps, unless they’re blimps equipped with machine guns to put up along the Mexican border, because it’s a well-known fact that Mexicans fear both guns and blimps. It’s natural law, just like the Constitution and the rules of Yahtzee.

Speaking of games that involve hitting your spouse: football. I’m here to talk about football? Really? Okay, I’ll talk about it. Ron Paul likes football, but doesn’t like a few things about football as it stands in America.

First, a Ron Paul administration believes you should go ahead and do what you like in football. Helmets are unnecessary encumbrances on your basic freedoms as a football player! In fact, by restricting what you can see on the field, it actually causes more accidents and injuries.

Second, I believe the football should conform to all of the clauses of the Constitution, including the second amendment. You can’t like one, and not like the other. Do I think this means you should be able to carry guns on the field? That’s not the government’s business unless you want to tell people they can’t carry guns onto the field. And from what I’ve seen, the introduction of firearms into the game could make for some real excitement on the field, people!

Now that’s freedom? Wait, that’s not what the card says. Now, THAT’S Freedom! Who’s typing these things again? What was I talking about…

Oh, third: rules. You’re free, and that’s a huge responsibility. So when it comes to first downs, we can’t as a nation rely on the oversight of replay officials, or the unsubtle fascism of chalk lines, or even the quiet tyranny of aluminum stands. There’s so much order in this game, it’s a wonder people don’t all wear the same colors to the games! Wait, they do? Well, you know the last time I saw uniforms this consistent and well-arranged? Soviet Russia, my friends, the largest totalitarian regime currently standing on the planet. That’s the road to serfdom, people, and you pay eighty bucks a jersey for it! If you’re that keen on matching, I’ll buy you an Aeroflot ticket to Leningrad myself so you can be somewhere you feel more comfortable, Ivan.

(Steve, stop looking at me like that! People on the internet LOVE me. And I would buy anyone who disagrees with me a ticket to Leningrad, I would. St. Petersburg? Florida? Why would I send anyone to hang with a bunch of retirees? Do I pay you? Where am I again?)

Oh, and you’ve played in your backyard using a spare pair of flipflops and a stolen traffic cone as first down markers, or even resorted to the “two-completions-makes-a-first-down” rule—why can’t football do this, too? The games are too long as is, so let’s just get rid of the meddling regulators in black and white and just let the players decide what makes a first down or not? And as for seating, let the people figure that out. Stampedes are the natural byproduct of competition, and those crushed by them? Their body parts can earn a fair price on the open market like every other good, like babies and Honda Accords do.

And who cares what goes in players’ bodies? It’s not for the Federal Government to decide that, or even care. Remember Tony Mandarich? What a specimen he was, and he was hopped up on every imaginable kind of supplement the government wants you to believe is harmful: horse testosterone, distilled monkey semen, nandraolone, HGH, stanazolol, Tylenol PM, Tylenol AM, Tylenolalone, pure hydrogen enemas, espresso eye drops, methamphetamine gummy bears, morphine… he had it all, and look at what it did for him.

See? He looks just like that now, but with a second head. He’s twice as free!

Why this is any concern of the federal government is beyond me, since both he and his second head are doing just fine last I checked. Heck, I could be on the last quaalude in the Western Hemisphere right now, and you wouldn’t know. I’m not! I’m not not on the last quaalude! Freedom!

Oh, and most importantly, it’s not the job of the federal government to tell you how to gamble on football. It’s just not. You should be able to set a fair price on points, point-shaving, intentional injuries and mid-game assassinations as your whim in accordance with the laws of the free-market. How else will we develop the bullet-proof players of the future without the invisible hand of the market whisking away the weak, non-bulletproof players of yesterday from the field? What you do with your money is none of the federal government’s business, even when it comes to paying a bookie thirty large to put mescaline in Tim Tebow’s cereal prior to a big rivalry game. Freedom!

And one final note: under a Ron Paul presidency–when it happens, not if!–you’ll get your gambling winnings back not in this imaginary scrap you call cash, but in the only thing of real value besides freedom: Spanish doubloons.

I’m Ron Paul, and I think I’m running for President. Thank you all, whoever you are, and wherever I am.

Ron Paul is running for President as a Republican in 2008. If you have never touched a girl, you have to vote for him. It’s in the Constitution.

Clark’s response to readers Mitch and Chris, who both got this response to their protests of the proposed new clock rules.

“NFL studies showed that adding the 25-40 clock will actually add 4 to 5 plays per game based on consistent pace of play. BCS Football and officials themselves were for this change. With the ready for play, live ball out of bounds rules, (This happens about 12 times per game, with on average 3 of those in last 2 minutes) we should get the same amount of plays in a time span that is a few minutes shorter. For the record it is BCS football, TV, Conference Commissioners with lengthy seasons and television that leads the push for faster games. The Committee’s stance is that the game has given about all it can give back without a negative influence on product. Next move will have to be from Administrators or Television themselves. It is still a great game. MC”

Beginning with the caveat that our mathematical skills are somewhere in the simian range, we actually asked other people to help us out, essentially admitting FAIL and going to the phone-a-friend for this: a Georgia Tech Ph.D (”too many factors, unsure,”) a former finance guy, and a few others who all seemed equally baffled by what would actually happen if the new rules were implemented, and if Michael Clark is being–ahem!–disingenuous with his numbers here.

Less football equals more football, people! Now if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to take a healthy cigarette break.

If you’re dealing with forty seconds between plays, you’re talking NFL clock rules here. Take the status quo from this Ivan Maisel quote from an article on why college ball is superior to the NFL:

All those commercials and yet the games are shorter. What does that mean? Less football! NFL teams ran an average of 62.5 offensive plays per game last season. Division I-A teams ran an average of 70.6 offensive plays. And don’t tell me that college games last longer. Yes, they averaged 3:06 and the NFL averaged 3:01, but that’s explained by halftime. College halftimes last 20 minutes; the NFL, 12.

So half the problem with the time is halftime to begin with–an entirely different tweak of the rules, so we’ll shelve it for now. (Less alumni stroking and introductions of the swim team? Saints preserve us!) Stick to the running of the clock: the point is that overall, with the forty second rule, time will be running off the clock that, in the move the chain and go 25 second game we have now, would not be running off the clock under the current set up.

This means less football unless you’re running a no-huddle, a move Steve Spurrier has already suggested would be the only way to maxmize the total number of plays under the new rules. That may be what Clark means here by “some studies,” so you can’t assume he’s lying here, since in theory it would be possible to have more plays if you’re in a blazing fucking hurry the whole game.

Begging the question: why would you be in such a hurry? Because you have less time, of course, something offenses will work to death this year. If an offense can take longer to scan the defense and audible, they will; if they have time to read coverage and lineup, they will; if they have time to do anything at all making them more comfortable, they’ll do it. The rules changes may ultimately come down to incentives. Sure, less time may actually equal more plays if you’re running the Gus Malzahn No-Huddle (copies still available!), but there’s far more incentive to slow the game down for an offense than there is to speed it up.

We haven’t even broached bleeding the clock out with a lead in the fourth quarter. You like kickers? And games that end with field goals? Get your money in early for Auburn for the 2008 National Title, because 3-2-5-e did nothing like what you’ll see with fourth quarter strategy this year. Offenses can now hit fast-forward with the forty second clock, reducing the fourth quarter to the sit-and-squat fourth quarters of most pro games. It’ll be like watching two people play tennis with a huge children’s ball rather than a standard tennis ball: big, slow exchanges, with more and more games ending with excruciatingly slow drives ending with a winning field goal.

The more we write about this, the more we’re convinced this isn’t just giving you less football: it’s drastically changing the endgame strategy in college football. To borrow boxing metaphoricals: now we have middleweights exchanging blows in rapid-fire succession. With this rule change, you’re going to slug the game down to heavyweight speed, and toward the end of the fight you’ll see the guy ahead in the cards clinching like they’re meeting a long-lost shipwrecked sibling. Points will die on the vine this year, and drastically so.

So Michael Clark’s reply is honest in that it admits TV and the BCS are the prime movers, but it’s less than honest with the suggestion that there will be more plays with the rule change. Suggesting this ignores how the game is actually played, and what teams’ incentives are on the field of play. We could suggest that we shorten our work day in order to “be more productive,” but realistically, there’s little incentive for that to happen–in most cases, you’ll simply get less done, which is precisely what will happen in college football. Thanks to the pressures of television and a lack of ingenuity on the part of sponsors, you’ll see exactly what you feared: less football, period.

(Are we missing something? We probably are? Yes? Leave any and all corrections in the comments.)

P.S. After writing this, note the biggest canard/conditional in Clark’s phrasing: “Based on consistent pace of play.” That means the studies likely used an average number of seconds per play to do their studies, or assumed on. There’s miles of wiggle room in this, as the time could vary greatly depending on situation, offensive scheme, etc. Good news for Michigan, though: DickRod runs the “jet” set, college football’s fastest no-huddle. You’ve got a plan, at least.

Oh, and if it’s the NFL, they used the NFL’s average time to get a play off, not college. In the NFL they seem to get the play off faster–less monkeying around with looking to the sideline for a call, as you’ll often see college offenses do. In college, we’d bet it takes even longer to get the play off in the same alloted timespan. Meaning, again: less football, and shifty citing of “studies” here. At least that’s what we suspect.

A proclamation! I need to make a proclamation!

The press release even has a Luntzian lilt to it: “NCAA Football Rules Committee Proposes Rules to Enhance Student-Athlete Safety and Encourage Consistent Pace of Play.” This means that the actual priority is shortening the game, since it’s mentioned second and not first. We hate the name of this memo: “Annual Plan for Enhancing the People’s Grain Production and Spreading Cooperative Cooperation To All Bulgarians” would have been a better one, which in Commie-speak meant “Eat a diet of hot rat, peasants: it’s time to buy some dachas.” We hate euphemisms: just say you want to make the game more manageable for television, and we’ll only be mostly enraged, as opposed to prodded by bullshit into a pissshitting, nail-spitting rage.

So what exactly have they proposed? We rate each proposal with the universally understood internet ratings of FAIL, Meh, and WINNAR. All rules phrasing is lifted directly from the proposal. To our surprise, we only FAIL one of these, but it’s a big, big FAIL. As in, a whole shipment of FAIL.

Additionally, after a year of consideration, the committee proposed a 40/25 second play clock system to encourage a consistent pace of play.

Rating: FAIL

So we’ll be more like the NFL! And there will be fewer plays! YAYYYYYYYYY. The reverse curse of replay has been the buggering around with clock rules, a task the committee botched the first time like a brain surgeon asked to perform an operation wearing oven mitts. This time, it’s moving the play clock to 40 seconds from 25, a move “some” coaches favored because of the differing amount of time officials from different conferences used in moving the chains.

Why this isn’t a simple officiating issue we’ll never know: perhaps it’s easier to just make a harebrained rule than adequately train officials and tell them to move faster. Why you need to change the entire playcalling scheme and, as Steve Spurrier suspects, favor the no-huddle over more deliberate offenses, well, that’s beyond us. We’d just outfit officials with shock collars and lay on the juice whenever they were slow with the chains. If you think we’re joking, we’re not: it would be a better idea to train officials with high voltage pain modification than change the clock rules. It’s carving time out of carnival season for college football fans, and any shortening of the party is something we oppose violently (We mean this, too: we will fight any of you for charity if these rules go through. Bareknuckle backyard Miami-style, if necessary.)

P.S. REVISION: On review, this is even worse than you might think, as SMQ points out. This is an odious rule, people will hate it, and it will fail as its predecessor did.

This is a much greater hit than 3-2-5-e, which eventually cost about 16 plays and five points per game from 2005-06. The impact under the new, completely unnecessary change will probably be double that.

Michael Clark is the committee head. Here’s his email address: mclark@bridgewater.edu. Oh, and here’s his office number: 540-828-5406. Give him a call, write him and email, and tell him how hard this rule sucks, and will suck until it fails and is revoked next year.

Go get ‘em, internet vigilantes.

The committee has proposed adjusted wording to curb the incidences of dangerous helmet-related contact. In this change, the committee is giving game officials better guidance to penalize these hits.

Rating: WINNAR.

The ghost in the machine on any of these is how they’re enforced, but watch any rugby game and you’ll see perfect examples of form tackling without leading with the head. If you want to see kids compress their spines and use the allegedly protective helmet as a weapon on the field, you go right ahead. As cool as the hit was, watching Reggie Brown face down on the turf was the first time we ever thought getting overly sensitive to helmet-to-helmet hits was a good idea, since we thought Brown was dead after getting speared by Junior Rosegreen. It’s bad tackling, one; two, it’s dangerous as electrified hell. That’s how people end up wearing diapers and eating applesauce.

You can do enough damage with the shoulder. Trust us. We’ve seen it done.

The incidental five-yard face mask foul was removed. All face mask fouls (pulling, twisting or turning) will be a 15-yard penalty.

Rating: MEH.

Again, increases the margin of error for officiating: whereas officials at one point could make gradations for facemasks, even the touchiest of calls now will invoke 15 yarders. This will lead to some howling, abysmal mistakes by referees–we’d be your child’s kidneys on it. (Hand ‘em over! Those things are like red, fleshy gold in China!) The spirit’s not misguided here, as it was obviously increased to punish deliberate facemasks, and thence lies the error: intent. Half of all refs will see that; the other half, being mediocre, undertrained, and busy people, will just see facemask and “DERRRR!!!! 15 YARDS FOR BAD TOUCHY!!!”

A proposal relating to the chop block rule clarifies this area and will assist in officials and coaches in the understanding of this foul.

Rating: WINNAR.

Glenn Dorsey says thank you, NCAA Football Rules Committee. Go ahead and call it the Auburn rule; fairly or not, they were caught twice on national television this year chop-blocking, once on the extremely large and unmistakably visible person of Glenn Dorsey. Making explicit exactly what constitutes a chop block actually does mitigate the dangers of blocking. If you would like a reminder of why this is necessary, perhaps you’d like to skip the perhaps debateable chop block on Dorsey and proceed to the grotesque shitballness of the chop block from the Peach Bowl against Clemson.

Any player will now be prohibited from grabbing the inside back collar of the shoulder pads or jersey, or the inside collar of the side of the shoulder pads or jersey, and immediately pulling the runner down.

Rating: MEH.

Again, as much controversy and half-assed enforcement will result from this as gains in safety. On Roy Williams seems to have turned this into a guaranteed danger on the field, and only then in the pros–we’re stuck trying to remember a specific time when this technique caused an injury in the college ranks. Either way, any tackle from the back could be miscalled for a penalty now, again increasing the margin of error for a bad call by a referee. See how these are all going to make the refs an even larger part of the game, increasing the scrutiny by giving them an even larger set of variables to weave into mistakes? Along with replay, this makes referees an even bigger influence on the game. At least in baseball, umpires get to call ball or strike. In football, the crew has several different techniques to watch at once whiel people are moving full speed. This isn’t making their job any easier.

In the rules relating to instant replay, plays where a fumble leads to an immediate recovery may be reviewed.

Rating: Winnar

A sensible change of a senseless rule. The WOO!master sends many WOO!s to you for this change, Rules committee.

In replay rules, a coach that challenges a play and is successful will retain the right to challenge one more time for a maximum of two.

Rating: Winnar.

A bit game show-y, but we like it. When do coaches get phone-a-friend for calls, or street shout-outs from the fans?

When a kickoff goes out of bounds, the receiving team may accept the ball at the 40-yard line instead of the 35.

Rating: Meh.

An attempt to offset reduced plays with better field position? An irrational craving for the only twenty yard penalty in football? We’re confused why this is particularly necessary, but someone on the committee’s got a real dislike of inferior kicking or something. Rage on, man, but this doesn’t seem like big taters in this round of improvements.

A yardage penalty for sideline control was instituted.

Rating: WINNAR.

Probably a good idea. Why?

As with the chop-blocking rule, might as well call this the Mack Brown rule, since poor Chris Jessie wasn’t the only one half onto the field at the Holiday Bowl.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — More than two weeks after he was sued over a $4 million buyout clause in his contract at West Virginia, Rich Rodriguez turned in a second resignation letter, claiming university president Mike Garrison reneged on a deal to reduce and possibly eliminate that clause.

Jeffrey Wakefield, the school’s attorney in the case, denied Friday that such a promise was made.

And that’s your story, essentially unchanged from day one: he said/we said. Oh, and your obilgatory, never piss off a West Virginian item of the day.