“Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.”

Joe Paterno is dying in front of our eyes, and that is no overly dramatic statement. His body is beginning the inevitable decline he staved off for so many year by running, staying involved in his job, and leaning on the good credit his robust genes advanced him in his later years. This is not a sentimental judgment: it’s fact, as clear to the viewer as the cane he now requires to get from point A to point B or as obvious as his absence from the sidelines when he takes to the booth in the second half of games due to hip pain.

Brent Musberger may be annoying, predictable, and prone to over-excitement on the smallest play, but give him due credit for honesty in discussing the factors motivating Paterno’s insistence on remaining on the sideline.

He is fearful — and he looks back at Bear Bryant as the example — he is fearful that he would not be with us if he stepped away. He is a man that doesn’t fish, doesn’t play golf…he has no other interest other than his family and football. And he’s just afraid what would happen with the rest of his life if he walks away from it.

“What would happen” here is cloaked language for what happened to Bryant: death. (more…)

Dear Michigan fans,

We have no words of comfort. For comfort, go to mom, or better yet, Oprah. Or better yet, fire your motherfucking coach once the nadir turns into the midpoint when you lose to Michigan State by thirty, or (Jebus forbid!) Notre Dame next week, or to whomever else would snap the creaky back of the Carr Administration at this point. You’ll still suck, but you’ll have cut off someone’s head–and coachblood makes the wounded fan’s heart sing every time.

Instead of comfort, we focus on one seemingly cosmetic but terribly important thing. We watched the Oregon game, hoping to be that Oprah type person: rooting for the downtrodden, pulling for the wounded little meerkat, you know, falling prey to our national genetic predilection for the underdog/comeback kid. And for an instant we were there, until we saw this:

!!!!

This would be less appalling if it were alumni…but STUDENTS JINGLING KEYS? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Young, healthy people with clean, fully-functioning lungs JINGLING KEYS TO MAKE NOISE!!!! My god, why don’t you hire Salvadorans to come yell for you? Or better still, they could just come in and cheer for you while you watch the game in the parking lot in peace and quiet and save you the trouble of screaming “DOWN IN FRONT!!!” (Because that would hurt your lungs, wouldn’t it?)

Yes, this is coming from a boorish, decorum-free SEC fan whose fellow fans bring cowbells to games and set off seismometers at the geology department during games in between handing out sociology and leisure management degrees to illiterate, well-muscled athletes. It is also directed at a school in a conference where some schools actually cheer their asses off and force teams into penalties with crowd noise. And some Michigan fans have been railing about this for way, way longer than we have.

Don’t blame the architecture either. Instead, scream. At this point, you should be screaming, anyway. Who cares if it’s at your coach? Notre Dame doesn’t have to know that. This is football. Blood. Screaming. Tribal violence. Bizarre rites and rituals. Put away the keys. Pick up the torches. Less Roman, more Vandal, dammit!

Bret Bielema, EDSBS Man of the Year 2006, takes on the most controversial assumptions of the 20th century in an AP interview earlier this week. Say what you will about him–he’s a man of range and intellectual depth.

“I understand why certain teams get exemptions.

Oh, and Fermat’s Last Theorem? Someone’s solving that bitch someday, and that someone is gonna be me.”***

And…INCOMING!!!

Most anyone paying attention to college football tends to get postmodernish about Notre Dame. They’re football Russia: once great, hit by a long, long, long slide, and now building for a comeback using their single natural resource (the brand) with a skilled despot at the helm. (Unfamiliar with Russian petrochemical diplomacy? Good on ya for having a life.)

Bashing them for easy ins to the BCS, though…that’s so 1999, no? (more…)

When did FSU begin this long, slow, and sad descent into mediocrity? Who cares? It really doesn’t matter, as long as it’s dead, right?

For historical purposes, we think the long slide to tonight’s Emerald Bowl loss (positive thinking positive thinking positive thinking) began long, long ago with the Oklahoma/Florida State game in 2001’s Orange Bowl. Richt left. Amato was gone. Jeff Bowden would soon take Chris Rix to hell, along with the whole formerly juketastic Florida State offense, and leaving a blinded Bobby to act out a sad little redneck Shakespeare until the denouement this year–Jeff Bowden’s resignation and cashout, where he’ll wipe the tears away with Seminole booster money until the year 2012, when his annual payout will finally end, and he will have to find honest work as a barista somewhere.

Flash back with us, and remind yourself that once a badass, always a badass, as is very much the case with Roy Williams here.

No supplements needed on Bobby Bowden’s explanation for his son’s inability to call anything besides a square-in, jump ball, or blown-up screen as an offensive coordinator:

As for why things didn’t work out, he didn’t point to statistics or won-lost records.

“Because you all ignited it,” he said to a small room of reporters. “You listen to eBay and e-mail and all that junk, and you all kept writing about it and that fans it and makes it grow and grow, and it becomes a cancer. That’s why.”

Jeff Bowden’s playbook for sale. Opening bid: $550,000 from user exasperatedboosternfla.

Two things:

1. Don’t even try to purchase wemustignitethiscoach.com, because if you do our lawyaz iz strong and multifarious, yo.

2. Ebay actually does destroy coaches. Especially when they’re shopping for other coaches’ playbooks in a last-ditch attempt to properly call a game. In the middle of a game. (HT: Jeremy, WATB.)

3. Bowden’s actually pissed because Jeff totally got this notice about a real live confederate army vintage flintlock musket he was trying to buy that said he needed to give EBay his credit card information and then OMG! some huge charges on Dad’s Visa at a jewelry shop in Istanbul showed up so Dad had to spend like six hours on the phone straightening the whole thing out and that made him so tired that Jeff had to go put him to bed which sucked because then Jeff missed the episode of JAG he’d been waiting to see on USA. That TiVo think is wayyyy too complex to mess with, in Jeff’s opinion.

Stranko, is this where we put cheesecake? This is what happens when you have instant access to porn–you just go right to it and bypass cheesecake! And thus lose all cheesecake skills! DAMN YOU INTERNETS!!!
(This is Catherine Bell of JAG, who keeps Jeffy coming back for military courtroom drama with her Farsi skills.

We have five simple rules to life. They are based upon observation, experiment, and peer reviewed statements made in numerous bars across the world between the hours of seven p.m. and 4 a.m. They are:

1. Things will go wrong.
2. People never change, and never will.
3. People continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.
4. When your favorite uncle is eaten by a tiger, don’t ask “Why?”, ask “Why not?”
5. Attempt to ignore rules 1-4 at all times.

Given that, we bring up the rumor of Norm Chow, the Greatest College Offensive Coordinator Ever â„¢ and the currently a mediocre NFL OC for the talent-rupt Titans. This rumor comes to us courtesy of Horseface, who thinks a job-hungry Chow would find an ideal transitional job in the situation at Florida State. Chow comes in as an assistant, gives Bowden one last “dadgum,”, and then takes over for Bowden when he leaves.

Chow: no scheme, no system. Just hot, nasty, badass scoring. We think Eleanor Roosevelt said that first.

We’re not going to think about Hayes’ penchant for turning fever-dream fan-fiction into “interesting official speculation,” or about him writing college football fan fiction at all. (See: Yahoo Groups “Holly Rowe BDSM Tales,” chapter six for some of that.) In fact, if you’re looking for tasty reliable speculation, it’s in there: Chow to North Carolina or Miami, which makes sense even taking into account a set of rules about humanity so skeptical only someone raised in the hardknock life surroundings of..um…the suburban sun belt could come up with them. Yeah.

Chow wouldn’t engage in Matt3576HorseyNeigh@yahoo.com’s fevered scenario because it violates several of Orson’s Sad But Reliable Rules for humanity. The indictment, point by point:

1. Something will go wrong. Chow’s from the West Coast, and enjoyed his greatest success there. Why wouldn’t he go back? Arizona State’s football program will likely have an opening, and Oregon State and UCLA are also up there for potential jobs. All of these are more likely than Norm Chow to Tallahassee, where he’d be replacing a legend in an area of the country he’s never really worked before.

2. People never change, and never will. Bowden won’t admit mistakes, and has no reason to: in a single person, he represents the successful heritage of Florida State football. He’s also got that history of rank nepotism, which won’t change. Get Jeff Bowden a shiny new brass nameplate and fasten it into the door with the big screws, because his biggest resume line is never going away.

3. People continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. See number two. Jeff’s just learning. He’s young. The other boys turned out okay, except for the embezzler, right? Sick with dolor as Seminole fans are right now, we have to ask an even more sickening question: what makes anyone in the fanbase think that Bowden doesn’t have fantasies of putting Jeffy in charge once he’s gone? What in his behavior has shown an inclination that he wouldn’t do this?

4. When your favorite uncle is eaten by a tiger, don’t ask “Why?”, ask “Why not?”

The second greatest coach of all time wins-wise (we refuse to count the Samford wins in that total, and just like JoePa better anyway, especially after his “Run For Two” earlier this year) becomes a laughing stock of a country sheriff by promoting his inept son to a position of responsibility. Why not? Why can’t a formerly brilliant coach be completely anti-brilliant towards the end of his career? It happens all the time. Woody Hayes punches Charlie Bauman. Dennis Erickson goes from coaching Miami in the national championship to play-calling in an airplane hangar in Moscow, Idaho. Smart people do dumb things, like trust someone simply because they have half the same genes as they do. Ask King Birendra–not always the soundest thinking. Don’t ask “Why would FSU make a bad decision on the next coach?” Instead, ask “Why not?”

King Birendra of Nepal: ask him how mixing family and upper management worked out.

Supplemental evidence: [NAME REDACTED]’s entire hiring and tenure. Why not?

5. Attempt to ignore rules 1-4 at all times. The only ray of hope here for Seminole fans: rules 1-4 collapse, and someone makes sound decisions in hiring the next coach. Of course, this implies betting on people being competent, which is a big, big risk. Perhaps we need a rule six…