Ours could be any number of things:

–”STILL MORE MOBILE THAN CHRIS WEINKE”
–”THERE WERE FLOWERS HERE BUT PHIL FULMER ATE THEM”
–”YOU’RE AT THE WRONG TOMBSTONE MIAMI’S SWAGGER IS FOUR SPOTS DOWN AND DIED IN 2002″
–”IF TIM’S RIGHT I’M IN HELL RIGHT NOW GO GATORS.”
–”CANCER: NATURE’S ORIGINAL UNSTOPPABLE SPREAD OFFENSE.”
–”NOT DEAD–JUST HIDING FROM ED ORGERON.”

Please leave your own personalized epitaphs below, and salute Mr. Smith, an American hero, and JBoxt1, who found this brilliance.

Tim Tebow, clad in an ironic t-shirt reading “IRONIC T-SHIRT,” announced that this year’s Georgia-Florida game “won’t be any different than any other time the two schools meet” during Florida’s weekly press conference on Monday.

Appearing disinterested and unshaven, the star quarterback answered questions in a low mumble as reporters asked him about the upcoming matchup with historical rivals the Bulldogs.

“I don’t really see how this matchup is any different from any other matchup between two groups of athletes from adjacent and arbitrarily drawn geographic regions. It’s not going to be any more special, because football isn’t special. Nothing is special. Not even love, which is a lie. A dirty, filthy lie.”

Tebow dismissed last year’s 49-10 victory as “just another game.”

“I mean that. Just another game, a meaningless distraction I put myself at the center of to keep the boredom away. I’m so numb even the thrill of violence doesn’t do anything to me anymore. (more…)

Football is like life: it has a playbook, and when it breaks down, people get hurt. Enjoy.

The play begins thusly. We play the part of the quarterback, labeled here as O/S. The idea: to successfully pitch our way through an evening of socializing at a party in DC with the pitchman, our friend the local DC-ite and aspiring political lizard-person, trailing the play. (You ask: how are you friends with a person-lizard? Simple. You just feed them lettuce just like an iguana, and they’ll be your friend forever.)

The design of the play is simple: the blockers here are played by our liver and ability to make small talk. They will block the dangerous elements of the defense in order to free movement throughout the party, and if needs be the pitchman will take the ball of conversation or social interaction when alcohol or the awkwardness of discussing anything with the half-reptiles at this largely politico-style party. (more…)

We all remember with delight how Jim Leavitt reacted to one of his underlings so much as expressing interest in an open position not affiliated with South Florida. So how do you suppose he’s coping with losing that guy plus two more assistants inside a month?

Promise me you’ll always love me best.

Oh, fine, just fine. Why?

_____
This late-afternoon dose of total plausibility brought to you by LSUFreek. Honor him.

These are the facts: this is the visualization of why Wolverines did not work as the official mascots for Michigan football.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1920.

“Michiganders of all stripes, behold our new mascot!

(more…)

I mean, of course he is. If this coaching staff had anyone left in their corner at all after treating a reeling, gutted fanbase to a full quarter of Jonathan Crompton, I’d love to hear from them.

So, here we go. It’s time; there’s absolutely no arguing that, but for a city and a team threatened by the remotest hint of change the balance of the season looms dark and our natural pessimism has finally found purchase.  Even with both feet in the FIRE HIS ASS YESTERDAY camp, I was never going to be entirely comfortable when this day came.  He’s the coach of my childhood, the devil I know.  Six weeks ago, I wrote,  “It’s our time at the edge, and the stay will be neither brief nor pleasant.”  I had no idea.

But if there’s anything to celebrate here with complete joyful abandon (for me, campers, for me), it’s that Chris Low scooped the living hell out of the Knoxville News-Sentinel, a terrible paper with a simpering buffoon of a sports editor in John Adams.  Save your preening, sir—you’ve had a public, exhausting vendetta against the guy for years and today you got beat.  ABIGAIL Adams would’ve had that story first, and that bitch has been dead almost 200 years.

If Penn State would like to make things easier on themselves, they should throw down a Rome-on-Carthage, empty-the-cartridges earth-salting on Ohio State Saturday. If there is a second left on the clock and they are up by thirty, they should throw. If there is a goal line situation with under a minute left with seconds on the clock, they should score, and then onside. They should behead the young Jedi without hesitation. They should ride behind British lines and kill the pages. They should, Tony Jaa-style, break limbs until there are no more limbs to break.

They should keep swinging until teeth fly from skulls, and then continue kicking ribs until the whistle blows.*

They should follow this pattern in the rest of their games because The Big Ten is playing several hands down in any national title contention because of the twin pillars of lack of a title game and Ohio State’s FAILboat Party** in the last two national title games…not to mention a crucial point Michael makes abundantly clear hyah:

With that caveat out of the way, the Big Ten and Pac Ten need to be punished for being the primary roadblocks against a plus-one playoff. Those two conferences will change their minds when there is sufficient pressure from their member institutions to do so. An unbeaten Penn State team sitting on the sidelines in January while Texas and Alabama duke it out for the national title would be exactly the tonic to cause the stodgy Big Ten to stop opposing evolution.

The Doomsday Scenarios are not limited to the aluminum headgear-wearers of our beloved blogosphere: Tony Barnhart outlined the same scenario this morning in the AJC.

1. Penn State gets left out: No. 1 Texas and No. 2 Alabama both finish 13-0 and win their respective conference championship games. Like Auburn in 2004, a 12-0 Penn State, which has not played a game since Nov. 22, finishes No. 3 because it played a weaker schedule. Joe Paterno, 81, is denied the chance to end his career with a national championship game. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, one of the strongest opponents to a four-team playoff, gets an earful from Paterno.

It could happen (then again, as Barnhart points out, so could every other scenario,) meaning the only recourse Penn State has any control over whatsoever is points, points, points, which have to happen frequently and without mercy for the remainder of the season. Ohio State could upset them straight-up, and will likely hold them under twenty (since your oft-repeated stat of the week is the “ten point max” that Penn State has scored at the ‘Shoe historically.)

Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan State best look into burn clinics, though; JoePa’s coming with a flamethrower-equipped Rascal in the best senior citizen revenge film this side of Death Wish 3 if Alabama and Texas go undefeated. With no conference championship to buffer the schedule, laying waste to their opponents is all Penn State has left to make their argument.

(P.S. Fuck Jim Delany in the ear. Again.)

*Thank you, Matt and Trey, for having us now imagining Butters yelling “Fuck ‘em up!” during every blowout from now on.

**Cartman is Ohio State. There’s little doubt of this: loud, powerful, profane, and ultimately slow in the clutch. Also: both are associated with shitting in inappropriate places.

“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…)