Possession receivers, gutty linebackers, all-heart fullbacks, that one weird fast dude Iowa always pulls out of a cornfield, and kickers unite in mourning: Minnesota wide receiver Eric Decker will miss the rest of the regular season with a sprained arch in his left foot, presumably strained while running too fast and exceeding the factory specifications laid out in the Caucasian Model Owner’s Guide. A moment of silence, please.

I wanna stand with you on a mountain…

Decker takes his 758 yards receiving and 5 TDs full of wan brilliance with him, meaning the burden of being the foremost honky skill athlete falls predictably to running back Toby Gerhart, who even more predictably plays for Stanford, is majoring in management, and has a profile that does not mention any of the following words: “nimble,” “fast”, or “speed.” Toby, you’re our only hope now. Take strength as thousands of slow-footed but determined white athletes have before you: in the completely plausible Rocky 3 training montage’s final sprint sequence.

(HT: FOTP, who was on the very same track mid-stream with us here.)

#11 Ohio State @ Toledo
Ohio State IS Johnny Cash IN Walk the Line. Jim Tressel, you can’t just keep doing the same songs over and over? And you sure as hell can’t do it in front of a rabid crowd of people who’ve killed people? You are incorrect, record executive/football pundit. Sweatervest will trot out his shufflin’, two-note bass line lovin’ Tennessee Trio of an offense again and again until someone puts his head in the John Cooper memorial guillotine, confidently plowing ahead with convention in front of an audience condemned to imprisonment. (more…)

Nine o’clock EDT. Be there, and BYOB, because we’ll be using ours for sure and will be unable to share.

Rejoice.

Peter and ourselves, after long hiatuses due to work, putting together Maple Street Guides, building our own stunt biplanes with nothing more than materials scrounged from old car parts and lego kits, and the responsibilities of being two of America’s most in-demand male escorts, have decided to resurrect EDSBS Live. The short-notice test drive will occur tonight at 9:00 p.m. EDT, will consist of Peter and Orson clearing their throats, talking over each other, and giggling uncontrollably. In other words: a usual show of EDSBS Live.

Future installments will settle back in for their usual spot at Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. The listening widget and link will be posted here as the final post of the day. Hit the liquor store, because cocktail hour returns with a vengeance tonight.

NARRATOR (V/O): You’re watching “When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong.” Percy Harvin was one of the most talented athletes in college football history: A five-foot, eleven-inch receiver out of Virginia Beach, he broke records as an all-purpose offensive player for the University of Florida, totaling 32 career touchdowns and helping to revolutionize the role of the wide receiver in the modern-day spread offense. He was drafted in the first round by the Minnesota Vikings and signed a five-year contract worth more than $14 million.

Scene: A classroom in a Florida high school. A dozen or so high-school football players are seated at the desks; PERCY HARVIN, flanked by the high-schoolers’ coaches as well as some of his own former coaches, stands behind a podium at the front of the room.

NARRATOR (V/O): Harvin had a speaking engagement at a high school in Florida to tell some potential Florida recruits about his time at the university and how it prepared him for the NFL, when one of the students asked him a fairly innocuous question. (more…)

Todd Reesing, crushing it in the fifth quarter. If that’s your mom, we want to meet her and buy her as many margaritas as she’ll take. (HT: Bully For Old Mizzou, who has more pics over at their place.)

This is our favorite image of all from the Stadium Sipper’s site:

Hmm…what shall we pour into the Stadium Sipper? These two Bud Lights? This Montrachet 1978 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti? 20 shots of Jager? You’re right, Ed. The Montrachet don’t go with the stadium popcorn at all. Go with the Jager, and we’ll save the wine for the cold chicken fingers at the after-tailgate.

Holly suggested taking one seat filled with Jager Jameson and Irish Cream in, and one with Guinness, and then car bombing the entire section. That would work, you’d need ten for beer and one for Jager to make it work out correctly, and who’s going to do that when you could just have twenty stadium seats full of Jager?

Another idea we wanted to foist on security would be filling the stadium seat with something entirely non-beverage related, like delicious peppered sawmill gravy or a molecular gastronomy creation like liquefied marrow. Hand it out like shots at a game (preferably an insanely hot one,) and when security comes to throw you out, calmly explain that it’s not booze, but instead is tasty homemade gravy you’re sharing with the public for free out of the kindness of your heart. They might throw you out for just being cheeky, but you could say you were tossed out for handing out free hot gravy at a 90 degree football game, and that’s something you can tell your grandkids (to disturb them, and therefore leave creepy old you alone to watch your favorite show, McGillicuddy, or “An Elderly Paul Rudd Fights Young Criminals With the Assistance of a Sassy Rapping Cyborg.”

(All that said, the deluxe kit is 40 bucks, people. Pounce, consumer!)

It’s a long offeseason. In an attempt to vary up the somewhat fatigued Friday rotation, we will change it up with various lab experiments, including The Digital Viking: The EDSBS Guide To Spicy Living. The five categories are Drink (obvious), Comestibles (Food/Snack), Combustible (Shit what blows up), Transit (for making you transitory) and Canon (essential films, books, and movies to understand reality as you know it.) Enjoy?

Peter Beard, the real Most Interesting Man In the World, is your Patron Saint of Spicy Living this week. You have to read the whole 1996 article in Esquire to get an inkling of just how spicy a life he’s truly had, but this should give you a good taste:

The first day of my visit to Hog Ranch, Beard finally ambles out of his tent in early afternoon to begin the day. He is clad only in his usual kikoi, a colorful sarong-like loincloth. His torso is sinewy and nut-brown, with not an ounce of extra flesh, and he looks surprisingly fresh for someone who stayed out until five a.m. Apparently, after I begged off at two a.m. to get some sleep, Beard stopped in at the Carnivore, a local hangout whose menu features zebra and ostrich and crocodile as well as a diverse array of Nairobi night crawlers. It isn’t until the Ethiopian girls begin to wander out of his tent that I realize he didn’t come home alone. (more…)

Jim Tressel is not on vacation yet, but this is pretty much what it will look like.

Las Vegas. 10:17 a.m., yesterday.

Cooler: You, uh…need me to go over there, boss?

Pitboss: I dunno. I kind of want to see if he can keep going at this pace. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Cooler: He’s a machine. Barkley passed out an hour ago.

Pitboss: Yeah. We woke him up with a cognac enema. That always perks him up.

Cooler: I’ll head over there if you want–

Pitboss: Nah. You don’t stand in the way of a storm like this.

Stunning Floozy 1: Daddy, you want me to blow on the dice?

Tressel: Oh, yeah baby. Whore germs got me this pile of chips, and they’ll make it bigger.

Stunning Floozy 1: You’re mean!

Tressel: Roll them bones, baby, and we’ll see what else gets bigger.

She rolls the dice.

Dealer: Another seven! I’ve never seen anything like this!

Waitress: Need something from the bar, sir?

Tressel: Another Panty-dropper, please.

Waitress; But that’s your 38th, sir.

Tressel: Do you see my panties on the floor?

Waitress: No.

Tressel: Then keep bringing ‘em. Then we’ll see what we can do about yours.

To be continued.

If the Texas Tech-OK State score drops below 50, this liveblog will explode.