You got fourteen days of practice-THIS IS A FUCKING WARMUP. You’ve all got shots to become heroes. Might be a little fear here might be a little scared but I need you to work your fucking asses off. We at EDSBS want you to know we love every one of you. What is this, fucking “Dancing With the Stars?!?!” DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME!!!

Prone. PRONE!!! I don’t have a whistle, I just say whistle. Ball. Come on: Ball! stick-OUT! (From USCRipsIt, which does a little more each day to explain why USC gets every single recruit they so much as blink at.)

NOTE! BRENNAN WANTS YOU TO LISTEN TO EDSBS LIVE! Right here! With Kyle King, who’s gonna tell us why the Dawgs are gonna lose to USC in the title game! We love you all! At 9:00 EST here!

DOUBLE NOTE! Might want to check out Brennan’s Wikipedia page. A screencap follows, because you know they’re going to axe it in a matter of minutes after this.

(more…)

Our intrepid blogger-in-chief is still in Las Vegas, fearing the local breakfast fare (”The eggs are rubbery, the steak is attempting to walk off with your luggage, the fruit sits under heat lamps and the sausage is on ice.”). If there are many more games like last night’s Duke-Belmont struggle–another sure sign than God is dead–then we may begin to worry. Meanwhile over at 35S, open threads and liveblogs galore! That is, unless you want to go to the teams’ fan sites and just read things like “Yeah!” or “Nice shot!” or “Call the foul!” over and over. Didn’t really think so.

In the ever-expanding and poorly swept warehouse that is Swindle Industries…

Patrick is doing the quality work we couldn’t do over at Thirty Five Seconds. We’re especially fond of this.

Our piece on things the NFL combine should test for is up over at the Sporting News, and if you take nothing else from it, it should be this: Deangelo Hall’s episode of Cribs is the gold standard by which all other NFLers’ Cribs experience should be measured. That is, until D-Mac gets the signing bonus and two months with a decorator.

Like that, but a house.

Things are happening. Fascinating, exciting, and often poorly organized things, but nevertheless, it’s rollin’ baby.

1. We’re full-time at the Sporting News now, and will be contributing two college football-related pieces or so a week over there in addition to appearing on Chris Mottram’s The Sporting Blog on a daily basis. We are also busy convincing them to send us to China on the cheap, and that the Chinese police will take bribes to let you into exclusive Olympic athletic events without jailing you at least 56% of the time you attempt it.

2. This will not impact EDSBS, which remains independent and Swindle-owned. In fact, the SN gig allows us to write full-time, meaning the pace of posting, so often dented by work and other nonsense, should remain constant at the worst. It will also not impact our fondness for profanity, so shove that notion sideways up your fucking ass, shit-tard.

3. The Swindle Industries family (dysfunctional and haphazard, just like yours) welcomes its first new member to the family: thirtyfiveseconds.com, our stab at a college basketball blog. Irishoutsider and Unsilent Majority will be bringing you only the finest of college basketball hearsay and analysis, along with lots of pictures of basketball players’ hair and mockery thereof. Other writers will make appearances, ourselves included, as you would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not think March Madness wasn’t worth paying attention to, and we only fit two-thirds of that bill.

4. Do you have a male relative you can’t talk to, relate to, or even sit in the same room with for longer than three minutes? Do you have to purchase a gift for them this Christmas? Of course you do, and of course you don’t know what to get them…until now.

Available at Amazon or out of the back of our trunk. We’ll be at Buddy’s at North Ave. and N. Highland selling them along with some fine electronic merchandise we found on the side of the road. Ah, the bounty of the concrete seas, all yours for rock-bottom prices!

University of Louisiana-Monroe coach Charlie Weatherbie is celebrating for a few reasons. Sure, he’s got reason to pop the bubbly because his team beat the Alabama Crimson Tide 21-14 on Saturday. But Weatherbie has 4 million other reasons to celebrate–namely, that he’s going to be paid a salary commensurate to his record after beating the 4 million dollar man himself, Nick Saban.

Give the man a monkey. And his 4 million dollars.

“According to the win, I’m undervalued by 97 percent of what I should be paid,” said Weatherbie, who earns a mere $130,000 as the coach of the Warhawks. “I’m looking forward to being paid what I’m truly owed and living out one of my lifelong dreams: buying a monkey, and then training it to smoke and drink beer.”

ULM had no formal statement in response to Weatherbie’s demands, but off-the-record sources were quoted as saying that “there was no fucking way” they could pay Weatherbie’s new salary, citing the fact that “paying almost one-tenth of our total budget to a 5-6 football coach would be completely fucking insane.”

Weatherbie, though, is confident something could be worked out. “Perhaps they could sell some land or something. I don’t know. Have a bake sale. Charlie wants his monkey, and it’s time to give him some bananas for all his hard work. Tell the sob stories to my agent, pencilnecks. Bananas, motherfuckers.”

Weatherbie’s not the only one making cash from the hash of the Crimson Tide’s loss. (more…)

Don’t make me get the health department in here…

Coach Dennis Franchione here, and believe what you’re hearing–I am willing to accept a buyout. In fact, I’m excited about accepting this buyout and all it has to offer me.

Remember, though, that here at Texas A&M my staff and I have done nothing but fight for the best every single day. We believe in–caps for championship emphasis–HOLDING THE ROPE, day in and day out for the Aggie Nation. And that’s just what I’m gonna do here in this negotiation. The hands? Mine. The metaphorical rope? That’s your dicks, gentlemen.

What have I got to hold your balls to your ceremonial bonfire, sirs?

Well, I sold hot dogs on campus from a cart near the Agricultural Science buildings for the past three years. I was clearing 2600 a month on that thing, and that’s with what, like, 20 hours of labor a week? Shit, with this coaching thing going and the email newsletter I was up to my ears in loot.

I bought a new Camry. With cash, guys! That’s just how good things were!

Anyway, I never got a license and bought my dogs across the border from my close friend Antonio, a Mexican gentleman who sold warm meats out of his trunk. I don’t even know what kind of meat they were, but Coach Fran’s Giggin’ Weenies sold like crack on a cheap bun one you put a little mustard on them and put ol’ coach behind the steamer.

But then someone got a hold of a fishy dog, and got sick. How sick? I’ll be frank with you: they got very sick. So sick they almost paid the ultimate price: paralysis, a fate worse than death. Imagine it, being trapped in your own body like a prisoner in reeking, fleshy cage! A living hell, I bet.

Not, this kid got off easier than that–he died. And when his family thought of going to public health, suing the university, and ruining my reputation along with that of Antonio the warm meat merchant and lastly this fine university, I wouldn’t accept it. So I had a brief talk with his surviving family and offered them forty dollars and an autographed Dennis Franchione HOLD THE ROPE T-SHIRT for their silence and forgiveness. It’s very important to establish trust with those around you, and I genuinely sought to do that.

I was shocked when they refused. Oh, they made a lot of ruckus when I set the house on fire. Whew, and they got even louder when I started firing! But it was for the greater good and after enough screaming and carrying on and hours of me chasing them all through the woods, I think they understand where I’m coming from, and what I’m trying to teach here. I think we’ve all come through this even closer than when we started, and I’ve generously paid for their hotel room while they begin to rebuild the lives they once knew before I destroyed them.

Anyway, the really serious part is the hot dog license without a permit, which could be a fine of up to hundreds of dollars here. If you don’t want the Bryan and College Station Health Department on you like a bag of barking hammers, you better give Coach Fran what he wants. You don’t know hell until you’ve gotten a kitchen inspection from them. For a mere $2 million dollars, that’s what you can avoid. Your choice, friends. Choose wisely.

Oh, what better time to be facing a team with the potential to beat you by 70: Texas A&M will be going into their matchup against Texas Tech with self-reported violations chasing them after a press conference today regarding the exclusive newsletter sold by Dennis Franchione to a select group of boosters for $1,200 a year.

Aggie officials ordered the shutdown of CoachFran.com and “admonished” Coach Fran this morning in the press conference. In case you’re reaching for the thesaurus right now, never mind. Just put on a straw hat, a fake handlebar mustache, and waggle your finger firmly at yourself in the mirror while calling your reflection “a scandalous rapscallion scamp of a tramp’s son!” That’s admonishment, and one can only hope the meeting between Franchione and officials took place in exactly this manner.

The emails are now out, and in scoping through them the Harold Hill shenanigans of Franchione’s weekly game preps are detailed lovingly by the actual author of the emails, Mike McKenzie, Franchione’s longtime assistant and one of the guys who helped get Mike Price $22 million dollars from Sports Illustrated. Our favorite thus far involves a group of Rangers staging a mock abduction in the middle of a team meeting.

…two of the Rangers burst into the room portraying terrorists bearing (wooden fake) weapons. They “captured” Scott in front of the group and tied him up and blindfolded him, while the others held the players hostage. They were loud and chaotic and maniacal. Everyone was mesmerized.

Then suddenly, eight other Rangers in full field dress, as the good guys, sprang into the room’s three entrances and overpowered the terrorists, freed Scott, and secured the room. Their exercise started with a bang–a fake gas bomb (a balloon they exploded) that certainly got everyone’s attention.

Coach Fran loves commandos! He promised he’d kill you last…BUT HE LIED.

It’s Medieval Times every day with Dennis Franchione! Live performances! Stunning surprises! Pat Benatar playing in the back room! With showstopping skills like this, Franchione’s success as a future mogul in Branson, Missouri is guaranteed.

Seriously: he’s fried? Toast? Done, right? May we assume the Tuberville, Gruden, and other rumors may begin in earnest? And that with Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri still on the schedule, the only commando raids happening in the Aggie locker room will be from hired guns doing boosters’ bidding and doing a little extraordinary rendition on Fran? He could be in a Syrian prison by November at this rate. EXCELSIOR!!!

Woof!

Pirates tend to have a raunchy sense of humor and should, what with all the wenching and pillaging of booty. Euphemisms make for romance! Remember that they both essentially mean robbery and rape, mind you, which is why real pirates are total assholes who don’t wear eyepatches and who do carry RPGs when they plunder Taiwanese freighters off the Horn of Africa.

(Seriously: vigilance, reader. Pirates are everywhere. Be aware.)

We remain fond of the fake variety, though, especially the ones in Lubbock who attend Mike Leach’s Pirate School. Oh, and they make festive t-shirts, too, like the one cocked up for this week’s game against Texas A&M. Did you know that, in addition to making huge bonfires, grabbing their balls in unison, and participating in complex group cheers, the Aggies have a collie as a mascot. Why? Because Lassie’s no commie, dammit, unlike that liberal pinko Alger Hiss of a dog, Rin Tin Tin.

FYI: We actually got an advance copy of this t-shirt from Dennis Franchione last Thursday. He’ll send you next week’s rival t-shirts for just twelve hundred dollars a year. You say crazy, but who was pimping this shirt on Saturday in Baton Rouge? Only Dennis Franchione’s official 145th best friend, yours truly, according to his Facebook page. We can feel the envy from here.

You’re going to watch it, anyway, you sick, sick person. However, like the informed observer you are, you’re going to watch and enjoy it thanks to our list of eight totally true things, since you’ve already decided not to go to the gym, spend time with your significant other, or remain sober tonight. Good for you, trooper!

Why, yes, they’re leaking right now, thank you very much.

8. Dennis Franchione is under so much pressure his teats leak condensed milk constantly. (This usually requires some firm pressure with a gloved hand. Food safety starts with you!)

7. Up to fifty thousand people to attend, the second largest gathering that night in Miami and the largest not involving muscular chickens with razors strapped to their ankles. Wait, there’s a Mets/Marlins game? Okay, third largest, and second largest without the death chickens, okay?

6. Stephen McGee, dual threat quarterback, finally embodies all that A&M fans truly want in a quarterback: tough, fast, able to run the option, and white.

5. Aggie Corps of Cadets could be mistaken for immigration officials, causing thousands in stands to flee in panic.

4. Aggie Corps of Cadets could be mistaken for DEA officers, causing thousands in stands to flee in panic.

3. Aggie Corps of Cadets could be mistaken for Russian Tax Police, causing thousands in stands to flee in panic.

2. Kyle Wright is starting tonight, and will save the groundskeeping crew time and effort by trimming the grass one underthrown ball at a time.

1. 270 pound Jorvorskie Lane will score a diving touchdown. Sadly, the impact will shatter the limestone bedrock of Miami, spoiling the Florida Aquifer and making the city unsafe for human habitation. Unsurprisingly, no one living in Miami will notice this.

Rodin’s done it. Gustav Klimt did one, too. But the funniest and most touching work of art we saw this weekend was Tony Joiner’s rendition of The Kiss, delivered to one Mr. Tim Tebow on the Florida sidelines following a Florida TD.

For the record, as long as they both play like they did on Saturday, we don’t care if they’re wearing muscle shirts and PVC pants and doing the gayboy two-step to Crystal Waters on the sidelines in between chugging Cosmos. 59-20 is fabulous no matter who you’re kissing. After Saturday, the least we owe Tebow is a kiss on the cheek, which he’d never demand.

Now, Grossman? He’d be holding his balls and demanding a harem. That’s just what the Sex Cannon did and does, baby.

(If you want the actual story on the emotional journey of Tony Joiner without the irony, click here, or watch Joiner interact on family night in last week’s ESPN fluff piece here. )

By the way, if you’re looking for ESPN video on Florida’s victory…you won’t find any. It doesn’t exist on ESPN and their video page, just as the potentially epic Florida/LSU game won’t be make Gameday, either, as ABC owns the rights to the Red River Shootout that same Saturday. Michael Eisner says this is not the game you’re looking for (this is not the game we’re looking for…)