Vols, bitch.

LeGarrette Blount met with the Pac-10 commish yesterday to discuss his possible reinstatement, but he’s a sideshow at the moment to the bombardment Oregon rolls out on opponents week-to-week. QUACK BITCHES.

Fun facts from the midpoint of the Chizik era, year one: Auburn’s defense has been on the field or 575 plays, tied for 113th in the nation in total snaps taken by the defense. The side effect of the espresso-paced Malzahn offense is to lengthen the game for everyone, your defense included, which is why you see your Toledos and Texas Techs down in those rankings, too. This leads to more opportunities for the opposing team, which leads to fatigue, which leads to Les Miles’ struggling offense breaking out the good knives and going to work despite struggling through most of the season. Auburn’s defense is tired, and we’d bet even money on them looking more gassed as the season goes on due to the first year of the system and the lack of conditioning. It’s not like Auburn spent the offseason lounging poolside and feasting on gelato, but you can’t really be prepared to take that many snaps unless you’ve seen what switching up-tempo can do to the defense of the team making the switch.

(HT: The ever-cromulent War Eagle Reader.)

Blame our east coast bias. It keeps us from doing so many things endorsed by west coasters: veganism, watching football at 9 in the morning (you fucking savages!) and group sex (okay, no comment.) It sometimes delays picking up on stories from the West Coast, like this superb blurb from John Canzano of the Oregonian where he shares an email he received from Senior Associate Athletics Director Kenny Mossman:

Oklahoma’s three losses …

· All versus ranked opponents.

Oh, you don’t know the least bit about pageanting, Kenny Mossman. You play in a conference headed by the queen of pageanting, Mack Brown, whose girls never line up in the inevitable BCS post-season lineup without flawless mascara applied and hairdos blasted into place by a thousand empty cans of White Rain and ESPN appearances. Reminding people of close losses won’t be enough, especially when your most worst loss came to a team later blown out at home by Florida State, and your only “quality” win came over “Baylor.” If Mack Brown is the master tap-dancer getting twenties thrown in his hat on the subway platform, Oklahoma is the tuneless bucket drummer thwacking away spastically on an empty paint jug.

Pageanting will continue apace, especially if the nightmare Alabama-Florida rematch scenario occurs. It likely won’t, but if that somehow happens, the campaigning will redefine whorish.

Bacon’s revenge, my ass.

We spent all but six hours or so of yesterday dead to the world, and the hours spent awake weren’t much more lucid. Going light today, but we will be posting, mostly in our pajamas and attempting to kill ourselves with a vitamin C overdose. If you substitute the word “rum” there, you have Howard Schnellenberger’s offseason schedule, so this should be fun.

That’s my teammate. That’s my quarterback. Tressel didn’t gush TO tears while he made the statement–Jim Tressel only cries over special reruns of Full House–but he did offer an emphatic defense of Terrelle Pryor in his press conference yesterday, unsurprising because Pryor a.) is his best option at qb, and b.) because Jim Tressel likes change about as much as Pol Pot loved people with glasses.

One of the most fundamental keys to “Tresselball” — a conservative, rely-on-your-defense approach — is that turnovers lose games. Yet Tressel continues to stand behind a quarterback who can’t seem to avoid them.

“No one has a disdain for turnovers any more than Terrelle,” said Tressel.

And yet he continues to make them at an astonishing rate, meaning he should just embrace his inner reckless genius and become what he truly is: a turnover-happy qb with moments of occasional brilliance who takes a different path to the same result, that result being games you win by about four points every time. In Tresselball, you do that when you begin running the clock out with a two point lead in the second quarter, and in Pryorball you do that when you scramble for a game-winning TD after throwing a pick six and fumbling to keep the other team in the game.

In theory, it should happen. When the buddy comedy of Stick ‘n Potts faces off against Texas A&M this weekend, they really could score a hundred, right? At this point Aggies players are just laying down to spite Coach Bologna Sandwich, a vortex of anti-charisma driving the football program deeper and deeper into the pit of eternal football misery. Allowing a hundred would be instant firing on principle, perhaps even done theatrically on the sideline by the AD, WWE-style.

Old People, Making you Look Weak Again. Head injuries will not keep an elderly Hawkeye fan from watching what she has to see happen. Kudos, ma’am, though there is a fair argument to be made about the lack of compelling viewing options elsewhere in Iowa.

They’ll make it work. Freek on the lack of home orange for Tennessee in the matchup with Alabama this weekend.

He returns to practice in full pads but with no contact, presumably wearing a special Nike-sponsored Nerf Helmet to protect his noggin. Oh, the joys of listening to swampstained LSU troglodytes hollering jokes about our brain-damaged quarterback! We can’t wait, especially since the fun has already started with LSU fans getting Urban Meyer’s and Riley Cooper’s phone numbers and leaving what we can only assume are helpful words of encouragement, love, and not-at-all veiled murder threats on their voicemail.

Let’s pay ‘em back, shall we? 318-681-4564. That’s Les Miles number.* Let’s make some memories, lovers.

*If Les Miles runs a hospital cafeteria with the most consistently entertaining menu announcements ever.

[click to embiggen]

Brandon Carter, your new facepaint for the Oklahoma game awaits this year: Stephen Good, starting right guard for the Oklahoma Sooners, is terrified of Pennywise.

What’s something about yourself that not many people know?

I’m afraid of clowns. The movie “It” got to me.

It’s okay. We all float down here, Stephen. If you didn’t see IT when you were a kid, we can save you the trauma and summarize it thusly: you get scared shitless by a clown that talks to you from the drains and tries to persuade you to join him in the gutter, and then watch as it turns out he’s just a poorly animated stop-motion animation monster of little substance in the finale. In other words, he’s what every non-Tennessee fan hopes Lane Kiffin’s narrative arc as football coach at Tennessee will be. Glad we could save you the time, and good luck sleeping anyway thinking about a.) what will happen if that’s not true, and b.) Tim Curry talking to you from sewer grates. (HT: Barking Carnival.)

The billboard’s executed well enough; the website is good for an afternoon chanting fix and full of shiny pictures, but there’s just a little je ne sais quois missing. That sense of urgency, not the kind that comes with a tight scoreboard race, but the kind that conveys (CORRECTLY) that the only way to restore balance to an orange universe thrown completely off-kilter by a certain defender’s usurpation of a certain highly coveted trophy is to have the award bestowed on a defender of our own. To wit:

Now we’re talking.

That would be Armanti Edwards of Appalachian State, he who gave Michigan such fits in the portentous 2007 season opener, and who despite GETTING HIS FOOT CAUGHT IN A LAWN MOWER is expected to make a full and speedy recovery in time for kickoff.  Details at this point are sketchy, other than there being a LAWN MOWER involved, but we hope you’ll find our artist’s rendering as entirely plausible as we do:

Quoth ‘Freek: “Revenge is a dish best served cold, and usually from  lawnmowers and woodchippers.”  Carr’s got nothing but time, man. Nothing. But. Time. [SFX: meeeeowwwSNAP!]

RR: Hey! Weren’t you in Booty Call?

JF: Among other things, yeah, man.

RR: I remember that. You put a rubber glove on your stuff instead of a condom. That was GREAT.

JF: Thank you. What do you do?

RR: Well, I coach football. At the University of Michigan. But we had a pretty bad year last year.

RR looks hurt. He trails off.

JF: Hey, now. Let’s turn that frown upside down. You can talk about it.

RR: Naw, it’s…it’s difficult for me. It was so painful.

JF: It can’t be that bad, man.

RR: (pauses) We lost to Toledo.

JF: Oh, now, I didn’t know it was like that. You’re gonna have to sing that one out.

RR: I’m sorry?

JF: It’s the only way you’ll feel better about it. I’ll drop the beat for you, and you can just sing it. You heard my hit song, “Blame it on the Alcohol?”

RR: Have I? You bet. Gary Moeller loves that jam.

JF: Well, I just lay the track down like this…

RR: Really, I don’t know if I could…

Sultry drum machine kicks in. Rich Rod pulls an autotuned mike from his pocket.

RR: Blame it on the backs
Small and full-a lack

Blame it on the line
Fat and lackin’ spine

Blame it on the per-per-per-per-per-personnel
Blame it on the per-per, per-per-per, per-per-per-per-per-per–

You say you usually don’t
Or that you usually won’t
But you’re just frontin, cause last year lost to a team straight from the MAC…

I ain’t saying we ain’t goin’ to
With One freshman qb and maybe two
But it could happen ’cause we’re still slow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow

I know what you’re thinkin’
Michigan be stinkin’
Every single weekend
Freakin’
Out on the message boards sayin’ I’m in trouble
Ain’t all my fault if my screens are all bubbles

Lose to Notre Dame–what?
Coach that got a gunt-what?
You don’t even care now
I was unaware now just
How thin this roster was before I bailed on Morgantowwwwwn…

Blame it on the guards
Blame it on the tackles
Blame it on protection best described as ramshackle

Blame it on the per-per-per-per-per-personnel
Blame it on the per-per-per-per-per-personnel

Blame it on Navarre
Blame it on the Henne
Blame it on the qb who run a six-fiddy

Blame it on the per-per-per-per-per-personnel
Blame it on the per-per, per-per-per, per-per-per-per-per-per–

Music stops.

JF: Man, that was impressive. Have you been practicing that?

RR: Oh, only for about a year and a half now.

The official EDSBS policy on this is that Ms. Andrews has been wronged grievously, and that the person behind this should be bankrupted not just for their invasion of her privacy, but also for their intrusion on the privacy of others. From what we understand, this was a completely random act, and in an alternate universe could have been you or us standing there getting our goods pasted all over the internet for profit. That her celebrity has exacerbated the initial violation is an even sadder occurrence, and far exceeds the reasonable cost of fame in its severity.

With that said, we feel we need to publish what we have in the name of full disclosure. New information has come to light, and we cannot sit on it any longer. We did not film this, nor do we intend to sell it. We do not claim it is in fact anyone in particular, and will not comment on any resemblances other than to say this: we have made this SFW, and that if this is who we think it is, then this could very well be the media scandal of the century.

You have been warned.

A thousand cocktails to Freek, and to the person who invented the concept of the jump on an internet post. You really have made some of our lives so much easier through your foresight and clever coding.