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…)

Pillowfights aren’t always sexy. We reserved a special pillow for Boy Scout camping trips: the Hammer. The Hammer was an ancient down pillow that had, over the course of decades, surrendered much of its fluff to the atmosphere, leaving the remainder as a sack of rock hard feather stems and assembled grit. It had zero give as a pillow, and may have accounted for years of nightmares we had as a child about clowns crushing us in the watery pits at the bottom of elevator. We’re actually not sure it wasn’t just a sack of corn husks and gravel with a pillowcase around it, now that we think about it.

When swung with the appropriate amount of force, though, the Hammer could shatter testicles, evict teeth, and turn a raging pillow fight into a 360 degree swath of prone bodies around you. It was our preteen Mjolnir, and worked with the kind of force that Nebraska defensive end Barry Turner must have applied in a mighty alleged swat of a pillow at his girlfriend on Friday night. Ordinary pillows don’t get you third-degree assault charges.

According to the police report, Turner and the woman fought on Friday night, when Turner allegedly picked her up in the entryway and carried her into the apartment. There, he asked her about a phone call, and when she did not answer, allegedly hit her with a pillow. The report said she grabbed a candlestick and hit him in retaliation. He allegedly responded to that by biting her on her arm and refusing to let her leave.

The universe gives you a FAIL on the Rhett Butler move, Barry, but awards points for the attempted candlestick murder by your girlfriend, Miss Scarlet. As for biting: when your relationship reaches the point where emotions run so high you can only communicate with biting, then it’s true love. We suggest proposing immediately, because that kind of fire does not die.

Nebraska is awarded one point for their efforts in the Fulmer Cup, bringing their total up to a respectable two points in the early innings of the Great Race.

It’s a national holiday and a drowsy news day besides—the kind of afternoon that makes you want to curl up on the couch with a cup of coffee and the Monday Bourdain marathon on the Travel Channel, and watch a large, ardently devoted online fanbase absolutely lose their shit.

In marginally related news, please enjoy Tulsa World’s interview with Oklahoma linebacker Ryan Reynolds (emphasis ours):

Q: A lot of people thought your absence from the second half against Texas was the difference in the game. Even though you lost to Texas, you played in the Big 12 title game and the national championship game. Did it feel good to know that your knee wasn’t the difference in the entire season?
A:  Well, I don’t know about the Texas game, but as the season went on, I felt our team got a lot better. I felt if we were to play Texas later on in the season, or had a tie-breaker game or something like that, I think we would have won that game. I think we were a better team than Texas at the end of the year. I mean, I’m glad that loss to Texas didn’t have any effect on us going to the national championship. But I don’t feel like me coming out of the game was the reason why (Texas won).

Oh, where to begin? The implied statement that mid-October is too soon to evaluate the prowess of a team? After all, it’s only what, seven games into the season? The idea that losing the national title game (only the latest in an admirably solid streak of postseason choke-jobs) leaves one’s team somehow superior to a team it lost to by 10 on a neutral field, a team that went on to win its own BCS tilt? We just can’t decide. Angry Texas hordes, over to you. Arise, Army of the 45-35.