Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. Colorado has lost ten games in a row on the road, a streak surpassed only by Washington Generic and Washington State With Vibrating Rings For Your Pleasure and Most Definitely Not Theirs. They rank last or next to last in passing efficiency, punt returns, fumbles lost, rushing offense, scoring defense, scoring offense, total offense, turnovers lost, and turnover margin. This team allowed Toledo to score over fifty points on them. This team attempted to stop for a busy crosswalk, hit the gas, and is now wondering why there is a screaming old woman embedded in their windshield. This team is horrible beyond any concept words can convey, and thus we resort to song. Terrible, excruciating Chinese song:

Dan Hawkins’ recruiting is Chinese karaoke howl bad, and it is coming back for an encore thanks to the university being too broke to buy him out, meaning they’ll be sending out the Weber State Men’s Water Polo Team for another year of savage beatings at the hands of the Big 12, but without prize recruit Darrell Scott. He overcame a two year delusion that he was a white water polo player, and transferred him to a school that would allow him to play football.

Oklahoma State, in contrast, is not Colorado.

Advantage: Oklahoma State.

Oklahoma State, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: Oklahoma’s Pistol Pete falls into the category of mascot only describable as “accidental grotesquerie.” Is he going to awkwardly ask a young girl if she’s had the menses yet? Did he hear tell of a mysterious half-cougar, half warlock creature that lived in the old abandoned mineshaft out yonder guarding a pile ‘o Confederate gold, and is he going to tell you about it while staring at you just a bit too intensely? Is he second away from gunning your family down with a cold glint in his eye for no reason whatsoever? Didn’t you last see his face bobbing down the street in a Spanish religious festival’s procession that ended with dozens of spectators being burned alive by a collapsing bonfire?

You datin’ yet, sweetie? You’re twelve. That’s about right.

Ralphie is an ornery Buffalo she-bitch who tramples her own trainers and once threatened to charge Tom Osborne and the entire Nebraska team in the tunnel in a prior incarnation. Additionally, her meat when cooked would be low in fat, high in protein, and wouldn’t taste like spoiled muscadine wine and cigarettes like Pete’s would.

Advantage: Colorado.

Colorado, You’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. The passionate OSU fanbase will be on top of the Buffaloes tonight in Stillwater, a place constructed for maximum noise and proximity to the crowd, an important factor if you’re going to be making enthusiastic fellatio gestures at the opposing team indicating their deep degree of suck.

Also, we remind you that Colorado is terrible and slow.

Advantage: Oklahoma State.

Oklahoma State, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names.

Oklahoma State: Ugo Chinasa, Daytawion Lowe, Patrick Hoog

Colorado: Zach Grossnickle, Maxwell Tuioti-Mariner, Douglas Rippy

Advantage: Colorado.

Colorado, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? Does it matter? Colorado has every reason to be able to steal this game in the intangibles category, because Oklahoma State has to be overlooking them on an oddly scheduled Thursday night game in mid-November against a sludgy, thin, banged up Colorado team with a rolling atrocity of an offense and absolutely zero chance of competing head-to-head with the Cowboys at any position. So every gutty, hunch-driven bone in your body is telling you to pick an upset. This is the gambling equivalent of “listening to your body” when you’re hungry, because shockingly your body needs cupcakes, beer, and fried chicken, and not things that won’t clog its circulatory system and leave you waiting for someone to bust out a wall and snake a tube down your throat for six weeks of an emergency liquid diet. If you’re thinking this you are bored and belong nowhere near a bettin’ window. (We’re typing this as much for us as for you.)

Oklahoma State, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 3-2, Oklahoma State, You’ve Been Factor’d! This game will be horrible, but between Gundy and Hawkins the Rant Potential Factor is through the roof, so if anything tune into the postgame pressers out of morbid curiosity.*

*Please note that an earlier tally erroneously granted mascot to OSU. This was an error, because counting to five is really, really hard.

Link to listen is here; link to chat is here. It is a balla convention with free admission, but you have to bring your own bottle. See you at 9:00 p.m. EST, Bravehearts.

Photo: Mark Bradley, AJC.

The guide has the 45-42 Tech victory last year in Athens as a 42-42 tie. Please note that the Florida score is accurate, and still registers a full, sexy 39 point margin of victory. Mark Bradley also mentions the differing tallies between Tech and UGA in the series, and takes pains to mention Jasper Sanks’ fumble/non-fumble in the ‘99 game and thus double-Rochambeau Dawg fans. Remember this when you’re kicking Bradley in the balls in person, and feel justified.

That, if you’ll recall from last year’s BYU/Washington game, is what happens when you take apes, give them complex and sometimes poorly written rules, and ask them to navigate them 14 times a year under the live fire of crowd noise, bodies hurtling all over the place, and the confusion of real-life angles and blocked perspectives. Necessarily stated: officiating is hard, especially in football officiating, a job akin to being a traffic cop stuck without a car vainly trying to flag down speeders without the benefit of a radar gun or pistol.

There’s really just four sets of eyes out there to watch 22 players in motion, and this bad math leads to worse calls. Realistically, holding really could be called on every play, and every game contains a thousand variables being processed by very fallible brains working very quickly under immense pressure. Faced with an impossible job, most crews seem to stick to the big stuff, calling the most egregious penalties while letting little ones slide.

Unless, unless, unless: the crew is captained by Ron Cherry, the most annoying spotlight-slutty referee in the nation and a kidney stone of an official at best, or the crew actually decides to call the excessive celebration call. The rule is a bad one, especially when called as insanely as it was against Jake Locker above, but it’s unmanageable not just in its content, but in its further clouding of the ol’ mental windshield for officials already trying to balance a zillion things at once. People’s cognition tends to suffer as more variables are thrown in, something that applies to both quarterbacks and officials. Add enough of them, and soon the rule book is as incomprehensible and unpracticeable as the Dave Clawson offense.

Thus Mack Brown’s fear of what may result from the new emphasis on ejecting players for above the neck contact from defenders: he’s terrified of the possibilities of officials being given one more thing to think about and interpret, and of watching the Texas program’s coaching scion, Will Muschamp, die on the sideline as his head explodes on a particularly ticky-tacky call against Sergio Kindle in a big game.

In the same Kirk Bohls article R.C. Slocum makes an even darker point: not only does an additional fuzzy and ultimately subjective rule make for official confusion, but it opens the door for corrupt officials to influence games even more than they might already:

“I’ve got nothing against officials,” Slocum said, “but we’ve got politicians who have less than perfect integrity. Bankers, doctors, preachers, lawyers all have problems, but we’ve got no crooked officials?

“We’ve got TV ministers and priests, some of them proven not to be (upstanding), and it’s unthinkable that a whole group of officials have total integrity? It’s an insult to our intelligence.”

This will get out hand, gentlemen. And when it does, you’ll experience rage untold. Even money on the most egregious being from the blind collection of random hankie machines called the Pac-10 Officiating Corps, since they’ve been the ones most likely to walk face-first into the logical bear traps of new rules. (Dan Fouts’ beard still deserves a group hug for making the “Horrible call!” judgment on the spot, and for doing this with his alma mater getting the upside of a demonstrably monstrous call.)

Play me off for 6-8 weeks, Keyboard Cat.

No permanent or lasting damage, as the piece of angry, disunited bones in my back aren’t load bearing. They do hurt like I swallowed a plugged-in soldering gun, which is why I’m waking up in a few hours to dust off some more delicious, nutritious Percocet.

Thanks to all the well-wishers on Twitter and Facebook. (Our phone doesn’t work, as the iPhone battery died last night, too.) It’s pill and sleep time, and we’ll see what “we” feel like tomorrow.

Three: Auburn/Your New Diet. French ladies don’t get fat. Nor do they fire Tony Franklin.

Both are mysteries involving long walks, various forms of starvation, and cultural differences it would take years of dodgy research to fully flesh out. In fact, we suggest you contact the Ford Foundation and other luxurious research institutions fond of giving out fat grant money to let us research these. We, in turn, will take that money, move to Thailand, and do all of our important research on both topics from there face-down in a bowl of pad thai and with an IV of Chang Beer planted firmly in our arm. Trust us: it sounds unconventional, but all new science at first is indistinguishable from fraud. Or magic. We forget the quote.

Anyway, Auburn began 2008 as a consensus top tenth and a half team, getting ten in the AP and eleven in the USA Today poll on the basis of their fierce defense and the introduction of the Tigerbonesplitwhateverthefuckitwas Tony Franklin spread attack, which was double awesome because the Tigers had installed it early for the Peach Bowl to end the previous season. You were were ready, because you were doing this the sensible way, no?

Just like when you switched to sugar-free candy, or light beer, and began tapering into the diet–you didn’t have to start all at once! Just easing into it in a sensible way, and not like the time you just started eating nothing but bacon for three months back in 1997. Man, you smelled like one big piece of pig ass. (But my god, you could almost see that little D’Angelo man dent! It was there, you swear!)

Lookin’ good, Auburn. Just a few more pounds and you’ll be perfect.

Yet…something was wrong from the start. Maybe you should have cut certain old friends of yours. Oh, sure: you had defense-a-plenty. Trey Blackmon, Antonio Coleman, and a horde of no-name young ‘uns held the line with effort, just like you did puffing away on some desolate back street or on the elliptical machine. When you needed power, it was there; endurance, yes. In the name of holding it off, you had that part down.

That wasn’t the problem, though, was it? The problem came with your old friends, the ones who had just met this new “diet” person and weren’t taking kindly to him? Hugh Nall, Steve Ensminger…they were comfortable in their ways, ineffective and flabby though they were. Run-block, pounding the ball forward mindlessly regardless of the situation…that had to change just like your habit of buying a six pack designed to last the week but finishing it by Tuesday, didn’t it?

And there you were, wondering why your pants were still tight enough to split your balls into a sad camel nose–even with the new exercise, you were still eating yourself into a steady-state of ineffective flab when it came to how you did things day to day. You didn’t get along with this new guy, and frankly, you began to wonder if what he was teaching was going to work?

So intead of just diving headfirst into the project, you half-assed the thing. You built a half-assed zone read into the offense. You ate 1,000 calories of low-carb ice cream because “hey, it’s on the diet!” You put not one, but two quarterbacks into a morass of a scheme, ensuring neither would properly get a read for how it actually worked and felt under live fire. You drank wine because “hey, it’s an antioxidant,” and boy sure is it when you drink three glasses of it a night, you walking, talking tipsy, antioxidized bloated picture of health, you. Your habits and the new diet were as harmonious as inserting a chainsaw solo into the middle of a Schubert piece. It wasn’t working.

You let this roll on because you’re the laid-back CEO type when it comes to things–Captain Laissez-Faire, an attitude that has benefited you in the past, certainly. The adult in the room expected everyone to behave like adults, and when the Play-doh started flying across the room–first in tiny balls, and then unopened in the can to ensure damage–you flipped out and shut the whole thing down, letting loose and letting your old habits take you right back to where you were before.

Toss him out. And those Zone bars? Throw that shit out, too.

And if you watched the Auburn/Georgia game Saturday, that’s where Auburn is: back at Chik-Fil-A, sullenly ordering the 12 pack, with the fries, and the large Coke, and fuck it let’s just get a brownie, too, because it’s been a hard day, and I’ll make up for it….sometime. There was the Al Borges toss play; there was the bootleg pass, and the naked boot, and bootlegs of all sorts, and all of the greatest hits of the Borges playbook. Ultimately, after all that effort and expenditure (and Nutrisystem has nothing on paying two ex-offensive coordinators at the same time), you ended up with the same ineffective offense you had two years ago, reams of disappointment caused by a piss-poor offense, and ending up back where you were six years ago: on the hotseat and dodging bullets.

Maybe you should just work on loving who you are instead of chasing the latest fad. Who doesn’t like a little meat on a program? It’s cute, unless you’re clawing to the death with 14-12 games against fellow failed diet fad enthusiasts Tennessee. Yours ended up with disappointment, but that crazy-ass urine-drinking all-tofu diet they did? Holy hell, you’ll take the sad shortcomings of this season over the
total kidney failure and hospitalization they got out of their new diet.

Now where are those chips…mmm…old friend Doritos, you never fail when the sad comes…and when you lose to Vandy, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Mississippi consecutively, the sad comes fast and furious and by the pound.

So there’s that, which preceded Georgia decimating Florida in the Cocktail Party last year. A gag order has been issued to his team by Urban Meyer, presumably to avoid bulletin board material and keep the team focused, but he did talk about the dance by not talking about it, which is talking about it but DAMN YOU AND YOUR LOGIC:

“I think it’s old news … and it has no bearing on this year’s game,” Meyer said Sunday. “It’s two teams battling for the SEC East.”

Meaning a spectacular choreographed retribution is planned for Saturday. Our proposals for how Florida will attempt to one-up Georgia in the excessive celebration department follow, listed from least likely to most likely and by mode of celebration:

Tex Avery: A horde of walk-ons and mascots hoisting anvils, safes, and grand pianos on pulleys above the endzone waits for Georgia’s first score.

Busby Berkley: The endzone rolls back, a pool emerges, and a wedding cake rises from the pool lined with leggy dames! The rest goes just like this, but with Tim Tebow playing the part of Miss Piggy:

Batman-style: Jeff Demps scores, throws a smoke bomb down on the ground, and disappears in a fog, only to reappear suspended in a glass box over the student section, peacefully napping upside down.

Palin-style: Tim Tebow scores, turns to camera, winks and makes cutesy little “pyew! pyew!” gun shots at the camera.

Strauss-style: Counters UGA’s 2007 sponsorship of “Soulja Boy” with tasteful group minuet.

Hot Rod-Style Fifty huge dudes in orange and blue do this on the sidelines–not on the field, mind you–when Florida scores.

SAW-style. At first score, Dave Matthews is dropped screaming from lights, thus breaking the collective will of the UGA fanbase. Or should we say he CRASHES INTO THE GROUND BWAHAHAHAHAHAA

Leave your own suggestions for further Florida or Georgia dance-off routines or celebrations below.

Matt Grothe, football hero.  We’re as spooked as you are.

Art Briles used to coach at Houston and win games. He now coaches at Baylor, where he will–for one year at the least–lose tremendous amounts of football games. Briles is no rube: he’s clawed his way up from the petri dish in his coaching career, starting as an assistant at a high school and working his way alllllll the way up the coaching ladder. This will make and keep someone very, very humble, and Briles’ quote about spring practice certainly oozes that:

“First of all, we didn’t get anyone injured; that was our number one goal,” said Baylor head football coach Art Briles.

They’ve gone 7-33 the past five years, meaning they’ve had “not getting anyone injured” as the mission statement for a while now, coach. We are just discussing spring practice here, and we wouldn’t want to unfairly excerpt him. (We never do that.) Briles did get financial candy to move to Waco–a 1.8 million dollar contract will do that–but we wonder what kind of naked BASE-jumping while wrestling over a single chute with a Spetznaz assassin does Briles indulge in? The Baylor job is straight fiendish danger for coaches and their careers; Guy Morriss, calling from a high school, would like to reinforce this point vigorously.

Kanu explained it best: “It’s like they had a lot of shitty beer, and just said ‘Hey, we can sell it if we just add more alcohol.’”

Enjoy your evening.

We slammed a fifth of Powerthirst after waking up this morning, and the Curious Index is now the FURIOUS INDEX! Thus, it’s only fair we start things off with something satisfyingly harsh, like Pantera in front of tens of thousands of angry Russians. Mind the language, of course, but it’s likely your boss might care a bit more about the fact that it’s Pantera than if an F bomb gets dropped. Plus you can’t even understand any of the lyrics anyway.

Who the hell is “Terrelle Pryor”?: Recruiting minutia for those of you who care about this stuff… some Pryor kid, who seems more interested in basketball than football, has committed to the “University of Ohio State.” aren’t they in the MAC or something? Regardless, we expect this to have absolutely no effect on the college football world for the next four-five years. None whatsoever. We’re certain that Michigan faithful would rise up with pitchforks and torches and throw Rich Rodriguez into Lake Huron in 2010 anyway. Anyway, worst kept secret turns into not secret at all, and the other members of the BXI now have their excuse why they plan to lose to Ohio State 90-0 for the next four years.

June Jones cares about defense, pants: An alert reader sends us this tip:

But here was the big surprise — June Jones was coaching the defense. Seriously. I expected him to be right behind the quarterbacks talking to them about everything, but instead he had a notebook in his hand and after each play he’d flip it open and show something to the defense — I’m guessing a formation he wanted them to line up in. He even lined up as the right end a few times and at the snap would take a couple of steps into the backfield, like a rusher.

Picture evidence, which is too large for the constraints of this site, is here. There is no denying, now, that SMU is controlling Jones like Scientology. First, the clothes: Jones, who used to dress like a bad mix of a Jimmy Buffett fan and Bernie Focker, is posing in suits with the SMU brass. Now the former Hawaii coach thinks he’s a defensive guru. Don’t be surprised when, by July, Tom Cruise hears June’s name, thinks he’s a girl, and instinctively gets him pregnant.

Did we say “aggravated murder by arson?” We mean “misdemeanor.”: Charges against a Penn State player have been dropped. No, this is not a repeat. This time it’s Tyrell Sales, cited last Saturday for hollerating, and charges have now poof disappeared. This follows a long line of exorbitant Penn State charges that haven’t even come close to sticking, which just goes to show what happens when you hire Fericito as your attorney general. The Big Board will reflect the adjustment, assuming it was ever changed in the first place.

Did you have a good day with your bracket?: Yes, so did everybody else. It’s not like you had Georgia in the Elite 8 or any… oh God, you did, didn’t you. It’s okay, you didn’t need that money. Your wife can live off canned food for a while.

The Sporting Blog. Not only does it have our interview with Ric Flair, but it will have our posts on what Vegas during the first weekend of March Madness looks, feels, smells, and feels like, including the part where we wind up drinking $2000/bottle cognac from goatskins with the sheikhs of Dubai at a live man versus panther death match in the hills of Nevada.

Step One, this. Step Two, fire up laptop. Step three: MASSIVE PROFITS.

Flickr. I’ll be posting photos live from the fracas, as well, so keep up by following here.

Twitter. For those too ADDled to even get through this blog post, we’ll be posting on the EDSBS Twitter feed muy rapido all day and most of the night.

Your guest host will be Oops Pow Surprise from Black Heart, Gold Pants , a demented gent who promises to not only provide the Curious Index, but an installment of “Things Black and Gold People Like,” the latest in our series of fan profiles. We will usurp the Iowa jokes by saying the only one we know for sure: meth.

Godspeed. And wish the same to us. If we fail to come back from this mission, know that we went to bat country happily.