“Tressel Hayes Huffines — sounds as sweet as an OSU victory over Michigan,” Brent Huffines, 27, said Sunday while cradling the 3-day-old boy in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ohio State University Medical Center.

The parents actually named their child after not one, but two Ohio State coaches, something so completely deranged we’ll go ahead and accuse the attending medical staff at the hospital of negligence for not immediately testing the father for tertiary syphilis. We’ll also predict that the child will take their first steps at age two, whereupon he will be tackled savagely by a helmetless Earl Everett.

Honey, get down! Get down Tressel Hayes!

Aside from serving as an argument as to why couples with an aggregate age under 50 should NOT have children, the birth also served as the occasion for a whole array of strange incidents:

1. Afterbirth contained lint roller and gambling chit signed by Art Schlicter.

2. Child’s first diaper stain? In the shape of Lloyd Carr’s profile, oddly enough. Now for sale on EBay and currently holding steady at $16.95. Will increase in value over time, however, as child will only defecate in styrofoam coolers.

3. Baby grabbed doctor by surgical mask and punched him shortly after exiting the birth canal.

4. Child’s natural birth and problem-free vaginal delivery lauded by Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany in the following statement:

We at the Big Ten congratulate the Huffines baby. We realize that at just under six pounds, the child may be smaller than 10 pound, 7 ounce Urban Spurrier Hernandez, born in Miami yesterday via caesarean section to the Hernandez family of Hialeah, Florida.

Jim Delany

Delany: clearly overjoyed.

Short attention span theatre, the radio version, returns tonight with EDSBS Live!, the show so exciting it requires unnecessary! punctuation! just to capture its excitement! Our guest tonight will be Michael David Smith of Football Outsiders, who will discuss the upcoming NFL Draft. We’re talking about the draft because no one, repeat, no one is more knowledgeable than you when it comes to draft predictions, and NFL executives can listen to tonight’s broadcast and save millions of misspent signing bonuses actually listening to people who watched these people play for four years.

What: EDSBS Radio

When: 8:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m. EST

Where: On the EDSBS channel at Now Live.

How: To call in? (310) 984-7600. You may also register at Now Live and participate in the live chat, where we’ll be taking comments and working them into the broadcast. Even if they make fun of our heavy breathing into the mike and audible belching.

Why: To put your “Adrian Peterson is the next Curtis Enis” boast on the record for posterity, sucka.

Who: Peter Bean of Burnt Orange Nation and Orson from this website, along with special guest Michael David Smith of Football Outsiders.

To prepare ahead of time, your study list appears below. The four questions for this week:

1. Who’s your favorite, non-obvious pick in the draft this year who you actually watched play?

2. Who’s your RADIOACTIVE BIOHAZARD DO NOT TOUCH AAAIIIIGGGHHH pick to avoid in this draft? We troy smith have no troy smith definite opinions on this. troy smith

3. Who’s your favorite college stud who failed to find success in the pros? Again, we have no leanings here.

Cough cough WUERFFEL cough cough

4. In the big draft board of life, where were you? Are you a first round bust right now? An unsigned camp invitee turned all-pro? An Arena League legend doing well in your niche? We want to know.

Orson’s totally sure he knows what he is, but you’ll have to listen tonight to find out.

The root of the joke, however, is pretty funny. It allegedly stems from the fact that the black guys on the team call the group, which includes Dallas Sartz and Brian Cushing, “white power.” And as we all know, “white power” as a repeated comic phrase is bankable funny, whether it’s out of the mouth of Clayton Bigsby, Dave Chappelle’s black, blind white supremacist, or as yelled by “White Power Bill” after he shivs someone in the yard on “Arrested Development.” It’s mostly funny because the concept itself is absurd, mockable, and espoused by people who don’t exactly “sell the sizzle” of their chosen lifestyle.

But it’s funny when he says it!

However, in order for this to be funny, you have to be operating at the least in what we’d call the high ironic mode, and preferably in an environment of zero taboo (like we imagine a football lockerroom to be), which means you have to accept the following premises.

1. Your audience has to know that you think white power is bad.

2. It has to be presented in a demonstrably absurd fashion. The more over-the-top, the better.

3. Your audience, preferably, should trust you.

4. You should trust your audience.

So really, this entire brouhaha is not a matter of racism, but bad comic design and placement. Clearly, these guys will not be on the writing staff of 30 Rock any time soon, since their design was sloppy, they didn’t realize their whole audience wouldn’t know that they were kidding, and the joke itself (”arresting black children before they commit crimes”) is offensive without providing any cutting insight. Again: not racist, but certainly reeking of dumb-ist.

(Compare this to the scene in 40 Year Old Virgin where a guy asks a black guy if his child, when born, is already on probation. This wouldn’t be funny coming from an older white guy; it comes, however, from the mouth of an older Indian man, a transgressive and savvy choice because a.) Indian guys are supposed to be polite! And good at math!, and b.) minorities are supposed to stick together, like the Minoriteam!)

Minoriteam-unite!

Nor will they be receiving Fulmer points, since technically they did nothing wrong. However, any of the players concerned will be referred to as First Name “White Power” Last Name as punishment for the next year for their atrocious comic execution. The Punchline is just down the street, white players of USC. Just don’t go there on a night when Michael Richards is playing.

Jim Delany, the commissioner of the Big Ten, does his job well. His job is to represent the interests of the corporation known as the Big Ten, something he’s done admirably. He integrated Penn State into the conference, made sure the fine Midwestern hog that is the Big Ten got a wide berth when he was helping build the BCS, and has helped usher in new revenue streams via “the Big Ten Network,” a football content provider coming to DirectTV only this fall. Jim Delany’s being proactive and visionary. Jim Delany’s turning in his TPS reports on time. He’s harmonizing synergies and being a charismatic problem-solver and self-starter.

Hi. I work for a failing mid-size paper company.

He’s also, to the average college football fan, a faceless powermonger with a rank list of heinous policy decisions to his credit, a few of which would be hanging offenses in a court of tailgaters. His big quote in a Yahoo! Sports article a while back was “I don’t work for college football at large.” His work in stitching together the mixed gristle and organs of college football into the BCS stands as a perfect example of his best and worst work: a skillfully negotiated pact between large partners with diverse interests generating huge piles of cash that almost everyone of any sense hates, a Frankenstein that almost resembles a living entity.

At least the old bowl system, corrupt and bucolic as it was, had some charm to it, and made few real claims to being a national title system. The BCS instead does it through a melange of computers and open politicking not dissimilar in tone to a four beer discussion at your local swillhole of choice. Its benefit relies more on enforcement of rules benefitting vested interests (especially the Big Ten) and less on creating the shiniest, most alluring carrot of all for the fan: truly open competition for a national title. Instead of a playoff bracket, you get the BCS: faceless, three letters as faceless and meaningless as a government bureaucracy, a simultaneous failure of imagination and vision lurching along like Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein, minus the invigorating dance number.

That’s Delaney on the left, BCS on the right. They never do this, btw.

Delany adds to the list of hanging offenses with a hilariously frivolous broadside on the Big Ten’s website this week. Delany’s got a history of overreaction to criticism, and writes a new chapter in it with his defense of the Big Ten’s football record in response to Florida’s eyeball-scorching trunking of Ohio State in the BCS game. Its title? “To Fans of College Football and the Big Ten.” (Remember, to Delany, these aren’t necessarily the same people. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about college football.)

The EDSBS Cliffs Notes begin, with Delany’s deathless prose excerpted below:

With the conclusion of another tremendous college football season and the recent national signing day, there has been a lot written and said about the Big Ten’s recruiting efforts across the country, including a recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times entitled “Big Ten needs to find new talent pool – fast” (see full article here). In response to these commentaries, it seems premature for us to lower our admission standards or give up on the tremendous talent pool in the Midwest.

Delany’s attempting to channel Frank Luntz here and spin the debate his way. Call it the “Healthy Big Ten Act,” with bumper harvests and screaming proletariats hailing the Chairman’s every word. Big Ten has dismal year in the bowls, Big Ten goes 2-5 = need for public defense of long-term bowl record and overall conference health. Marginally necessary, we say, and understandable despite the fact most college football fans don’t give a rat’s ass about conference affiliation and only follow their team.

Bumper harvests for the Big Ten! Smash bourgeois SEC negativity relentlessly!

Fine with us, save for the swipe at the end about lowering admissions standards, clearly a public finger in the eye to the SEC. This means two things in Delany’s siege-minded, “I represent the interests of the Big Ten only,” 18th-century brain: the SEC is the single biggest rival for attention, profits, and prestige, and that they’re recruiting Mongoloids who can’t read to play football. Which is true almost everywhere football is played, the Big Ten included. It’s unnecessary, provincial, and cheap of him, but then again, that’s what an oversensitive barrister playing strictly from the Talleyrand playbook will do: react, overreact, and overreact some more in only the most narrowly defined interests of his client.

Rolling on:

No doubt national programs must recruit nationally wherever the talented students and athletes live. Hats off to Florida and the SEC — they had a great year.

Because their football players can’t read, and have to be told not to eat their mouthpieces, which are not in fact tasty gelatin candies. Though they might want to consider making them out of firm gelatin, because you know they’ll just keep choking on those things.

We believe that both the Big Ten and the SEC have been and remain two of the greatest college football conferences in the country. But you may want to keep in mind the following as you review the various recruiting services, listen to talking heads and reflect the blogosphere out there as they compare these two fine conferences. I think most people would agree that head-to-head competition is an effective method to compare relative strengths between competitive entities:

And thus follows a whole bunch of stats about how good the Big Ten is, was, and will be, a fact virtually no one is disputing outside of the most deranged of message board snipefests. Another great political trick: make an argument no one’s really making, and then inveigh against it to deflect your real concern, which is that a region with stable or declining population is losing ground in a regionally recruited sport over the past forty years. The Big Ten is as competitive as its been since the glory days of the 50s and 60s, and has won two national titles in the past ten years. Why go bazooka here because of one popgun year?

Because Delany’s attempting to sell the Big Ten name, a more important branding than ever given the creation of their extremely stupidly packaged “BigTen Network.” He’s thinks the value is in the league, not the sport as a national whole. And for his paycheck, that is the correct assumption.

I love speed and the SEC has great speed, especially on the defensive line, but there are appropriate balances when mixing academics and athletics. Each school, as well as each conference, simply must do what fits their mission regardless of what a recruiting service recommends.

Umm, excuse us. Que? Reviving the swipe at the SEC, the guy who oversaw the Fab Five scandal at Michigan flings shit at the conference with a well-worn record of violations. Again, if it’s easy, convenient, and in my interests, I’m Jim Delany and I’m doing it to the point of overkill. And what the hell does a recruiting service get into this? Ohio State and Florida, the two teams inspiring the comparison in the first place, make for a disastrous comparision since Florida, the place with all of that non-academics-compatible speed, has marginally higher admissions standards than Ohio State. This isn’t saying OSU sux0rz in skoolz or anything, it’s just pointing out that the comparison flops from the start, and is disingenous.

In fact, the two bowl defeats from the Big Ten to the SEC this year both run downhill academically. Wisconsin (better school) beat Arkansas (not better school), and Tennessee (where you have, unbeknownst to you, already earned an urban studies degree through your reading of Vibe Magazine,) lost to Penn State, which ranks somewhere around a push.

What are you gonna do with all those Vibe Magazine subscriptions? Get yourself a degree, son.

The academic debate’s a canard, and Delaney knows it. He subverts the actual debate by tossing out the cheap inflammatory crapulence of “higher academic standards” when there’s little from the bowls to suggest any connection between the two.

Our favorite slice coming up, with frosting and everything:

I wish we had six teams among the top 10 recruiting classes every year, but winning our way requires some discipline and restraint with the recruitment process.

Translation: “I wish I could have as many boyfriends as you do, but I’ve got this horrible thing called “Not Being a Total Whore” I can’t get over.” Who knows what Delaney hopes to achieve here, other than defending the Big Ten’s somnolent ethos regarding PR and recruiting. The Big 12 and the SEC have consistently abandoned shame and “decorum” (whatever that means–see?) to advance their football programs in the public eye.

Championship games, public stumping from Mack Brown and Urban Meyer for bowl slots, outlandish recruiting tactics…it’s all a matter of public record. Does it conflict with the academic mission of a university? Certainly debatable, unless you’re like us and are willing to consider teams as semi-professional teams sewed to the hide of major universities who value them for their cash and the overall vibe they sell to potential students.

Yet for the major force behind the BCS, someone who approved the worthless 12th game, and the pope of the Big Ten Network to cry foul on a unversity’s overcommitment to football in the name of Mammon stinks of eau d’hypocrite. For one year only, other college football cabals did it faster, better, and stronger than his conference. The Big 12, SEC, and whomever else may be whores, but their business models are nimbler than yours this season, stealing boyfriends and putting all your potential recruits on rock rock.

Therein lies the sting, and the barely concealed spite behind the letter. Delaney’s only real recourse is to act like Angela from The Office and begin pointing sanctimonious fingers…while screwing Dwight Schrute on the side. And the rest is just more veiled screeching unworthy of fisking.

Hi. You might recognize me from my job as the chosen representative of the Big Ten.

The Big Ten’s ultimate problem isn’t a lack of speed, moxie, or prestige: it’s a problem of demography. The Midwest’s two most populous states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, aren’t keeping pace with the explosive population growth in the top five boomers: Florida, Texas, California, Arizona and Georgia. This leaves the Big Ten fighting over talent in their largest states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, a move recruitniks have been trendspotting and discussing for years. The edges other conferences will have in the long run result from population shifts.

This happens in other conferences, too. Look at the blighted Big 12 North for a perfect example of this. It’s not like large swaths of Iowa look like something out of Logan’s Run…yet. Schools like Iowa have already begun to adapt, though, recruiting diamonds in the rough and working their resources to the max. That trend to “adapt or die” must continue and spread if recruiting trends maintain their downward trajectory for the conference. But numbers don’t lie–the only really viable national contenders in the national title picture for the Big Ten have to have pipelines to big population centers: Chicago, the whole state of Ohio, and Pennsylvania. And even then you’ll have difficulty keeping up with the sheer range of goodies pumped out by public schools in blossoming Sun Belt communities.

It’s a matter of margins and numbers. No amount of bitchcraft by Jim Delaney will change that, and neither will walling up the Big Ten on Direct TV, a move comparable to selling your kidney for beer money in the long run. He’s boldly leading the charge back to 1982, legwarmers, skinny tie and all. Fine with us. After all, Delaney’s not working for the interests of college football, but rather the Big Ten, which makes him nothing to the average fan like us but…well, nothing at all.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Did we mention that Marcus Aurelius was an emperor? Anyway, the diagnosis didn’t even give the comfort of man points in the form of “It’s a torn ACL. I’ve been walking on it like it was nothing.” Runner’s knee at thirty: now officially and indubitably a yuppie blogger type.

We’ll be along in a bit with Jim Delany being a dick about the SEC. BTW, Jarvis Moss just sacked Troy Smith again in the shoe section of a Dillard’s in Columbus, causing him to fumble a pair of Tims he was buying, which were recovered by Derrick Harvey who promptly returned them for in-store credit.

We’re calling it blogger’s knee. Oh, the glamour!

Before Photoshop, life was a dull, grey waste, filled with marauding hyenas and only the chill of the north wind to keep you company. Via the standard chain of labyrinthine links (Heisgirl to BurntOrangeNation to hyah) we have Reggie Bush’s latest fumble, again proving that life before Photoshop for the cartoonishly-minded fan was a dark, cold place with little comfort besides food and the promise of a peaceful suicide on the desolate steppes.

Heisgirl’s headline is the winning side dish to the image: “This morning I woke up to a Reggie Bush probe.”

Reggie’s latest fumble: to be recovered by VY, or just vacated?

Muppet News reports. The ND Nation suicide alert has, in light of Trattou’s defecting to the United States of Florida,
been raised to Orange, citizens. Take note and avoid sidewalks around tall office buildings in the Chicago area.

And you can go to prom! With the high school girlfriend you’ve thought about marrying! Why miss that when you can be dating college girls who want no attachments, right? Colin Dunlap of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asks what’s so great about early enrollment, anyway?

Maybe I’m just too “old school” for my own good…Nonetheless, I’ll go on record and say it — I’m not a big fan of the latest craze in college football recruiting. This whole “graduating early and enrolling in college in January” business puzzles me to the core.

Somewhere, Colin’s got an old school letter jacket in a closet, and a class ring we’d wager, too. If he’s as old-school as he says, he’s also definitely writing this poised over his Tandy 300, dookie roll perched around his neck, drinking ginseng tea and pondering the mysteries of the universe while sipping some Old Gold.

Dunlap’s also likely not thinking about the fact that you could skip all the hokey high school crap, jump straight to college, start lifting weights, getting on with your life, and immediately begin your new life as a relatively independent collegiate manwhore/D-1 recruit instead of combing through the perfunctory dregs of your high school for another six months obeying curfew, sleeping in your parents’ house, and clocking meaningless hours in the same rat-trap you’ve already spent three and a half years pacing around in. But we’re just new school, we guess.

–The Annual Lloyd Carr Retirement Rumor Surfaces–SHOOT IT, SHOOOOOOT IT! This time via In The Bleachers, where a tweak to Carr’s compensation is noted in the Ann Arbor News as making a hypothetical Carr departure easier. That Carr’s in a position as a respected coach in a program emphatic about stability and tradition to retweak should be noted; in effect, no evidence of anyone but Carr having any sway over the decision has emerged. In the Big Ten, a coach like Carr could likely stay as long as he likes. Slap four zillion pounds on him, squeeze him into some cheap khakis and an orange golf shirt, and put him at Tennessee, and we’re talking about some entirely different produce, here.

This be some bull shit. SMQ tops his Chris Fowler diary with a revealing interview with Arrelious Benn. The payoff’s worth the whole article.

Really. We’re totally 8th. Perhaps you could take an interest in basketball? Frank Broyles, AD at Arkansas, lays out a persuasive case for Arkansas football in a Dallas alumni meeting. (Summary message: “Hey, assholes, we’re eighth in the conference at best! Back off!”) Teapot hysteria as only local news can give follows:

The sperm lottery pays out again. Mike Shula gets another job. Completely on his own merits using only the evidence represented by his resume and professional record. No other influences. At all. Nope.

Completely unrelated and screamingly funny terminology grab. Should we ever suspect someone of taking cocaine, we will simply refer to them as “partying with Dr. Rockso.”

They say it’s gonna snow! Gonna put White Christmas up mah nose…

“Really, he’s not that fast,” Seamon said of Smith. “He gets run down by defensive ends. He’s not real big. He kind of stares down his targets. You didn’t see those breathtaking, thread-the-needle throws [against Florida] that you’d hope to see from a top-of-the-draft quarterback.”

Nope. The same process of devaluation began for Chris Leak, as well, when a fateful number was announced during the combine: Five feet, eleven inches and seven-tenths. Not officially being six feet tall, Leak may now begin putting in his application to CSTV, right? Why even try?

Smith: tends to stare, right?

(Nothing in this category beats what we spied in the stands during the NFL playoffs this weekend: a drunk blonde woman in New Orleans who, for a full five wondrous seconds, showed off her “FUCK DA EAGLES” t-shirt center frame before Fox hurriedly switched shots. Which they most certainly did not show on purpose. Rememember: Fox hates you, which is why they’re debuting Ow! My Balls! on Thursday night. You can’t–and won’t–miss it.)

One of those nuggets for Gator fans has been this moment of delight, where we find out that any and all guilt associated with giving Ohio State a grievous and overdone death roll on national television evaporates in the viewing of a single gesture. Watch #55 Curtis Terry at the end of the play here. He should be easy to find– he’s the one elbowing Tebow in the head.

There’s a Zapruder style and sadly unembeddable copy here. The incident illustrates just how off OSU’s scouting reports on the Gators were, since scientists concur that blunt force trauma only makes Tim Tebow stronger and larger–as Andy James Lauranaitis, the BEST LINEBACKER IN THE WORLD1111 found out in the same game.

Curiously enough, an angry Tim Tebow also emits pheramones that smell of cinnamon buns to his friends, and of burning metal, cordite, and sorrow to his enemies.

Mmm…cinnamon buns.

We think that’s the bumper to a Honda, no?

–Did Tressel watch a single minute of game film on Florida’s offense? Florida withers under blitz; him big ape, me call blitzes. Instead OSU opens each series with three down lineman, including some sets with a linebacker at the nose tackle position. They begged for the short-passing, highly accurate Leak to undo the sutures of their defense and let it bleed.

Coach Heacock, this space-age device could change your life.

This might not have been a disastrous strategy had Leak not been tossing the ball down hallways. The dbs seemed horrified of giving up anything over seven yards, playing miles off the ball on the snap and allowing Florida receivers to catch the ball in space. If this phrase sounds familiar to you, it’s because it’s in your pablum detector for announcers, who use this verbiage to describe any short passing attack. Like, say, Florida’s. Who’d been called that all year.

A failure of imagination, gameplanning, and execution for Ohio State doomed them on defense. When they held soft zone, it was over. Next time, watch some tape. Or call someone. Or hell, pick up a controller and give NCAA 2007 a whirl. You’d think a team familiar with shattering Michigan’s soft zones would be the last to allow a team to do this, or create a gameplan begging for such treatment. Bear, meet trap.

–On defense Florida needed no coaching accomplices. (Negative superlative coming! Cliche warning issued.) Troy Smith played the worst game of his life and any other Heisman Winner in a big game, dipping below the Toretta line with the damning evidence listed in agate type for all to see:

4-14 completions 35 yards 0 TDs/ 1 INT

We imagined his agent creaming cellphone batteries, bluetooth light in his ear accentuating the panic, wearing out blackberries and reaching for holstered backups in an attempt to counter the ugly reality unfolding in front of him with carefully leaked leads to sympathetic sportswriters.

Cancer. Can we fake cancer? Sure, Lance Armstrong did it, right? That’s plan A, man. Then we go to dead relative–does he have a dead one? A really recently dead one? Or injury. He’s got to have a few. It’s gotta be something severe, like fractured ass, or cerebral ebola. Hell, cerebral ebola might actually up his signing bonus–what linebacker’s gonna want to touch someone with something called cerebral ebola? Phyllis! Get me the number of the CDC…

Earl Everett needs no helmet, and does not fear your cerebral ebola.

Smith should have more attempts on the books, and in reality did–five became sacks, and one became a fumble to set up Tim Tebow’s gotcha TD pass at the goal line. Ohio State’s tackles redefined late on Monday night, with Derrick Harvey and Jarvis Moss blowing tight curves around the edges to pressure Smith every time he had the ball.

Jarvis Moss: walking and talking on Facebook. He likes Heisemens.

If Marcus Thomas had laid off the GHB and stayed with the team, the numbers–horror of horrors–could have been worse. Joe Cohen in the middle did a superb job as malign speed bump, clogging two blockers on the decisive “Gamblin’ Vest” call on the 29.

The rest of the gameplan stayed simple: vary your coverages, let the Heisemens flitter around the backfield. They dared Smith to pull a Mike Vick and make something out of nothing. He didn’t. Who knows what Ohio State’s gameplan was–they met superior athletes bent on annihilation at every turn. We’d love to fall into an old diagnostic rut–no adjustments, no gameplan, hang the offensive coordinator blah blah–but Florida’s defense played with the mania of a suicide cult last night. Ohio State could have had Mike Leach pulling the levers for them on the sidelines in Glendale. Tears were an inevitability.

–Speaking of that call: we’ll own up and say that despite our cool veneer, we’re shitty at gambling. Horrible. Like, Nick-Leeson-bad gambling horrible. We bet out of turn at blackjack tables. We make ill-conceived, suicidal bluffs in Texas Hold-’em. We’ll spare you any details of a late-blooming love affair with roulette (like your uncle, we’ve got a system that can’t be beat!!!) Give us five hundred dollars, and we will perform a magic trick by turning it into eleven watery gin and tonics floating in the belly mixed with our own tears.

Thus, we sympathize with Jim Tressel, another bad gambler. Going for it on your own 29 does not necessarily indicate the presence of a hopelessly inexpert wagerer. Doing it on a straight up announced run into the teeth of an all-negating defense does. Tressel could have faked a punt, or run a trick play, or done something to indicate that if you’re going to go crazy, you might as well get Houston Nutt-crazy with it. Instead: stodgy, wholesome run up the middle. High in vitamins and fiber; low in payoff.

Sweatervest, we await you at the two dollar tables in Tunica. We’ll be the ones weeping.

Smith, leaving the scene of the Buckeyes’ 41-14 defeat at the hands of the Florida Gators, said he was just trying to interact with fans and help himself forget what had just happened.

“There were a few kids standing around the trailers, and I thought, you know, give them a little something to remember, mix with the fans. Blow off some steam and make a positive out of a negative, you know.”

Smith approached the youths, who gladly worked him into the game.

“He just seemed so sad. So we let him play,” said Gator fan Kieran Woodley of Orange Park, FL. “He thought we were just going to be playing touch, though.”

Smith played a position known as “all-time qb” for three downs on the field, actually a stretch of parking lot with trailers for boundaries and with light posts marking the endzones. Smith played three downs before he was injured by young Gator fan Ryan Thomas, a scrappy nine-year old from Lakeland, Florida and cousin of the aforementioned Woodley.

Woodley and Thomas, left to right, injured Smith in the parking lot.

“On first down, I ran after him and he threw the ball into my uncle’s RV. Chips went everywhere and my aunt screamed. It was awesome. On second down, he just kind of stood there–I mean, all we ran was a twist stunt and told Kieran to play a zone robber. Duh. He threw the ball into the ground that time.”

At that point, though, things took a dire turn.

“He was smiling and everything, just being real cool with the kids and all,” said Harold Conners, a witness to the game and acquaintance of the Woodley family. “Then he just kind of turned. He called the play real loud–HUUUUT! HUUUTT! HUUAAAGGGGHHHHHUUUT!!!–and then faked the pass and took off.”

“That’s when Ryan laid him out.”

According to witnesses, Smith ran full speed into the defense, expecting to bowl children over effortlessly. The young Thomas had other ideas.

“We spied him on third to keep him from scrambling–what, he thinks we don’t have DVRs?–and here he comes, just like we called. Taylor kept contain and forced him to my side, and I wrapped up, planted, and drove through my hips. It was way cooler than that movie Eragon, which totally sucked.”

Smith hit the ground, and on the play injured his knee.

“I don’t know what he was doing in the parking lot like that,” commented Buckeyes head coach Jim Tressel, “but that’s just not what we do at the Ohio State University. Not at all.”

Smith left the field under his own power, and was heard muttering the phrase “It’s not fair” under his breath. According to his agent, he will be fine for the combine, and plans on enjoying the layoff as much as he can.

“They just…they just came at me so quickly,” said Smith, shaking his head. “It’s like they brought extra guys. I didn’t know you could do that.”

Thomas, for one, is looking forward to the rest of his vacation.

“We’ve got Eight Below and a whole collection of Yu-Gi-Oh on DVD for the ride back. It’s gonna be awesome,” says Thomas, who has already fielded a phone call from Nick Saban offering a scholarship.

Smith declined comment on the situation, cutting short the interview on the advice of his agent.

Troy Smith, who injured his knee in the parking lot playing with kids, is seen here trying to choke the life from Chris Leak after the game.

(Chris…we’re so sorry. We’re so, so sorry.)

And it’s not that Ohio State was bad–they were pathetic. Odious. Null. Reeking. Inert. They had no answer, no adjustments, no nothing. Alex Boone and Kirk Barton spent all night reaching backwards into the void where Derrick Harvey and Jarvis Moss should have been, and instead turning over to look at Troy Smith, eyes wide as dinner plates, turning away from one 270 lb. man attempting to kill him to find another 270 lb. beast running at him with 4.7 speed. His line becomes a paragraph unto itself:

Troy Smith: 4-14, 35 yards. 0 TDs, 1 INT. Sacks: 5

Heisman! UF outplayed them in every single facet of the game. No Ted Ginn excuses, no blown calls, nothing. Florida kicked ass until their toes fell off. It was like watching a small animal get crushed between two glaciers. It was like watching Roy Jones in his prime boxing an Olsen twin. It was like watching Clarence Darrow squaring off against Starr Jones in the courtroom. It was defeat, served rare, with a side of raw loss.

And for us: scoreboard, bitches. Scoreboard. We. Win.

Ohio State continues to look into potential NCAA violations committed Saturday involving a benefit dinner for four players’ families.

NCAA regulations prohibit fundraisers to help players’ families, and NCAA spokesman Bob Williams said OSU’s investigation will determine whether there was an extra benefit to the families of running backs Antonio Pittman and Chris Wells, defensive end Lawrence Wilson and defensive back DeAngelo Haslam. If so, the players would be ineligible to compete in the national title game Jan. 8 and the school likely would apply for reinstatement.

The complete partisan would at this point be WOO-WOO!-ing all over this from a Florida perspective, but the NCAA skeptic has to ask what the hell an organization does when it’s policing dinners held to raise money so families can see their children play the second biggest football game of their young lives. (Michigan’s got the top spot in any Buckeye year, si? Si.) Plus:as a Florida fan, you don’t want to beat Voltron when he’s missing a leg, right? Of course not. You want to knock the whole thing on its ass, not a diminished version of it.

And after all…since when has anyone in Columbus, Ohio remotely associated with the football program had trouble finding transportation? We thought Escalades grew on trees up there, complete with complimentary lint rollers and Grey Goose bottles. Throw in a gas card or two and you’re Glendale-bound and rollin’ like an Israeli mafioso, baby.

All recipients of spaghetti dinner funds will receive the ‘Clarett Package.’

Another worthy activity: checking out Florida players’ Facebook pages. Today’s excerpt comes from Florida defensive end Jarvis Moss. A few facts about Jarvis Moss, first:

Fact: he is interested in girls.

Fact: someone named “Mimi” “tagged Jarvis in 11 photos,” something not half as nasty as it sounds, actually.

Fact: Jarvis Moss was appointed “Troy Smith’s Worst Nightmare” by an influential member of the
“~QUIT CRYING MICHIGAN…FLORIDA IS GOING TO DA SHIP!!!” group. Apparently this is not an elected office.

Fact: Troy Smith, Jarvis Moss apparently is not impressed with your “Heiseman.”

Presented in unalterable SCREENCAPTUREVISION to prevent memory-holing by concerned Florida officials, we present Jarvis’ Facebook page. Moss like HEISMENS! (HT: Lindsay.)

We highlight the best part of all below, hoping that this is some kind of backhanded spelling tribute to the classic In Living Color skit, “Men on Film.”

MOSS LIKE HEISMENS!!!

Troy Smith im watchin you win you Heisman trophy! Washin your car!!! Goin to Outback!!! Playin’ your PS3 in the Buckeye lockerroom!!! No, seriously, Jarvis Moss really is watching you do all of this through a night-vision telescoping lens from the bushes across the street. It’s getting well beyond the excuse of “pre-game scouting” here. You might want to consider a restraining order or something.

Thanks to this we do now have a term for the Heisman winner who goes bust in their final game: a Heisemen. We need no man-law council to adopt this new piece of verbiage, so tell Burt Reynolds and Eddie Griffin to sit down and shut up.

(Hey, we loved the man in ‘81, but dammit, facelifts are not masculine, Burt, and yours looks like Jerry Jones’ Joker work from a few years back. Grizzled and craggy is–just ask the Falconer, Jack Palance, or Howard Schnellenberger.)

For Moss’s sake and ours, we really, really hope Troy Smith turns Heisemennish on January 8th.