The foinest of the foin, brought you by an RSS reader and some prescription stimulants. Autobots, roll out!

–Every Day Should Be Lemsday. Go to it. Now. An excerpt from the goods if you don’t believe us:

Aw de bowgame comrawndhea. Owe Miss aintinna bowgame! ORGERAWANNABOWGAME! Bamainnabowgame, Tennseeinnabowgame, evin Kentkainnabowgame! Isa putta rebah innabowgame! Wepla ennawar. Shrepor, Jackvul, Canta, youname! Rebah manah ha agresaysen, butrebah travrewel! Brindamanah! Brindafan! Ow Miss Rebah fillyostadum ritup!

Gicotchogeonachan, or hecommaritroun anstrinyawup!

It’s the greatest thing since Chewbacca’s website. Gigantic accolades to Brian and Trev and the boys for rigging up something that truly defies description.

Datratdeyer izzahelluvawebsayyyyeeet. YallhavahappeeLEMSDAY!!!

–In other bayou-ish news: Tulane, fresh from what Tony Barnhardt called a “scandalous” firing of Chris Scelfo, hires retread Bob Toledo as coach. Scelfo was the coach who juggled chainsaws in getting Tulane’s football team through Katrina despite lacking facilities, a field, and proper funding for substitutes. Karma points surely give him a nice bonus on whatever the next roll of life’s 20-sided die brings.

–House of Heat brings us a comprehensive guide to surviving the wilds of Glendale, Arizona. They’re also quite cautious but also optimistic on Arizona State’s hiring of slut/genius Dennis Erickson as their coach for the next two years. (max)

–We missed the inimitable Clay Travis post-game at the SEC championship game, but we hope that’s understandable since the Nutt/Meyer trickfest left us too weak to speak coherently. Clay shares his lessons learned from his season-long swing around the SEC, including this canny observation about the benefits of publicly-subsidized Georgia educations:

. University of Georgia girls have bigger breasts thanks to the Hope Scholarship. With other southern states like Tennessee and South Carolina adopting lottery-funded scholarships, I expect this trend to spread even faster.

Take that, Harvard!

–Adrian Peterson, playing in la Fiesta Bowl. We’re not sure we can really advocate this, since given his long history of freak injuries and bad timing, a smiting at the gun just as AP extends his arm into the endzone for the winning score might be inevitable.

–Urban Meyer’s counting to 10 before he answers questions that make him mad. He’s also getting all postmodern and ironic with us:

“See, I’ve learned. I made comments in this room before (that were criticized). Watch how mature I am. You’re going to hear a lot of nonsense out of my mouth from here on out. … I’m going to start talking like a lot of these other coaches. … I think we’re going to take it one game at a time. We’re going to play very hard. Ohio State’s got great players. How’s that?”

Sounds like Jim Tressel, actually.

–Speaking of Sir Sweatervest…Buckeye Commentary has graphs of Smith’s landslide of the Heisman award leading up to the voting. The actual voting looked like Haitian election results with Troy Smith playing the part of the well-armed strongman.

–Dem Heizman Boyz: Another reason why living in the South is like awesomeness cubed. Actually, at any point in the Southeast spontaneous, coordinated, and oddly goofy dancing can break out at any point, though never without the participation of at least one black person. The only exception to this is the electric slide; otherwise, white people in large groups, like programmed Sims, just start playing horseshoes happily.

Brian’s got his videos, but we’re partial to this Florida-themed variation we found on Youtube. You know it’s college–check the lamp in the background and the blinds. We know this because we can still smell the odor of a tremendous spider falling to its fiery death against the bulb in a dingy Gainesville apartment.

NEW YORK–(AP) In a Heisman ceremony of unprecedented length and endurance, Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith was named the outstanding college football player of the year. This year’s ceremony set a Heisman record for length, stretching from 8 p.m. Saturday night and finally grinding to its conclusion at exactly 9:43 a.m. this morning.

“I’m overjoyed. Hallucinating from fatigue, yes, but still overjoyed. I’d like to thank my teammates, my coaches, my family, and that guy who slipped me a Ritalin around four a.m. this morning. Without that I would have never outlasted the other candidates,” said Smith in his brief and often incoherent acceptance speech. “Ostrich mflhghararrrgh jim jim,” he said as he left, supported under each shoulder by a Smith family member.

Almost 48 hours later, a winner.

The Heisman ceremony, as it has every year since ESPN began exclusive coverage of the event, grew in duration again in 2006 with the inclusion of “The Everlast Quotient,” a new factor in the balloting taking into account the “tenacity and spirit of the individual as measured by their ability to stay awake throughout the entire ceremony.” Bonus points have decided the balloting for the past five years, and have significantly changed the expected outcomes of the elections.

Controversial though it might be, the Everlast portion of the event has allowed ESPN to boost ratings and create artificial but still compelling drama during traditional “dead zones” in the ratings. Last year’s most compelling storyline involved teammates Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart showing great solidarity by shocking each other awake with personal tasers, which propelled both deep into early Monday morning before Bush’s ran out of juice. (more…)

The BlogPoll’s great for many reasons. You get to laugh at certain pollster’s submissions. You get to see which irresponsible laggards fail to file ballots for weeks at a time (us.) You get to see obsessed, overly-degreed people with a deep understanding of amateur statistics make predictions that turn bad with the speed of cheap bananas.

You also get the primary benefit of participating in roundtables that ask you questions your sleeping CFB brain may not even have thought of yet, which is certainly the case with Bruce Ciskie’s roundtable this week.

1.Which preseason college football magazine is your favorite?

Steele, which we never would have known about if we’d never dipped our toe in the blogosphere. We only bought it looking for a slightly BETTER preview. We never imagined the VHT Steele guide would only simply post the best WP of any guide in the WWW, even winning our hearts with its idiosyncratic prose, abbreviations, and spastically ecstatic prose!

The reason to love it logically are the endless stats and encyclopedic scope of the thing. The irrational cuddly reason to love it: it’s put together by someone who, though they might have started putting the thing together as a wagerer’s bible, has inadvertently turned it into the Cryptonomicon of football-mad America.

Phil’s literary counterpart.

2. What team is being supremely overrated in the preseason rankings?

The chic choice has become Notre Dame, but noblesse oblige will carry them high into the rankings even as a two-win team. Miami, on the other hand, drifts into people’s preseason rankings around the ten spot for no other reason than the fact that they’re Miami and allegedly talented to an extent where coaching turnover, an ACC schedule, and a creeping malaise of mere “very good-ness” will make no discernible difference in their performance.

Coker’s got a sophomore quarterback being yanked out of one system and placed in another, a whole new offensive staff moving in, and a tailback spot that refuses to fill itself with the single, dominant starter Miami’s traditionally had. The line’s got to recover from last year, and Randy Shannon can’t coach the team into an ACC championship by himself on the defensive side of the ball. The qb thing’s got to be restated for emphasis: he’s a sophomore moving into a new system at a high-profile school with mercenary fans . Switching senseis on a young qb always has serious side effects that sometimes wobble into the disastrous. Wright’s very, very durable, but he didn’t deserve this, and will likely spend the first eight games of the season ducking, throwing the ball away, and mentally awaiting the moment when the blurs slow down into coherent zones and routes.

And like FSU, Miami can’t conserve their juice during a weak run through straw dog conferencing anymore on their way toward prime bowl berths and national title appearances. The ACC won’t let them do that now, as Miami’s loss to Georgia Tech last year clearly demonstrated. (Losing to Chan Gailey=clearly descending to pack.)

Kyle Wright assuming the position.

3. Turn the tables. Who is underrated?

Iowa. Drew Tate throws with the proper blend of arrogance, precision, and foolishness in the face of pressure you want in a qb. Their plug ‘n play schemes keep players comfortable in their assigned roles, but they’re more explosive than most give them credit for while playing a very difficult Big Ten schedule. The best phrase for Iowa’s transformation under Ferentz is “mechanization,” since they crank out the same kind of teams year in and year out: big on the line, mobile at linebacker, fundamentally sound at the skill positions, solid in special teams and kicking, the NFL equilibrium model transferred to the college scene. Sometimes the equilibrium model gets you 7-5. Sometimes it gets you 10-2.

7-5, though is an aberration. They’re a much better team than that.

4. Which conference will be the best in 2006?

The Pac-10, of course. Why argue?

5. Which “non-BCS” conference will be the best in 2006?

We can’t say the Big East here, can we? They still get a spot? Why doesn’t someone tell us this shit before we get on the air? Are we on fucking Jefferson Pilot or something? Jesus, these people…

How about the WAC? Sure. They’re a joke that needs to be retired, since Fresno State’s near-defeat had the Bush family so scared they fled their house shortly thereafter. Dennis “Shots Up!” Erickson is back at Idaho, Boise will likely continue to be the darling of ESPN2, and Nevada’s a solid “Improbable Sponsor” Bowl Team now. Plus they run the pistol formation, whose play-fake is so huge it killed three free safeties from whiplash last year. So, sure, give the WAC a hug for us. We’ll call ‘em next week.

WAC-tually employed in the WAC: the currently WAC-tivated pistol formation.

6. Which non-BCS conference team will have the best season?

TCU. Patterson recruits whomever he wants, beat Oklahoma last year, and only has to face one serious challenge in ‘06, a game with Texas Tech that they could, in concept, win. That would leave them undefeated and looking in on a BCS crew of one-loss teams with a very suggestive look on their face.

Let’s get your first read on this one…who will win the H*i*m*n? Oh, by the way, players whose last names begin with the letter “Q” are ineligible.

Unfair and creative, Bruce. We’ll roll with it and give you an unfair and creative answer in Chris Leak, creative because no one seriously expects him to do it and he’s getting to be accurate to bejeezus with the ball in a system that asks him to throw a ton of short passes; unfair because he’s the quarterback of our chosen team. Given the complete lack of a run game, Leak could in theory have one of those two or three loss “valiant warrior” seasons where diminished expectations and the spectre of unfulfilled potential create a nifty storyline voters can buy with ease as he tries to throw the Gators into games by himself. This is dependent on the following things:

1. Brady Quinn’s arm being sawed off by angry Columbian gangsters.

2. Ted Ginn bending time with his speed and disappearing into a chronodistortion fold.

3. Troy Smith following Ginn into the same hole on a following block.

4. Adrian Peterson becoming angry and attempting to stiffarm a Dodge Ram that looked at him funny.

5. Kenny Irons getting killed in a taunt fight by his brother, who is on public record as saying Irons should just take the ball and “run for the jungle.”

If all of that happens, sure, the Ladyback wins the Heisman. Our betting window is open at harumphharumph at yahoo.com if you’re interested.

The most lukewarm Heisman endorsement you’ll ever read.

In hand, motherfuckers:

Phil Steele’s College Football 2006 Preview, shortly after floating into Orson’s hand from on high.

Block in the door. Disconnect the cell phone. We’ve got hundreds of pages to peruse–quite literally, 328 pages of 4 point font encrypted Phil Steele goodness to wade through. For the uninitiated, we imagine the murky, half-lit lives you lead with a shudder sometimes, wandering through life with only the glossy, insubstantial, and moderately punctuated Athlon and Sporting News guides to get you through the offseason. A demon’s life it would be, had we not Phil in hand.

But we do…and ALL the EXAGGERATED writing, poor copy editing, and endless reams of gambling addict data WE could possibly HANDLE!!! Imagine the guy your dad filed his weekly football picks with down at The Corner Pub, and you’ve got a superb idea of exactly who Phil Steele is, the bookie whose actual nose for stats and compulsive tendencies got seriously out of hand a few decades ago and led him to build a whole business around gambling on sports, beginning with a pamphlet-turned-magazine predicting anything and everything about the upcoming season.

Steele–as we dedicated insiders call him, you know, cause we tight like that–still feels like homespun mania sold out of the trunk of someone’s car. He still makes his own sometimes quirky statistical indicators, still stays obsessed enough to track San Jose State’s performance against the spread, and still uses teeny font and a plethora of acronyms to save space and pack a plump bratwurst’s worth of information into cocktail-weenie-sized columns. And he’s still fascinated EVERYTHING college football, the most compelling aspect of the guide. His guide is a democracy of fixation and an ode to multiple divorces in the name of sport, since we can’t imagine too many spouses willing to tolerate an empty bed in the name of staying up an extra three hours to run the numbers on, say, Tulane’s offensive trend over the past four years.*

We’ve just barely begun to skim the thing, but Phil’s general trends thus far:

–Bullish on Louisville. We know there’s numbers to support this, but Louisville thus far in the Petrino era has been mostly sheer potential without the payoff. Their biggest claim to fame in the season was a scare of Miami, which most teams in the old Big East could claim at one point. Their only scalp in a bowl came at the expense of Boise State in a 44-40 riot, and whenever they’ve faced top-tier competition their defense has crumpled under the pressure. A gambler’s dream because they cover spreads nicely, but in reality Louisville’s still just dry-weather pretty as a football team. (If you need explanation on this, think about the last really attractive person you saw who looked like crap when their makeup/gel/public cosmetic facade disintegrated when they got wet. That’s what we mean, and that’s why Phoebe Cates must really be a geniunely attractive person in real life, since she’s made her whole career off of one scene of hot wetness. Did we just type that? Yes, we did.)

Louisville: Not the football equivalent of Phoebe Cates yet.

–Down on ol’ Florida. Can’t blame him, since they were a disappointing team in both the spread option and against the spread, which puts any team in Phil’s styrofoam cooler of doom. (You know Phil’s a styrofoam cooler man. We can feel it in our white-trash bones.) The s-word keeps coming up with his analysis, just as in everyone else’s: schedule. He’s got them ranked in the twenties, a misunderestimation sitting just fine with we who fear bloated expectations. (See: Michigan fans every year for a cautionary tale on this.)

You know Phil’s got a few of these hanging around the garage.

–Locktight convinced Brady Quinn will throw for a silly amount of yards this year and win the Heisman, a completely plausible scenario in our minds since a.) he did it last year, b.) he’s sitting in the most visible, VHT roster spot in all the land, and c.) everyone else is already saying this, too. Because all of Steele’s lists go something like 20 deep, he’s got a few surprises in there, including Darren McFadden of Arkansas, who we would like to see play one day when they build a camera that can compensate for the red-shift of an object approaching light-speed.

–Still big on Florida State, which means Phil’s obviously never watched “Driving Miss Daisy.”

-Pulling off on the segue: Steele thinks Arkansas could be much improved this year, not a bad guess since Nutt’s finally given up on being an offensive coordinator and given textbook author and erstwhile football coach Gus Malzahn the helm in Fayetteville. Having Reggie Herring at DC for a second year can only help, too. Other than that there’s no real surprises, save a brief nod in the Wannstache’s direction with a mention of Pitt as a lower case “surprise” team.

–West Coastishly, he’s got Arizona as the rising stock in the Pac-10,with USC not falling off dramatically while Cal gets their act together after a stumbly year in 2005. Not crazy-sounding, but very little of this is, right? When Stanford wins the Pac-10 and Mississippi State snags the SEC West, we’ll all be weeping into our wine coolers together.

–The feature we love is the “Team Experience Ratings.” In the Pac-10, Washington has the most experienced team. Of course, a group of seventy-year old Sudanese refugees has a lot of “experience,” too, mostly of the soul-scarring variety. Nobody said it was always a good thing.

–In his conference ratings, Phil rates the SEC tops, followed closely by the ACC and the Big 10. We’re sure this is just delusion on his part, and that future revisions will put the Pac-10 right up there where it belongs.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re…off to do something else. Most definitely not watch a soccer game. At the Brewhouse. When we should be at work. On a Monday.

*The fact that some spouses would tolerate this if it was germane to their own team or teams is a testament to patient companionship. We must salute the Conscience of a Nation, who tolerates more than a woman should, including late nights spent arranging lame PowerPoint presentations. Huzzah to all the football widows of the world.

Joey, posting in his dual life on the internets on Schembechler Hall, revives the BlogPoll roundtable with this installment of searing, begging for topical ointment-urgent questions:

1. It’s early, but thus far, which offseason change or changes in college football are you most excited about?

Oh, without a doubt Myles Brand’s brilliant squad-size adjustment, since without it the University of Alabama would have been subject to academic violations this year, and thus could, without future improvement, have played a brewing revenge game against the Florida Gators in the Swamp this year that would have been wiped from the books when the penalties really started piling up on ‘em. We, as Gator fans, would reaaaaaallly like that one to leave a big smoking cattle brand in the record books, since it would not only avenge the 31-3 “re-education” in Tuscaloosa last year, but the three in a row they’ve taken from us dating all the way back to the Dubose Secretary era.

Here’s hoping he spanked her while wearing a Houndstooth hat.

Oh, you mean actual changes that mean something? Well, we can’t talk about anything connected to the NCAA, of course. Two things.

a. First, the overwhelming sense that the bowl system as we know it may finally have been written off by the parties of interest in college football. Not sure if this has any real empirical support here, but the television contracts and sponsorship moves seem to be building toward an eventual push toward a scaled-back playoff. Just a vibe thing; then again, we’ve been convinced since 2002 that Florida State’s Waterloo was just around the bend, and just like zombies, we’ve realized that in order for that to happen, the head must die first. And he’s still sort of there.

b. The continued blossoming of interconference scheduling. Like the retired comic book dork we are, we rejoice when the Ant-Men of the world (er, Vanderbilt) get to face off against the Hulks of the college football world (in this example, Michigan.) Tennessee/Cal, Colorado/Georgia, another blowouter in the Arkansas/USC series, and the most brutal of all intersectional games, Texas/OSU–when interconference games happen, there’s always some level of quirk raising them a few hairs above the average game. But when they happen in numbers, you start talking a base of comparison between regions, which fuels the message boards that fuel the blogs that…we’ve all agreed, indeed do something, though opinions vary on exactly what that something is. In netspeak, it’s more exotic content, and that’s never a bad thing for the college football fan.

2) With spring practice underway, what are the three concerns about your team that are causing you the most anxiety? (USC fans can’t just list the departures of Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, and LenDale White.)

The three things that make us clutch out plush Danny Wuerffel doll in the middle of the night are:

a. O-line. Zone blocking sticks, or it doesn’t. Either way it’s the linchpin for the Meyer offense, which puts so many receivers in play across the field that quick reads and protection dictate everything. The line got younger, but it may have gotten better with a year to pick up the schemes and get the persistently winded line into better shape. With the protection covered, there’s the issue of…

b. The wife-ahhhing dude making the reads, Chris Leak. Leak’s storyline this year comes in one of three flavors. He could have the Powlus: highly touted recruit who never makes good on his promise thanks to institutional upheaval and general overspeculation on their talents. Leak may also have the Brodie: a highly touted prospect who makes good in an improbable senior run, overcoming the plague, a swarm of locusts, and whatever other demonic obstacles ESPN wants to put in a soft-focus collage about his perserverence. Or finally, Leak has the Carson Palmer vibe where he takes an unanticipated leap to freakdom, throws a decent Wonderlic score’s worth of touchdowns, and stiff-arms a stunned defender to the ground on an option.

That’s the prime rib scenario, but given what we saw last year, we’re expecting sausage.

Meyer, seen here telling Leak that if he slides again, he will rip a baby koala to pieces on the sideline.

c. The secondary, which should be getting fat checks from Jay Cutler for boosting his draft status into the upper reaches of the first round for allowing him to incinerate them last year in the Swamp. Seeing Kyle Jackson at safety has been like watching old footage of Pedro Guerrero playing first base: occasionally a comedy, sometimes a tragedy, but always an adventure. Dee Webb Avery Atkins has some fuzzy charisma about him, but besides Reggie “KBD” Nelson, there’s little to keep us from freebasing Tums in the offseason just thinking about them lining up against South Carolina and a very observant and pass-wacky opposing coach in November.

3) Care to take a stab at a preseason top five?

What the fuck–sure. Here’s who everyone else will put in their top five, saving our own stunning top five for later when we’re really, really starved for content.

1. Ohio State. The win over Notre Dame, Ginn, the emerging Troy Smith Heisman storyline…if this were a stock, it would be Krispy Kreme 2002 at this point. Buckeyes fans hope against hope that the glazed curse doesn’t follow them…Speaking of glazed…

2. Notre Dame. Why work, when you could just plug the two Fiesta Bowl participants into the first two slots? It’ll sell like Diet Crack in the press and give writers loads of “wake up the echoes” stories to mine until they lose to Michigan State, Michigan, etc…again. Rewake those echoes when they take one loss into a matchup with USC in LA and win.

3. Michigan. Evidence? Nope. Just putting them in their traditional slot, seemingly reserved for the by-definition-underacheiving Wolverines.

4. Texas. It’s good to be king, if only for the preseason. Defend positioning with “he may be a freshman qb, but (insert Texas qb here) is a VY clone.”

5. West Virginia. Another hottness pick that will go down in flames the first time the ‘Eers meet a team that can stop the run. They play in the Big East. Which means this won’t happen.

You know who does play in the Big East? The Wannstache, whose visage will close this roundtable in honor of an extremely spotty Mustache Wednesday posting:

Overjoyed to see Pat White running ramshod over his defense. Happy Mustache Wednesday, motherfuckers!

As expected, Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart and Vince Young will be in Manhattan for the presentation of the Heisman trophy. What was not expected is that Brady Quinn et al will not be joining in the invitation to look happy when they lose to one of these three (Reggie Bush).

Cost of Bronze increases forcing budget cuts for the Heisman Trophy ceremony.

Despite the frantic efforts of his soon-to-be official agent, it’s Bush for Heisman. Get your anticlimax on!

An email from an angry fan (Matt from LSU) got us thinking (always a dangerous thing) :

Can you please explain to me how LSU can hand a conference opponent their worst loss at home in 40 years (beat Ole Miss 40-7), and Penn State can struggle to beat a poor Michigan State team, YET the pollsters still decrease the LSU lead over Penn State?

Can you please explain how LSU can win a game while Penn State doesn’t play, yet LSU loses ground yet again in the polls?
Can you please explain why Texas doesn’t earn more first place votes when USC struggles to beat a WAC team who lost to Nevada?

Only one of these questions has an easy answer: USC held the votes because they still haven’t lost and Reggie Bush is having one of those seasons that forces sportswriters into increasingly ludicrous territory attempting to describe just how…deflaculent his gameplay has been this year. (See? Deflaculent isn’t even a word, we just had to pull it out of our ass in a vain attempt to approximate what Reggie Bush does on the field. Hyperbole doesn’t cover it, so tubby journalists the nation round are banging away on laptops tossing in nonsense words like “scrotufulactic” and “obstraspectaculiferous” while their editors slam coffee cups to the floor in frustration. Fortunately for us, we have no such journalistic integrity, and can label Bush’s alien level of agility as “deflaculent” without flinching.)

Reggie Bush: straight nasty deflaculence.

The other questions center on another important trend in national coverage of what is basically a regional sport: narrative. The primer on this was written by Gunslingers–a piece on par with Martin Luther’s 95 theses, Newton’s Principia Mathematica, and Hobbes’ Leviathan for its sheer cromulence in its field–who lays out with well-chosen examples the formation and dynamics of a national narrative as dictated by Papa E in Bristol. LSU, like other teams in other ways, is a victim of this narrative, a story shaped by profit motive, population dynamics, and most importantly, a human weakness for easy storylines and pat finishes.

First of all, let’s clear this up, though: LSU is NOT getting screwed. (more…)

Every so often college football fans are privileged to watch a truly special athlete who is just head and shoulders better than everyone else on the field. I felt that privilege in watching Michael Vick at Virginia Tech. I was treated to that again these last three years with Reggie Bush. So, Reggie, as a college football fan I just want to thank you. It is a privilege to watch a master like you work.

The Notre Dame game was one of the best performances of the season by a college football player, rivaled mostly by Bush’s Heisman competition, Vince Young’s, performance against Oklahoma State. Well, Bush blew that away with 513 all purpose yards against a good defense in Fresno State. But it wasn’t just the total that was mind boggling. It was the style in which they were gained that impressed me most. It did not matter if everyone knew Bush was getting the ball, the defense was powerless to stop him. Whether it was a draw on third and a mile that went the distance or a punt return, the stadium was electric each time he touched the ball. Bush proved that he is clearly the best player in college football this year and perhaps the best in a decade. They only thing keeping him from the Heisman is the fact that he shares the backfield with White and Leinhart (both Heisman-quality players) and Vince Young (a worthly player himself) doesn’t have that burden. But regardless of what happens in the Heisman race, Bush’s season and indeed his college career, will be one of college football folklore.

Pat Forde suggests that Jim Plunkett couldn’t hold the jock of most Heisman winners of the modern era. In the vacuum wash of the season leading up to actual events, we’re totally game for this vein of time-warp speculation, especially since the rain refuses to let up in Atlantabad, or whatever alternative Indian/Atlantan universe we’ve been transported to. (Our dog needs Prozac-the monsoon conditions have turned her into a depressed, 130 pound black rug of misery.)

In this quantum leap edition of EDSBS, we attack this question with all the wisdom that someone watching hour upon hour of college classics and reading “Greats of the Old Southwest Conference” can acquire. Who could fit into today’s game? And which modern svengali would make the best mentor for them?

Don Strock, Virginia Tech: Strock couldn’t outrun plate tectonics. The Hokie legend could wing the ball around like a spread ace, though, setting a Va. Tech record in 1972 by throwing for 3243 yards and 16 touchdowns in a season. To give you an idea of what an aberration Strock was-both in his own era and at his own school-Brian Randall finally broke Strock’s all-time school passing record last year.
(more…)

DeAngelo Williams has a badass website for his Heisman campaign, complete with video set to “Death in Vegas” style riffs. (Look! Every time you give him the ball, he scores!) Heismanpundit wonders if there isn’t a logical marketing partner waiting for a call.

The ESPN brain trust picks their preseason Heisman leads. Heismanpundit sees Mark May’s sound predictions as a sign of the apocalypse; we’d be more concerned if they’d asked Trev Alberts and his picks made sense to us. Then we’d be checking ourselves for slurred speech, numbness along one side of the body, and all the other classic signs of a stroke.

If you trust this man’s football acumen, you may be having a stroke.

Heismanpundit analyzes the impact of the 12th game on the Heisman race.

We think the 12th game will allow for more drama in a race without a clear front-runner, with teams with crucial late-season matchups benefitting and those with weak in-state rivalries–often scheduled toward the end of the season–losing out. The race, complex as it is, just got even more complex.

Heismanpundit gives the lowdown on Heisman campaigns. We invite everyone now to begin the guessing game to his real identity, since he’s only seen in public wearing his eyemask and leather helmet.

Have you seen this man?

Heisman promos have begun in earnest, with Memphis sending out souvenir Nascar cars for DeAngelo Williams and Minnesota pimping for Laurence Maroney and others. This flies in the face of recent findings by Clark Haptonstall, a doctoral candidate at Florida State University who studied the voting patterns and motivations of Heisman voters and found the impact of promotional campaigns amounted to the empirical equivalent of approximately jack shit. (Apologies: we checked FSU’s published dissertations, and Haptonstall’s study must be in the review process, as it’s not listed in the collection.) Memo to Heismanpundit: if you’d ever had a craving for a cushy job where you work nine months a year and command exorbitant consulting fees, your time is now, since this is proof you can evidently write a thesis on anything. Has anyone explored the underappreciated but textually-rich multiverse of video game studies? We think we’d be an ideal candidate for such badly need inquiry…

A simple child’s game? Or Sisyphus for the postmodern man? See, we could make that shit up all day.