–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.

“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. With the other contestants sleeping heavily, Leinart unselfishly yielded his taser and went to sleep, handing the award to his teammate.

This year’s drama, as presented in a short summary timeline, included:

8:00 p.m–3:00 a.m.: Heisman finalists Brady Quinn, Darren McFadden, and Troy Smith take their seats at the Downtown Athletic Club. The first test begins: seven straight hours of ESPN tributes to the candidates, each highlighting their overcoming obstacles. Most candidates agree that the crux of the first phase came in getting through Quinn’s four-hour tribute, which focused mostly on the challenges of being “man-pretty.”

“We thought Quinn would fade for sure,” said Archie Griffin, who survives the ceremony each year with a regimen of catnaps, strong coffee, and a running game of scrabble he plays with fellow Heisman winner Pat Sullivan. “In fact, we thought Paul Hornung had died during Quinn’s piece. A drink or six pepped him up, though, and we were over the first hurdle together.”

3:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. Heisman candidates then sat through every single second of footage of them playing football in 2006, including bench footage of the candidates drinking Gatorade, talking on the phone with coaches, and simply standing around. “It was unbearable,” said McFadden. “In between my asskicking stiffarms and breakaway runs, I guess I never realized how boring watching my beastly form truly is,” said the runner-up. “Even grew I tired of looking at my record-setting gamespeed and bowling ball-sized biceps.”

To up the difficulty, ESPN allowed Merrill Hoge to narrate the film. Hoge spent the better part of the time detailing how each one will have to be a man at the pro level, and that the NFL was a league of men, of hard, disciplined men, and how each one of them would fail, fail, and fail again to compete against these hard, disciplined men. Quinn credits Hoge for knocking him out of the competition.

“He just…he just said it so many times,” said a bleary Quinn on Monday morning. “I just remember getting to the Michigan game film, and he launched in on that whole ‘league of men’ thing again, and I just broke down crying that I wanted either to die or fall asleep or both, just anything to make that guy shut up. I mean, just come out of the closet or don’t, dammit. But stop talking about how hard, disciplined men need to be men in the N-F-L, the way he always does, and I just wanted a bullet in the head.”

Quinn, clearly emotional, wiped his eyes. “No trophy’s worth listening to that for 11 hours. Not one.”

2:00 p.m.–11 p.m, Sunday: McFadden and Smith sit through three back to back to back presentations of Cirque de Soleil, including their “legendarily unbearable” Zumanity. Both candidates are seen holding back tears of boredom, but still refuse to sleep. “I’m impressed with both of their tenacity,” said analyst Mel Kiper. “Smith’s ability to endure boredom makes him an ideal pick for the Cleveland Browns’ offense. I expect him to be a surefire first rounder for them.”

Unbearable: Zumanity almost killed both candidates with boredom.

11:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m. Monday: In a move some skeptics suspect was meant to actually prolong the competition, both remaining nominees are forced to participate in a special “Heismania” edition of The Sports Reporters. Both candidates visibly fought off sleep as soon as Mitch Albom began speaking, but sprang to life as soon as show veteran Mike Lupica began to speak.

“Hate kept me awake from that point on,” said Smith. “I just hate that little shitfucker, and I don’t even know why. I was about to go, but he really woke me up.”

McFadden, though, took a decisive lead when he sprang to life, seized Lupica by the throat as he spoke, and then spent thirty minutes teasing Lupica into unconsciousness with a sleeper hold. “At that point, I was on fire with rage,” said McFadden, whose squeezing and release of Lupica’s neck earned him serious plaudits from voters, as well as several standing ovations from the sparse crowd that remained.

“We’ve all thought about doing it, sure,” said Heisman voter and winner Tim Brown. “But he lived the dream, man. At that point, he had my vote for sure.”

1:00 a.m.–9:43 a.m.: McFadden and Smith both endure the cruelest and stiffest test of their wills yet: a Heisman-themed broadcast of NFL Live, focusing on the draft and done entirely unscripted with only Michael Irvin, Sean Salisbury, and Chris Berman. “I was running on faith and faith alone at that point,” said McFadden. “And when Berman got into his gravelly eulogy voice talking about the death of Kory Stringer for the fifth time that night, a little voice popped in my head and said, ‘Darren, give it another year.’ I’m convinced that was Jesus, and not the 1500 milligrams of Sudafed I’d taken a few hours earlier.”

Berman: the finisher.

McFadden slumped to the floor, and Smith emerged triumphant. Observers seemed to sing a common refrain, though, on the way out of the Downtown Athletic Club.

“The real winner, in my opinion, is the viewer,” said sports television critic Michael Hiestand. “Because this is finally done. Next year they should do some kind of Japanese game show thingy with it. Girls being chased by iguanas and log jumping or something. Anything, anything but this.”

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.

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.

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!

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. The bowl tie-in with the Sugar Bowl is the SEC prize provided you AREN’T undefeated and racing toward the 1 versus 2 title game. So the BCS rankings, irksome as they are to Tiger fans, really don’t mean shit as long as time traveling mischief makers from the future don’t muck around and force a fumble in the fourth quarter of the Tennessee game stopping a Vol comeback and preserving LSU’s undefeated season. That loss, which in retrospect was one of immense impact on the national scene, won’t vanish from the rolls anytime soon.

Scratch all of this if faultlines rupture, the rivers run red with blood, and a rain of locusts pelts the fields where USC and Texas lose next week and send the BCS to hell in a flash of chattering pundits and scuttling bowl officials in funny-colored coats. Barring that, though, the one-two matchup maximizing ratings and national hubbub goes down: a West-Coast dynamo with a photogenic, starlet-humping qb and a meth-fast dervish of a running back matchup plays the Southern/Sunbelt demo-covering Texas Longhorns. A pretty nifty pitch for the networks, who need only a prominent star from the New York area and a half-naked woman on the screen every other shot to have their ideal college football package up and running.

Musberger:…And safety Gino DiBruglia, Brooklyn’s finest, drops back in coverage for the Longhorns, makes the pick, and returns the ball 76 yards for a td before leaping into the arms of…EVA LONGORIA!!! And every redblooded American male just wished they had a scholarship to that school in Austin, Gary! Not a bad gig if you can get it, now down to Jackarooooo on the sidelines for the whole story, Jack–

If only ABC could work Eva in, it would be perfect.

The narrative consists of two principal parts right now:

1. USC–this year’s Greatest College Team Ever�–is on an unstoppable roll to a matchup with Texas. Substories to be exploited are:

a. Mack Brown’s quest for the unattainable national championship.
b. Matt Leinart’s life-better than yours ever thought about being.
c. Reggie Bush, Heisman winner, showing off the goods for the scouts in said national championship game.

The last point is especially precious to ESPN right now, especially with the latest Gameday commercials. The announcer guy intones:”…and we’ll bring you the latest on the Heisman race from our experts.” This is followed by the disembodied head of Kirk Herbstreit looking smack in the camera and announcing “It’s unfair right now to compare anyone to Reggie Bush.” Never mind that Texas has one more game for Vince Young to shine in and that Leinart and Bush may still split the West Coast votes leaving Young with a plurality and the Heisman. Narrative has its demands.

2. Joe Pa has a happy comeback at Penn State and will get national pub. Why? Because it’s a great story and it never hurts to have one loss on the season in December. Not to mention Penn State’s foothold in the nearly college football-proof Northeastern demographic, which makes all those lengthy broadcast blocks easier to pitch to advertisers wary of blowing money on a what is a slippery demographic. Wanna argue the point? Name another sport where you’ll see mutual fund ads bumping up against spots for Yamaha ATVs and the Marines. Evidently, we’re somewhere between cow-turd burning Appalachian trash and Dockers-wearing middle-aged investor class. Wait, that is pretty damn accurate, actually…

3. Notre Dame, after a long Time of Troubles, is back. (Storyline only available on NBC.)

Is that the whole narrative? Of course not. The lost storylines, or at least those lost to the hyper-focuses lens of the ABC/ESPN/Disney Brahmins:

1. LSU. Our perceptive reader, Matt, is perhaps a bit sensitive to this being an LSU fan in a season that’s been as good as any in recent memory for the Tigers–but he’s right. LSU, since the Katrina debacle, has gotten little if any pub for ripping through a triumphant season despite the obstacles presented by the largest natural disaster in the nation’s history, a head coaching change, and a first year starter at qb. Respek needed, but the ADD of the media will prevent it from happening barring a slaughter of Georgia in the SEC game followed up by a pounding of equivalent magnitude for their opponent in the Sugar Bowl.

2. The comeback coaches. Coaches previously thought to be on the ropes or making high-pressure debuts made nice comebacks to finish their seasons in several locales. Bill Callahan, who had Nebraska fans pining for Frank Solich a year ago, came back to finish 8-4 in a 30-3 pounding of Colorado. Urban Meyer, whose weeping had the jackals drooling a few weeks ago, gave the entire Gator Nation a happy ending on Saturday with a 34-7 gotterdamerung defeat for the disintegrating Seminole Empire, bringing his first season tally to 8-3 with the wind at his back going into recruiting and the bowl season. The cuddly Mark Mangino, college football’s only perfectly spherical head coach, went 6-0 at home, had one of the most underrated defenses in the whole nation, and beat more ranked teams than–Mother Mary forgive us–Notre Dame did in their renaissance season. Mike Shula proved to be more than just a genetic lottery winner by rolling a punchless Crimson Tide team to a 9-2 record despite giving up on the whole “scoring points” thing for the better part of five games. O’Leary at UCF, Price at UTEP, Spurrier at SC–those stories are on the national radar, but they’re just the beginning of the long list of coaches who pulled themselves and their teams through nightmarish adversity this season.

3. Oregon. The Ducks need to reserve a spot on the perpetually underpubbed list, but not for lack of trying, what with Phil Knight throwing them out their in uniforms straight from the U of O’s freshman “Russian Constructivist Design 101″ class. The Ducks only lose to USC, blow doors on the rest of their slate, and completely revamp their moribund offense in a single year…to the sound of crickets from the national media. They won’t get the bowl they deserve–the Fiesta–and could fall into the same trap Cal fell in last year against Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl, mailing in a half-assed performance in a consolation game. Hopefully they won’t spoil the redemption of both Mike Bellotti, who’s dispelled some of the common wisdom that the spark of the program packed its bags a few years ago and went to Berkeley, and for Gary Crowton, who just a year ago was busy running BYU into the ground (pun intended). He’s single-handedly turned Kellen Clemens into the best full-time student qb on the West Coast.

Long live the Glorious People’s Ugly Jersey Collective!

4. The effects of conference realignment. Watching Florida State wobble into the third quarter of the Florida game Saturday brought this point home in dramatic fashion: realignment has forever altered the program dynamics of the ACC and the Big East. Florida State will never be as dominant as they once were now that they play in a conference with Virginia Tech and Miami lurking in the ledgers. The Big East, the conference closest to flatline in terms of national prominence, made a fantastic leap towards respectability by nabbing the USF Bulls, Louisville, and UConn. As far as growth potential, no conference has more room to grow or more incentive to do so and do it quickly–their automatic BCS bid expires in 2006, and with major conference at-large bids already crowding the upper reaches of desired bowl slots, the memory of Pitt’s embarrassing caning by Utah last year coupled with a potentially lopsided WVU matchup with LSU in the Sugar Bowl means one thing: play hard now or be relegated to Conference USA status fast.

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.

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.

Need another resume line? He nearly outdueled Dan Fouts in the 1982 playoff shootout between the Dolphins and the go-go Don Coryell Chargers, often mentioned as the greatest game ever in the NFL.

Ideal modern coach pairing: Mike Leach, since Strock was happy throwing ’till his arm fell off.

Sammy Baugh, TCU. As close to a complete freak as you can find in the pre-modern era. Old film of Baugh shows all you need to see: elegant, gliding footwork, a straight, fluid over-the-top delivery, and a touch that set short passes whistling past defenders and fades fluttering into receivers’ hands. The numbers help, too: 3,471 yds and 39 touchdowns in an era of paleolithic offenses and a brutal, knucklebreaking style of play. He also was considered the greatest punter of his time and picked off two passes playing both ways in the 1936 Sugar Bowl. Oh, and he was also fluent in eight languages and made love to women with such passion they often converted to Christianity at the mere sight of his loins.

Ideal modern coach pairing: Bobby Petrino.

Baugh would rock in any kind of helmet.

Steve Spurrier, Florida: Displayed the proper temperament of a successful modern athlete by ignoring coaches’ calls in the huddle and making up his own on the spot. Spurrier was an accurate leadfoot passer with a panache for drama, throwing for a whopping 352 yards and two TDs in the 1966 Sugar Bowl against Missouri and icing his Heisman season in 1966 with the winning FG kick against Auburn. (Our father-in-law, who was at the game, swears it was the ugliest kick to ever pass over the crossbar at Florida Field. ) A pass-first, pass-deep qb who became the premier pass-first, pass-deep coach of his era, his style would be a perfect match for a certain funny-hat wearing, one-liner dropping coach in Columbia.

Ideal modern coach pairing: Steve Spurrier, though we’re not sure they’d get along.

Would he audible out of his own plays? Of course he would

Jack Mildren, Oklahoma: Stats do not back this one up, and we’ll own up to it now. Mildren ran the Fairbanks-era wishbone at Oklahoma to perfection, which meant scads of line reads and subpar passing numbers. In fact, Mildren only passed over a thousand yards in a season once in a season.

What makes us pick Mildren for this list is the footage we’ve seen of the 1971 Oklahoma-Nebraska game on ESPN Classic, where Mildren goes postal on Bob Devaney’s Blackshirts. Mildren, more so than any of the other qbs mentioned here, fits the profile of the cliched “field general,” functioning with airtight efficiency in a system dependent on a brainy but brawny qb. Judging from some of the great passes he throws in that game- Mildren threw for two and ran for two more in the “Game of the Century”-he would have been a competent passer, as well, if given the chance.

Most importantly, Mildren’s got some serious “Jay Barker” mojo; the team with him on it tends to win when he takes the field for them. A spread option system would be a snug fit for a great D-scanner with the ability to take a hit like Mildren.
Ideal modern coach pairing: Urban Meyer.

We miss cheesy action shots.

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.