Plus Vince Young’s roommate had the last name “McCoy,” and Colt McCoy’s roommate has the last name “Young”! OK, that’s completely false, but ESPN Big 12 blogger Tim Griffin has found some remarkable similarities between the Texas teams of 2005 and 2009. Leaving aside the irrelevant “Y-O-U-N-G and M-C-C-O-Y both have five letters!!!1!!1!” coinky-dinks, there are indeed a striking number of parallels here, not the least of which is the fact that if UT takes the BCS championship this season, they, like the ‘05 squad, likely will have notched a huge title-game upset over a team that had been shoved down our throats for months as the GREATEST DYNASTY EVAR. Those who forget history, doomed to repeat it, etc. etc. etc.

All right, everybody, time for backstroke drills! Practice has begun for teams across the country, and some had an easier time of it than others:

RALEIGH – N.C. State’s preseason practice is off to a stormy start.

At one point, a sideline yard marker began floating in a stream of rainwater that had drained to the side of the field.

Not an auspicious beginning for a program that’s been touted for dark-horse status in the ACC this year, but when two of your first three games are against Murray State and Gardner-Webb, maybe you can afford to write off a preseason practice or two.

Neologism of the day. In other practice news, first-year Auburn head coach Gene Chizik, too, has begun fall practice on the Plains, which really isn’t that newsworthy in and of itself but is a good time to introduce a new word I’ve been meaning to get started. With Sylvester Croom gone, we need a new word to replace “Croomed,” so I propose that if a coach loses to a Chizik-coached Auburn team in such an embarrassing fashion that he gets fired, that coach will be said to have been “Chizzwhacked.” Go ahead, spread it around.

Meanwhile, in Tuscaloosa, an entirely different kind of whacking is going on. How did we miss this comment from Nick Saban at SEC Media Days?

“We appreciate our fans,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said at SEC Media Days. “They certainly give a lot of positive self-gratification to our players, which is the most important thing. . . . “

Further comment? None, thanks for asking.

First recorded instance of “pig sooey” in a rap song? We’re going to go with yes. Since we posted that ricockulous “Tim Tebow Song” video the other day, in the interest of equal time we’re now going to hear from one of Florida’s 2009 opponents: Arkansas, specifically wide receiver Reggie Fish. Behold: “I Ball.”

The title of “Next Barkevious Mingo” is not one we take lightly around here. SI.com’s Andy Staples scours the recruiting sites for the next great name in college football. God’s Power Offor retains a healthy lead in that race, but make no mistake, Indiana Faithful and Munchie Legaux will be mounting strong efforts down the stretch.

I’m Richie Cunningham, and this is my lovely wife Oprah. Allow myself to introduce . . . myself: I’m Doug Gillett, proprietor of Hey Jenny Slater, occasional contributor to Dr. Saturday, and jet-setting international jewel thief; along with the lovely Holly — fellow Doc Saturday contributor, EDSBS associate editor, and L.A. Times Kitten With A Whip Award winner three years running — I’ll be gingerly manning the controls of this blog for the next week and trying like hell not to wrap it around the very first tree I come across. As a gesture of goodwill, I hereby promise to be at least 70-75% as funny as Orson at all times; if you’d like to send me tips, love/hate mail, or grainy boob shots, shoot them to heyjennyslater.blog at gmail.

You call it a “low bar”; we call it “reasonable goals.” UCLA linebacker Reggie Carter is happy with the play of redshirt-freshman QB Kevin Prince in spring practice, as evidenced by this glowing praise:

“He doesn’t move around a lot and he doesn’t flinch,” Carter said. “He stays in the pocket and he makes the right decision. If it’s there, he throws it, if it’s not, he keeps it. That’s all I need. I don’t want him to throw the ball to other people. As long as somebody on our team has the ball, I’m happy.”

Even the venerable Los Angeles Times can’t resist snarking off a bit at this comment, but there’s a marketing opportunity here for UCLA if they want it: Give out “STOP FLINCHIN’” T-shirts at games and make that the theme of the 2009 season. It’ll become the must-have wannabe-gangsta accessory in SoCal within days.

“Is this heaven?” “No. It’s Waco.” The buzz is slightly, uh, buzzier in central Texas, where Baylor fans are being treated not only to non-backhanded, genuinely optimistic projections for their football team this year but also to the delicious catnip no true CFB fan can resist: NEW UNIFORMS! Oh, to be in Waco, now that new unis and realistic bowl expectations are here!

He’s so laid-back, it’s intense, man. Things are equally sunny in Ames, Iowa, where first-year head coach Paul Rhoads “has transformed the button-down, strait-laced approach favored by Chizik and embraced a more relaxed, high-energy style.” That seems like a bit of a tightrope walk there, and we have no idea how Rhoads is managing it, but either way he already seems to be more invested in the Cyclone program than Chizik, who, to hear his former players tell it, was frequently “relaxed” to the point of complete apathy. In other news, Rhoads says that teaching his “single-wing pro-style spread offense” has been a challenge, but that he’s still trying to maintain an “intensely involved, hands-off” relationship with his players.

The University of Arizona: Slightly less desirable than a nut house. Accusations of having an “inferiority complex” get lobbed at places like Auburn and Michigan State and Georgia Tech all the time, but take heart, kids — at least your alma maters weren’t literally a consolation prize. According to the U of A’s student paper:

“The University of Arizona didn’t start out in a traditional fashion,” said Theodore Gatchell, an aerospace engineering junior and campus ambassador.

Gatchell explained that the UA was born in Tucson in 1885 only because the Tucson representative of the Arizona Territorial legislature showed up late to a meeting.

“The city of Tucson had hoped to receive the appropriation for the state’s mental hospital, which ended up going to Phoenix,” Gatchell said.

The town was so mad that it got stuck with the university, that the Tucson representative to the Arizona Legislature was greeted with a barrage of rotten fruit on his return home.

Ouch! Tucsonians, take a lesson from the city of Tempe, which was faced with similar disappointment. They were chosen as the home of Arizona State University even though what they really wanted was Arizona’s first legal brothel, but they managed to make it work for them, and in the end they got both.

I’M A MAN! I’M 220!!! Okie State QB Zac Robinson is bigger, more muscular, and more option-y heading into the 2009 season, says coach Mike Gundy. Other than kicking a puppy, Bobby Reid had no comment on these developments.

No, dammit, we want CONFLICT! Colt McCoy and Sam Bradford are friends. Yeah, that’s real great for them and everything, but kinda anticlimactic, no? When one of them is caught banging the other’s girlfriend, call us.