The Ole Miss lockerroom in Columbia, SC, Thursday, September 24th just prior to kickoff. There is the sound of a church organ humming from an indistinct spot somewhere in the locker room.

HOUSTON NUTT enters surrounded by a choir of African-American ladies.

Count Giggity: GIGGITAH, REBELS!!!

Rebels team: GIGGITAH!!!!

Count Giggity: MY CHILDREN WHAT A BLOTARKUS BANGFANGLED GAME WE HAVE IN FRONT OF US!!! GIGGITAH!!!

Rebels tea: GIGGITAH!!!

Jevan Snead leans over to Dexter McCluster.

Snead: Any idea what that means yet?

McCluster: No. I don’t understand a word this magnificent, addled genius ever says. (more…)

Ole Miss, in just a year and a half of sustained football excellence, have bypassed the stable, prosperous stage of football glory and skipped ahead to the decadent, endstages of Caligula-esque imperium. They don’t want the steady, stable period where fans behave semi-normally, coaches don’t hand out hundreds for good play, and orgies don’t break out with shocking regularity. They prefer to skip right to the part where they enjoy the Senators’ wives, thank you very much.

Please, Senators’ Wives are ready to pleasure you! Also, take a scholarship offer at the door.

Proof of this: the hiring of dwarves, a sure harbinger you’ve entered the decadent phase of a civilization’s lifespan.

I am looking to hire a professional Dwarf Actor for frat house party entertainment at the University of Mississippi in Oxford Mississippi.

No amateur dwarves, please. They want someone who is committed to their dwarfdom, and not someone who just puts it on for dinner theater presentations of “Under the Rainbow” or your random Quebecois dwarf-tossing competition before going back to being someone full-sized. (more…)

Sir Stanley: Gentlemen! I seek philosophical entertainment!

Elrick, Duke of Necessity: Certainly. Today’s fox: What is sexy? Discuss!

Sir Stanley: Why sir, I had no idea you would play right into my hands! In my studies of the colonies and their primitive yet exotic derivative of our own culture, I have come across one thing they do excel at: the iconography of the sexy. I attribute to their mongrel blood, as they are too close to the base passions that rule us all, and therefore incapable of escaping it in the fine Alpine tower of reason as we do.

Elrick: Quite. But you have diverged from our path of inquiry, have you not?

Sir Stanley: So easily lost in the thorns, Elrick, and yet a nose away from the rose! Not at all, Elrick. For instance, I will show you using an experiment of PURE SCIENCE what sexy is. A sample from the colonies I believe you’ll find especially compelling. I will apply the following picture, a sample of pure sex, to the following array of items arranged on that table over there. Are you prepared, Elrick?

Elrick, Duke of Necessity: As ever, friend. Experiment away.

(more…)

A crowded church in Oxford, Mississippi. The slow sizzle of tambourines and magisterial rumble of a church organ roil in the background. A choir stands waving its hands heavenward in the air.

PASTOR HOUSTON NUTT approaches the podium.

Nutt: MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS!!! CAN AH GET A GIGGITY!!!

Assembly: Giggity!

Nutt: Ah said…..(smiles, pauses, looks up at the rafters…) CAN YA GIVE THE LORD A GIGGI-TAH!!!

Assembly: GIGGITY!!!

Nutt: Now let’s sing it out…HOW MANY TIMES DID THE LORD BLESS US?

Choir: THREE!!!!

Nutt: And a what— (more…)

The Alphabetical, our grand attempt to summarize the week’s action in 26 pieces, is up at the Sporting Blog. it’s a lovely day: the sun is shining, the birds are really and literally singing outside the window, and the Dane is lying comfortably in the grass. What more could one ask for, really?

Besides a yard? ONE DAMN YARD, DAMMIT.

This house is going to be spotless by the time we’re done with this. Like, Joan Crawford spotless.

Clean up THIS MEEEEEESSSSS!

Our only consolation is that across the state of Georgia there will be thousands of other spotless homes by the end of the day, too. Nifty thing: our cleaning makes them feel better, too, via the endless loop of mutually reinforced schadenfreude.

Meanwhile, Ole Miss, don’t lift a thing today. You should spend the day drinking, and drinking heavily and eating on the reddest and velvetiest of red velvet cake. Ragin’ Cajun Rebel texted us at 1:30 in the morning last night with the question: “Does it still sting?” Yes, which means your football team did somethin’ right, son. Giggitys all around.

Enjoy your Sunday. We’ll see you tomorrow.

At least someone’s happy about this. Frankly, you’re probably fortunate if you lose by one after you spend the entire third quarter practicing the “fumble” drill. You’re actually fortunate to not lose by two TDs, actually, given the number of flubs, mistakes, miscues, clusterfucks, missed tackles, blown assignments, dropped passes, and fumbles fumbles fumbles fumbles fumbles did we mention fumbles yes fumbles.

The defense made one critical mistake, and that was Major Wright deciding to guard the wrong side of the field on the long pass to Shea Hodge. The rest is on the offense: the offense that kept playing the lunch buffet with the play-calling, calling up a seemingly random slew of plays to turnover the ball with, the offense that gave the Ole Miss offense the ball three times inside the fifty, the offense plunged this team headfirst off a cliff with errors and a final fatal playcall—the Tebow Smash that hasn’t worked at all going on now four games into this season–that was doomed from the beginning.

Turnovers killed Florida for the majority of the game. Then play-calling delivered the coup-de-grace. Someone tell us how Tim Tebow morphed into low-carb Jared Lorenzen in the span of a single offseason, and we’ll give you a dollar for your efforts. Holy fucking cowcunt, we just lost to Count Giggity in game four in classic Houston Nutt fashion: countless mistakes by the other team, outrageous high-school playcalling, a quarterback who goes 9/20 but throws nothing but backbreakers on those completions.

If your team’s undefeated right now, do us a favor: watch. your. fucking. ass. Oh, and if the game’s on the line, and you’re a bit skeevy on the idea of having your kicker try a 51 yarder, try something that doesn’t play into the obvious weaknesses of your team thus far and the other team’s strengths simultaneously.

Houston Nutt, professional coach. This is only marginally about him, but the picture is too good not to lead with here. Thanks: J.

The current turnover total for Florida on the year: zero, a number instructive for those of us kvetching and kvelling about the offense thus far, and its lack of Krakatoa-like eruptions a la 2008. The Gainesville Sun, a.k.a. Pravda: Swamp Cabbage Edition, addresses those concerns in typically sunny but timely fashion below. Warning: corrected to do away with the plague of one sentence paragraphs.

The Gators are the only team in the nation with zero turnovers.UF is one of only five teams in the nation that has not trailed at any point in the season. The Gators lead the SEC in total defense (213.0 yards a game), scoring offense (37.3 points a game), kickoff returns, punt returns and punting. The special teams have scored 14 points, only five shy of opposing offenses. Opposing offenses have not started a single drive on Florida’s side of the 50.

So, in short: they haven’t been good yet because they haven’t had to be good? A sobering thought if you, like us, are wondering if and when they’re pressed to actually score points, and if they will be able to do so. To be perfectly frank about the offense for Florida thus far, it still looks like a live dress rehearsal that someone accidentally sold tickets for: Miami was the audition for receivers (Louis Murphy, come on down,) while Tennessee was the audition for running backs (Emmanuel Moody, 55 yards on nine whole carries! Cue rain of frogs.)

Ole Miss and Arkansas probably won’t test this ongoing dry run on the field for the Florida offense; in fact, Ole Miss makes a particularly disastrous matchup with Florida, and not in a sense of pending Florida doom because Ole Miss is last in time of possession in the conference, and it’s not because they’re scoring scads of points in flashes. Then again, consider the next worst team in terms of time of possession: Florida. Stats are fun, and endlessly misleading!

P.S.: Houston Nutt in crazier than a sack of rabid weasels.

One time, I was trying to fix the HVAC in my house. I like to fix things because my father liked to fix things. One time he fixed a sick goat by throwing it off the roof of the house during an electrical storm. It hit the ground and stopped moving.

Fixed. Giggity.

I asked my father if the goat was “fixed,” and he said, “Son, ain’t nothing in this world that can fix a cantankerous goat or a laudanum-sippin’ woman. Except by violently throwing them off the roof.” That’s why I like to fix things.

[stares, attempts to spellbind audience.]

6.022 × 10 to the 23rd power. That’s Avocado’s Number.

[empty stares]

GIGGITY! (more…)

And I like to WIN.

Houston Nutt story number one. Please read all of these in a voice triangulated somewhere between Bill Clinton and George Bush’s, and remember that for proper effect you should point and attempt to spellbind someone while doing it.

Tale One:

Houston Nutt is speaking to an assembled group of Ole Miss boosters. Someone mentions Enrique Davis, the late switcheroo commit from Auburn who opted for the Rebels late this year. Nutt answers thusly.

You know what I like about Enrickey?

(LONG DRAMATIC PAUSE. SPELLBINDING STARE. THUMB FIST POINT.)

He’s FAST.

Tale Two:

Nutt is at his first major meeting with Ole Miss types. He’s relating a story about his upbringing hanging out with deaf kids. (Nutt Sr. was a coach at the Arkansas School for the Deaf.) No one’s really sure where this whole thing is going.

When I was a kid, I’d go out and play with the other kids, who were deaf. There was an African American on that field, a Hispanic on the field, a Native American on the field…it didn’t matter what you were or who you were, just as long as you could sign and communicate.

(LONG DRAMATIC PAUSE. SPELLBINDING STARE. THUMB FIST POINT.)

…And I like to WIN! (APPLAUSE.)

The N in Nutt officially stands for “Non Sequitur.”

How do you enjoy a fluff piece you know from the start will be a perfunctory knob-polishing of a new coach, coordinator, or university president? They’re atrocious to write and just as bad to read, something that is not so much the fault of the writer as it is of the editor who says, “Go get me a profile” to a person who needs access to the program, the coach, and the players. Meaning: the profiles are inevitably nice, hands-offish, and gloss over anything remotely interesting.

Therefore, we at EDSBS Labs seek to give you reality improved. One technique to improve the fluff piece: unfairly excerpt or elide quotes. Another? Unfair illustrations, as seen in this Houston Nutt profile from the Laurel Leader-Call.

“WAYNESBORO – If Thursday night’s tenth annual Wayne County Rebel Club gathering is any indication, new Ole Miss Rebel head football coach Houston Nutt has already won over the Rebel faithful. The last four seasons are nothing but a fading view in the rear-view mirror of their vehicles…”

“If you meet Nutt, you will be impressed even if you are not a Rebel fan. (more…)