Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1920.

“Michiganders of all stripes, behold our new mascot!

SCREAMYBLOODAGONYUNSUITEDFORHUMANEYES.

“Well, now that was a hoo-dilly, now wasn’t it? Who wants a brandy?”

Others: Right, then.

#11 Ohio St. at #24 Northwestern

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: Relax your bedtime grip on your Glocks, America. Ohio State has two losses, and the universe can breathe easy, safe from the specter of a third-straight Buckeyes champblahblahblahBig10bashing. Statistically, these teams are surprisingly well-matched, but….look, we’d all love to pick Northwestern, adorably ranked after a victory over Minnesota, but if pluck guaranteed wins, we’d be celebrating the single-digit ranking of Texas Christian (HOW DARE YOU PUSH US TO ACCEPT UTAH AS A LEGIT TEAM, HORNED FROGS).

ORSON, IRRATIONAL. The force is strong in the young one…

…but this is episode five, and he loses his hand to the Dark Lord.

Baylor at #4 Texas

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL. If Baylor had the chops on defense to hold Colt McCoy in check, we’d happily tiptoe over to the pond of tribute bets and salute Art Briles and Robert Griffin for revivifying Baylor football. We would, really, it’s just that Texas just lost to Texas Tech, something they’re not accustomed to doing, and will not play the part of scalded dog two years in a row. Baylor gets inflame-u-lated by a frothing mad Texas team.

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: Robert Griffin, most impressive. Howevah! Texas is clinging to their top-five slot with all their considerable strength, with the added incentive of having Something To Prove after last week’s heartbreak in Lubbock. Despite their sub-subpar pass defense, the Longhorns have more than enough personnel to keep bodies on Griffin all afternoon.

#13 Georgia at Kentucky

HOLLY, QUASI-RATIONAL: You could call this game on intangibles–Georgia will be as surly and smashy as they’ve been all year and have presumably reconstructed their collective throats since their most recent Cocktail Party debacle, plus their last visit to Lexington didn’t go so well–but why bother? The Dawgs are an all-right football team on their worst days, and outclass Kentucky in every category that matters. The Wildcats are bowl-eligible, to be sure, but it comes on the backs of such vaunted opponents as Norfolk State, Western Kentucky, and Loovill. This one won’t be close.

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL. Georgia is not the better team top to bottom; take THAT EXPECTED FOOTBALL CLICHE. Kentucky’s got the better defense, but too bad for them this is football, where sometimes one must score. Georgia can do that because they’ve got this offense, and do really well when they’re not giving up drives to opponents that start on their own one yard line. Kentucky fans prefer basketball ARP ARP ARP ARP.

Wyoming at Tennessee

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: Joe Glenn’s market value peaked long ago, and in a five game stretch prior to breaking universal slump-buster San Diego State the Cowboys were outcored 207-30 by their opponents. We feel some FAIL comin’ on hyah, and would take at least 90 teams in division one over the Cowboys sight unseen. Holly will explain further reasons why taking the Cowboys borders on the tardbilly-ish.

HOLLY, ACTUALLY RATIONAL: If you managed to sit through Fulmer’s press conference on Monday without squirming yourselves completely underneath the couch cushions, you got a taste of the general tenor of the UT locker room. The players are bound to be out for blood, and to not particularly care whose blood. Tennessee by a hundred and fifty or so.

#1 Alabama at #16 LSU

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: Instead of picking, let’s treat ourselves to a festive round of Nick Saban Projectile Bingo. Center square if he gets hit with an egg. Fill the rest of your card, in any order, with: bottles, batteries, dead bats, live snakes, pots of boiling peanut oil, actual shrunken heads, glowsticks, empty mace cans, and vials of plague strains. Oh, and here’s to an LSU win, because Alabama at number one is fucking awful, the end. Light ‘im up, Tigahs.

ORSON, IRRATIONAL. John Parker Wilson has taken the Brandon Cox Mantle of “OH MY GOD WE LOST TO HIM” Qb for this year. Bama Bang’d, rag-armed, prone to taking sacks with audible feminine shrieks, and with his supporting cast totally unbeatable thus far. The shame of victory will sting even more as he attempts 20 passes, completes 12 of them for piddling yardage, and yet gets to trod from the bourbon-soaked sidelines of LSU clothed in glory…and LSU fans’ spit, of course.

#3 Penn State at Iowa

ORSON, LUDICROUSLY IRRATIONAL SHONN GREENE SHONN GREENE SHONN GREENE.

If the weather’s awful, consider the Iowa victory a done deal due to the inverse relationship between crappy weather and the performance of white athletes. (Only remaining fields of dominance: cross-country skiing, biathlon, and blizzard wrestling.) We just don’t want Penn State in the national title game, are open about this, and don’t think Mark Dantonio and all the properly worn neckties in the universe can get the Spartans to beat the Nittany Lions.

(Final note: an undefeated Penn State team belongs in the title game. Logic overcomes homerism…just barely, though. It was wrong when it happened to Auburn; it’s wrong here, too.)

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL FOR YOUR OWN GOOD: C’mon, Penn State. Drop a game you shouldn’t lose and lose the ranking you shouldn’t have. Nobody wants to deny old what’s-his-name a title shot based on sentimentality and your bullshit schedule, so give us an excuse to slot in a more deserving squad and you’ll be free to enjoy a pleasant berth in one of the remaining big four bowls. Let’s not cause a scene, now.

Kansas St. at #14 Missouri

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: We owe a debt of gratitude to Mizzou for dropping out of the top ten and saving us from the effort of shoring up our rapidly depleting stock of Chase-Daniel-is-old-and-delivers-pizzas-in-his-copious-spare-time jokes. For this, Tigers, and because KState is f’ing woeful, we ch-ch-choose you. Prevail, if you please.

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL. K-State is horrible, Missouri is not, grab a shovel as Mizzou makes a minced ass pie from the butt-end of the Ron Prince carcass.

#21 California at #7 USC

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: Jeff Tedford, pre-season: icy genius, steely-visaged pro-style thinkbot waging cold warfare amidst the primitive ankylosauruses of the college football landscape, a technical scientist fighting against sloppy, emotive artists.

Jeff Tedford, mid-season: 6-2 and about to lose to Pete Carroll. Again.

HOLLY, QUASI-IRRATIONAL: Isn’t it entertaining, every November, to watch P-Car wax angry about how very number-one-y his team would be if they hadn’t dropped a cakewalk game for no reason? Like the return of the first robins of spring, only EVEN MORE REDDER AND AWESOME JACKED I’M LIKIN’ IT BRAH—yeah, whatever, USC’s complacent but they ain’t bad. Trojans.

#9 Oklahoma State at #2 Texas Tech

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: [Lazy-assed OOOOOH, TAKE TEH OVER Y'ALL LOLZ bit] Texas Tech. Texas Tech will win this game, depressing Mike Gundy just enough to accept a generous offer from the University of Tennessee to become the next head coach of the Volunteers. He will bring Trooper Taylor back to Rocky Top; recruiting cachet will soar, the new clock rules will be abolished, Rick Neuheisel will go rapidly and unattractively bald, and unicorns with lollipops for hooves will roam the sidelines of all D-I schools at will.

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: When faced with good defenses, Oklahoma State has refrained politely from scoring points by the gross: 24 against Texas, 28 against Missouri…strike that. Mizzou’s defense is not good,and they still sputtered against them. When let loose by the secondary and unpressured upfront, OK State will disintegrate a defense. With some pressure, though, they become only excellent on offense, and “only excellent” against Texas Tech will get you tortilla’d in Lubbock.

#5 Florida at Vanderbilt

Orson, IRRATIONAL. We’ll be there, and need tickets, because what has two thumbs, applied too late for a press pass, and wants to see Florida train a few orbital death lasers on an overmatched and offense-challenged Vandy team? THIS GUY.

HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: Vandy has a proud history of playing Florida tough when they have no business doing so. This, however, is no ordinary Florida team. Gators saunter through this one at a casual, deadly pace.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B.

Exhibit C:

And to all a good night.

My father would drink. He liked to drink. When he became drunk, he became mean. He would curse at only the brown tiles on the floor, because he was a racist, and would slap my mother until she bled. And by my mother, I mean my father. He would slap himself.

It was indescribably brutal.

To please him, I played sports. At first, I tried diving. I remember my first diving match event. My father screamed at me from the stands. “Where’s your helmet?” I tried to explain to him that in diving, you didn’t need a helmet.

“The little man in the aquarium has a helmet!” he insisted.

“We’re not in an aquarium!” I screamed back.

“Don’t question me in front of your mother!” he said, pointing to a man in his mid-fifties named Harold sitting in the stands.

I jumped that day with a forty-five pound diving bell around my head. When I hit the water, I broke my jaw and fell unconscious to the bottom of the pool. My old man had a way of teaching me lessons about determination like this. He also carried a cattle prod with him, and would use it on anyone who disagreed with him while insisting they call him “Neptune Jones.”

Neptune Jones, you dreamer you. I can’t hear a bug zapper without feeling the warmth of remembered love spreading through my pants. Love is what I call it, at least, and it gets me thrown out of public pools who don’t understand my story.

Then I played baseball. I remember my first game like it was my last game, like it was the last time I would be with my father, like some golden flake of divine forehead dandruff floating from the head of God, if God had God-eczema and really had to scratch, and it all fell from his forehead, but you know without burning like big asteroids made of dead God-skin when they re-entered the atmosphere.

Also, when the flaming chunks of God-skin came down, they didn’t crush anyone or fall into anything critical to national security. If my father taught me nothing besides determination, it was faith.

In addition to this, he taught me how to clean a fish with a set of standard house keys.

I tried to make him happy playing baseball. I stood there, dazed in right field. The ball headed right to me. Thinking of Proust, I smelled madeleines, and not the urine of fear running down my leg, nor of the wolves standing mere feet away.

Where I played baseball, wolves were an unending threat. There was also a French bakery in right field. This phantasmagoria was my childhood.

I struck out, a perfectly common embarrassment made humiliating by the fact that I hadn’t noticed my teammates had switched my bat with a three-foot salami

My father was so drunk and angry that day. He left the stands and walked home all the way to his native Finland.

He killed many bottles along the way. And men. And whales. And men inside of whales. My father was his own Jonah, and alcohol was the whale, except that he drank the whale, presumably from a huge metaphorical chalice or paper bag.

Trying to understand him, I joined the crew of an illegal Japanese whaling boat. They taught me love, the art of tattoo, and how to fire 120 pounds of rocket-propelled metal through the heart of a slow-moving sea mammal. It’s why I’ve been divorced three times.

I left the boat with a strong back and a weakness for Asian schoolgirls. I miss it sometimes. I’ll go down to the Florida Keys, rent a tuna can with an outboard motor, and cruise inlets looking for manatees. You can stroke them, and they’ll let your scratch their bellies. They’re like big, amiable sea cattle, really! Just like a cow, especially in the way they bleed for hours when you shoot them with a gun.

Oh, I guess I should mention that my dad divorced my mom forty years ago, rejected me as his son, re-married, raised a healthy happy family, and died peacefully in his sleep having never spoken to me again. Not exactly the closure I was looking for, but whatever.

He was also not the man I referenced earlier. That was Steve. Steve’s pretty cool, actually. My god, can that man smack the scabs off a leper!

Guess I should have made that clearer. I apologize.

Song of the Lukewarm Potsticker by Spencer Hall and Matt Ufford will be released by Harper Collins later this summer.

Roll Tide!

On Tuesday, we reported that the University of Tennessee had, following the firing of Johnny Majors, considered attempting to hire Florida coach Steve Spurrier to replace the longtime Vol coach. This was inaccurate; Tennessee made no such attempt, a point clarified to us at great length in a phone call from Tennessee officials earlier this week. The candidate Tennessee wanted most to replace Johnny Majors was not Spurrier, but rather country music legend David Allen Coe. We regret the error.

Monday’s continuing series on the struggle to rebuild Columbus following last year’s Ohio State-Michigan victory celebrations misidentified an image as a neighborhood just south of campus. The photo in question is actually of a Beirut bomb crater. We regret the error.

O-H!

Monday’s “Where Are They Now?” segment featured a collection of inaccuracies we would like to address here. Purdue is located in West Lafayette, Indiana, not Louisiana. The Heisman Trophy was, until 2001, awarded annually not at Radio City Music Hall, but at the Downtown Athletic Club. And finally, Eric Crouch played at Nebraska, not at Iowa State, and at no point in his adult life fought a crippling addiction to drinking window cleaner he consumed to quiet the voices of relentless murder in his head. We regret the error.

He does, however, have unusually silky dark brown hair and particularly delicate, almost feminine eyelashes his female friends just can’t stop gushing over. His secret pride in this forces him to question his understanding of his own masculinity.

The Tuesday Grid-Iron Crossword had an ambiguous clue under “14 letter word for former coach at Texas A&M and Mississippi State.” Both the words “Jackie Sherrill” and “Piglickingcheat” fit the slot in the puzzle, causing some consternation among our readers, especially as “piglickingcheat” contains more letters than “Jackie Sherrill.” We regret the error, and clearly have no place assembling crossword puzzles in the first place.

A Wednesday evening news flash reported that former Kentucky coach Hal Mumme was among a band of notorious pirates captured by peacekeeping troops in April off the coast of Mozambique. Mr. Mumme has since been located, and apparently serves as the head football coach at “New Mexico State University”. We regret the error.

The lead story “Sean McDonough: Announcer at Large” on Monday inaccurately described McDonough as being “three apples high.” This refers to the apocryphal height of smurfs, not McDonough. The announcer himself is easily five apples high, and will kick a fucking Smurf in the teeth without hesitation, especially if shirtless white-pant wearing punk suckas walk up on him and take him seven-on-one again like they did after the Continental Tire Bowl BECAUSE THAT’S JUST THE KIND OF PUNK SHIT YOU FRENCH SURRENDER MIDGETS PULL, DON’T YOU SMURFS? WHAT? HUH? YEAH! GARGAMEL AIN’T GOT SHIT ON THIS! BRANG YO BEST, LAWYA!

We regret the error.

Our lead post on Thursday stated that an EDSBS staffer was critically injured after being lured into an open rain gutter with promises of a shiny balloon. The report further named the assailant as Ole Miss head coach Houston Nutt. The perpetrator has since been correctly identified as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. The Turtle cannot help us, and we regret the error.

Raise ya glasses, shake ya asses, Vol Nation: For unto us is given this day that greatest of football blogosphere treasures—a Catlab masterpiece of our very own. It’s like staring into the sun, but it’ll get you drunk. Behold:

Have you ever seen anything ring so true? I’m about 85% sure the guy holding the pennant is my cousin Maxie. Had this wondrous creation hatched just a scant few days earlier, we would’ve been hard-pressed not to scrap the Tennessee list entirely—because this is, perfectly encapsulated, what Orange And White People Like.

Our theory of SEC football scandals involves several stages, outlined below.

First: the spurning! At one point someone pisses someone off about something. This is then aired on a message board, blurted out on talk radio, or vented in a drunken boosters luncheon so virulent it’s spoken of in hushed tones years later.

Second: the infection. The story spreads as people circulate emails from trainers, guys who wash cars for the university spill their innermost secrets (”I saw him calling someone real sneaky-like in the parking lot of his office last night!”) and talk radio begins to hint boldly around the story. That asshole on your message board with an endless well of “insider information” claims to know the real story, which he wishes he could tell you but WHOOO! would that be trouble.

Third: Thermidorian Period. The raging peak of the scandal, where even the coach and administration get too stupid to just shut up and let the lawyers enter the fray for them. We just passed this in the Nutt case last week, where everyone’s issuing fevered press releases (including university car wash guy) and the “inside info” asshole on your board disappears just for effect.

Fourth: Enter the lawyers. The scandal putters out in a succession of frivolous lawsuits, legal proceedings, and increased billable hours for every scheisty lawyer in arms’ reach of the case.

We have officially entered the Fourth Stage of Las Cronicas de Boss Hawg, as John David Terry, bold taxpayer, has filed the first legal salvo in the Houston Nutt Saga by accusing university bigwigs of not adequately investigating the Teresa Prewett emails to Mitch Mustain, the ones showing a grown woman calling a 19 year-old a “fag” and gently suggesting that he transfer from the University.

Mr. “I’m not named Richard Dean Anderson and I still have the gall to use three names” then, after filing the lawsuit, presumably went back to his rustic cabin for lunch.*

*Yes, we’re calling you hillbillies. Because this whole thing makes Arkansas look like bone-sucking, muscadine-wine sippin’, knuckle-dragging goatfuckers. And that’s sad because we come from Tennessee and Florida, two places with similar PR issues. Fortunately, the lawyers are in force now, which means the worst thing you can accuse anyone of now is being overly litigious–this is ouuuuuuuuuurrrrrr counnnnntreeeeee…

Dateline Presents: To Catch a Recruiter. (WARNING!!! Scene containing the Orgeron may be too intense for children or young adults.)

Wright’s injury is to the bone on the inside of his right thumb. He totally didn’t break it slamming it in a drawer, or having a teammate pound on it with the butt of his Glock. He most definitely didn’t injure it in an attack at the hands of an enraged and…especially alert and enthusiastic Michael Irvin, who did not attempt to bite off Kyle’s hand after the VT game.

“You’re terrible, son! Just terrible! Playmaker gonna make a roster move all by himself here…Give me that hand reearrrrrgghhhhhAIIIIIGGGHHH…WE READY! WE READY!”

But as with any place that when spelled backwards reads “I MAIM,” you don’t have to make anything up. Here’s audio of Kyle Wright’s dad, for example, getting into a shouting match with Miami fans displeased with his son’s performance. (HT:Eye on the U.) Florida: the state of nature! Like the one Hobbes wrote about, not the cuddly type that doesn’t bite or shoot you for crack money.

Welcome to Miami! Your time here will be nasty, brutish, and short.

–Charlie Weis manages to be completely horrifying, even in a puff piece on 60 Minutes. Follow linkage to listen to Weis as he’s possessed by spirits, spits malignant incantations on inept underlings, and works black magic on the sidelines in his attempt to reanimate the corpse of Notre Dame football. It’s aliiiiiive!!!

I send the players on the field! That’s my job.

–The tasty meat of Big Ten deep threat and its dark secret returns to your football plate sooner than expected: Mario Manningham to return. His dark secret? HE’S MADE OF PEOPLE!!! PEOPLE I TELL YOU…

–Another person gets drunk and dies at the Cocktail Party, bringing the grand, bloody total of the menace posed by the game to…three people over the past three years, meaning that the scourge of lightning still poses a greater danger to the combined student bodies of UGA and UF than drinking at the cocktail party. What are you doing to protect the student body against the scourge of lightning, Michael Adams? Huh?

–Rich Rodriguez kind of sort of is everyone’s boyfriend right now. UNC wants him, FSU wants him, Miami’s batting eyelashes, he’s not exactly turning the whole idea down. A murderous backwoods betrayal lurks if he really is thinking of leaving his alma mater! Where you goin’ city boy?

You ain’t leaving West Virginia, boy.

–Bruins Nation may be overshooting on their short list for coaches, but hey, you gotta dream, right? Unless a murderous, finger-bladed madman is stalking your dreams, that is…

–Urban stumps for Florida, since that’s what you have to do when there’s no playoff or fair way of comparing teams at the end of the season…unless you count the many armed beast who cannot be named who you may call the BCS…Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn…

–Speaking of monstrous tentacles…that’s some gnarly math you got there. (Cue math geek saying “that’s not so bad” in 3…2…1…)

–The spectre of the On Notice Board returns! Once your name is written on it, you will die in 24 hours unless you spread the curse to someone else by creating your own!*

Settle down. That curse is an extremely flexible one.

–San Diego State suffers the Curse Of the Former Bob Stoops Assistant As Your Head Coach! This only confirms that he is the Daywalker, and will suck your talent dry before tossing you to a struggling program to flail.

–The undead rise! They need no sleep, or people skills, actually.

–A Rutgers blog? And a Baylor one too that compares A&M to North Korea? Shocking monsters on this internet, indeed! Information beasts…truly the food of the gods…

This one’s for you, TCOAN.

*Margin of error=+/- 100 years.