Corwin Brown, Notre Dame defensive coordinator, is doing what every defensive coordinator who doesn’t have the perfect lineup this spring is doing: tinkering, moving pieces around like an interior decorator swings furniture around, waiting for that perfect Ping! arrangment that just screams “sophisticated neocolonial style!” Wait. We meant, “Skull-slamming defensive rotation.” (It’s so easy to get the two confused, sometimes.)

Brown has one guy he’s particularly fond of, and hopes to stay fond of safety Harrison Smith, who unlike previous safety Tom Zbikowski and several coal towns in West Virginia, is not currently on fire. And unlike all those other asshole players he’s coached, Corwin Brown hopes he won’t defecate in his food. Again!

“He’s a hard-working [player], he’s smart, he’s tough. I don’t want to say too many good things about him, though, because he’ll probably poop in my lunch bucket.”

Threat, dare, or invitation? Corwin Brown, after a Notre Dame loss this year, will walk sad laps in short pants and a prep school tie and jacket with a reeking lunchpail, tears welling down his face. Mom! They did it again! For Notre Dame players, this could evolve into a powerful motivational technique for the player on the defense demonstrating the least effort in a game: the Corwin Brown Craptacular Lunch Bucket of Shame.

Chunky is the disappointment of bearing the Corwin Brown Craptacular Lunch Bucket of Shame.

Brian brings us this week’s Big Board, an active board for those who really, really don’t have time for this shit. Notes, clarifications, and open challenges to fight follow.

The biggest leap in the board comes from Oregon State. Do not blame us, blame the authorities who file the charges and insist on playing triple-word-score with the charges for otherwise five/six point crimes.

Al Afalava, a three-year starter for the Oregon State football team’s defense, was cited for criminal mischief, which is a felony, DUII and hit-and-run by the Corvallis Police on Feb. 9, according to Corvallis Police Department public information officer Lt. Dave Henslee.

See? Corvallis police charge him with everything including “untidy arrangement of vehicular garbage resulting in messy crash scene,” and by rule we spit out points like a broken ATM. Blame the Farvas at the Corvallis police department and drunkass Al Afalava for the skewed charges, not us. Mike Riley says he can tell Aflalava’s making a tackle just from the sound. Now the Corvallis police have the same ability.

Alabama makes the first of two ironic scores in the Cupdate. Your team captain gets arrested for disorderly conduct! No salt or pepper needed! Take that scotch neat, you will. Add in the Elder armed robbery arrest, and we’re talking magic.

Louisville went a-road tripping, and oh what a time that was. We awarded two bonus points for this one, but with the charges as they stand, even the brazen gusto of robbing a convenience store (and on a school night, young man) doesn’t tally up the pile of points Alabama and Oregon State racked up. Even so, the Farking is good to you and good for you in this case.

HT: Reed. He does reek of triumph, with just a hint of hot dog roller.

Double your irony at no extra charge: Iowa players get busted for drug charges while Kirk Ferentz, attempting to right the ship, is actually on the Iowa Hawkeye Booster Cruise. “Shore to ship, can you hear me–” “Umm, no…you’re breaking CHHHRRRGGGGGFAKEMOUTHNOISEKKRRRGGGG up KRRRGGHHHH…”

Kansas loses points due to a clerical error on our part: the trumped up “dog-on-the-loose” charge has been dismissed due to PeteJayhawk’s diligent work, informing us that the player in question is a fifth-year senior with no eligibility left. Not on the team, not in the tally.

Post your compliments, gratuitous stroking of our ego, and cries from the WAAAAAAHHHHHHmbulance below. And pleading for points is just perverse, unless you’re from the U. Then you’re just trying to compete like competitors would, playa. (We’re looking at you, Barstoolio!)

Nick Saban approaches the podium, looking drawn and fatigued. Cameras pop idly. The press conference begins.

Reporter one, wiping donut grease off chin: “Coach, how do you recover from a catastrophe like this?”

Coach Saban:“Changes in history usually occur after some kind of catastrophic event. It may be 9-11, which sort of changed the spirit of America relative to catastrophic events. Pearl Harbor kind of got us ready for World War II, or whatever, and that was a catastrophic event.”

Reporter two, putting down a cup of whole gravy: “Are you sure that’s the right phrasing?”

Coach Saban: “Look, I’m sure it’s the right phrasing. It’s just like the way I would describe John Parker Wilson’s play as ‘AIDS-y.” Which is not what I called it, by the way. I’m just saying that one could describe his play as being reminiscent of an autoimmune disease with no known cure that’s killed millions around the globe. You could say that, that’s all I’m saying.”

Reporter two: “Is that how you’d describe Wilson’s play? AIDS-y?”

Saban: (chuckles.)”No, no. It wasn’t AIDS-y at all. I would never say that about his play.”

Reporter two: “Then how would you describe it?”

Saban: “Holocaust-tastic. That’s the right word, I think.”

Reporter one, dumping the last salty powder from a family-sized bag of chips into his gullet: “Coach Saban, what about the play of your offensive line?”

Saban:”I’d like to say we were raped. (more…)

Two months in the can, one to go, folks, before 2007 is a misremembered, revisionist fog. Get every bit you can while you can. That is an order (Nevada-New Mexico State optional):

Remember the good times? There’s nothing keeping you away except you and your dignity.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
NEVADA at NEW MEXICO STATE (8:00 ET • ESPN2)
It’s a WAC game of no consequence whatsoever, even by WAC standards – both teams are eliminated from the conference title picture – so why not have one of those 59-57 barrages? It should be a law, really: the number of punts in any televised WAC game shall be no greater than the combined number of I-A wins between both teams. In this case, that’s five. Watch For: Admit it: you miss Hal Mumme, don’t you? It’s okay: it’s Friday night, it’s in New Mexico, it’s ESPN2…he won’t tell anyone.

SATURDAY – EARLY AFTERNOON: THERE IS A BODY. DUMP IT IN THE RIVER BEFORE…

Main Course: PURDUE at PENN STATE (Noon ET • ESPN)
It’s a virtual lock the winner here will be in one of the Florida bowls on New Year’s Day, which says nothing, really, except that there will be some really sketchy quarterbacking on display in January. Do not be fooled by Purdue’s “high-powered” offense, which has tended to find the deepest hole it can find against competent defense for the last three years or so – the Boilers were averaging 30 points before they were shut out by the Lions in West Lafayette last year. Watch For: Flashing back to his duty in the final days of World War II (this is true), JoPa mistakes the “bombs” Curtis Painter is spraying around the Penn State secondary for that agonizing night in the leaning shells of old farmhouses outside Bondeno in ‘45. Massacre ensues.

On the Other Channel…
IOWA at NORTHWESTERN (Noon ET • ESPN2)
One of these teams currently has a winning record. Can you guess which one? I didn’t think so. Watch For: Iowa quarterback Jake Christensen, coming one of the truly, stunningly horrible performances in the history of winning football after last week’s double overtime win over Michigan State. Christensen completed three passes in regulation for 24 yards, but didn’t throw an interception, which is like the quarterbacking version of playing dead. It’s all about adapting and surviving, man, adapting and surviving.

It’s just a highly evolved defense mechanism – Christensen doesn’t really throw.

NEBRASKA at KANSAS (12:30 ET • FSN)
The Callahan Death Watch limps into its final excruciating month in need of a good mercy killing: at 4-5 with three games to play, Nebraska is technically alive for a bowl game, even with a defense that just gave up 319 yards rushing at the Beaver Crossing First Presbyterian bake sale and a first time starter at quarterback. At some point, backups can only provide a spark – you know, the team can hardly play worse under Joe Ganz – but he’ll be a minor here if the ex-Blackshirts are competent enough to cover the 20-point spread. Watch For: Last week, it was the velour track suit. This week, Mangino goes for the lucky lederhosen.

Provincialism: N.C. State at Miami (Noon ET, ESPNU) . . . Wake Forest at Virginia (Noon ET, Lincoln Financial) . . . Ball State at Indiana (Noon ET, Big Ten Network) . . . Wisconsin at Ohio State (Noon ET, Big Ten Network) . . . Kansas State at Iowa State (12:30, Versus).

(A brief word to the Big Ten Network: I understand your contractual obligations to get teams onto BTN a certain number of times, but fuck you for picking up Wisconsin-Ohio State and sticking the rest of the country with Iowa-Northwestern. This is quite the boon a wounded conference was looking for, I’m sure, hiding a mythical championship contender in one of its three marquee games of the season on a regional network while trotting out the play-in game for the Music City Bowl for everyone not living next to a Great Lake. Or is it better voters not actually see Ohio State in its only pre-Michigan game worth watching? Go to hell. And if you don’t live in the Big Ten zone and you’re getting Wiscy-OSU by some means other than basic cable, you go to hell, too. We don’t want to hear about your fucking packages.

Oh, and it’s Northwestern: the Wildcats are 5-4. Iowa’s double overtime win over Michigan State last week left the Hawkeyes sitting at 4-5).

LATE AFTERNOON: VIVA HATE!

Main Course: LSU at ALABAMA (5:00 ET • CBS)
Bizarre start time for the Eye, about an hour and a half later than usual, all the better for the fan base that mobbed its new coach’s private plane and showed up 90,000 strong for the Spring game to get in that extra flask before filing in to its seats violently storming the gates to sate the entitled bloodlust that’s possessed the blackest corners of its soul since last December. This game could mean more, if both teams were undefeated or something – in SEC play, anyway, both are only an overtime loss away from 5-0, and a wild last minute drive from being 3-2 – but between coonasses, fucking rivals and the division title, there is epic theater in the works. Watch For: Well, damn, even Nick Saban has time for this shit. There are wilder environments than Bryant-Denny, but with an infusion of revenge and bourbon-filled Louisianans, under the circumstances, it should be transformed into the unpadded batshit madhouse of the season.

On the Other Channel…
Your Mouse-Eared ESPN on ABC Overlords Present…Regionalism!
CINCINNATI at SOUTH FLORIDA or MICHIGAN at MICHIGAN STATE or TEXAS at OKLAHOMA STATE or UCLA at ARIZONA (3:30 ET • ABC/ESPN)

One way or another, most of the country will be seeing Michigan-Michigan State, which is good and right: a legitimate, hate-filled rivalry between decent teams, neither of which is UCLA nor Arizona. The programmers guessing at the beginning of the year that Bruins-Wildcats would be a better draw for this slot than Devils-Ducks should be summarily sacked – Arizona? – not that anyone off the West Coast would be able to see the latter under these conditions, anyway. It probably worked out for the better, actually. Great job, guys!
Watch For: One of your last chances to see Chad Henne and Mike Hart as Wolverines. Truly, through the decades, they have been the voice of an entire generation.

NAVY at NOTRE DAME (2:30 ET • NBC)
Whatever the losing streak is now, 40 games, 45 games, this is it for Notre Dame. The last possible shred of respect it can salvage is to win the frosted dessert course of its schedule (in November, the Irish get Navy, Air Force, Duke and Stanford) beginning with the Middies, if for no other reason than to say “At least we didn’t lose to Navy” and avoid another billboard advertising this team’s historic futility. Watch For: Unparalelled potential for schadenfreude, and because you love the triple option, don’t you, seaman?!

Provincialism: Colorado State at BYU (Noon MT, mtn.) . . . East Carolina at Memphis (2:00 ET, WITN, WLMT) . . . San Jose State at Boise State (1:00 MT, KTVB 7) . . . Buffalo at Miami, Ohio (3:00 ET, Ohio News Now) . . . Army at Air Force (1:30 MT, CSTV) . . . Marshall at Central Florida (3:30 ET, CSS Southeast) . . . Maryland at North Carolina (3:45 ET, ESPNU).

THE WILD CARD
ARIZONA STATE at OREGON (6:45 ET • ESPN)
Even the most cynical hats must be doffed to the Leader for saving the game of the day from regional oblivion, even if kickoff here is inconvenient for anyone more interested in LSU-Bama. The second half of this one ought to get much better ratings than the first. Watch For: If it’s not enough of a draw to watch two high-scoring, top five teams hook up with the highest conference and national implications and coaches who are liable to stagger in as sloshed on the Nike dime as the Sig Eps in the stands, at least give a fair shake to Dennis Dixon, the most overlooked candidate for certain unnamed statuettes. Oregon has to remain a national contender for his campaign to gain any traction, and vice versa.

HERE COMES THE NIGHT

Main Course: Your Mouse-Eared ESPN on ABC Overlords Present…More Regionalism!
FLORIDA STATE at BOSTON COLLEGE or TEXAS A&M at OKLAHOMA or OREGON STATE at SOUTHERN CAL (8:00 ET • ABC)

Almost two-thirds of households nationally will see Matt “Roller Coaster” Ryan try to keep his lunch down against Florida State, while viewers attempt to keep their own lunch down watching the ‘Noles’ pathetic attempts to execute anything on offense. Even FSU’s lone interesting player, Xavier Lee, has succumbed to a sprained cerebrum, leaving vanilla Drew Weatherford to fail in far less spectacular fashion. Just for the record: does anybody else get the sneaking sense that, if their teams and coaches were reversed, Drew Weatherford and Matt Ryan are pretty much the same quarterback? Watch For: Independently, DeMarco Murray and Dennis Franchione’s tortured attempts at stoicism in defeat are worth the price of admission on their own. So a certain segment of the country is getting a sweet two-for-one. It’s like Christmas.

On the Other Channel…
MISSOURI at COLORADO (6:40 ET • FSN)
There’s no figuring Colorado out: the Buffs lose at home in the middle of the night to Florida State, then take out Oklahoma on the same field, then get routed in back-to-back games by Kansas and Kansas State, and, reeling in the wake of Sunflower State smackdowns, salvaged the season by whipping Texas Tech last week in Lubbock. Division I football, brother: completely schizophrenic. Watch For: Chase Daniel, who, no, you have not observed closely enough. Everyone has Mizzou figured, but nobody’s doing much about it.

Chase Daniel doesn’t adjust to the altitude. The altitude adjusts to Chase Daniel.

SOUTH CAROLINA at ARKANSAS (8:00 • ESPN2)
It feels like both teams are reeling, but, where South Carolina’s lost two in a row, Arkansas has actually won four of its last five. The problem: those four were North Texas, UT-Chattanooga, Ole Miss and Florida International. Against actual SEC opponents, the Hogs have fallen flatter’n Houston Nutt’s denials re: Donna Bragg. Watch For: Any chance to watch Darren McFadden knife through hordes of tacklers is a precious one, and by all reasonable guesses, this will be one of the last you’ll get on a Saturday.

WASHINGTON STATE at CALIFORNIA (10:00 ET • FSN)
Random Pac Ten game! Random Pac Ten game! Less than a month ago, Cal was ranked third in the country and thinking national championship. Now the Bears are trying to hold on against streaking Wazzu (one in a row, baby!) to avoid a tie for ninth place in the conference. Watch For: The sheer, drunken, bleary-eyed pleasure that comes from falling asleep for whole quarters, then waking up just in time to catch a bizarro finish and trying in vain to remember just which team you bet on, again, before passing out for good. It’s the little things that make it all worthwhile.

Provincialism: New Mexico at TCU (4:30 CT, mtn.) . . . Washington at Stanford (3:30 PT, FSN Bay Area) . . . Southern Miss at UAB (6:00 CT, CSS Southeast) . . . Eastern Michigan at Toledo (7:00 ET, Buckeye Cable Network) . . . Rutgers at Connecticut (7:15, ESPNU) . . . Tulsa at Tulane (6:30 CT, CSTV) . . . Illinois at Minnesota (7:00 CT, Big Ten Network) . . . Wyoming at San Diego State (6:00 PT, mtn.).

Don’t forget to set your clock backs at the end of Cal-WSU, and enjoy that little time warp while you can.

Ivan Maisel gets the Barbara Walters shot at Nick Saban in a piece producing two shining details worth framing on the wall of “things we will wear into the ground through comic repetition this year. ”

One: Saban hates your gangsta huggies.

On the practice field in the early days of spring practice, the Saban you don’t know decided he had had enough of his players wearing their pants too far below their waist…

“He pulled his pants down,” Caldwell said, “and said, ‘This is how some of you guys look. You’re showing your ass. And I’m going to be the only a–hole showing around here.’”

Proof positive there’s a Patton DVD somewhere floating around the Saban household, most likely sandwiched between musty copies of the original Walking Tall and Snap, Pop, OH MY GOD WHY?: Quarterbacks in Pain, Vol 12.

The other grand tidbit here: Saban’s rage fuel, allowing him to work those famous 20 hour days and still reduce underlings to tears with ease, is readily available at your local gas station or downmarket grocery store:

The Saban you don’t know may have a Manhattan income, but his tastes remain rooted in his native West Virginia. Given his druthers, Saban would be watching practice video, a cup of coffee on the table and Red Man Golden tucked in his cheek. Toss a package of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies (the original size, not the big ones) next to the coffee and you may not hear from Saban for hours.

Them’s some druthers right there. Saban’s snack tastes run roughly parallel to Britney Spears, something we wouldn’t have predicted given a decade’s worth of guesses. In our darkest moments as a fan–say, when the 2009 team is pounding the hell out of Florida’s quarterback in the SEC championship game–we’ll just go to a happy place where Nick Saban is yelling at his players, waddling around a practice field with his pants around his ankles and an oatmeal cream pie in his hand. Laughing makes the sad fly away at times like that.

That visual could be handy for SEC fans over the next few years, actually.

SEC Media Days, the rootin’-est, tootin’-est, shootin’-est conflagration of 400 pound sportswriters and the coaches who loathe them in the nation. The updates from the boots on the ground:

Chris Vernon says…”elastic waistbands are in at media days, in fact, I feel weird that I have a belt on. A conservative estimate would put the combined weight of most radio teams at 550-650 lbs.”

The Tide Sports Blog has evidence that Alabama sportswriter Kevin Scarbinsky is dressing like Bumpy from Shaft.

It moved! Saban just arriving in the building is news in Alabama.

Bobby Johnson, like Steve Martin in so many ways. The Vandy coach answered a question about text messaging by sending a quick text message as a reply, then said that he actually had a problem with text messages since they distracted students when they were in class. Urban Meyer then suggested Johnson hike his skirt up if text messaging blew his slip up the wrong way OMG LOL.

True to form, softball questions reigned. So actual children were left to ask the difficult questions to Nick Saban:

After a reporter from Huntsville asked Saban about the suits he wears, Dawson Wade, 9 of Vestavia, spoke up, asking Saban about Alabama’s difficulty scoring in the red zone last year and how to fix it. Grateful to be answering questions about football rather than his wardrobe or the spectacle of his arrival at Alabama, Saban gave a thoughtful, composed response.

Hold on…something seems awry there…

Grateful to be answering questions about football rather than his wardrobe or the spectacle of his arrival at Alabama, Saban gave a thoughtful, composed response before incinerating the impudent rapscallions with his Custom Bear Bryant Brand Flamethrower With Real Bryant Head Flame Spigot.

That sounds better.

Earl Bennett, optimist. Earl Bennett wants a holographic panther loyal only to him. He wants a gun that shoots exploding pit bulls at 950 feet per second. He also wants to make love to Jessica Biel in front of a live studio audience.

Oh, and he thinks Vandy can get to a BCS bowl game.

“We are thinking BCS bowl,” Bennett said. “That’s what we’ve been talking about. We are working hard to do that. We believe we can do that.” …

We believe we will kick the first discouraging evil Disney character we see in the balls during the Disney Marathon, too. But after 12 miles of running, it’s likely not happening.

Orgeron? No detectable smell of burning gunpowder and cooked flesh yet. He’s scheduled for tomorrow. Do not attempt to chest bump him.

Pay no attention to your seismographs… Sylvester Croom is set to speak later today, so what you’re feeling is not an earthquake, but rather Croom’s voice, which makes Barry White sound like a mincing prissy rent boy squeaking through the Johnny Mathis catalog.

That’s the ad for NCAA 2008 that aired last night during the baseball all-star game, which we did not watch since we were busy doing EDSBS Live and not giving a shit about baseball. Seeing this did not help our struggle with buying an XBox, which we figure will cost us at least this much money:

–$435 minimum for system setup

–Another hundred for crap we don’t need but crave like sweet, sweet blueflake (headsets, new video game rocker, vibrating wireless codpiece)

–$60 for NCAA 2008

–Calculated loss of wages and labor over the next year. Even at blogging wages, which we’ll calculate at fifty cents an hour for no particular reason, that will add up to $3.5 billion over the next six months lost to playing NCAA alone. Once Mercenaries Two comes out, our losses could add up to the net worth of several Balkan republics since we’ll not only be able to run the “All Speed Option and Statue of Liberty Offense” with our newly created “Peter North University Gushers,” but can throw our brain a changeup by burning down whole Venezuelan towns with nothing more than a cell phone and a lighter.

Even with that and this morning’s replacement of a radiator in the Swindle FAB1…well, it is our birthday tomorrow, no? And we couldn’t have an EDSBS league without the PNU Gushers and their wily Dutch coach Vaas Deference, right?

3.5 million dollars this year, 3.75 million dollars in ‘08, and…well, we won’t stretch Saban much past the two year window yet. That’s asking a lot of a coach who’s, you know, still exploring other options, checking the scene, thinking about getting his MBA, seeing other women, you know…keeping his future flexible, man.

Thought about taking the State Department exam, but doesn’t have time for that shit.

Those are the salary numbers for Nick Saban’s contact, newly finalized as of today. The contract was stripped of much of the extraneous endorsement and personal appearance requirements many coaches have built into their contracts, including the “unlimited” obligations listed in his predecessor Mike Shula’s contract.

By contrast, Saban need only appear once a week on the radio during the season, twice during spring practice and once close to the national signing day for high school recruits.

For television programs, Saban is bound to appear once a week during the season, once after the season and once after a bowl game.

The rest of the time he may sit in his undisclosed location, watching film in the dark, sucking the hearts straight from the chest of screaming iguanas, and scanning the want ads dutifully. This is likely a positive development for Alabama fans. Shula’s performances in press conferences were…well, just watch the clip to see all you need to know.

This video is from the Alabama Senate. The question is which one went to Bama and which to Auburn?

New coach Nick Saban and Les Miles have used text messaging and other new technologies to try to get the edge in recruiting. But the two coaches, now bitter rivals in the hotly contested SEC West, have resorted to an old but reliable method of getting their message across to a recruiting base more attuned to the sound of the streets than the cheery bromides of a middle-aged white coach.

“Dawg, I thought he was clownin’, but dude’s got flow,” says Memphis area mixtape impressario B-Crack90. “His first joint is my second leading seller, right behind T-Nutz’s Xerox Me Your Thickness/ Da Remix featurin’ Akon. Say-Bann got the streets bumpin’ and you heard that.”

Whuppin that trick on the dance flo’: MC Say-Bann.

Saban made the tape on the advice of his players, who suggested that it was an appropriate response to Les Miles referring to the Crimson Tide as “Fucking Alabama” in an LSU booster meeting. Production was handled by several anonymous Alabama players, including one known only as “DJ Longshanks,” and was completed in typically prompt Saban fashion.

“He dropped, like, 38 tracks in two hours, man,” said DJ Longshanks, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “He was mailing them in, like, bam bam bam. We were astounded.”

Sporting a delivery somewhere between Slick Rick and Eminem, Saban taunts not only Miles and LSU fans, but most of the big names in the football world on the leadoff single, “I Ain’t Got Tyme (4 This Shit)”

(Warning: extremely adult language.) (more…)

If you’re an Alabama fan, you probably know that your coach has been labeled a “jerk” by esteemed, legitimate journalist-types. You also know that your coach, frankly, doesn’t have time for this shit–whatever the shit happens to be. He’s got games to win, asses to kick, underlings to push to the brink of insanity. Shit? No time for it.

And now you, Alabama fan, may join in the movement by declaring your own lack of time for this shit. In fact, you don’t have time for another sent–

(Click the image to go to our shop.)

The back: (more…)