I’ve always wanted to hunt the most dangerous game . . . Ohio State fans.

Senator Blutarsky laid down the challenge, and T. Kyle King, who hates Auburn — boy, does he ever hate Auburn — responded with every bit of the gusto you’d expect and then some. So now the only question is, is 100 Things Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die just an Auburn thing, or is this book part of a series? Naturally, it’s the latter, meaning that in addition to a team-specific tailgating tent, leather sofa, or casket, you can now have a bucket list tailored to the college football team of your choice.

Even leaving out all the baseball-themed volumes — is “Stay awake through an entire MLB game” on any of those lists? It should be — we don’t have the time to slog through every one of these books, much less the resources to buy all of ‘em. But that ain’t gonna stop us from making some educated guesses as to what’s on each list. Here’s what we’d include, if we were instructing individual fan bases as to how they can optimize their respective fandoms before shuffling off their respective mortal coils:

ALABAMA
* Pick three random years out of the past century and make a case for Alabama deserving a share of the national title in each of those years in a letter to the editor, comment on a rival blog, or graffito spray-painted on an opposing team’s stadium.
* Get a houndstooth-patterned prosthesis or medical implant (i.e. hip replacement, pacemaker, or IUD).
* Cut off an Auburn fan’s ear whilst listening to Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You.”

(more…)

Worried about the Big 10’s recent habit of face-planting in high-profile out-of-conference games? Jim Delany isn’t:

“In any particular time frame, could be three years, could be five years, could be two years, you could get your ass kicked, OK?” Delany continued. “It can happen. We’re not playing Little Sisters of the Poor. We’re playing the best football teams in their region.

“So were we 1-6 (in bowl games) last year? Yeah. Were we 0-6 in the BCS in the last (three years)? We were. Those are the facts. But take me from 2000 or 1997 to 2005; I remember when Michigan played Ohio State [in 2006]. We were the toast of the town, one versus two, game of the century.”

Jim Delany’s not too worried about it, really. He wouldn’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. He’s not worried at all.

Sounds like a reasonably nonchalant response to the issue, even if, as Doc Saturday humbly points out, it’s a problem that isn’t likely to resolve itself this season no matter what Delany says. For all the criticism we’ve heaped on the Big 10 commissioner over the past couple years, he sounds like a guy who takes a level-headed, matter-of-fact approach to problems instead of panicking, which is the kind of trait you’d want in not only a conference commish but also . . . an advice columnist:

Dear Big 10 Commish,
My husband and I have three children: a son who is in college and two daughters, a 16-year-old and a 10-year-old. My older daughter was an A student all through elementary and middle school, but her grades have deteriorated markedly since she started high school. She has a boyfriend now and has been spending a lot more time with him and his clique of friends, and a lot less time studying or helping out around the house; she hasn’t been particularly combative toward me or my husband, but that’s mainly because we hardly ever see her at all. A couple weeks ago I found what looked like the remnants of a marijuana cigarette on our back patio; I asked her if she knew anything about it and she said she didn’t, and that she had never tried marijuana or any other drugs. Can I trust her? Is it time for me to put my foot down and make her stop spending as much time with her boyfriend, or will that only drive her further away?
Concerned Mother in Battle Creek

(more…)

Dan Hawkins’ blog sounds a bit like the sadly defunct Tressel’s World: an internet Potemkin Village actually constructed by a deranged college football fan with too much time on his/her hands and in the grip of a wicked fascination with home hovercraft technology. We were prepared for disappointment and the inevitable dwindling of the blog to nothing but a final post and sad internet silence.

Yet Coach Dan Hawkins’ blog is not only real–it will fucking change your life, brother. Because Dan Hawkins knows you’re not living life to the fullest, and he’s got the blinding html skills and excerpts from motivational handbooks and half-baked eastern philosophy texts to shoot gallons of metaphysical nitrous into those underperforming cylinders of yours, as evidenced by this awesome screenshot. Be the bow!

He quotes Clint Black at the top, something we’d make fun of if we didn’t earnestly love like at least ten Clint Black songs. That midget can rock, albeit in a countryish, paralyzed on one side of his mouth kind of way. We like to think of Clint Black as what Terry Bowden looks like in his wildest fantasies, where he’s tearing ass on a horse across the Western landscape with Catherine Bach on the back of his saddle and his shirt open to reveal ripped pecs and abs.

But don’t limit him to country, spirit-prison-warden:

Music? I am going with the ole standby, Van Morrison. Again, don’t listen to the top 40 stuff of Brown Eyed Girl. Dig a little deeper, some great soul searching going on there!

Oh, Coach Hawkins. You make us want to curl up on a brown couch in a brown house decorated in various shades of brown, eating fondue, listening to Van Morrison, and just enjoying the mellow vibe of our new, multilevel contemporary house, all soaked in before a drive in the new Audi, maybe a little raquetball at the club, and then a relaxing dip in the hot tub with some Riunite while Gaucho plays in the background.

(HT: MK)

Back without popular demand: The Golden Unicycle Diaries return, where Peter and Orson use the wonder of internet chat to spin mental detritus into gold! Or at the least, affordable cotton/rayon blends cut in contemporary patterns, cuts, and styles!

We discuss this week’s games. Enjoy? Yes. Enjoy.

Orson: wearing this to the game on Saturday.

Peter Bean: What’s up in your world?

Orson Swindle: I’m so Master Chief this week. It’s HALO-ween

PB: Ah, feeling violent. Was it Ole Miss?

OS: Oh, yes. We coudl have used something from the game. There’s this thing called an antigravity hammer in Halo 3. I call it the Tebow-rod. It doesn’t require ammo.

PB: Can it do four play action maneuvers all by itself?

me: Yes. But you hit things with it so hard and so many times, that at one point, you just can’t hammer any more. You’ve outbludgeoned bludgeoning, and you have to stop. Just like Tebow, who looks like he’s doing the electric slide back there on some plays.

PB: Let’s pull up this week’s schedule.

OS: Hold on, i can do that with my anti-grav hammer DONE!!! I also just repelled Beano Cook fifty feet into a brick wall through the portal of ESPN.com. He’s still asleep!

PB: And start with Friday – West Virginia-USF. There won’t be anti-gravity in Tampa. But there will be lots of hair gel.

OS:Yes, WVU. Noel Devine as Q-bert. He doesn’t sidestep, he edits the film to make himself go sideways.

PB: I was thinking Sonic the Hedgehog.

OS: That’s McFadden. Always forward. And craves gold coins.

Peter: I bet Nutt trains him like a greyhound. Coins and rabbits and hydraulics out in front of him. CHASE!

OS: I bet he tries that, and D-Mac has no clue what he’s doing. EAT ‘EM! THEY’RE COINS!

OS: “What the fuck, H-Nutz?”

PB: I imagine the Arkansas huddles are delightful. Play gets called in. D-Mac says, “Fuck all that. Gimme the fuckin pig, baby.”

OS: I bet Casey Dick just cries and nods. (more…)

Orson Swindle rummages around the EDSBS Bunker, flashlight and can of Pine-Sol in hand.

OS: Shit, we need to clean up around here. Old “Punt Bama Punt!” bumper stickers…an autographed Cecil Collins crowbar…Jesus, it’s like haven’t cleaned in here since the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl—

AAAAAAIIIIIGGGH!! What the fuck, Galoshes? You know we hate it when you sneak up on us like that.

Galoshes McGillicuddy, the Gold-Lusting Whoremouthed Leprechaun of Glories Past : OI HOI, Swindle! I NEED DAT GOLD, N*****!!!

OS: You’ve been spending too much time in Alabama, Galoshes. What’s up?

Galoshes: Fuck yo’ couch! All the gold be in the hands of Saban, and he guards it with a dragon. Burnt me motherfuckin’ hands to rare filets, it did!

OS: Those…those need medical attention, Galoshes. What are you doing here?

Galoshes: What I do best, Swindle. Bring ye the down ‘n durrty on me old boys, The Foightin’ Irish.

OS: (takes out Inserection receipt and old red crayon.) We’re listening.

Galoshes: Don’t gimme that “we” shit, punk! I NEED DAT GOLD N****!!!

OS: Those hands…is that what that smell is? By the way, I have no gold.

Galoshes: Nevermind me hands! Then fifteen thousand in doubloons then, Swindle, for what ye seek to know…

OS: I will give you a dollar fifty and you will tell me, or I will spray you with Pine-Sol until you leave or die a lemony, horrible death.

Galoshes: Demetrius Jones is the starting quarterback against Georgia Tech, boy-o. You need ask no more. NOW GIMME DAT PAPER OR POP GOES THE WEASEL BITCH!!!

OS: (Sprays Pine-Sol on Galoshes’ red, swollen hands. Cries of agony ensue.)

Galoshes: Meant to say: you’re welcome, sirrah.

OS: No problem. How’d you find this out?

Galoshes: Oh, I have mah ways with Charlie, ya know.

OS: Say no more. Seriously. I don’t want to…

Galoshes: No, really, it’s fascinatin’, see? First I gets me lucky ball gag…then I–AAAAIIIIGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!

OS: (Sprays Pine-Sol, dials 911.)

One source is here. We confirmed this with Galoshes, who’s as good a source as you can imagine.

P.S. And here. Facebook, again!

The Hayley Lafontaine Story ended up in the oddest of places: the lap of Lurch, one of the Sports Junkies, a sports talk show on WJFK in Washington, D.C. It enters the picture during their run through the morning’s stories, and they read as much of it as is acceptable under FCC rules before callers and a few of the crew begin to suspect they’ve stumbled into an “enhanced” story…which, of course, they have.

The audio’s posted below, lovingly assembled by Holly from Ladies…If this isn’t empirical proof that talk radio makes you a dumber person, we don’t know what would do it for you, Flat-Earther.

MP3 File

P.S. We do sympathize with them, as we almost pulled the trigger on a story from the Piedmont Gazette last week before it dawned on us that preventing anyone with a 0.08 BAC or higher on gameday in Tuscaloosa would effectively leave the Crimson Tide playing to empty bleachers, discarded shakers, and one prissy teetotalling asshole named Elmer. A last minute fact-check saved us from our mandatory glaring error of the day, proving once again that Caffeine’s a hell of a drug.

EDSBS Live! is going to focus on the Big East today, and with good reason: any and all Big East attention we might pay to the Big East has been clouded by our Owen Schmitt worship and the fact that trying to figure out what’s happening in the Big East is very, very difficult at the moment. So we’re going to air the thought process, talk to a few people, and settle the whole thing over cocktails tonight in ninety sloppy internet radio moments.

Owen Schmitt: clouding our thoughts on the Big East with his awesomeness.

But our ramshackle thinking of the moment on the conference goes:

The Big East is full of smallish, very well-run programs, and two biggish, very well-run programs. Consider the picture four years ago for the Big East: a conference with its two prime milkers taken to different pastures (wooo SEC agricultural metaphors!) (more…)

Waiting to get a read on Les Miles? We’ve got the word: flaaaaaky. Has sugar problems. Potentially born without a governor on his inner monologue, and not in that mad professor way like Mike Leach, but more like a sugar-crazed regional manager going nutsini at a quarterly reports meeting.
(”I WILL TEAR THIS PHONEBOOK IN HALF TO PROVE TO YOU HOW SERIOUS I TRULY AM ABOUT EXCELLENCE!!!”)

Miles dropped the F-bomb in reference to Alabama. And when we say the F-bomb, we mean fuck, as in “fucking Alabama,” the answer he gave to a question about LSU’s biggest rivalry. He can be confused for Godzilla. He lets it rip! He seems just a pace out of step with most public speaking situations, which leads us to our story.

Miles missed a trip to Monroe, Louisiana last week due to bad weather. Being the nice professional that he is, Miles addressed the crowd gathered at the dinner via cellphone. (Again, non-SEC sports fans. These are adults standing rapt around a cell phone talking about football. You don’t take this shit as seriously. You just. Can’t.)

Miles opening line to the crowd he couldn’t see? “I look forward to getting to Shreveport to see a lot of friends.”

HELLLOOOOOOO CLEVELAND!!!!

It’s ok, Les. Dangerous Toys did the same thing during the Monsters of Rock tour in Shreveport, and everyone was so hammered no one noticed. And they were HUGE, man.

Blogtoberfest: a tureen of other people’s information wrapped in fresh EDSBS field bacon. Mmm…tureen.

Erik’s got his own All-Name team for the SEC, and it’s strong, strong stuff. As for the king of all monikers, there can only one winner, and it’s special, indeed.

Be gentle with him…at first.

I want your job, Donaghy. Ted Miller takes SpeculativA!, the medication designed especially for columnists seeking material, in this week’s column on Jim Mora on the loose in Seattle as an overqualified secondary coach for the Seahawks. (more…)