We slammed a fifth of Powerthirst after waking up this morning, and the Curious Index is now the FURIOUS INDEX! Thus, it’s only fair we start things off with something satisfyingly harsh, like Pantera in front of tens of thousands of angry Russians. Mind the language, of course, but it’s likely your boss might care a bit more about the fact that it’s Pantera than if an F bomb gets dropped. Plus you can’t even understand any of the lyrics anyway.

Who the hell is “Terrelle Pryor”?: Recruiting minutia for those of you who care about this stuff… some Pryor kid, who seems more interested in basketball than football, has committed to the “University of Ohio State.” aren’t they in the MAC or something? Regardless, we expect this to have absolutely no effect on the college football world for the next four-five years. None whatsoever. We’re certain that Michigan faithful would rise up with pitchforks and torches and throw Rich Rodriguez into Lake Huron in 2010 anyway. Anyway, worst kept secret turns into not secret at all, and the other members of the BXI now have their excuse why they plan to lose to Ohio State 90-0 for the next four years.

June Jones cares about defense, pants: An alert reader sends us this tip:

But here was the big surprise — June Jones was coaching the defense. Seriously. I expected him to be right behind the quarterbacks talking to them about everything, but instead he had a notebook in his hand and after each play he’d flip it open and show something to the defense — I’m guessing a formation he wanted them to line up in. He even lined up as the right end a few times and at the snap would take a couple of steps into the backfield, like a rusher.

Picture evidence, which is too large for the constraints of this site, is here. There is no denying, now, that SMU is controlling Jones like Scientology. First, the clothes: Jones, who used to dress like a bad mix of a Jimmy Buffett fan and Bernie Focker, is posing in suits with the SMU brass. Now the former Hawaii coach thinks he’s a defensive guru. Don’t be surprised when, by July, Tom Cruise hears June’s name, thinks he’s a girl, and instinctively gets him pregnant.

Did we say “aggravated murder by arson?” We mean “misdemeanor.”: Charges against a Penn State player have been dropped. No, this is not a repeat. This time it’s Tyrell Sales, cited last Saturday for hollerating, and charges have now poof disappeared. This follows a long line of exorbitant Penn State charges that haven’t even come close to sticking, which just goes to show what happens when you hire Fericito as your attorney general. The Big Board will reflect the adjustment, assuming it was ever changed in the first place.

Did you have a good day with your bracket?: Yes, so did everybody else. It’s not like you had Georgia in the Elite 8 or any… oh God, you did, didn’t you. It’s okay, you didn’t need that money. Your wife can live off canned food for a while.

Oh, lovely reminder that even while you’re stuck at work in the waning days of winter, young people are out beating the hell out of each other for your entertainment in fall.

—UNC Galleries and the full size of the above photo are here.

—Sooner practice gallery hyah.

—Clemson photo galleries here–fresh and uncut. Punny!

Violently emotional: Muschamp.

If you’re starved beyond belief and ready to seize without football, you could head down to Auburn and catch spring practice. (What? Opelika’s got an airport. Resisting cow joke telling urge resisting cow joke telling urge.) Auburn’s working in both new offensive coordinator Tony Franklin and defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads. Today’s shocking revelation: Rhoads is different than Muschamp.

“I can already tell he’s going to be a great teacher,” Powers said. “If you screw up with Rhoads, he’s going to let you know just like Muschamp. Muschamp might have let you know a little more violently. Just comparing the two, they are great teachers and great coaches. They are passionate about football.”

Violence: exactly what we look for in our defensive coordinators, masseuses, and gardeners. Auburn’s qb are throwing way, way more passes in practice than they had under Al “Gorgeous” Borges, up to hundreds of passes a game, according to practice reports. Pat Dye, on hearing the news, wept big fat old man tears.

Meanwhile: Texas is ideating like WHOA with new blood Muschamp and Applewhite.

…Auburn does, baby: spring practice starts on February 28th. Leap year, baby–it’s like the chop block of the Gregorian calendar. BAM! Just freaks you all out.

Freshmen typically don’t make huge dents in their initial year in college football. If they do, they typically enter two career tracks: the Herschel Walker path-strewn-with-rose-petals career track, where children are named after you before you graduate, or the Mike Vick pattern where a spectacular peak in his freshman season dwindling out in a pitter-patter of injuries and unfulfillable expectations. (Not that THAT ended badly for him. He’s still able to afford the finest of chiba, and the elaborate technology required to transport it through airports successfully 99.999% of the time.)

Point is: even if you peak early, you’ll still have a peak. That’s more than most people can say about…well, about their lives, really. And in trying to write your “WOOO freshman who you should watch!!!” column, you’re looking for players who through massive graduation losses, sheer ineptitude by coaching staffs, or dumb luck could have the chance to alter game plans singlehandedly.

They typically tend to be at skill positions like running back, where quick-twitch nothink can get someone very, very far on talent and gall alone. Guile and technique take time, which is why linemen take years of coaching and investment to grow save for the umbrella-handed natural Orlando Paces of the world. There’s a few in there as well, but as you’ll see they’re of the obvious sort. (Hello, Marvin Austin.)

A few of our future Walker/Vick career path selections…

Joe McKnight, RB USC. Potentially horrifying scatback-y type from Louisiana who already fit the USC mold coming in by embroiling himself in a minor recruiting controversy. Allegedly runs a 4.3, allegedly shifty as Juan Pablo Montoya on a road course, and definitely loaded with blue-chip reputation burden. Fortunately for him, so is everyone else at USC, so he’s in good company, even in a packed backfield. Carroll (hearts) freshmen, and could use McKnight as Reggie Bush was used early in his career, making appearances on third down, in the slot, split wide, and hopefully not skeezing a free house off a semi-retarded sports agent under his coach’s nose.

Joe McKnight: elusive, as Les Miles and Ed Orgeron found out the hard way.

Noel Devine, RB WVU. Noted physical freak with academic shortcomings, Devine has qualified at last and is heading to West Virginia. Given the slew of speedy, option-friendly talent already stockpiled there, Devine would seem to have a year of chopping in front of him. Consider that his coach will be Rich Rodriguez, (more…)

Who cares about spring football? The usual suspects, according to nifty graph put together by the boys at Big Red Network:

Kind thanks to them for allowing us to use their snazzy image: check out the rest of the article at Big Red Network on pain of having Tommy Frazier run you over like so many Florida defenders, blood clots in his legs and all.

Enlightening to us is the overall pattern mattering most in spring games: hope. We knew it mattered, but if a program feels particularly hopeful, the best way to see it isn’t in the panegyrics local scribes spit out every time a new coach rolls into town. It’s in the attendance leap from the prior year’s spring game. (Fans in East Lansing must really, really be vibing off Mark Dantonio.)

It’s also a rough approximation of the value of a head coach to a program. The spring game costs nothing, means effectively nothing, and reveals little about a team. It’s a fluffy event with little driving it besides the need to see something, anything football-esque in the void of the offseason combined with the desire for a rollicking good sunburn to break in your hide pre-beach season.

The only thing a spring game brings with it is buzz–pure jejune hype about a team’s projected potential hypothetical goodness/badness going into the season. And if you’ve got someone at the helm who can make something out of nothing, or god forbid force the groundskeepers to close the doors at capacity for a scrimmage, you’ve got someone who by sheer talent and shine brought them there to park on the lawns, purchase eighty dollars worth of gas, and roll down to what is essentially a non-event.

That’s a stellar indicator of a coach’s value to a program: the one based solely on his reputation as a program manager capable of making what was good become great. Judging from the bottom of the attendance list, hope in that department does not spring in Champaign-Urbana, “excitment” and “getting better and better” be damned. Illinoise had “several thousand” fans at their spring scrimmage in Chicago, estimated at more like 500 by the Big Red guys.

Florida International University has in its brief football history accomplished one thing: fielding the baddest ass brawler ever, the indomitable A’Mod Ned, who took the field in the middle of the 2006 Lamar Thomas Invitational Brawl on crutches to get his teammate’s back.

Florida International has now added a new line to their resume as a program of esteem and worth: putting on the greatest single spread of pork seen in South Florida since Connie Mack the third was in office. From El Herald:

The ambience — which included complimentary food featuring six roasted pigs, a sale of retro FIU athletic uniforms and gear and the unveiling of the new football stadium design — didn’t disappoint the crowd.

”I have never seen an atmosphere like this at any previous FIU event with the exception of the inaugural football game in 2002,” FIU radio broadcaster Jerry Del Castillo said. “These fans are really soaking up the changes to this football program.”

Hold on…let’s crack out the red pen, Deadspin commenter-style.

“‘These fans are really soaking up the changes to this football program all the greasy, delicious, heart-destroying porkfat they possibly can in 25 minutes without foundering like sick mules.‘”

There! So much better, and likely more accurate. Free pig and all, FIU turned out just 2,500 for their spring scrimmage, approximately the same number as those who volunteered to die if necessary to make Nick Saban the next governor of Alabama that same afternoon on Saturday in Tuscaloosa, bayonets and tear gas be damned.

We went to a spring game and have the red, red neck and knees to prove it.

–Beautiful, sun blasted Gainesville this weekend, a place redolent with the smell of rotting vegetation, cheap beer, and burritos, and the smell of people actually tailgating for the spring’s Orange and Blue game: that was our weekend, combined with ten hours in the car and a hefty dose of Guitar Hero 2 on Saturday night. (”Beast and the Harlot” is hrrrrrrd, d00d.)

Ahhh…sun-blasted Gainesville. That’s not us in the foreground, incidentally.

As with any spring game, any bit of good news might potentially be bad news, since any amazing block, nifty catch, or clean sack might as a result of poor play on the other side, a side that happens to be the other half of your favorite team. This explains the odd reactions to any good play made at the Orange and Blue game, where an initial WOOOOO usually had a trailing grumble grumble grumble or OHHHHHHhhh accompanying it.

So 40,000 plus at Florida Field turned out to test out their inner Janus on Saturday, (more…)

More spring practice gossip, this time from a highly desirable source: Da U of Miami, now under new management with Randy Shannon at the helm. Reader/citizen journo Redheaded Jewban gives us the insider’s info as only scuttlebutt, rumor, and a guy he knows who works at a pizza shop can deliver:

I am a loyal gator in Miami, but I still think I should supply you and the EDSBS readership with an early Miami report.

New Head Coach Randy Shannon has a gag order on all things quarterback related, which he reiterated to the media during the last scrimmage in which he was pressed for information. To sum up the situation: Kyle Wright was one of the most highly prized recruits his senior year of high school, but has not produced much at Miami. Wright is a typical dropback passer, which would seem to fit well in Miami’s pro-style offense. However, he has not done too well. This could be a combo of never having much time to pass or just being scared under pressure.

It’s been like that for Kyle Wright at Miami.

Reasons he may win starting job: He looks great in the red “Don’t touch me!” and basketball shorts zipping the ball around to all his reads and was the starter the past one and a half years until his midseason injury, which let his competition get time on the field. Kirby Freeman (white guy with a very black name) is another highly talented player for the Hurricrimes. He was considering transferring, but was convinced to stay and now has the ‘U’ tattooed on his shoulder blade. (more…)

Thanks to all who’ve submitted eyewitness reports from the practice field thus far. Try us–if you think we won’t post a Ball State practice report, you’re completely mistaken.

Reader, commenter, and gentleman RedRoot went to Florida’s practice yesterday and discovered this:

I was able to slide out of work early yesterday and made it for the first part of practice. I few observations from an untrained eye:

Hollywood…phantom? Professional? Paraguayan?

Frightening news on Mon Williams, a microback with an alluring jukiness to him. This does, however, improve the chances of young ones like Chris Rainey possibly seeing the field in fall, so as always: it’s good to be Chris Rainey again.

As for guesses what the “P” in “Hollywood P” stand for:

–Playa
–Pimp
–Penis
–Poondido
–Percocet?

Answering our call for spring report correspondents, J. Campbell from Bama Report files this tidbit from Tuscaloosa about the Tide’s practices under the reign of Saban the Merciless. If you would like to file a spring report to EDSBS, send details and nude(NO!–legal.) pictures to harumphharumph of the yahoo.com variety of email address.

Much thanks to J. for the pics.

Nick Saban kept his first spring practice at the University of Alabama frenetic but not furibund, instructing players on both sides of the ball, shadowing his assistants through manifold drills and exercises for an assiduous 110 minutes–at one point even filling in for the secondary coach’s missing graduate assistant. Cornerback Simeon Castille lasted 45 minutes of the first practice before having his manhood challenged, paying takers on the under a moneyline of 5:2.

Saban, seen here on the practice field, attempts to instill the discipline sorely absent from the previous regime, who, if this sign is any indication, found it necessary to remind the team they were football players, not the Dukes of Hazzard.

Remember: don’t drive your vehicle on the field, especially if your car chews tobacco.

Addressing the players after a team sprint, Saban borrows a Khmer Rouge motivational technique: “Your families have forgotten you; whatever I say is your reality. Today you see but an empty hand. But by the end of this, I will raise an empty hand and you will see a gun. And if I shoot you with this gun, you die!”

(more…)