I’ve got my towel, I’ve cut all the checks . . . let’s light this candle.

As Mumme prepares for his first season at McMurry, Lexington Herald-Leader columnist John Clay took it upon himself to track down Mumme’s UK staff and find out where they’d ended up. What he found was less than inspiring: Of Mumme and his 11 original assistants from 1997, only five are employed at D-IA programs in any capacity; four are college head coaches; two are coaching at the high-school level; and two are out of coaching entirely (though one of them has the convenient excuse of being dead since 2006).

The most successful of these gentlemen, obviously, is Mike Leach, currently leading his rowdy band of pirates at Texas Tech to regular bowl appearances; oddly enough, the guys with the next most prestigious jobs on the list were mere graduate assistants under Mumme. Chris Hatcher is the head coach at Georgia Southern (and being mentioned with increasing frequency as a candidate for D-IA jobs), while Sonny Dykes is breathing life into a formerly moribund passing attack as Arizona’s offensive coordinator.

There is, of course, one guy who still rates a grade of “incomplete”: Tony Franklin, running backs coach under Mumme and currently offensive coordinator at MTSU. At the moment, Franklin is known primarily for being the catalyst that started the Tommy Tuberville administration down the road to doom in its last year at Auburn, a dubious distinction indeed; but if he can work the same wonders at MTSU that he did at Troy, who knows, he might have a D-IA coaching gig in him yet, thereby eclipsing both his old bosses something fierce. The spread offense indeed works in mysterious ways.

(Pre-emptive righteous-indignation stifling: McMackin’s free-speech rights aren’t being violated by any of this. The 1st Amendment prevents the federal government from prosecuting you for something you’ve said; it doesn’t bar your employers from fining you for making them look like a bunch of troglodytes. Thanks, carry on.)

With that out of the way, all that’s left is to sweep up the pieces. Can we expect an Obama-style “beer summit” between McMackin, the UH president, and Charlie Weis? Or would a “cosmo summit” with McMackin and the head of the Human Rights Campaign be more appropriate? We’re confident that any institution whose athletic teams were once nicknamed the “Rainbow Warriors” can be trusted to do the right thing here.

Play me off for 6-8 weeks, Keyboard Cat.

No permanent or lasting damage, as the piece of angry, disunited bones in my back aren’t load bearing. They do hurt like I swallowed a plugged-in soldering gun, which is why I’m waking up in a few hours to dust off some more delicious, nutritious Percocet.

Thanks to all the well-wishers on Twitter and Facebook. (Our phone doesn’t work, as the iPhone battery died last night, too.) It’s pill and sleep time, and we’ll see what “we” feel like tomorrow.

AWWWW. So cute when a seagull does it, so not when it’s a 200 pound linebacker doing it. Arkansas linebackr Ryan Powers engaged in illegull activity when he stole something of value in Fayetteville, Arkansas on Tuesday. Condoms? A flat-screen television? Thank you notes? Batteries for his metal detector, which has helped him lose weight and led him to countless buried treasures on the beaches of…Arkansas? There’s no telling, really, at least not until we get a detailed police report. This being Arkansas, we know that the full burden of the amateur legal community is being brought to bear on a FOIA request for this very document.

One point for Arkansas in the Fulmer Cup standings, building on the point total amassed by Ryan Mallett, who will be up at 6 in the morning and in bed by 11 p.m. according to Bobby Petrino thank to his public intox arrest. (Early bird specials, Ryan. They’re a lifesaver.)

A powerful high-caliber recruit who shot into the starting lineup as a left guard on the 2006 national title team, Ronnie Wilson will be reinstated at Florida as a walk-on on the defensive tackle position*.

Wilson, who spent over a year away from the team following an incident where the lineman discharged an AK-47 in a downtown Gainesville parking lot**, aims to help the Gators reload on the defensive line. The d-line will need significant firepower this season to assist a secondary still reeling from being shot to pieces by opposing quarterbacks in 2007. Wilson, a 6′4″, 310 pound former starting guard, could provide some substantial fire along the line, though there is a firefight of competition surrounding the spot.*** He’ll have to acquire all the skills d-lineman need: looking down the barrel of an onrushing offensive lineman, shooting the gap, and strafing through blocks in rapid-fire fashion to bring down his target.

Given the current state of Florida’s defensive line, we predict Wilson will rise with a bullet to the top of the depth chart!**** Go Gators!*****

*Really? Reeeeeeeeally? Agog. Agape. Not with surprise, but with disgust, since we sort of expected him to be back on the team in November of 2007. By that standard, we should be happy, if that “standard” didn’t mean “bitter sarcasm,” and it does.

Kendall Washington, redshirt freshman, puts West Virginia in a tie for the Fulmer Cup.

CANTON The man told police the masked robber came to his bedroom as he slept, demanded money and jewelry, then shot him twice.

The victim couldn’t see the gunman’s face, but city police have charged former St. Thomas Aquinas High School football star Kendall M. Washington with aggravated robbery and felonious assault. A grand jury now will take a look at the evidence to see if he should stand trial.

Blanket allegedlys all around, but: breaking into someone’s house, stealing things at gunpoint, and then shooting someone in the head in front of their five year-old means large, large points no matter what the charges. Currently, as it stands, Washington’s charged with aggravated burglary and felonious assault. Under FC rules as they stand:

Grand Larceny: 4 points. We use this as a catchall for players being involved in crime so outrageous and well-planned it can only be described as ‘nefarious,’ ‘professional,’ or ‘legislation.’ Applies to large drug rings, chop shop operations, and the Haitian human trafficking ring that’s been run out of the Miami locker room since ‘93. (We kid! They didn’t get that thing humming ’til ‘95 at the earliest.)

Assault doesn’t seem to cover this; nor does generic burglary charges. Therefore, we award four points for each charge, and a bonus point for, well, HOLY HELL IN FRONT OF A FIVE-YEAR OLD CHILD? That’s Killing Joke Joker territory, there.

The total comes to nine points total, a sum which places in WVU in a tie for the lead in the Fulmer Cup. That’s not score manipulation to tie things up and make some excitement in the idle days of late July; if anything, that’s some circumspect scoring for a crime of astonishingly random, nasty cruelty.

The “not da U” Miami football player accused of aggravated burglary and assault, Zachary Marshall, has a waterproof, game-tight excuse for his barging into a strange apartment and allegedly placing a pillow over the face of one of the apartment’s female occupants.

The lawyer representing a Miami of Ohio football player accused of assaulting a female student in her dorm room says the player was drunk and entered the woman’s room thinking it was his own.

So, it’s customary for him to arrive in his own apartment and then smother whomever’s lying in his bed with a pillow. In the Jerramy Stevens guide to love, this is customary, but we suspect he might have just panicked, tried to shut up the girl once he realized he had a live screaming girl on his hands, and then realized he was actually suffocating someone before doing a mad Andre the Giant wind sprint out of the place.

All in all, the Continental would have been proud of the mucho suave way this was executed and handled. Jason Bourne would have handled it the same way, with the possible addition of killing someone with a phone book on the way out (but only in the most involuntary and remorse-inducing of ways, of course.)

(P.S. The Cincinnati Enquirer adds insult to self-inflicted injury:

Police say his bulky physique helped distinguish him from other suspects.

When he’s a tiny 180 pounds and in the throes of manorexia, we’ll blame your toxic sizism, you bastards at the Enquirer.)

Stuff Black and Gold People Like

Fried anything. Holy shit do we like frying things. It’s not that only Iowans fry everything, but Iowans only fry everything. Go to the Iowa State Fair, but do so only at your own risk and with polarized lenses on your sunglasses; direct eye contact with too many fried confections will clog your arteries with Oreo paste.

Not meth. Sorry, Orson, but that’s something that Red and Yellow people enjoy far more than Hawkeye fans, along with other mind-numbing substances like Oxycontin and Rep. Steve King (R-IA). On the other hand…

Hawkeye Vodka. This brand exists, it’s about $11 for a handle, and it’s every bit as gut-wrenching as you can imagine. Only the saddest, most pickled citizens can stomach shots of the Hawkeye, and consuming large portions in mixed drinks leads to complete loss of pants, motor control, and stomach contents, in that order, and in the span of about 15 minutes. It’s a great way to spend a weekend, even if you only remember the world-altering hangover. Actually, it’s unfair to Iowans to restrict us to Hawkeye. Let’s broaden this out a bit:

All alcohol. Go to a Hawkeye tailgate sometime. It’s similar to SEC tailgates in terms of volume (both sound and attendance), but there’s a marked difference: SEC tailgaters cook. They socialize. They have fun. We stand around in 40 degree weather silently forcing Natty Ice down our throats and thinking to ourselves, “there’s more dew than usual.” This is a necessary result of having all our football games start at 11 a.m. Eventually, after 7 hangover-delaying Keystones, some asshole turns on his car and puts in his tailgate CD, which by default has…

THIS. FUCKING. SONG.

Things take a while to get to our fair state, so yes, it’s hot and fresh to us. This is Iowa, after all.

Making you watch us while we do politics. We’re not actually interested in politics. At all. Our governor is just as stupid as your governor. But every four years, CNN shows up and we get to travel to downtown Des Moines and say things like “is that Shepard Smith crossing the street?” and listen to desperate politicians tell us things that not even they themselves believe. We are attention whores, pure and simple, and when you follow the cycle of one month prom queen, 47 months drag queen, you’ll understand too.

The one-finger raised from the steering wheel salute when you’re on a gravel road. We don’t wave. We point up. Of course, Jimmy Bluecollar’s not about to acknowledge you in return if you’re driving an import, because his (male relative) didn’t die in (war that may or may not have had any bearing on American security) just so you could ride around in a god-damn Toyota, son. Why can’t you just drive a Chevy like normal people? You on marijuana or somethin?

Corn. Oh god, the corn. It’s everywhere. Also, sadly, Children of the Corn was not a documentary, because this state would be a lot more interesting if unsuspecting teenagers were beheaded by rogue corn vines (which may or may not, you know, exist) every time they set foot in a cornfield at night. That’d make for some unforgettable yearbook pages every spring, wouldn’t it? “IN MEMORIAL: Jared Carver, 1990-2007, car accident; D.J. Thompson, 1989-2007, evil corn demons ripped off skull. You will be missed.”

No, Charlize, the corn vines! Noooooooo!

The Drake Bulldogs. They do things the right way, which is a nice way of saying their point guard is white. We’re not racist, we just don’t care much for the showboating and hollering and the rap music and gangs. That Adam Emmenecker, he just plays ball the way it was meant to be played, you know?

Nile Kinnick. Plain and simple, he’s the Iowa football Jesus. He saved us from mediocrity. He defeated the unholy Catholics. He won the Heisman. And sure enough, he was cut down in his prime, dying in a plane crash as he trained for WWII off the coast of Venezuela two years after graduation. Sure, it’s debatable whether he ascended from the Atlantic–his body, like Jesus’, was never recovered–but we at least got his plane back. Fortunately, the plans to put his wrecked plane on display at the stadium were shelved, because when Nile comes back in the Rapture, that’s the last thing He’ll want to see, but we revere him nonetheless. Talk crap about Nile in the Hawkeye state and you will be ripped asunder, even by people who barely even know who he is.

Hayden Fry. If Nile Kinnick is Hawkeye Jesus (he is), Hayden is our patron saint. Sure, he was openly Texan (not that there’s anything wrong with that, either), but we like to think that his down-home sensibilities applied to Iowa as well too. We like to pretend that anybody of decent character has that in common with us, though that’s hardly the domain of Iowans. Still, the man in the aviators and the moustache built the football from nearly nothing, as well as training others to do the same at Wisconsin, Kansas State, Iowa State and South Florida. Again, any ill word of Hayden within the Iowa borders is cause for completely legal assault and dismemberment. It’s what we do.

The missionary position. In the dark, without the distraction of music, and under at least two blankets. It’s more intimate that way, you see, and we don’t want to deal with all these freak show details that you see on the pornos and the internet. It’s sex, not a goddamn circus.

Moderate obesity. This is not entirely unrelated to the previous item, since there’s nothing appetizing about acrobatic sexplay coming from two people who resemble clean-shaven Saint Bernards engaging in Greco-Roman wrestling. The slobber gets everywhere, it’s awkward and uncoordinated, and… yeah. Anyhoo, whenever the Hawkeyes go to bowl games, it’s painfully obvious who the Iowa fans are in the city beforehand; not only are we wearing only bright yellow (”It’s gold!” No, it’s yellow. Gold is this and don’t let us catch you wearing that) , but we’re universally 40-80 pounds overweight and loving it. A steady diet of Bennigans and 4-month bitter cold winters does that to you. You wouldn’t understand, Gator fans. We hibernate with mozzarella sticks.

Superiority. Despite everything that you may interpret as inferior qualities, readers, we wake up every day happy. We know it could be worse. We could be Cyclone fans.

Oh, denim. Is there anything you can’t ruin?

The Sporting Blog. Not only does it have our interview with Ric Flair, but it will have our posts on what Vegas during the first weekend of March Madness looks, feels, smells, and feels like, including the part where we wind up drinking $2000/bottle cognac from goatskins with the sheikhs of Dubai at a live man versus panther death match in the hills of Nevada.

Step One, this. Step Two, fire up laptop. Step three: MASSIVE PROFITS.

Flickr. I’ll be posting photos live from the fracas, as well, so keep up by following here.

Twitter. For those too ADDled to even get through this blog post, we’ll be posting on the EDSBS Twitter feed muy rapido all day and most of the night.

Your guest host will be Oops Pow Surprise from Black Heart, Gold Pants , a demented gent who promises to not only provide the Curious Index, but an installment of “Things Black and Gold People Like,” the latest in our series of fan profiles. We will usurp the Iowa jokes by saying the only one we know for sure: meth.

Godspeed. And wish the same to us. If we fail to come back from this mission, know that we went to bat country happily.

DID YOU KNOW….that Phillip Fulmer’s name is a perfect anagram for “Lifer Hull Pimp”?

ARE YOU NOW….picturing him patching a hole in a submarine wearing a feathered hat and a grill?

Alternate anagram: “Pulp Refill Him”

‘

Winner:  “Helpful Lip Rim”

Still reading? Good. Because Pete Carroll’s name scrambles out to “Rape Rec Toll”, which sounds like it should be rolled into USC’s student activities fee. However, I prefer “All Erect Pro”:

And particularly “Caroler Pelt”, implying that an angry Pete has skinned a Dickensian gentleman to wear as a jacket (and also stolen his hat):

Now, Charlie Weis. I don’t know what “Washier Lice” means, but I like the sound of it. Can’t pass up the opportunity to put him in a bonnet, though…I give you “Cries Awhile”:

The clear winner (not really the word I’m looking for): “A Chili Sewer”.

This is all we have to look forward to for the next six months. Enjoy your night terrors, happy offseason, and tune in tomorrow, when we’ll be playing Special Teams Sudoku! [lulls self to unconsciousness with large mallet]