That, if you’ll recall from last year’s BYU/Washington game, is what happens when you take apes, give them complex and sometimes poorly written rules, and ask them to navigate them 14 times a year under the live fire of crowd noise, bodies hurtling all over the place, and the confusion of real-life angles and blocked perspectives. Necessarily stated: officiating is hard, especially in football officiating, a job akin to being a traffic cop stuck without a car vainly trying to flag down speeders without the benefit of a radar gun or pistol.

There’s really just four sets of eyes out there to watch 22 players in motion, and this bad math leads to worse calls. Realistically, holding really could be called on every play, and every game contains a thousand variables being processed by very fallible brains working very quickly under immense pressure. Faced with an impossible job, most crews seem to stick to the big stuff, calling the most egregious penalties while letting little ones slide.

Unless, unless, unless: the crew is captained by Ron Cherry, the most annoying spotlight-slutty referee in the nation and a kidney stone of an official at best, or the crew actually decides to call the excessive celebration call. The rule is a bad one, especially when called as insanely as it was against Jake Locker above, but it’s unmanageable not just in its content, but in its further clouding of the ol’ mental windshield for officials already trying to balance a zillion things at once. People’s cognition tends to suffer as more variables are thrown in, something that applies to both quarterbacks and officials. Add enough of them, and soon the rule book is as incomprehensible and unpracticeable as the Dave Clawson offense.

Thus Mack Brown’s fear of what may result from the new emphasis on ejecting players for above the neck contact from defenders: he’s terrified of the possibilities of officials being given one more thing to think about and interpret, and of watching the Texas program’s coaching scion, Will Muschamp, die on the sideline as his head explodes on a particularly ticky-tacky call against Sergio Kindle in a big game.

In the same Kirk Bohls article R.C. Slocum makes an even darker point: not only does an additional fuzzy and ultimately subjective rule make for official confusion, but it opens the door for corrupt officials to influence games even more than they might already:

“I’ve got nothing against officials,” Slocum said, “but we’ve got politicians who have less than perfect integrity. Bankers, doctors, preachers, lawyers all have problems, but we’ve got no crooked officials?

“We’ve got TV ministers and priests, some of them proven not to be (upstanding), and it’s unthinkable that a whole group of officials have total integrity? It’s an insult to our intelligence.”

This will get out hand, gentlemen. And when it does, you’ll experience rage untold. Even money on the most egregious being from the blind collection of random hankie machines called the Pac-10 Officiating Corps, since they’ve been the ones most likely to walk face-first into the logical bear traps of new rules. (Dan Fouts’ beard still deserves a group hug for making the “Horrible call!” judgment on the spot, and for doing this with his alma mater getting the upside of a demonstrably monstrous call.)

Reads are important on this play, which we’ll call CAREER JET BANDIT X FLY D-BO OVER 2. We’re expecting good protection through a solid zone scheme of a middle class upbringing and lack of obvious physical or mental defect. We’re running four routes on the play. You’ll note the slot receiver is not accounted for in the playbook; this is by design, since you need one career option to forget, and then mourn as your lost ideal once it’s too late to choose it in the progression.

Let’s go through the reads, son.

First read: ASTRONAUT. The quarterback (you) takes the ball in the shotgun and surveys the defense. On this play, your first option is the X receiver, on this play known as ASTRONAUT.

ASTRONAUT is double covered by LACK OF MATH SKILLS AND DISCIPLINE. (Also, you find out you don’t like enclosed places when you go to Mammoth Cave as a nine year old.) It’s important to recognize this early and not force this ball prematurely, as you may end up in the military not flying jets, but instead handing out fresh underwear for hours at a time to new recruits as a logistics man. This throw is off the table, especially with a potential tip from COLORBLIND pressuring from the weakside. You must go to your next option.

(COLORBLIND plays havoc on his play as the 3-4 hybrid end: you can’t tell if he’s dropping to further cover ASTRONAUT, or rushing the qb. He’s a menace confusing the entire left side of the play for the qb. Better to let the running back chip and then go to the flat as an outlet receiver, which we’ll cover here in a bit.)

Second read: Your Z receiver, a.k.a. The Z receiver is referred to here as ADULT FILM STAR.

A quick frantic look and progression through your footwork reveals that Z is not an option due to A LACK OF SIZE against the cornerback of DON’T WANNA BE THAT AVERAGE GUY IN THE ORGY SCENE, M’KAY? Again, recognize this quickly, shuffle forward in the pocket, and move to your next option.

Third read: The Y receiver, or the Tight End, or what we call VET in this scheme. Shifting your feet a third time somewhere around your first semester in college, you eye your third read: VET. It says math is required in the major description, but you don’t believe it, because they’re just animals, right? And animals can’t hire lawyers or complain when your ignorance of basic chemistry puts them in a three day coma. How hard can this be?

Unfortunately, VET is running a short drag round underneath the ROBBER position of HAYFEVER. This throw is also affected by LACK OF MATH SKILLS AND DISCIPLINE, a corner whose locktight coverage indeed affects the entire field. (A good corner is just that valuable to a sound defensive scheme.) It might look open, but it’s not, and a forced throw risks a turnover and valuable time lost to getting all those prerequisites only to find out you don’t savor the special warmth you feel with your arm stuck two feet into a cow’s rectum.

You move to your fourth read, who because of the double coverage on ASTRONAUT should be wide open: the running back, shown here in our terminology as CELEBRITY CHEF.

This option is interrupted both by your lack of any real restaurant experience and THE SHRIMP INCIDENT. This option is blocked, and if you should force this throw twice you will have to rely once again on the kindness of strangers with EpiPens to spare.

The net result on the play will be an incomplete pass, and a PUNT

There are a few more loaded up and ready to go here, but if you have a situation you’d like to see metaphorically represented in football terms, please send it to us at harumphharumph of the gmail or yahoo variety type email address.

Kansans, known for being bold pioneers in the field of anti-evolutionary biology and tornado-enabled interdimensional travel, may claim another title: the first state to attempt to stake out an entire color as a copyrighted entity.

You may recall a t-shirt last season that read “Our Coach Can Eat Your Coach,” a bit of innocuous, non-name specific piece of puffery probably defensible under the First Amendment. (Lawyas, form of inveterate debate club! Lodge your depositions in the comment sections, since you will anyway.) The company producing the shirts, a small outfit called Joe-College.com, made the shirts along with a haul of others. Standard small-time American commerce.

Joe-College.com made one crucial error: they used the color blue, a tint apparently owned by Kansas, meaning we owe them a shitload of money for toting around these baby blues all these years. (Estimated cash value of our entire life’s work: $282.50. Come get some, counselor! We dare you!)

For some reason, the owner Larry Sinks was told by a Kansas judge yesterday to pay Kansas a sum of money we find positively redonkulous: $127,337, a stupendously idiotic number a good bit reduced from the $500,000 originally requested by Kansas. We’re sure there was a scientific basis for his number, as in the coefficient of arm reach to the posterior divided by the depth with which one may reach into the ass of an attorney. Yes, that’s it exactly.

Our junior colleagues at the SN sniffed out a fine, curmudgeonly quote from Jason Whitlock on the case:

Overall, the decision makes Kansas look like a bully. Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star reported that Sinks told him a Kansas official argued in court that the school owns the color blue in the state of Kansas. “Really? I thought the Crips owned the color blue,” was Whitlock’s retort in a column.

The Crips do own the color blue, which is why we pay them royalties and respect like whoa. [/flashes gang signs, nods with lips pursed slowly in deference to passing Buick with tint.] Why this wasn’t brought up in court is evidence of serious legal malpractice here, but Sinks should appeal whatever he’s got. If the Crips argument doesn’t hold up, the ol’ First Amendment thing should still be good for a laugh in the appeals process.

Now, if Kansas had waterboarded Sinks? No problem there. It’s full of vitamins and stuff, you know. Next time, just take Sinks to a third country and dowhatchalike. Works for fired ESPN employees who violate their gag orders, right? Whitlock just survived because he’s tough, unlike that pansy Hitchens, who would have never given in if they’d poured scotch over his face instead of water. (”He’s drinking it all! What do we do, Captain!”)