Oregon student newspaper writer Alex Beard makes no compelling case aside from the love of the absurd and the low cost associated with keeping a live duck for putting a live mascot on the sidelines at Oregon. That is enough for us, especially since once you get its waddly, absurd duckiness out of your brain, an actual live, hungry duck is meanass bird more than willing to swat wings at toddlers horning in on their breadcrumbs. If they could hold knives, they’d cut you. Additionally, the utility of the duck meets standards Jeremy Bentham himself would be proud of, as it can always be “retired” to a lovely spot on the plates of an Oregon booster dinner. Personally, we’d pay to eat slices of Renegade, since cheval cooks up nicely in a red wine reduction sauce, but will bypass UGA, Smokey, and all other dog-related mascots for sentimental reasons. (Don’t deny it: you’d eat a hunk of Bevo even if you didn’t have to, because a bull that pampered has to be deliciously marbled.)

Oh, and on a minor, teeny, little insignificant note, Sam Bradford will start for Oklahoma against Baylor on Saturday.

But back to the important thing: does white wine go with Ibis? And what about Baylor? Bearmeat is a culinary challenge thanks to its oiliness, something the pioneers always cut with a blackberry sauce. South Carolina probably presents the easiest option, but also no real challenge. Now NC State? That’s a challenge, since technically we’re talking a wolfpack worth of oddball meat to dress. For the health conscious there’s always Marshall…

Welcome to our Factor Five Five Factor Preview of Nebraska at Misouri. The Factor Five Five Factor Preview examines the Thursday Night Game–the real beginning of your scheduled weekend leisure units, worker #383929–and the five factors determining victory with absolute scientific certainty…certainty that the Factor Five will predict victory in the other direction. Or not, as evidenced by the Factor Five’s 3-2 record this year, either a sign the randomness is becoming even randomness, or the Factor Five is about to go on a strong streak of breaking counterintuitively correct.

Enjoy.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity.

Nebraska offers little data to speak of in the direction of solid numbers thanks to games against Arkansas State, Florida Atlantic, University of Louisiana-Lafayette, and one sluggo matchup versus Virginia Tech. The matchup against Virginia Tech exposed Nebraska as being subject to random passes from scrambling quarterbacks somehow finding scrambling receivers in the endzone, a weakness shared by every other team in Division One football. The other salient factoid from their only matchup against a quality team: Nebraska did manage to rush the ball successfully against the Hokies, going over 200 yards on the day. Mizzou has been decent against the run, but Nebraska looks more like the mudder here, even with Tigers LB Sean Weatherspoon cracking heads and singing sweet melodies from his linebacker spot. (more…)

Way off topic, from the It’s The Offseason And We Are So Bored We Will Post Pretty Much Anything RCR Sends Us Department: Louisiana man finds African wildcat in backyard.

He took it water, then slices of American cheese, then pieces of turkey wing.

[...]

He guessed that the cat’s relatively calm demeanor meant it was someone’s pet: “If it had been aggressive, it would have had my butt.”

[...]

“They told me to go back inside because the cat, you know, might have other options,” he said.

Area residents were, of course, unfazed:

Proving once again that Louisiana lives larger than anywhere else in God’s green America, and that we are all poorer for it.

We have an unhealthy obsession with the inflatable secondary mascot for Nebraska, “Li’l Red.” Sometimes he does his little palsied “dead-girl-from-The Ring” into a wormhole located in a cornfield in Nebraska and journeys through time. Because we live in a universe of infinite worlds all existing at once, he falls through it differently everytime. Here’s one.

(Index along in a moment.)

–Hello?

–Yes, I’m calling regarding job opening #828D. May I confirm that this position has been filled please?

(more…)

Boo, hiss, bark: Texas A&M has chosen to ignore our sage advice–that the next Aggie mascot be a ferocious, misbegotten beast of a dog closer to a hyena than a smooth collie–and is going with “a collie-like dog.”

“She is very likely to be a collie-like dog. Something that looks similar to a collie,” Bresciani said.

According to the e-mail, there is a possibility that the next mascot will be a golden retriever. But the most unusual thing about the selection is that it is likely the next mascot will have been trained as a service dog.

The dog will likely have some service dog training because of the stress placed on the mascot, which likely has a busier schedule than you. Dogs can’t handle stress very well, as they tend to start biting things at random, making them very similar to Jim Delany or a liquored-up Ron Franklin.

We remain deeply saddened at the choice, if only because we had such dreams of the possibilities for the mascot:

And introducing Texas A&M’s new mascot…MAUAJI, DESTROYER OF FOES. Oh, and his handler, Steve.

The debate over replacing the retiring Reveille VII (that prounounced “vaiiiii”) at Texas A&M has gotten quite spirited for a place priding itself on military traditions like order and swift decision-making. To wit:

“I think Reveille VIII should be an American collie because it’s tradition, and isn’t that what A&M’s all about?” freshman general studies major Emily Hudson said.

“Reveille should be a mutt. [Collies] are really spastic and hard to train. And mutts, since they have a mixture of all different genes, they tend to be a lot smarter,” junior marketing major Kelley Baxter said.

Yeah, that’s right. Listen to the person who’s actually declared a major, Texas A&M, and back up because we ’bout to drop some policy:

EDSBS Policy: Texas A&M, you should get a mutt. First, it sets an exemplary standard for your community and for the rest of the world as a whole if you adopt a stray dog–just like the first Reveille–and take it back to campus to become the new, freshly dewormed mascot of your school. It would be timely, too, since stray dogs are the third-greatest threat to Americans in their homes, topped only by our natural enemy the sun and, of course, Kimbo Slice.

All they want is love, your garbage, and a soft place to lay down. Oh, and occasionally a child stolen from the neighbors’ yard to play with, but isn’t that what the road trip to Austin every other year is for? Exactly. Our bluetooth devices are communicating smoothly and processing nicely here.

Slow down your heart rate, man. He’s getting angry!

Second, do not just get any mutt that comes along. No, Aggies, you must select a hoodtastic mix of some of nature’s gnarliest dog breeds all force-humped into a single physical vessel through a genetic lineage so convoluted Mormon polygamists would weep at its complexities. Chow, pit bull, Rottweilers, Cane Corsos, Doberman Pinschers, Anatolian Shephereds, German Pit Chows, Dogo de Argentinas, Brazilian Mastiffs, the rare but powerful Scythian Rape Terrier…all of them need to be present in one form or another here. The final product should look something like Cerebrus, the three headed dog guarding the gates of hell, but only after the bad ass middle head decided it was tired of all the other heads’ yapping and ate them in a 35 second display of horrifying, impressive ferocity.

Take care to raise it with humans and socialize it early and often. And never, ever, leave it with fewer than three people at once, and try to keep it away from flashing lights and loud yells. For football games, sedate with 200 mg Seconal, or whatever amount will get it to a manageable level of fury. It all sounds like trouble, but if you want the Hound of the Baskervilles as envisioned by a Russian bioweapons lab, then you pay the price, amigos.

Oh, and if the Brazos Animal Shelter doesn’t have one of those lying around, you might consider contacting a Russian bioweapons lab. Those people do great work. For an example, just look at Terrence Cody. He cost Saban a pretty pony (no typo–Saban has to feed him one each day), but 900 pound defensive tackles don’t grow all by themselves.

Wii!

EA Sports is allowing fans to vote for the mascot who will appear on the cover of NCAA 2009 for the Wii, a dubious honor since if the Wii edition of NCAA is as much of an epilepsy simulator as the Madden franchise is, the game will shovel piles of suck in suckhell forever.

(If you haven’t had the chance to play it, its bizarre controls force you to conduct Bernstein’s exact hand gestures from guiding the New York Philharmonic through Mahler’s Fifth. Our favorite move: the “Throw The Goddamn Thing Into the Ficus Plant” move. Never say we don’t know how to throw the ball away when danger nears.)

We cast a vote for Albert, but noticed something previously unseen: SEC mascots are all remorseless killing machines or hammered redneck militiamen with guns. Remember: as a conference we’ve got the only mascot that’s actually been on a killing spree. Toss out the genteel Commodore, and we’ve unveiled the iconic representation of all the Southeastern United States values: fangs, an unstoppable killing urge, little in the way of higher brain function, and a facility with firearms.