The Alphabetical is up, including this LSUFreek brilliance from the South Carolina Tennessee game.

The Alphabetical is up and humming in its usual ramshackle form at SB Nation. In other distractions: cabin fever has a thousand forms, but filming yourself chugging DayQuil and watching football for a whole Saturday is one particularly bold form of it.

PARK-LIFE. We really didn’t drink that much DayQuil, since Orange Drank ain’t got quite the same spectral liftin’ power of that Purple Drank.

If you’re around in Las Vegas next week, feel free to come down, plonk down some coin, and watch us mix vodka with brain at Blogs with Balls 2.0: Vegas Edition. What happens when you do that on stage? This, of course:

What You Missed at BwB 1.0: On Blogging with Spencer Hall from HHR on Vimeo.

Tickets may be purchased here. Prices may seem steep, but remember that they come with free booze, free booze, the promise of AJ Daulerio being pistol-whipped on stage by a drunken Sean Salisbury (GUARANTEED!), party passes, and yours truly doing his damnedest to derail any serious conversation as coordinator of the “State of the Union” panel.

This week’s edition of Blatant Whoring features Clay Travis, who is whoring his book On Rocky Top: A Front Row Seat to the End of an Era. The following is a clip of him making fun of himself on video on video. He’s fairly postmodern for a guy who wears sandals and golf shirts everywhere.

OS: Let’s start with an important question: why didn’t you write a book about legendary broadcaster Tim Brando?

CT: Ah yes, the immortal Timmy B. I seriously considered it. The working title was, My third follicle in the combover goes crazy when I have two mich ultras and a zima, but publishers were iffy on the idea. They also told me that Zima didn’t exist anymore. I said, you haven’t seen the selection in Tim Brando’s man cave. Which came out much worse than I expected that it would…

OS: And now I’m thinking of what’s in Brando’s rectum. Besides his head of course. Next question: why Lane Kiffin? I mean that in a general sense, not just a coaching way.

Clay Travis: Well, if you listen to the people at UT, the amazing thing is everyone wanted Lane Kiffin. And I believe them. (more…)

Christmas Ape Rides Again.

Today we interview Michael Tunison, author of The Football Fan’s Manifesto and one of the founders of Kissing Suzy Kolber. His book is quite funny, and like all great reading fits on the back of a toilet for convenience of reading. It can also double as toilet paper in a pinch-strike unfortunate words-jiffy. You should buy it. Here’s the interview.

OS: What other purposes can your book serve besides tiring and unnecessary reading? Which fatigues the eyes, bothers the placid brain, and excites overly tense nerves?

MT: If you prop it up with a twig and place a small sliver of cheese with a string attached beneath it, there’s a good chance you could catch one of those sprites from Pan’s Labyrinth.

OS: You went to Maryland, therefore it is not your fault you don’t grok college football. What elements of the college game, though, would improve the soulless, corporate air of a pro football game?

MT: Definitely boosters. They really embody the innocent play-for-the-fun-of-it ethos of the college game. Also, a College Gameday-like broadcast would be nice. (more…)

For tone. Go ahead and get emotional. It’s only the greatest song ever recorded.

Ahem.

As of this month, EDSBS will be joining SB Nation, America’s largest and finest collection of blogs devoted to sports, sports, and in its spare time, sports. The mortal known as Spencer Hall will be joining them as well, for whatever he’s worth.

What does this mean for this site? (more…)

The same company must have been able to sell multiple schools on the same idea in a single offseason without alerting the other, since Arizona State University, Boston College, and now Colorado have all used the same interactive marketing app where you enter your name, phone number, and then get a virtual tour through the football offices where your name gets plastered onto welcome boards, a letter, and then the endzone.

And good for them: they managed to sell the same undoubtedly expensive product to three programs without altering the basic framework a lot, i.e. “having to do a lot of work.” The Colorado variation at least has two wrinkles in your name appearing on Ralphie’s blanket, and in Coach Dan Hawkins making what is by far the most JACKED AND ENTHUSED call to your phone. Making his third recruiting trip of the summer, Buttfuck McGee was impressed by the luxe facilities at CU, the array of impressive alumni appearing in the video (Hey! Joel Klatt! How many fingers am I holding up?), and the cameo by Bill McCartney. No, don’t be offended by the name. It’s pronounced “Philip,” a confusion created by the spelling in the original Icelandic.

Hawkins, by the way, just suffered a bout with kidney stones so tenacious they required surgery. Naturally, he refers to this episode as “a gift.” That’s usually the way we think about episodes involving tiny, barbed mineral deposits engaged in a slow, excruciating tumble through our urinary tract. Heck, that’s like Christmas, actually! A Christmas where blood comes out of your pee-pee and you put Dilaudid in your eggnog every ten minutes to keep from dying from the pain.

ESPN just released their announcer pairings for the fall, something we found via Pat Forde’s Twitter feed. We thank you and your majestic frontispiece of a hairstyle, Mr. Forde. It could cut a skirt steak dragged across it into fajita strips ready for the skillet.

The new arrangements for the fall:

Matt Millen’s Inexplicable Employment Continues. What Matt Millen has to offer to college football that Chris Spielman doesn’t is clear: the stigma of reeking, carrion-strong failure from being the worst GM in the history of the NFL. If the stench is real, his new broadcast partners Sean McDonough will have to wear a gas mask. This would probably be just as good as most in-game commentary, now that we think about it. Holly Rowe moves over from ESPN to join them for ABC Saturdays, and it will probably be a bit blander overall than the Spielman/McDonough combo since Millen’s not likely to say anything as cool as “hunt, dog, hunt!”

Spielman moves to work with Dave Pasch and Bob Griese, and they’ll be working the noon game on ESPN.

The Champagne Crew: Nessler, Blackledge, and Andrews keep the ESPN Saturday Prime Time slot, a.k.a. The Ron Franklin Suite. Musberger, Herbstreit, and Salters on Saturday’s Blue-Ribbon game stay strong, as well.

Caucasian Menudo: The trio of James, Fowler, and Palmer remain together, who for our buck were the most gregarious, entertaining, freewheeling, and surprising crew last year in how much fun they had in the booth together.

Palmer gets additional face time as an in-studio analyst on Saturdays, thus expanding the Gator Nation’s reach into even our most hallowed halls of power like College Football Live. The Jort Illuminati grows in power; we approve. Andrews remains with them, and should really just start brandishing a combat shotgun everywhere she goes.

James will also see a shuffle as he joins Mike Patrick and Heather Cox for Saturday broadcasts on ESPN. (more…)

CONSUME. Now available in selected regional newsstands across America, Gator Gridiron profiles the 2009 Florida Gators football team as only we can: WITH HUNDREDS OF NUDE PHOTOS. That’s right, nude photos of beautiful celebrities performing despicable but riveting acts with all manner of implements and other beautiful celebrities.

Sure, you like Dan Shanoff, but you’ll like him better when we take his piece Tebow: Great… Or Greatest? and pair it with a picture of Kristen Bell from her Veronica Mars days in a bikini soaping up a tranquilized American alligator! HEY-YAH!!! She’s a wiry one! Just wait until you get until the pieces by Chrison Charlie Strong’s defense and the evolution of Tim Tebow. They’re 100% genius, but wait until you see his brilliant analysis matched up against ACTUAL PICTURES OF NAKED ERIN ANDREWS NAKED ERIN ANDREWS.*

Order here: Holly, Joel, Scott, Ryan, T. Kyle, and some random anarchist named Spencer Hall are all included, and at 124 pages it is certainly more information than one might require about the 2009 Florida Gators.

*”NAKED ERIN ANDREWS” is Polish for “accurate diagrams of spread formations lining up against a standard 4-3 defense.” We apologize for any inconvenience. Also there are no other nude photos in the guide except for the author’s photo. You pay 12 bucks, you get exactly 12 bucks worth.

It’s an ingenious piece of marketing, yes (HT: Ted Miller): you type in your name, and you not only get a personalized video tour through the Sun Devils football offices, but also a phone call from Dennis Erickson telling you how important you are, and about the time he ran the Angry Post-Hole Digger drill with a one-armed woman in Saskatchewan for two hours straight once in a Comfort Inn. (”Had to burn the sheets afterwards that time!”)

It is all very well done, though we might suggest one modification, brilliant marketing people at Arizona State: a filter. These are all screencaps from various submissions, and are not photoshopped. (Holly, of course, contributed mightily.)

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