Worried about the Big 10’s recent habit of face-planting in high-profile out-of-conference games? Jim Delany isn’t:
“In any particular time frame, could be three years, could be five years, could be two years, you could get your ass kicked, OK?” Delany continued. “It can happen. We’re not playing Little Sisters of the Poor. We’re playing the best football teams in their region.
“So were we 1-6 (in bowl games) last year? Yeah. Were we 0-6 in the BCS in the last (three years)? We were. Those are the facts. But take me from 2000 or 1997 to 2005; I remember when Michigan played Ohio State [in 2006]. We were the toast of the town, one versus two, game of the century.”
Jim Delany’s not too worried about it, really. He wouldn’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. He’s not worried at all.
Sounds like a reasonably nonchalant response to the issue, even if, as Doc Saturday humbly points out, it’s a problem that isn’t likely to resolve itself this season no matter what Delany says. For all the criticism we’ve heaped on the Big 10 commissioner over the past couple years, he sounds like a guy who takes a level-headed, matter-of-fact approach to problems instead of panicking, which is the kind of trait you’d want in not only a conference commish but also . . . an advice columnist:
Dear Big 10 Commish,
My husband and I have three children: a son who is in college and two daughters, a 16-year-old and a 10-year-old. My older daughter was an A student all through elementary and middle school, but her grades have deteriorated markedly since she started high school. She has a boyfriend now and has been spending a lot more time with him and his clique of friends, and a lot less time studying or helping out around the house; she hasn’t been particularly combative toward me or my husband, but that’s mainly because we hardly ever see her at all. A couple weeks ago I found what looked like the remnants of a marijuana cigarette on our back patio; I asked her if she knew anything about it and she said she didn’t, and that she had never tried marijuana or any other drugs. Can I trust her? Is it time for me to put my foot down and make her stop spending as much time with her boyfriend, or will that only drive her further away? Concerned Mother in Battle Creek
Hey, kids. If you’re reading this, it’s because we were in the emergency room all night getting a pesky couple of broken transverse processes of the L1 and L2 lumbar vertebrae taken care of by the fine medical professionals at Emory Hospital. You ever had Dilaudid? It’s like morphine, but with robot arms, a trust fund, and a horrendous gambling problem. We met last night.
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.
We all make mistakes. In fact, some of us specialize in them. Thus, we present the EDSBS Corrections for the week through 3/28/08.
Mistakes: we make ‘em.
On Tuesday, we mentioned that Bo Pelini’s middle name was “Steven.” This is incorrect: Pelini’s middle name is Wrathhammer. We regret the error.
On Monday, we quoted the number of sacks allowed by Notre Dame last year as 58. This was correct, but left out the other stat lines.
Pressures: 324
Disembowelments: 15
Decapitations: 7
Drawn and Quartered: 9
Thrown off cliff in Iraq by U.S. soldiers: 3
Strapped in chair and forced to watch Ang Lee’s The Hulk: 1
Again, we regret the error.
On Wednesday, we referred to Bobby Bowden as a former lover of Rudolf Nuryev and “one of the most notorious power bottoms in the Castro’s jet-set weekend crew in the 70s” This was based on false information and bad sourcing, and we regret the error.
Also on Wednesday, we implicated Bobby Bowden in the shooting of Tupac Shakur. This, too, was based on bad information. (Thank god we didn’t actually do that…unlike the LA Times actually did to someone.)
On Tuesday, we referred to our consumption of Tylenol Orange Flavored Cough Medicine in Las Vegas. This was a misrepresentation. We were actually smoking moonrock and huffing benzene at the time and chasing it with the Orange Drank. We regret the error.
On Monday, we suggested that Rutgers coach Greg Schiano was lactose-intolerant. This is not accurate. He is just naturally gassy and has a problem processing complex starches. We regret the error.
On Thursday, we reported on the death of Brent Musberger in a Texas hotel room following a squabble with Mexican drug dealers and an unstoppable, shadowy killer fond of coin flips. This did not actually happen, and was instead the plot of the Oscar-winning No Country For Old Men with the words “Brent Musburger” put in place of “Josh Brolin.” Again, we regret the error.
And now, after a generously late starting time, the continuing saga of…
Don Frank, a.k.a. Frank Broyles, Arkansas’ retired semi-legendary coach and longtime AD, will be retiring after the calendar year 2007. Events on the rancho happened very quickly: the retirement came after a meeting of the board of trustees in executive session, which is Robert’s Rules-speak for “the time when we close doors, say whatever the hell we feel like, and actually start getting things done.”
Broyles has been the biggest patron–lo siento, El Patron Mas Grande!–for Boss Hawg, a.k.a. Houston Nutt. Nutt made it back to the SEC Championship Game this year after winning ten games during the regular season and pounding the daylights out of Auburn at home, one of those games you’ve likely forgotten about that really, really changed the way people saw a Tigersplainsmenwareagle team pegged by many to be a national title contender. (You no stop off-tackle, you no win national title.)
The debacle began with the defeat in the SEC title game and Mustaingate, the lass pictured above who was the blue chip in Nutt’s bonnet in 2006 recruiting. After hiring Mustain’s high school coach to revolutionize the Arkansas offense, Nutt slowly reeled in Gus Malzahn, benching Mustain and marginalizing the spread attack until the Arkansas offense looked a lot like the run run punt attack Nutt has trademarked at Fayetteville. Nutt then loses Malzahn, may have lost Mustain, aggravated a parent revolt with his retrograde offensive moves, and went on a local talk radio show to slam a columnist who he believed wrote inaccurate things about him…which were, of course, mostly true.
What happens next? If this follows the telenovela, we will have:
–Boss Hawg, impassioned with desperate love, impregnating the buxom maid.
–Don Frank, clinging to the rancho, making a desperate bid to get back the ranch by searching for Trotsky’s lost gold in the hills with the treacherous vagabond Jackie Sherrill.
–Gus Malzahn, trapped in Tulsa, woos Mustain with roses and mementoes of their formerly glorious love.
–Arkansas boosters mass at the gates of the rancho, torches in hand.
All this story needs is Bee Man.
The next offensive coordinator at Arkansas? The whole thing makes him queasy.
Overwhelmed with emotion–simply overwhelmed. 41 out of 50 AP sportswriters can go choke themselves with a Twizzler right now. After five minutes, this game was out of reach. It’s not that Florida was merely good–they were flawless and magnificent like anyone who’s ever appeared on The Actor’s Studio with James Lipton. Chris Leak played a magnificent game-no Evil Chris, lurking in the shadows in the third quarter. No blocked punt, a la Auburn. No improbable decisions.
(Chris…we’re so sorry. We’re so, so sorry.)
And it’s not that Ohio State was bad–they were pathetic. Odious. Null. Reeking. Inert. They had no answer, no adjustments, no nothing. Alex Boone and Kirk Barton spent all night reaching backwards into the void where Derrick Harvey and Jarvis Moss should have been, and instead turning over to look at Troy Smith, eyes wide as dinner plates, turning away from one 270 lb. man attempting to kill him to find another 270 lb. beast running at him with 4.7 speed. His line becomes a paragraph unto itself:
Heisman! UF outplayed them in every single facet of the game. No Ted Ginn excuses, no blown calls, nothing. Florida kicked ass until their toes fell off. It was like watching a small animal get crushed between two glaciers. It was like watching Roy Jones in his prime boxing an Olsen twin. It was like watching Clarence Darrow squaring off against Starr Jones in the courtroom. It was defeat, served rare, with a side of raw loss.
And for us: scoreboard, bitches. Scoreboard. We. Win.
Name: The Emerald Bowl. Our fingers really just wanted to keep typing here–whaaa? No improbably clunky secondary sponsor? No long modifiers? No Pioneer Purevision Bell Helicopteredness?–but that’s it. The Emerald Bowl, brought to you by Chan Gailey.
Actually, as we’ll remind you several times during this preview, Chan Gailey is not involved in this game. Florida State is playing in this game. The Emerald Bowl. Without their band, whom they’ve outsourced.
Motto: Umm…”We’re nuts about football?” None visible on their respectable website, which does mention that Florida State is playing in the game. The website also brags about being the only matchup between the ACC and the Pac-10, and, well, good for them for that, since prior Emerald Bowls featured the Mountain West versus the ACC, games either serving as grim confirmation of the Mountain West’s drastic talent deficit (losses to Boston College, Virginia Tech, and Navy) or nasty revelation re: a major program’s ability to show up for a bowl two thousand miles away from home (Georgia Tech’s humiliation in 2005.)
Since it doesn’t have a motto, we’ll just supply one free for them: “Featuring Florida State!” They already have the t-shirt, which we’ve already purchased and framed in our bathroom:
Did we mention Florida State’s playing in the Emerald Bowl?
Fake Bowl? Not really–think of it as the Chik-Fil-A Peach Bowl of the West Coast, an upstart bowl whose competent management, slick promotion, and sound invite strategy give it a robust profile for a bowl game only five years in existence. (In retrospect, the Utah/Georgia Tech invite of last year was brilliant. It helps that Utah won, of course.) The corporate partners list features just what you would expect of a well-run bowl game in the Bay Area: a newspaper, luxury hotel, gourmet food supplier, IT company, and a rubber fist emporium.
(That’s what Portal One is, right?)
On a side note, we’d give our left kidney to make the trophy for this game a rubber fist awarded by ten men in hot pants wearing angel wings. In fact, we’d even root for FSU just to see this trophy handed to a vomiting and pale Bobby Bowden.
Intrusive Corporate Sponsor: Emerald Nuts, the snack-food subsidiary of Diamond Foods, which is itself a joint venture between Matsumura Fishworks and Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern. We give the crown of least intrusive sponsor to Emerald, since their name doubles nicely as a sponsor and title. They also do not insist on shoehorning their name and product into the full title like some people we know. (Pioneer Pure Vision Whores.)
The wonder of corporate copywriting does strike again on the site:
The Emerald Bowl exemplifies the spirit of exercise and vitality — just like the healthful, contemporary products brought to consumers by Diamond Foods.
We love contemporary products. Especially canned food and penicillin, though the day we quit drinking mead is the day you can revoke our Viking license, friend.
Tradition Rating: Around since 2002, a youngster, for sure, but still more venerable than the New Orleans Bowl. Since 2002 was announced as the year of autism, we give the Emerald Bowl a tradition rating of Hug Machine.
And you thought Mike Tirico was “the hug machine.”
Setup: ACC vs. Pac-10. One of the real value buys of the bowl season, not only does the Emerald Bowl pair an ACC and Pac-10 matchup rarely seen, it does what bowls are best for: pairing two teams of similar profile who’ve never actually played each other before. One of those teams, in case you didn’t realize, is Florida State. The other is a UCLA team still buzzing from a desperate choke-out of USC, the game allowing Florida to play in the national title game. While Florida State plays in the Emerald Bowl.
Location. San Francisco, a name not synonymous with college football but, instead, with the consumption of one’s own farts.
Matchup quality: Gourmet almond quality for half the price, here. We kept waiting for Jarvis Moss and company to incinerate the turnstile tackles of Florida State in the Florida/FSU game. This never happened, but those wanting to see a nearly grown man yanked down by the collar ten times in a night may want to tune in: UCLA’s pair of defensive ends, Justin Hickman and Bruce Davis, each have 12.5 sacks. Xavier Weatherford–the two headed tackling dummy under center for Florida State–will get abused to the degree of second-degree felony tonight. Florida State’s offensive disorder has killed qb productivity with bad protection and predictable routes all year. If Hickman presents a shadow of the menace he displayed when we saw him at Notre Dame–he vaulted a lineman on one play, a sight lesser quarterbacks than Brady Quinn would have crapped pants at–FSU’s woes will continue.
We would type something here about a running game if they had one, but Florida State does not have one and has not for three years. Did we mention they’re playing in the Emerald Bowl? UCLA’s mini-line is light in the weight department, and could in theory get pushed around. Florida State is incapable of such brawn, though, and their offensive coordinator doesn’t like to worry about petty things like blocking and such.
UCLA’s completed the handiwork of a coach who doesn’t quite have a handle on how to headcoach properlike just yet: an offensive juggernaut in ‘05 became a defensive team long on pop and shy on points in ‘06. A middling offensive team at best, they’re saddled with another problem in a mild but persistent case of quarterback surplus. Ben Olson is back for the bowl game. Patrick Cowan, his backup, beat USC in a game decided largely by his refusal to make mistakes and his ability to scramble for key third-down yardage. Either one will get serious punishment dealt out to them by Florida State’s defense, the lone unit on the team with any semblance of past Seminole glories.
What to watch for: Concussions and punting, most likely. Florida State’s offense will hand UCLA ten points easy; combine that with Patrick Cowan’s scrambling, tons of dumpoff passes to the versatile Chris Markey at running back, and a game plan designed to eke out yards and dare Florida State to score, and UCLA will nab the Pac-10’s first bowl victory. FSU should score a few points off the legendary Jeff Bowden rainbow jump ball pass–so pretty!–but UCLA should be able to thrill to the site of FSU’s offense drowning slowly in the second half. No worries on entertainment value, though: they’ll be plenty of extremely violent hits between the two superb defenses, which is all one can ask for in a bowl game the day after Christmas. It should be fine viewing, even for those of you not addicted to FSU snuff films like we are.
Did we mention Florida State’s playing in the Emerald Bowl?
Subcommandante Wayne will be along in a bit. There’s some actual news going on, and let’s not let Wayne near that, shall we?
In an era where some professors cower and even abet the scullduggery associated with many D-1 football programs’ academics, one professor has stood up and said NAY to grade-fixing. That brave soul refused to give yet another break to a shiftless student, stood up for the standards that made that university great, and simply said: the line must be drawn hyah!
(And actually, we’re pretty sure they said exactly that and in that voice, since this is Georgia Tech, and that’s exactly what Picard said versus the Borg when he flipped out at Alfre Woodard, except he said “Reggie Ball” wherever he’s talking about the Borg. Oh, and he probably didn’t accuse Ball of decimating whole worlds, either, though Tech fans rightfullycould.)
That brave professor may also be acting entirely of spite and self-interest as a football fan, too: their actions in effect ended Ball’s career one game shy of its likely dismal coda in the Gator Bowl. Ball has been declared academically ineligible along with cornerback Kenny Scott, and has played his last game as a Yellow Jacket. (Pause for cheers, tears of relief, peals of bells ringing through the humid air of Atlanta, sound of one undergrad whooping as he achieves level 60 in WoW.) Taylor Bennett, a backup with little experience outside of mop-up duty against Duke, will start for the Jackets in the bowl. He cannot be worse, and this is mathematical fact you cannot contest or challenge without looking foolish.
Calvin Johnson had no comment at the time, but his hands did issue this statement through a representative:
We’d like to say that we’re relieved that our long, personal nightmare has come to a conclusion. Working with Reggie may have made us look brilliant, but we’re tired of trying to make foie gras out of pig snout, five rusty bolts, and a pile of pencil shavings. We’re pro, but we’re not David Blaine, for chrissakes.
Love, peace, and chicken grease,
#21’s hands
Though university officials could not comment directly on the ineligibility issue, inside sources have leaked allegations that Ball’s ineligibility stems from his age. Rather than the declared 22 he claims to be, some suspect Ball’s age to be much lower than previously thought, with one source claiming to have a copy of a birth certificate showing Ball as having a birthdate of August 13, 1990.
This would make Ball an extremely mature-looking 16 year old, something Tech fans have long suspected. When asked about this, coach Chan Gailey had no comment.
Ball, meanwhile, plans to continue his studies at Stone Mountain High School in May, and is excited about the prospect of playing college ball for a big team. “I think I can catch on with a HBCU or maybe even a MAC team,” said Ball from his dorm at Georgia Tech on Wednesday. “I’m going back down to the developmental leagues for a bit, but it’s gonna be good for me. The opportunities are limitless from here.”
FSU’s outsourcing their band–again, though T.K. Wetherell insists it’s part of a symbolic move by the university to punish itself for its lowly gridiron performance this year. We think it’s to save money and piss on the bowl game that’s deigned to offer them a bid, since the FSU band has somewhere between 500 and 30,000 members and has to be a logistical nightmare to deal with at home games.
Moving them across the country for the Veganomics.Com Quorn Bowl would have been a pain in the ass, sure, but it would have also made the stadium look slightly less desolate. As it stands, FSU will now pay a band to show up. We nominate the following San Franciso bands and their song that best applies to FSU:
As for why things didn’t work out, he didn’t point to statistics or won-lost records.
“Because you all ignited it,” he said to a small room of reporters. “You listen to eBay and e-mail and all that junk, and you all kept writing about it and that fans it and makes it grow and grow, and it becomes a cancer. That’s why.”
Jeff Bowden’s playbook for sale. Opening bid: $550,000 from user exasperatedboosternfla.
Two things:
1. Don’t even try to purchase wemustignitethiscoach.com, because if you do our lawyaz iz strong and multifarious, yo.
2. Ebay actually does destroy coaches. Especially when they’re shopping for other coaches’ playbooks in a last-ditch attempt to properly call a game. In the middle of a game. (HT: Jeremy, WATB.)
3. Bowden’s actually pissed because Jeff totally got this notice about a real live confederate army vintage flintlock musket he was trying to buy that said he needed to give EBay his credit card information and then OMG! some huge charges on Dad’s Visa at a jewelry shop in Istanbul showed up so Dad had to spend like six hours on the phone straightening the whole thing out and that made him so tired that Jeff had to go put him to bed which sucked because then Jeff missed the episode of JAG he’d been waiting to see on USA. That TiVo think is wayyyy too complex to mess with, in Jeff’s opinion.
Stranko, is this where we put cheesecake? This is what happens when you have instant access to porn–you just go right to it and bypass cheesecake! And thus lose all cheesecake skills! DAMN YOU INTERNETS!!! (This is Catherine Bell of JAG, who keeps Jeffy coming back for military courtroom drama with her Farsi skills.
EDSBS Store Live it. Love it. Wear it until it's ripped from your body by envious hordes of tailgaters.
Locker Room
About us
Orson Swindle and Stranko Montana are two men pushing thirty who should know better than to run a college football blog, but evidently don't. Both graduated from the University of Florida, and both agree that college football is far too important to be left to the professionals.
Contact
Comments? Questions? Long strings of profanities directed at something we said? Please send your comments to harumphharumph -a- yahoo -dot- com. Please direct all tailgating photos and stories to edsbsfans -a- gmail -dot- com.
Loading ...
