Every Day Should Be Lemsday has Coach O’s farewell speech. Da rebbah done madeah bigassah mistakeah!

The Orgeron is out at Ole Miss, according to Joe Schad of ESPN, who’s practically an honorary coroner today after announcing both Callahan’s termination and now Orgeron.

We’re heartbroken. The Orgeron Era can’t die. He just…he just can’t. He’s big, tough, and aggressive, just like a Hummer! He’s gettin’ pelts on da rakrootin’ trail! He gotta da Jevan Snead a-comin intah da Oxfahd fo-a throwing da heapah touchdowns in 2008!

In all seriousness, this is sad as hell. We’re left looking through the scrapbook now, watching the photos bubble up under our tears.

Just one more time, for old times sake. Play it Jo-Jo. YOU PLAYED IT FOR HIM, NOW PLAY IT FOR US. (Slams fist down drunkenly, tears gleaming in our eyes.) Play it again, Jo-Jo.

We imagine Robert Khayat did this over the phone, since you’d have to engrave the Orgeron’s name on magical shackles a la Hellboy to restrain him before telling him he couldn’t come back to work in person. They’d have to call in Rasputin for the whole thing.

This leaves the pesky question of who will take the Ole Miss job. Exquisitely timed as always, Ole Miss has fired a coach just in time to compete against Texas A&M, Michigan, Nebraska, and god knows what other larger, more monied programs will fire their coaches in the next ten minutes–not to mention the vacancies gaping after the guys who fill those positions leave their current positions.

OOOOOOO DaCoachO donnaunnastandhoww daOleMissaWildBoyz stealapillahs frommadahotel! CoachOgonnaevahextreme tomakkah daOleMissaRebbah sohappahatta daOleMissahcampus. Nowdeygonnaroon dareputashunuhdaschool fohthirtypillahs annasixclokkaradios! CoachO
gonnahdrinkkaeightaRedBull annasevenpacksabeefjerkeh ahjussathinkinboutit!

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Buttanow, playahstakin dapillahzfrommadahotel, annaCoachogottadasolutionfromma supplahanddademandside. Firssahsuspendalltwennyofum; thenwehittadahboostahmen fodahclinchah indarecrootinprocessah thattahgettahdemOleMissRebbah todaESSEESEE ahChampyunshippah:

DAHEATPRAHDOOCIN’ BODYPILLAHFODAH OLEMISSAHREBBAH
ATHALETICDORMAH!!!!

WEGONNAHRUNEMBABEE!!! DAPILLAHCHAMPYUNS HEPUSSAHLANDABIGRECROOT, andahtakeussatodah nexlevelboi! Issaonhunnapuhsent hypoallagenix anna ugonomicallistacallyshapta fordamossferoshussleepinahyoulife! PlussaCoachOget damodelwiffa daFossfilfodoze wiffadaallahgiestodagoosedown.

All disclosures first: we’ve talked with Bruce Feldman on the phone, met him in person once, and are quoted once in his new book on recruiting, Meat Market. We’re also quoted in several other books, as well, including Gridskipper’s upcoming guide to sex clubs around the world. (Pg. 256, Bangkok section. “No club is more welcoming to the homely, naked, and needy male than Club Superpussy! A thousand cocktails to them! Come for the awkward group sex, stay for the Pad Thai special!”)

It’s great. Buy it.

Nevertheless, despite having contact with us, Feldman is a masterful observational writer, disappearing into the background of Meat Market as the eye for a year’s worth of frenetic recruiting by a modern master: Ed “The” Orgeron, who let Feldman tag along as Coach O ran through a zillion hours of tape and several reservoirs of Red Bull and coffee in his quest to restock the cabinet with talent at Ole Miss.

The book’s a meticulously researched book, but don’t mistake the precision for a lack of blood. The story’s got all the life it needs in one Ed Orgeron, who seems to be bigger in real-life than we could ever make him here in the blogosphere. We’ll just tempt with two scenes from the book that involve actual, witnessed events or conversations during a typical Orgeron recruiting process.

One: Jerrell Powe and Ed Orgeron actually squared off in Powe’s high school parking lot. Someone saw them practicing swim moves and called the school to tell them that “a huge white man and a huge black man” were wrestling in the parking lot.

Two: An actual conversation between TE coach Hugh Freeze and Ed Orgeron about a recruit who fancied Ole Miss after a visit.

Freeze: “I think he really likes us because you wrestled with him.”

Orgeron: “Shit, that son-of-a-bitch was strong. After he pinched me under the arms, it was ON.”

We can’t sell the book any more convincingly than that. We woke up at 5 a.m. the other day to read it. It’s a peek into the least understood portion of the football year, and a rousing portrait of someone truly obsessed with the process.

Buy it.

Ole Miss’s halftime had special spark this weekend thanks to a wondrous treat: daytime fireworks. Fireworks are awesome–the cheaper and more bootleg they are the better, and the phrase “Mississippi Fireworks” certainly reeks of both–but they lose some of their efficacy when deployed in broad daylight. Because you can’t see them. Because it’s 2 in the afternoon in Oxford, Mississippi.

COACHOGONNABURNTHISMUTHADOWN!

It’s really great, though, when the fireworks make things catch fire and not work.

A halftime fireworks display gone awry knocked out power to half of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Saturday.

The game was not delayed and power was restored early in the fourth quarter.

Ole Miss officials may seem negligent for continuing despite the lack of a proper scoreboard, but consider this: with Ole Miss not scoring until the fourth quarter in a 44-8 defeat to the SEC’s only other team without a conference win, there really wasn’t much incentive to turn the power back on, was there?

At least Ed Orgeron got to go out there, cigarette in mouth and beer in hand, and light off the $55.95 Carnival Extravaganza multipack for the fans. He was probably trying to burn the place down to avoid playing the second half–they were down 21-0 at the half–but it was a nice cover for the failed attempt at arson.

(Massive HT: Ragin’ Cajun Rebel.)

Coach O’s a busy man. Zoom in once you click to see just how busy he can be.

We can’t look past Hate Week just yet–but the Shadow of the Orgeron is long, and tinged with fire and the smell of smoked meats of many species. Erik at Deep South Sports spies our favorite kind of story–rank hearsay!–concerning a young autograph seeker and the Orgeron at a local little league game.

He waited until the game was over, so as not to bother him while the game was going on. He stood there waiting with his Florida Gator team hat (the five year old that is). When his turn came, he was very rudely turned away by Orgeron. He told my son he was not going to sign his hat because it was a Florida hat.

Nancy Grace is outraged, OUTRAGED WE TELL YOU! The EDSBS official stance is this: when Somali Bantu mothers have daughters, they slap them from infancy. Why? Because life for the Bantu is hard, and for women it is hardest. To the child with the Gator hat, welcome to your baptism in the Church of Arbitrary Laundry-Based Hatred and its first instructional slap–and consider yourself lucky you weren’t dressed for the grill and cut into chops on the spot.

(Check the photo–who knew he had such shiny knees? Your reflection in them would be the last thing you see.)

In five days: FOOTBAW.

The great search for a quarterback at Ole Miss–now four years and running following the departure of Eli Manning from Oxford–may have reached an improbable conclusion in the form of one ferocious piece of fighting okra, Delta State transfer Seth Adams.

Brent SCHAEF-FAH, lauded transfer from Tennessee via the College of the Sequoias, was supposed to be the starter going into 2007, but fizzled last year as starter with a 9/10 TD/INT ratio and an underwhelming on-field presence as signal-caller. Enter Seth Adams, a former Delta State Fighting Okra who went 16 for 20 in the spring game and has “a leg up” in the competition according to Ole Miss head coach/manbeast Ed Orgeron.

Correct, reader: Ole Miss’ potential quarterback is a transfer from Delta State. YO YO YO YO YOOOOOO, YO YOOOOO…OK-RA!!! This should be immensely fun, especially given the fact that Adams gives everyone a chance to say the words “Fighting Okra” at least a zillion times over the nexy season.

Delta State’s Fighting Okra: qb mill for the Orgeron.

Don’t mock the name, either. As anyone whose eaten more than a small serving of okra at a time, okra does indeed fight, albeit in your lower intestine mostly. It’ll run through you with a Patton-esque speed and determination, a connection the designers of the Delta State outfit must have had in mind when they stitched together that turdulent, Mr. Hankey outfit seen above.

Women, tackling dummies, lots of 40ish women doing deep squats: it all sounds like one of Carl Spackler’s more feverish sexual fantasies, but no! we say–it’s the Ole Miss women’s football camp, yet another one of those marginal offseason fundraisers that fill the long, empty, desolate, but now only 68 days or so until college football season begins.

And this article from the Memphis Commercial-Appeal is really the first and last thing you need to read about this year’s wave of camps, because we can assure you with scientific certainty that nothing, and we mean ABSOLUDDDELY NOFIN’ GONNA TOP DA OWE MISSAH CAMP with your honored host, the Orgeron.

LADEEZ DA OWGERON GONNA LURNYA SOMMADAT GOODOWWFASHUNNED FOOTBAW!!!

OXFORD, Miss. — Ole Miss coach Ed Orgeron stood at the center of 400 screaming women.

“WAR TIME! TAKE IT OUTSIDE! WAR TIME! TAKE IT OUTSIDE!”

This is precisely what Ed Orgeron says to all the women he takes back to “The Tannery,” (more…)

Freshmen typically don’t make huge dents in their initial year in college football. If they do, they typically enter two career tracks: the Herschel Walker path-strewn-with-rose-petals career track, where children are named after you before you graduate, or the Mike Vick pattern where a spectacular peak in his freshman season dwindling out in a pitter-patter of injuries and unfulfillable expectations. (Not that THAT ended badly for him. He’s still able to afford the finest of chiba, and the elaborate technology required to transport it through airports successfully 99.999% of the time.)

Point is: even if you peak early, you’ll still have a peak. That’s more than most people can say about…well, about their lives, really. And in trying to write your “WOOO freshman who you should watch!!!” column, you’re looking for players who through massive graduation losses, sheer ineptitude by coaching staffs, or dumb luck could have the chance to alter game plans singlehandedly.

They typically tend to be at skill positions like running back, where quick-twitch nothink can get someone very, very far on talent and gall alone. Guile and technique take time, which is why linemen take years of coaching and investment to grow save for the umbrella-handed natural Orlando Paces of the world. There’s a few in there as well, but as you’ll see they’re of the obvious sort. (Hello, Marvin Austin.)

A few of our future Walker/Vick career path selections…

Joe McKnight, RB USC. Potentially horrifying scatback-y type from Louisiana who already fit the USC mold coming in by embroiling himself in a minor recruiting controversy. Allegedly runs a 4.3, allegedly shifty as Juan Pablo Montoya on a road course, and definitely loaded with blue-chip reputation burden. Fortunately for him, so is everyone else at USC, so he’s in good company, even in a packed backfield. Carroll (hearts) freshmen, and could use McKnight as Reggie Bush was used early in his career, making appearances on third down, in the slot, split wide, and hopefully not skeezing a free house off a semi-retarded sports agent under his coach’s nose.

Joe McKnight: elusive, as Les Miles and Ed Orgeron found out the hard way.

Noel Devine, RB WVU. Noted physical freak with academic shortcomings, Devine has qualified at last and is heading to West Virginia. Given the slew of speedy, option-friendly talent already stockpiled there, Devine would seem to have a year of chopping in front of him. Consider that his coach will be Rich Rodriguez, (more…)

Bruce Feldman talks national recruiting on signing day with us, broadcasting from the Orgeron's forbidding Bone Palace.

MP3 File

Sopressata for the sorrow-filled college football fan: Blogtoberfest.

Tree-huggers. Literally. Berkeley falls deliciously into its own pit of stereotype when the construction of Cal’s new athletic center and renovation of Memorial Stadium grinds to a halt thanks to…tree-huggers. SMQ suspects Stanford’s involvement, while Bruins Nation sees a Dorrell angle on the whole thing.

Oh. So. Sexy. Per.Fect For. Me. Treehuggers drag California stereotypes back a decade. (Photo: Lee Suzuki, San Francisco Chronicle.)

Well, if you ask sir. The police usually oblige the requests of inebriated citizens, as former Oklahoma star Charles Thompson found out this week. Thompson, quarterback of Oklahoma’s wishbonetastic 1987 team, pulled a Juvenile act this week in his arrest for public drunkenness. This means that he did precisely what rapper Juvenile once famously requested in a Miami club, actually a far funnier story than Thompson’s frankly boring request to “take me to jail.”

According a police report, several off-duty police officers were trying to break up a number of skirmishes just outside the Club Improv. The fighting apparently began when Juvenile got into an argument with twenty-eight-year-old Jackson Saint Ange inside the club. Upon leaving the venue, the rapper allegedly struck Saint Ange with a bottle of Moet…The report claims that upon the arrival of the officers, Juvenile grabbed Miami Police Sgt. Timothy Fell yelling, “Take me to jail. Take my motherfuckin’ ass to jail.” Another officer pulled him off of Fell and Juvenile fled, but was quickly apprehended.

Student, meet teacher. Class begins at double margarita hour at the Chili’s of your choosing.

We will give you whatever you want, just put Crystal Gayle down, Ed. Ed Orgeron (a.k.a. Vigo the Destroyer, Memnoch the Unholy, Murderface, the Horror of Yg, Coach D-B’O, The Old One, and Solomon Grundy) earns a contract extension with a 4-8 season, something we can only guess occurred via Ed Orgeron holding something Ole Miss holds dear for ransom. A list of possible victims follows:

–Crystal Gayle.
–The skull of William Faulkner
–Binkley Weatherford, the immortal magical talking catfish who’s secretly ruled Mississippi for decades.
–Ole Miss coaching legend Jon Vaught’s lucky penis guard.

Cough up the contract extension or the penis guard gets it.

The Orgeron’s contract carries him through to 2010, when he is schedule to take a sabbatical to Jupiter to kick some pretentious monolith’s ass.

Oh, and Rich Brooks, who got lowly Kentucky to the exact opposite record of 8-4 and a solid bowl trashing of Clemson? He gets a raise to a mil a year after most rational people had him sold to the glue farm of coaching. Would that we all receive such generous boosts to our packages.

Flea Market. Montgomery. It’s just like. A mini. Mall. Cool Hand finds yet another reason why the word surreal dies in the face of everyday reality.

200 feet, 70 teeth. Saurian Sagacity pontificates on one of the truly inexhaustible topics in college football: why, oh why oh why Florida hates Tennessee with every fiber of its collective being.

Let’s stay civil, ass-fisting shitbags. Newspaper Hack brings his call for a new civility among fans. Hear, hear:

Don’t dick around when talking shit about another team’s fans. I like using words and phrases like, “assholes,” “bastards” and “sons-of-bitches.”

We believe this to just be a starting point for a whole digression on proper usage of abusive, colorful, and profane verbiage to properly describe the opposition. Too often fans lean on the simple cromag insults worn thin by overuse: Gaytors, Bammers, Barners, Corndog-aroma’d LSU fans…there’s just no space for this in a tight rhetorical race between fanbases.

There should be some kind of initiative surrounding this kind of work. And six-figure NEA grants. To buy hot tubs. For important grantees and their “committee members.” If you’re thinking this is all part of some grand plot to get federal money to subsidize the EDSBS Fortress of Snarkitude del Sud in Costa Rica, where we would definitely not blow taxpayer dollars on vodka faucets, dirt bikes, and a giant statue of Jack Youngblood…well, shame on you sir/madam.

Because we’re totally willing to compromise on the statue. The rest is necessary for our work.

A completely worthy investment of taxpayer money, in our opinion.

Brian Jones hates college football. According to the CSTV columnist, he believes there aren’t enough minority coaches or ADs. Huzzah–as an industry whose labor force skews heavily toward black athletes and has done so for over thirty years now, this is an easy if not remarkable call. Then, he pulls his human mask off and reveals his true, football-hating reptilian visage:

Games were on average about 15 minutes shorter than 2005, with fewer plays and fewer points scored, and, looking back, I had no problem with last year’s rule changes affecting the clock.

Everybody was complaining about it all year long, but I was thinking, “You’re crazy.”

And then everyone just looked at me, like I was crazy. And here we are a year later, and nothing collapsed, which justifies my lack of a problem with the rules, my awesomeness, and my keen insight. It was like the time the Challenger blew up, and I’m thinking, like, “Yeah, but they’ll keep flying ‘em,” or that other time I told my friend Toby that McRib would come back even though they called it “The McRib Farewell Tour.” And just like that, last week, whaddya see on the menu? The fucking McRib. Take that Toby, you little mincing biatch.

–Vandy may be dropping the Richmond Spiders for another opener against Michigan in September 2007. Brian in turn says death to college football.

Well, we’re hung like…um, a human? Doug’s leaping on the latest internet meme: saying five nice things about yourself, which in Doug’s case includes positive comments about the size of his genitals. Bully for Doug. Our own short–um, that is, perfectly average-sized list of five positive things we can honestly say about ourself follows.

1. We dance with great enthusiasm. Note: no mention of skill.

2. We type very quickly.

3. On command, can consume horrifying amounts of beer without getting drunk. This is a positive, right? We bat well above our body weight in beer drinking, which to be honest is so effortless it’s gotten too expensive to be worth it. Liquor, however is a whole other story, one that involves pepper spray, very poorly timed phone calls, and mysterious ATM withdrawals from ATMs in Dubai.

4. We’re unbeatable at NCAA 2007. Just unstoppable. To quote Hero: we have become the sword.

5. Dogs like us. All of them, and not just because we wear Armani’s Pancetta for Men.

Leave your own in the comments section if you like.