Inadvertent or not, the winnowing down of D-1 football to a Premiere League begins with the APR. Columnage hyah at the SN.

Oh, and in unrelated news, Chile knows how to throw a death-party:

Either that’s a volcano and thunderstorm going off simultaneously, or we’ve just found exclusive pictures of Nick Saban’s new office. More photos here.

The NCAA released the APR today, the Academic Progress Report, the NCAA’s opportunity to seize the spotlight and do what it does best: issue press releases.

The NCAA’s Academic Performance Program (APP) is creating positive behavioral change among Division I institutions, according to new four-year data released May 6.

The multi-year Academic Progress Rate (APR) data – with four years of data collection available for the first time – show upward trends in several categories, especially from 2005-06 to 2006-07.

GET DOWN, PARTY PEOPLE! GET DOWN!

We’re still digging through the data for this year, made even more fun by the NCAA’s propensity for releasing a press release on one page, a commentary on another, a spreadsheet here, a comprehensive list hosted on a Russian Military server and only accessible via several hours of white-knuckle hackery. Fortunately, the Indy Star has them all compiled nicely for you so you can revel in the uproarious ironies of a system where the University of Florida’s football team is on par with the United States Military Academy’s team in academic performance, and where Eastern Kentucky pwnz them both.

In the meantime, the only penalties of any relevance to college football go to Kansas and Washington State, who will suffer scholarship losses due to underwhelming APR scores. NCAA, beware: Mark Mangino will have his real estate agent call you to voice his displeasure with your metrics!

Two interesting notes regarding the NCAA, your favorite curiously defined regulatory entity, bear some mention here. Both come courtesy of the good people at Miami Hawk Talk, the smartest damn mid-major board in the universe, and both make sense, which means the sun will go dark today and the man in the rabbit costume is bound to waltz into your office and start talking to you about wormholes any second now–because this is the NCAA we’re discussing.

The NCAA first has decided to pursue where the FBI has relented in the points-shaving scandal at Toledo, conducting its own investigation into the university’s handling of the Harvey “Scooter” McDougle case. McDougle, a running back, had been accused of taking money from a Detroit gambler to recruit others to shave points in football and basketball games at Toledo.

The charges against McDougle have been dropped, but the NCAA presses forward:

“We have had repeated contacts with the university … and have been working collaboratively, including a previous campus visit to interview an individual about a potential sports wagering issue that had been brought to our attention,” NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said in a statement to USA TODAY.

Meaning that doing this as a MAC school could get you fucking fried by the NCAA, especially on the heels of the stories of Toledo coaches taking the company card to pay for expenses during trips to Germany to go “recruiting.” In Germany. Where the only football played outside of NFL Europe involves guys named Beckenbauer, Voeller, and Ballack.

Second, the NCAA’s reconsidering its ban on text messaging and other forms of digital communication. OMG URBN IZ XCTED NCAA WUZ SO NF!!! More than thirty schools filed override complaints in regards to the ruling, meaning it will be reviewed.

Walk-ons at Colorado were charged less for training meals from the years 2000-2005, a violation of some clause in the NCAA’s 3,289 page rulebook on student conduct that will cost the University of Colorado three scholarships and two years on probation.

(Pause. Inhale. Exhale.)

There’s plenty of monkey feces to hurl at everyone here–grab an umbrella, because we’re about to make it rain. First, poop on Gary Barnett for not hiring someone to notice the little things that kill or make management of something as large as a football program, or heaps of shit on him for letting little shitbag things like this fly under his extremely underpowered mental radar without considering the potential consequences cloud his thinking.

Sooper Genious Barnett strikes from beyond the career grave.

We now, more than ever, imagine Gary Barnett as the guy who fails to claim an elephant-size chunk of income from his taxes (”Hey, I never imagined the BurnLounge account would do so well, man.”) and then just hopes that sending the auditors out to his house to dig through piles of Vitamin Shoppe receipts costs more than the money they’d recoup off the audit.

Also, piles of feces hurled to the NCAA for the deepening mess that are its illegal benefits rules. The Colorado thing is most definitely a violation under the rules, but why stop with what you’ve got? Signal to Noise is thinking fierce when he suggests in a very Modest Proposal-ish way that it doesn’t go far enough–the NCAA should codify student behavior toward athletes, because surely the status and esteem they get affords unfair benefits to them in the form of especially forceful blowjobs, entry to private parties, and ultimately airtime on ESPN, a form of advertisement whose price far exceeds the $61,000 or so Colorado spent on extra calories for walk-ons.

And if you don’t think the cash value of especially forceful blowjobs and free advertising for your football skills exceeds $61,000 dollars and isn’t a benefit other students don’t get…well, like people who don’t smoke Tarrlytons, then fuck you. In the name of logic, we won’t be satisfied until Myles Brand spends a few minutes of the day writing a code stating that if a student athlete doesn’t get teeth and also gets a push on the dirty doorbell from a fellatrix, then a regular student should, too.

We love supplements. Some of our own dietary supplements keeping us in top shape:

–Zybrowka Vodka. Drink of the gods. We could drink a half a bottle and run a 5K through the middle of Dekalb Avenue during rush hour IN the variable lane. Scratch that–“have” run a 5K through the middle of Dekalb Avenue during rush hour. With the police “pacing” us.

–Coffee. Jamaica Blue Mountain, Waffle House swill poured into a human skull straight off the crack of Mario Batali’s sweaty ass crack…whatever. Caffeine buzz GIMME GIMME GIMME.

–Japanese bar mix. Oooh, god-kissed little soy sauce-encrusted soulfuckers, we will inhale you like you were strapped to our face in a feed bag.

–Pure Protein Shakes. You only think we drink these for healthy reasons, made with the mix, ice, buffalo milk yogurt (because buffalo are hardcore and cows aren’t, bitches) and whatever fruit/meat/spare postal packaging is lying on the counter. In truth, it’s for when you’re too lazy to actually fix a meal, much less going to the trouble of chewing one.

Which one of these Swindle staples does the NCAA ban? If you threw a few steak nuggests in, the protein shake might be out of the running as something a strength coach could give to an athlete. Coffee, too, thanks to the caffeine. (Zybrowka’s out too, along with hero-…wait. What fucking genius said we couldn’t give the kids heroin anymore? Jesus, these people…)

Demon java! Our second favorite Colombian import and NCAA bugbear. The first is Shakira, you devious, devious people…

Via the Fanhouse:

“The NCAA came out with rules which say that we can’t give muscle-building products.

“If we give [the athletes] weight-gain products, there must be a limit of 30 percent protein. That means all the rest, 70 percent, is bad stuff like sugar. Really, we couldn’t give them peanut butter or milk. I’ve never understood that rule.”

Again, when faced with the hydra of writing coherent policy, the NCAA swung its dull broadsword and beheaded itself in the process. (Which means the score is hydra, 20 or so heads, you, NCAA member institution, none.) Athletes seek out supplements on their own now, usually doing so with the expertise one can expect from an untrained 18 year old doing anything complex and difficult: shoddily, haphazardly, and often purchasing supplements prohibited by the NCAA’s banned substances list.

This list includes caffeine down to trace amounts in tests, meaning coaches might not be able to give players so much as a strong cup of coffee pre-game. Deacon Jones, for one, would be appalled. The L.A. Rams legend’s pregame ritual before every game: two cups of black coffee on an empty stomach.

(Throw a donut on top of that, and that’ll make you want to skin a troop of Boy Scouts alive for so much as breathing in your direction.)

Mind your blackberries–you may be booted from the nearest sports event of choice for representing the events of the day. Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Brian Bennett was ejected from the NCAA Baseball Tournament for blogging about Louisville’s eventual 20-2 victory over UConn, and his credentials might not ever be restored. The NCAA regards his blogging about the facts of the game as a de facto rebroadcast of copyrighted material, and said as much in a pregame memo.

Bennett went on anyway until the Dorkstapo found him:

I continued blogging until the bottom of the fifth inning, an NCAA representative came to my seat on press row and asked for my credential and asked me to leave. I complied.

Blogging patriot? Brian Bennett, now-rebel blogger.

Somewhere, Walter Benjamin is wandering the streets of the afterlife in a leisurely fashion and laughing to himself. Everyone in the stadium holding a Blackberry or cell phone who said as much as a peep about the game in a digital medium stands guilty of what Bennett did–relaying live information about a copyrighted event. As the Courier-Journal pointed out, the semantic triple lindy here is this: the NCAA seeks not to protect its broadcast rights, but to copyright the actual live facts of the event:

Once a player hits a home run, that’s a fact. It’s on TV, everybody sees it. They (the NCAA) can’t copyright that fact. The blog wasn’t a simulcast or a recreation of the game. It was an analysis.

Thus…our liveblogs of games could be verboten. Along with any updates we send to friends over the internet, any discussion, a picture we snap at the game that gets posted a website with fifteen readers and .38 cents of monthly revenue…all sacrosanct property of the NCAA, or possibly ESPN, or Fox, or whomever holds the broadcast rights to the event. It’s a stance only the finest minds of the 18th century could have invented.

We didn’t care at all about the College World Series now, but just to piss off the NCAA we’ll post a live update while watching the game just to chafe their harbls right good. This is the glorious age of amateurs, and not its centripetal phase, either. Until the NCAA starts taking away cell phones at the gate, Brian Bennett or any other blogger can perform the nastiest of protests: they can buy a seat and immediately start texting away.

Unless the next step is cell phone jammers at stadiums. Don’t put it past them.

It’s one of the most magical times of the year: you wake up, and there’s just a hint of summer in the air. The bees buzz, the birds warble…perhaps you hack up a thick ball of pollen-encrusted mucus, if you’re fortunate enough to live in an allergen hell like Atlanta.

And then, the children run down the street, clutching white papers with baby blue print on the letterhead: THE APR’S OUT! THE APR’s OUT!!!

Jump for joy, piglet! The APR’s out!

The NCAA’s attempt to quantify the reconciliation of athletics and academics did indeed come out yesterday, and it lives up to its reputation again as being one of the sternest, least forgiving gauges of academic performance in small schools never hoping to even play in a bowl game or sell a single piece of NCAA merchandise. The letters stand for Academic Progress Rate, but we can substitute any number of better source words for the acronym APR:

Abstruse Pedantic Ruse

Auburn? Pretty Ridiculous.

Athletes Placed in Remedials

Annual Pipsqueak Reaming

The last one is particularly apt. The schools receiving the most serious scholarship penalties and Myles Brand finger-wagging all come from college sport’s Christmas Islands: Northern Arizona University, Texas Southern, Tennessee-Chattanooga, San Jose State…and most snidely, HBCUs and schools affected by Hurricane Katrina. (Myles Brand doesn’t care about black people! ) Oh, and FIU and Georgia Southern. Those puppies got kicked, too. (more…)

Blogtoberfest! We’ll let you transfer wherever you want to go, baby.

Brandon Warren cannot play this Division 1 football you speak of, sir. Beginning the long list of things we’d at least like to mention…Bobby Bowden refuses to grant a release of scholarship to TE Brandon Warren, who initially signed on with the Seminoles before flaking out mid-semester and leaving school to take care of his ailing mother.

Google Image: making the symbolism just a bit too easy.

Seminolians claim Warren’s just homesick and dredging up his mother’s illness to excuse himself from his contractual obligations to FSU, all the while convincing the only recruit he was in charge of showing around the campus to make a firm commitment to the University of Tennessee. (more…)

Blogtoberfest–the best party you won’t end up treating with antibiotics…probably.

Love has stepped on both of these people with a hobnailed boot. Larry Munson is the sole property of the Georgia Bulldogs we envy openly and shamelessly, an announcer with just a pinch of Minnesota nose to him who sounds like an ages old tortoise sipping whiskey while broadcasting the game from somewhere deep inside Mammoth Cave. He’s a national treasure, he broadcasts Georgia football, and the combination of the two facts is proof that God blesses even the wretchedest on this planet with something good and pure.

Paul brings us the news and audio behind someone paying Munson to do a voiceover for their wedding. Personally, we think given the divine desperation Munson can summon up in his best moments, his narration of a divorce would be even better.

For the uninitiated, here’s a compilation of Munson’s finest lunacy. Even with all that blasted, scabrous red all over the screen, it’s still run-flat awesome. OH MY GOD A TOUCHDOWN MY GOD A TOUCHDOWN–even the teetotalingest finger-wagging Baptist forgave him for that, which you may see around the 2:07 mark.

NCAA officially files their mea culpa. Rule 3-2-5-e, which suffered a severe aneurysm in March, gets the official DNR order signed and approved by the NCAA. Spit on the ground twice in its memory.

Way more effective than that old ‘G’ Formation. It’s the offseason–help yourself to a little football history as Corn Nation examines the history of the wacky ‘T’ Formation. Not explained in the article: why the hell the Seahawks have it in Madden.

SMQ is Jacob wrestling the angel, and you’re not even watching. Sunday Morning Quarterback is rolling through every team in the land again and you’re not even paying attention. You owe him makeup sex, a nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and at least two romantic comedies for your negligence. And no, The 13th Warrior is not a romantic comedy, even if we told you it was. (Because nothing gets us in the mood like Viking Death,, but we’re not normal.)

Best. Shirts. Ever. Take sporting debate on the road with you with Dan Shanoff’s stellar array of Gator/Duke debate shirts. Or, if you’re less inclined to debate, you could just wear one of ours (click to go to the shop and buy, say, thirty of them for your friends:)

Tang still double-entendre funny! Gravity pulls down! And Nick Saban? Still a raving asshole to everyone and anyone around him. He’d try to talk to you a bit about this, but he hasn’t got time for this shit, even if he made time later to make time for this shit.

An anonymous tipster who did get a peek in Saban’s practices though says the coach is livid with the front seven’s lack of…well, just general lackness. But how could that be? You hired a coach who is the son of a great coach? Greatness is genetic! Look at Freddie Prinze Jr. if you don’t believe us, or Robin Thicke.

Again, repetition is the key to communication again. Pete Carroll: again, not going anywhere. Ever. For any reason. Except he’s got to stop by Whole Foods for some Newman-O’s, because they’re the best organic cookies everywhere. If you need him, he’s taking the golden unicycle.

Fuck your couch, Ed Orgeron. Via the Wiz, the best walkoff decision we’ve ever seen comes from Cliff Davis, now former backup qb at Ole Miss:

“I gave it up since they didn’t put me in the damn game,” Davis said Monday in a telephone interview. “Fed up. Football’s not paying my damn bills, so it’s time to get my education, join the working world.”

Davis left the game early in the fourth quarter, walked into the locker room, and then walked out of football for good. Coach Ed Orgeron was so shocked he didn’t even burn his house down in retaliation for his disloyalty.

Nigella Lawson: We’d still ride it like the MARTA. Cheesecake is coming, but we’d like to reiterate that Nigella may still use us for medical experiments any day of the week.

Points-shaving. First, a definition:

The illegal practice of deliberately limiting the number of points scored by one’s team in an athletic contest, as in return for a payment from gamblers to ensure winnings.

This is exactly what Toledo running back Harvey “Scooter” McDougle has been charged with by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the Detroit News. The News broke the story on Saturday. The basics, according to both the News and noted secondary sources:

–McDougle was given a car, cash, and other benefits in exchange for shaving points off certain Toledo games by Gary Manni, a man only identified as “Gary” in the first News report. He was to recruit other players, as well, including other football players and basketball players. (You know, like Amway does, but with the FBI taking a vested interest in your “contacts.” )

–In turn, McDougle offered at least one other player $10,000 to sit out a game.

Your team…for just $10,000 a game?

–Manni, labeled “a professional gambler” in a subsequent report, admits knowing McDougle, but says he had nothing to do with point-shaving.

The funniest two pieces of information come from that second article, a piece in the manfully-named Toledo Blade. (You know it’s a rough town when even the paper is named “the Blade.”) (more…)

Myles Brand–punchline!

NCAA president Myles Brand expressed concern Thursday about coaches’ salaries, but said it was up to schools and universities to police themselves when it comes to hires.

Women be shoppin’…oh, yeah, women be shoppin!

We’re mailing Brand a blue helmet as we speak, since the NCAA is rapidly entering UN peacekeeper territory here. Brand makes, with benefits, three-quarters of a million dollars a year for heading up an organization whose purpose he can’t define. They’ve also been under investigation twice in the past year regarding their non-profit status, something they combatted by paying $160,000 to lobbyists in Washington to protect said status.

Just another vaguely defined non-profit it reminds us of…

They also make millions from the NCAA tournament, their cash cow, which in no way resembles a professional sporting event, either. We play ping-pong to ecstatic thousands at the Georgia Dome every Thursday, in case you’re interested. But let Myles go on:

“I think we have to begin asking some very hard questions,” Brand said. (more…)

Hello, citizens. Attorney Ken Terwiliger here. Know the picture, because it’s the face of justice and affordable personal injury litigation for most of central Georgia.

Others may just say this, but I’m looking out for you. Really, I am. I’m just waiting for you to come through that door and get your share of the money the NCAA owes you via this huge and very important class action lawsuit we’ve filed against them. (See this leather chair? It squeaks with the sound of affluence. Those books? I’ve read almost some of them.)

Seems someone decided to pay athletes less than they were worth across the board, which is just plain wrong, specifically underpaying exactly 11,500 athletes by precisely $2,500 each* in the delivery of their scholarships. What’s that equal in total? Well, I didn’t major in math, friend, but my sources tell me it’s over FIFTY BILLION** when you work it all out.

Your share could turn injustice into some of the things you’ve undoubtedly dreamed about! A chair made of pure platinum…ringside wrestling tickets…your very own “crib” on the moon… (more…)

We expected, with typical sour foresight, that the NCAA Rules Committee would do the wrong thing when it came to revising the mess that was Rule 3-2-5-e. (The rule that ate around 12 plays a game last season. See that link for a USA Today article if you’ve been asleep, or busy actually doing productive things for the past year or so.)

Specifically, we wrote this:

Who says Americans have balls? If the NCAA Rules Committee really had them, they’d emerge from the undisclosed location they meet in, face a few flashbulbs, and saunter up to the mike to read a statement that read in total like this:

Hi. We fucked up. Blame our lucrative television tie-ins. We’re going back to the way it was. Apologies.

And in essence, that’s precisely what they did. For that, we grant the Rules Committee our respect and the award of their balls back–in fact, we award them an unstoppable European cycling team in the balls department.

Balls, gentlemen. Even when you can’t feel them like competitive cyclists can’t, they’re still there.

The rules committee engaged brain and determined that, unlike the profoundly unwise decision to remove actual clock time, the peripheral dead time surrounding much of the game could be trimmed to speed up the game and thus keep the potentates of various network sponsors happy. (more…)

GIMME A FUCKIN’ SIREN WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

It’s America after all: Rule 3-2-5e has been scrapped by the NCAA rules committee.

The Berlin Wall, Iron Felix, rule 3-2-5-e…they all fall eventually, brother.

Quoth Rules Committee chair Michael Clark:

“The changes we made last year, overall, did not have a positive effect on college football at all levels…Our charge is to protect the game and do what is best for college football. Last year’s game lost too many plays, but it accomplished the need to shorten the overall time it takes to play a game.”

Modifications will be made, and some of them contain sense. Cut and pasted straight from the AJC:

• Limit the play clock to 15 seconds following a television timeout.

• Kickoffs moved from 35-yard line to 30-yard line.

• Reduced charged team timeouts by 30 seconds.

• Penalties for all kicking team fouls that occur during the kick can be enforced at the end of the run.

• Encourage coaches, officials, game management personnel, media partners to manage the game in a more efficient manner.

• Play clock is started when the ball is handed to the kicker by the umpire on all free kicks.

• Limit instant replay reviews to two minutes to decide to overturn or confirm the ruling on the field.

There’s probably something wrong here, but we’re too overjoyed at having more football in the coming year to examine them too closely. (”Hey, this Munich Agreement looks great. Tell Ms. Chamberlain we’ll be home in time for tea, Jeeves!”) Credit where credit is due: the Wiz of Odds and CFB Stats did more than anyone to keep track of just how much the new rules were hacking away at the game, and have to be given credit for raising awareness. Que! Que! to you and yours for your fine internets advocacy.

For now, sing with us over the gloriously dead corpse of this tyrant rule:

My country ’tis of thee
Today!
Sweet land of liberty
Today!
Of thee I sing
Today!
Of thee I sing
Today!

Far…we’ve been traveling farrrrrrrr…

Not quite through raging about the clock rules. If we’re very concerned about maximizing profit and coordinating with television partners, then we should be more than serious about it.

Our proposals:

1. The CSI First Down Line for SEC broadcasts: rather than simply show the line and the crew stretching the first down marker toward the spot, let’s have a full, CSI-style zoom in on the grass, the flecks of dirt, the ball looming huge like a zeppelin from the ant’s eye perspective. Complete the scene with jumpy edits and the disgusting sound of tiny bug jaws chewing up their prey. Finish each microzoom with the Roger Daltrey YEAAAAAAYYYYYY from CSI: Miami

We’d even work in David Caruso, if allusions to anything alcoholic were allowed on college broadcasts.

2. For Fox Broadcasts: combine the success of When Animals Attack with sideline reporting, forcing microphone-toting newbies to prove their mettle by broadcasting live while being attacked by an animal chosen by viewer votes. “To see Leslie fight a surly warthog, text *34 on your Cingular Wireless phone.” Remember: Fox hates you.

3. The FedEx Express Twofer: Making a two point conversion takes five minutes off the clock in the second half. Extra time will be filled in with bonus coverage of ABC’s new sitcom Unattractive Man With Inexplicably Hot Wife Makes Mistake And Has To Cover It Up in 22 Minutes.

4. Allstate can sponsor the Dennis Haysbert “Are You In Good Hands Varsity For A Day” contest, where a lucky fan (only after signing a mountain of waivers) is allowed to play for a series for a team at the position of their choice during the second quarter. They cannot opt out, and by purchasing a ticket have in fact already consented to the possibility that they will find themselves playing fullback in front of 80,000 people for five minutes. They must wear a blue all-contact Allstate jersey the whole time.

We really want this to happen in all sports just to illustrate just how hard they really are, especially during the Olympics. Ski-jumping. Pommel horse. Boxing. The possibilities are endless, especially in the vault. See evidence below.

5. The Trojan Magnum Deep Penetration Replay. Speaks for itself, really. Big pass play or huge sack (heh) gets the Trojan Magnum Deep Penetration Replay, accompanied with hotkey “oooooh” from a ladies’ voice.

6. The Brent Musburger Cold One Alert. Each time a player makes a particularly vicious and cold-hearted hit or tackle, the sound of a popping top plays, accompanied with Brent Musburger saluting the screen and saying “HE JUST POPPED A COLD ONE, DIDN’T HE JACKAARRROOOOO? REMEMBER, THAT’S ANOTHER BRENT MUSBURGER COLD ONE, BROUGHT TO YOU BY ANDY LAURINITIS!!!” Note: does not specifically mention beer, or even correctly identify Musburger’s current broadcast partner, which is exactly what will happen on the screen anyway. Paid for by the combined breweries of America, and they might as well, since we’re pretty certain Brent does his own in-house version of this anyway.

Brent: having a cold one alert whether you like it or not.