We’ve been trying to get the new clock rules straight in our head, and trying to figure out if the email response two of our intrepid readers from Michael Clark, Bridgewater College head coach and head of the NCAA Football Rules committee, makes any sense whatsoever.

Clark’s response to readers Mitch and Chris, who both got this response to their protests of the proposed new clock rules.

“NFL studies showed that adding the 25-40 clock will actually add 4 to 5 plays per game based on consistent pace of play. BCS Football and officials themselves were for this change. With the ready for play, live ball out of bounds rules, (This happens about 12 times per game, with on average 3 of those in last 2 minutes) we should get the same amount of plays in a time span that is a few minutes shorter. For the record it is BCS football, TV, Conference Commissioners with lengthy seasons and television that leads the push for faster games. The Committee’s stance is that the game has given about all it can give back without a negative influence on product. Next move will have to be from Administrators or Television themselves. It is still a great game. MC”

Beginning with the caveat that our mathematical skills are somewhere in the simian range, we actually asked other people to help us out, essentially admitting FAIL and going to the phone-a-friend for this: a Georgia Tech Ph.D (”too many factors, unsure,”) a former finance guy, and a few others who all seemed equally baffled by what would actually happen if the new rules were implemented, and if Michael Clark is being–ahem!–disingenuous with his numbers here.

Less football equals more football, people! Now if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to take a healthy cigarette break.

If you’re dealing with forty seconds between plays, you’re talking NFL clock rules here. (more…)

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.

Warning: Long.

Jim Delany, the commissioner of the Big Ten, does his job well. His job is to represent the interests of the corporation known as the Big Ten, something he’s done admirably. He integrated Penn State into the conference, made sure the fine Midwestern hog that is the Big Ten got a wide berth when he was helping build the BCS, and has helped usher in new revenue streams via “the Big Ten Network,” a football content provider coming to DirectTV only this fall. Jim Delany’s being proactive and visionary. Jim Delany’s turning in his TPS reports on time. He’s harmonizing synergies and being a charismatic problem-solver and self-starter.

Hi. I work for a failing mid-size paper company.

He’s also, to the average college football fan, a faceless powermonger with a rank list of heinous policy decisions to his credit, a few of which would be hanging offenses in a court of tailgaters. His big quote in a Yahoo! Sports article a while back was “I don’t work for college football at large.” His work in stitching together the mixed gristle and organs of college football into the BCS stands as a perfect example of his best and worst work: a skillfully negotiated pact between large partners with diverse interests generating huge piles of cash that almost everyone of any sense hates, a Frankenstein that almost resembles a living entity.

At least the old bowl system, corrupt and bucolic as it was, had some charm to it, and made few real claims to being a national title system. The BCS instead does it through a melange of computers and open politicking not dissimilar in tone to a four beer discussion at your local swillhole of choice. Its benefit relies more on enforcement of rules benefitting vested interests (especially the Big Ten) and less on creating the shiniest, most alluring carrot of all for the fan: truly open competition for a national title. Instead of a playoff bracket, you get the BCS: faceless, three letters as faceless and meaningless as a government bureaucracy, a simultaneous failure of imagination and vision lurching along like Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein, minus the invigorating dance number.

That’s Delaney on the left, BCS on the right. They never do this, btw.

Delany adds to the list of hanging offenses with a hilariously frivolous broadside on the Big Ten’s website this week. (more…)

A kid in our middle school was once paddled by the gym teacher for telling him to “fuck off, drunk-o.” The statement was factually accurate, of course; our middle school gym teacher really was a drop-dead alcoholic on the Nicholas Cage, Leaving Las Vegas-style scale, and succeeded in drinking himself into an early grave. If alcoholism were the Boston Marathon, he would be the Paul Tergat of his generation. There simply were no equals.

Our coach, who could finish a case of beer in the time it took Paul Tergat to run 26.2 miles. Both champions.

Anyway, coach was fun–the evil kind of fun. He had a great speech he rolled off about three times a semester whenever we became dissrespektfool. It went as follows:

“Gettin’ jacked up is surrious. I jack my kids up. I jack my wife up. I jack my dog up. And I will…not…hesitate…to jack you up.”

So after the coach had replaced his testicles (more…)

Clay Travis would, in the unchecked world of evolutionary competition, be gone long before you, dear reader. Why? Because he voted Ole Miss women the most attractive in a ranking of SEC women, a judgement call to be sure that in and of itself bears no animus towards this blog.

Unfortunately, he ranked Florida’s women next to last, just above the fine farm girls from Mississippi State. In this unfortunate oversight, Clay has overlooked not only the basic tenets of research design, but has made a crucial error in his basic understanding of evolution and mating strategies that could endanger his reader. There are dangers out there, men. This article is a warning about them.

You see, Clay would die in the wild, and his offspring–should they ever be born–would be eaten by wolves and birds of prey. In the ages-old interplay between male and female, Clay would certainly be a pawn–or perhaps just a mere checker–becoming both slave and feast for his masterful mate. Picking Ole Miss makes this all too apparent.

Explanation of the steps used to trap Darwin’s fools in the dating process follow:

1. Excessive use of camouflage. Ole Miss women certainly fit a very common understanding of attractiveness: heavily mascaraed, blushed, and lipsticked into perfection. Beware wearing of dark blazers or other clothing around them; a direct hit with their face, or even a slight brush, will cover your finery with synthetic fat-infused cosmetics. Also comes off on your face when you’re kissing them, which sucks, especially if–in true collegiate fashion–you’re doing it behind someone’s back. Lipstick has killed as many men as the French Pox, men. This is something you must not forget.

Does makeup mean a no-go? Certainly not. Most women wear to shut other women up. But beware the perfect storm of feminine wile: like wasps who waste valuable hours of their lives mating with orchids that look like female wasps, so too do men blow valuable decades married to the cunning and stunning.

Look closer: there’s a tiny sorority sweater on that mantis.

2. Saccharine overtures.

Also beware the saccharine gesture disguising the devil’s contract. Such gestures are really a code, unknown for generations and brought back for us by our network of spies. Remember: many bachelor spies’ best years died for this information.

Unwitting, doomed male: “Hey, you wanna go out sometime?”

Male to English translation: “God, your boobs are big. And you’ve got on makeup and coordinated clothing? It’s gonna be so much fun touching your boobs!!! You smell of wealth and sex and bein’ together and stuff. Boobs.”

Ole Miss Woman of the Old South Variety: “Whaaaayyyy, that sounds nice. Whut taaaime?”

Female to English. “I have chosen you to be my potential mate, young meatling. You will be administered a series of tasks, many of which you will fail. This happens by design, since my father, Bucksley MacAllister the Fourth, is the paragon of all that is masculine and perfect for me, and will always be. The grave will only enhance his stature in my mind, so don’t count on death eliminating the problem, sucker.

And yet a wedding will occur. And you, you will either pick up a professional degree of some sort or go to work in my father’s business. And all you do–we mean all–will come to dust, since it will all pale to the shining Barbie House Daddy has built for me. I will bear offspring, yes; but the sex will end. I’ll still wear the makeup–it wasn’t for you, anyway, but the lifelong siege campaign against other women I’m engaged in–but when I do have sex, don’t ask for head. It messes up the lipstick.

In exchange, I will let you crawl into a bottle of bourbon and commit a thirty-year suicide. We will only come to life on Saturdays, where we may root for the same football team, part of the elaborate trap that will end with you spending every offseason Saturday in a stinking duck blind to get away from me and every Sunday on your knees praying for death.

Oh, maahhh, I DO carry on sometimes..

3. Daddy. If at any point she actually refers to her father as Daddy, flee the scene immediately. Remember, if necessary make a Batman-style exit with smoke grenade if necessary. If there’s a cliff, leap. You’re saving yourself trouble in the long run, trust us.

One way to end the problem, sure.

Every now and then, something in the news cycle that has nothing whatsoever to do with college football breaks but is so important that we feel compelled to let our readers know about it.  Not since finding out that Santa Clause was… well, I can’t even bring myself to talk about that one… anyway, not in a long time has our faith in humanity been shaken to this degree.  We are no longer sure that love exists.  What is it that causes us this angst?  Britinay and Kevin are calling it quits.  The fairy tale is over. 

How can we be expected to vote after hearing this news?

So what if we were too lazy to do a new shirt each day for too weeks.  Haven’t you ever been lied to before?  Anyway, here is my favorite suggestion for a new Florida/Georgia T-Shirt.

Get em while they’re relevant.

Several members of the Miami football team, leaving the campus after Saturday night’s controversial victory over FIU, became involved in a brawl with the Coral Gables YMCA under-10 basketball team and parents. The ensuing fracas left five elementary schoolers severely injured and resulted in the arrest of twenty-seven Miami football players.

Miami safety Brandon Meriwether said the fight started as a result of actions of the dodgeball team.

“We don’t take anything for granted at this U, and we don’t take shit from no one. It’s all ’bout this U. This little punk takes a look at me like I’m nothin’? Damn right I’m having a boot party for them Showbiz Pizza bitches.”

Miami players in the first of two public fights on Saturday.

Meriwether, free on bail following the incident, is accused of at least six charges in the fight, including an accusation of throwing several children into oncoming traffic.

The incident, which occurred around 9:45 p.m. on Saturday night, began innocently enough, according to the parents of the children involved. (more…)