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. Take the status quo from this Ivan Maisel quote from an article on why college ball is superior to the NFL:

All those commercials and yet the games are shorter. What does that mean? Less football! NFL teams ran an average of 62.5 offensive plays per game last season. Division I-A teams ran an average of 70.6 offensive plays. And don’t tell me that college games last longer. Yes, they averaged 3:06 and the NFL averaged 3:01, but that’s explained by halftime. College halftimes last 20 minutes; the NFL, 12.

So half the problem with the time is halftime to begin with–an entirely different tweak of the rules, so we’ll shelve it for now. (Less alumni stroking and introductions of the swim team? Saints preserve us!) Stick to the running of the clock: the point is that overall, with the forty second rule, time will be running off the clock that, in the move the chain and go 25 second game we have now, would not be running off the clock under the current set up.

This means less football unless you’re running a no-huddle, a move Steve Spurrier has already suggested would be the only way to maxmize the total number of plays under the new rules. That may be what Clark means here by “some studies,” so you can’t assume he’s lying here, since in theory it would be possible to have more plays if you’re in a blazing fucking hurry the whole game.

Begging the question: why would you be in such a hurry? Because you have less time, of course, something offenses will work to death this year. If an offense can take longer to scan the defense and audible, they will; if they have time to read coverage and lineup, they will; if they have time to do anything at all making them more comfortable, they’ll do it. The rules changes may ultimately come down to incentives. Sure, less time may actually equal more plays if you’re running the Gus Malzahn No-Huddle (copies still available!), but there’s far more incentive to slow the game down for an offense than there is to speed it up.

We haven’t even broached bleeding the clock out with a lead in the fourth quarter. You like kickers? And games that end with field goals? Get your money in early for Auburn for the 2008 National Title, because 3-2-5-e did nothing like what you’ll see with fourth quarter strategy this year. Offenses can now hit fast-forward with the forty second clock, reducing the fourth quarter to the sit-and-squat fourth quarters of most pro games. It’ll be like watching two people play tennis with a huge children’s ball rather than a standard tennis ball: big, slow exchanges, with more and more games ending with excruciatingly slow drives ending with a winning field goal.

The more we write about this, the more we’re convinced this isn’t just giving you less football: it’s drastically changing the endgame strategy in college football. To borrow boxing metaphoricals: now we have middleweights exchanging blows in rapid-fire succession. With this rule change, you’re going to slug the game down to heavyweight speed, and toward the end of the fight you’ll see the guy ahead in the cards clinching like they’re meeting a long-lost shipwrecked sibling. Points will die on the vine this year, and drastically so.

So Michael Clark’s reply is honest in that it admits TV and the BCS are the prime movers, but it’s less than honest with the suggestion that there will be more plays with the rule change. Suggesting this ignores how the game is actually played, and what teams’ incentives are on the field of play. We could suggest that we shorten our work day in order to “be more productive,” but realistically, there’s little incentive for that to happen–in most cases, you’ll simply get less done, which is precisely what will happen in college football. Thanks to the pressures of television and a lack of ingenuity on the part of sponsors, you’ll see exactly what you feared: less football, period.

(Are we missing something? We probably are? Yes? Leave any and all corrections in the comments.)

P.S. After writing this, note the biggest canard/conditional in Clark’s phrasing: “Based on consistent pace of play.” That means the studies likely used an average number of seconds per play to do their studies, or assumed on. There’s miles of wiggle room in this, as the time could vary greatly depending on situation, offensive scheme, etc. Good news for Michigan, though: DickRod runs the “jet” set, college football’s fastest no-huddle. You’ve got a plan, at least.

Oh, and if it’s the NFL, they used the NFL’s average time to get a play off, not college. In the NFL they seem to get the play off faster–less monkeying around with looking to the sideline for a call, as you’ll often see college offenses do. In college, we’d bet it takes even longer to get the play off in the same alloted timespan. Meaning, again: less football, and shifty citing of “studies” here. At least that’s what we suspect.

(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.

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. Delany’s got a history of overreaction to criticism, and writes a new chapter in it with his defense of the Big Ten’s football record in response to Florida’s eyeball-scorching trunking of Ohio State in the BCS game. Its title? “To Fans of College Football and the Big Ten.” (Remember, to Delany, these aren’t necessarily the same people. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about college football.)

The EDSBS Cliffs Notes begin, with Delany’s deathless prose excerpted below:

With the conclusion of another tremendous college football season and the recent national signing day, there has been a lot written and said about the Big Ten’s recruiting efforts across the country, including a recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times entitled “Big Ten needs to find new talent pool – fast” (see full article here). In response to these commentaries, it seems premature for us to lower our admission standards or give up on the tremendous talent pool in the Midwest.

Delany’s attempting to channel Frank Luntz here and spin the debate his way. Call it the “Healthy Big Ten Act,” with bumper harvests and screaming proletariats hailing the Chairman’s every word. Big Ten has dismal year in the bowls, Big Ten goes 2-5 = need for public defense of long-term bowl record and overall conference health. Marginally necessary, we say, and understandable despite the fact most college football fans don’t give a rat’s ass about conference affiliation and only follow their team.

Bumper harvests for the Big Ten! Smash bourgeois SEC negativity relentlessly!

Fine with us, save for the swipe at the end about lowering admissions standards, clearly a public finger in the eye to the SEC. This means two things in Delany’s siege-minded, “I represent the interests of the Big Ten only,” 18th-century brain: the SEC is the single biggest rival for attention, profits, and prestige, and that they’re recruiting Mongoloids who can’t read to play football. Which is true almost everywhere football is played, the Big Ten included. It’s unnecessary, provincial, and cheap of him, but then again, that’s what an oversensitive barrister playing strictly from the Talleyrand playbook will do: react, overreact, and overreact some more in only the most narrowly defined interests of his client.

Rolling on:

No doubt national programs must recruit nationally wherever the talented students and athletes live. Hats off to Florida and the SEC — they had a great year.

Because their football players can’t read, and have to be told not to eat their mouthpieces, which are not in fact tasty gelatin candies. Though they might want to consider making them out of firm gelatin, because you know they’ll just keep choking on those things.

We believe that both the Big Ten and the SEC have been and remain two of the greatest college football conferences in the country. But you may want to keep in mind the following as you review the various recruiting services, listen to talking heads and reflect the blogosphere out there as they compare these two fine conferences. I think most people would agree that head-to-head competition is an effective method to compare relative strengths between competitive entities:

And thus follows a whole bunch of stats about how good the Big Ten is, was, and will be, a fact virtually no one is disputing outside of the most deranged of message board snipefests. Another great political trick: make an argument no one’s really making, and then inveigh against it to deflect your real concern, which is that a region with stable or declining population is losing ground in a regionally recruited sport over the past forty years. The Big Ten is as competitive as its been since the glory days of the 50s and 60s, and has won two national titles in the past ten years. Why go bazooka here because of one popgun year?

Because Delany’s attempting to sell the Big Ten name, a more important branding than ever given the creation of their extremely stupidly packaged “BigTen Network.” He’s thinks the value is in the league, not the sport as a national whole. And for his paycheck, that is the correct assumption.

I love speed and the SEC has great speed, especially on the defensive line, but there are appropriate balances when mixing academics and athletics. Each school, as well as each conference, simply must do what fits their mission regardless of what a recruiting service recommends.

Umm, excuse us. Que? Reviving the swipe at the SEC, the guy who oversaw the Fab Five scandal at Michigan flings shit at the conference with a well-worn record of violations. Again, if it’s easy, convenient, and in my interests, I’m Jim Delany and I’m doing it to the point of overkill. And what the hell does a recruiting service get into this? Ohio State and Florida, the two teams inspiring the comparison in the first place, make for a disastrous comparision since Florida, the place with all of that non-academics-compatible speed, has marginally higher admissions standards than Ohio State. This isn’t saying OSU sux0rz in skoolz or anything, it’s just pointing out that the comparison flops from the start, and is disingenous.

In fact, the two bowl defeats from the Big Ten to the SEC this year both run downhill academically. Wisconsin (better school) beat Arkansas (not better school), and Tennessee (where you have, unbeknownst to you, already earned an urban studies degree through your reading of Vibe Magazine,) lost to Penn State, which ranks somewhere around a push.

What are you gonna do with all those Vibe Magazine subscriptions? Get yourself a degree, son.

The academic debate’s a canard, and Delaney knows it. He subverts the actual debate by tossing out the cheap inflammatory crapulence of “higher academic standards” when there’s little from the bowls to suggest any connection between the two.

Our favorite slice coming up, with frosting and everything:

I wish we had six teams among the top 10 recruiting classes every year, but winning our way requires some discipline and restraint with the recruitment process.

Translation: “I wish I could have as many boyfriends as you do, but I’ve got this horrible thing called “Not Being a Total Whore” I can’t get over.” Who knows what Delaney hopes to achieve here, other than defending the Big Ten’s somnolent ethos regarding PR and recruiting. The Big 12 and the SEC have consistently abandoned shame and “decorum” (whatever that means–see?) to advance their football programs in the public eye.

Championship games, public stumping from Mack Brown and Urban Meyer for bowl slots, outlandish recruiting tactics…it’s all a matter of public record. Does it conflict with the academic mission of a university? Certainly debatable, unless you’re like us and are willing to consider teams as semi-professional teams sewed to the hide of major universities who value them for their cash and the overall vibe they sell to potential students.

Yet for the major force behind the BCS, someone who approved the worthless 12th game, and the pope of the Big Ten Network to cry foul on a unversity’s overcommitment to football in the name of Mammon stinks of eau d’hypocrite. For one year only, other college football cabals did it faster, better, and stronger than his conference. The Big 12, SEC, and whomever else may be whores, but their business models are nimbler than yours this season, stealing boyfriends and putting all your potential recruits on rock rock.

Therein lies the sting, and the barely concealed spite behind the letter. Delaney’s only real recourse is to act like Angela from The Office and begin pointing sanctimonious fingers…while screwing Dwight Schrute on the side. And the rest is just more veiled screeching unworthy of fisking.

Hi. You might recognize me from my job as the chosen representative of the Big Ten.

The Big Ten’s ultimate problem isn’t a lack of speed, moxie, or prestige: it’s a problem of demography. The Midwest’s two most populous states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, aren’t keeping pace with the explosive population growth in the top five boomers: Florida, Texas, California, Arizona and Georgia. This leaves the Big Ten fighting over talent in their largest states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, a move recruitniks have been trendspotting and discussing for years. The edges other conferences will have in the long run result from population shifts.

This happens in other conferences, too. Look at the blighted Big 12 North for a perfect example of this. It’s not like large swaths of Iowa look like something out of Logan’s Run…yet. Schools like Iowa have already begun to adapt, though, recruiting diamonds in the rough and working their resources to the max. That trend to “adapt or die” must continue and spread if recruiting trends maintain their downward trajectory for the conference. But numbers don’t lie–the only really viable national contenders in the national title picture for the Big Ten have to have pipelines to big population centers: Chicago, the whole state of Ohio, and Pennsylvania. And even then you’ll have difficulty keeping up with the sheer range of goodies pumped out by public schools in blossoming Sun Belt communities.

It’s a matter of margins and numbers. No amount of bitchcraft by Jim Delaney will change that, and neither will walling up the Big Ten on Direct TV, a move comparable to selling your kidney for beer money in the long run. He’s boldly leading the charge back to 1982, legwarmers, skinny tie and all. Fine with us. After all, Delaney’s not working for the interests of college football, but rather the Big Ten, which makes him nothing to the average fan like us but…well, nothing at all.

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–which were in truly stereotypical fashion perpetually falling out of his BIKE brand shorts–he wailed the kid’s ass for stating the obvious. (Picture this with flies approaching the coach’s curly, greasy hair, and then falling dead to the ground from the fumes.) The kid then skipped away from the paddling, for which he got suspended because, in Coach Scotchblood’s words, the event was “surrious.”

It was one of the stupidest things we’ve ever seen with our own eyes, and the reason we believe we could enroll a panda in a tracksuit in a Masters’ Program in Education and come back two years later and find a smiling graduate with a diploma in one semiarticulated paw, and a sprig of bamboo in the other.

Proud holder of a masters’ in education, which she ate on receipt.

It’s good, then, for us to have the basest suspicions we have about the American education system reinforced by Osceola County Schools. A student at St. Cloud Middle school was asked to change shirts because, obviously showing signs of gang related activity, he chose to wear a Florida Gators shirt to school. From WFTV (HT: zillions of people who sent this to us):

Two Osceola County parents said their son was humiliated at school when he was suspected of wearing “gang-style” clothing. Saint Cloud Middle School said only a handful of students were searched last week when they got a complaint.

The parents told Eyewitness News, if their son was wearing low baggy pants or a bandana, by all means he should have been sent home, but he wasn’t. He was wearing a Florida Gators t-shirt.

That’s where it starts. First they start with doing pot. Then they start sniffing crack. Before you know it they’re selling the wiring out of your house, wearing assless chaps, and dating manatees. And that’s just the start.

Obvious sign of gang membership. RIVERSIDE, MOTHERFUCKER!!!

Again: what are the qualifications for working in a public school? Is that a certificate program? Or just a two-week training? We’d weep for the future, but only for self-interested reasons: with Florida public education placing such an emphasis on dress code and other vital subjects, students’ test scores and learning will surely suffer, which equals more academic non-qualifiers to Florida and larger classes for FSU and Miami.

Clamoring for better public education only because it could increase your football team’s number of academic qualifiers? We know: it’s totally and completely awesome. Go ahead and mail that Nobel to the EDSBS bunker, Stockholm. We’ll be waiting.

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.

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

Get em while they’re relevant.

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.

“We were just leaving the game and heading to the parking lot when this group of really big guys walks by. My son Ricky looked up and said, ‘Hey, aren’t those the Miami Hurricanes?’” said parent Manuel Perez.

At that point, things escalated.

“The one in the front just said “Damn right we’re the Canes,” and then they all just rushed us. It was horrible,” said Vicky Harrison, a mother of a child involved in the fracas. “They just started beating the hell out of everyone in sight: women, children, I think there was even a parrot involved at one point.” Harrison then choked up, tears welling in her eyes.

“I don’t think the parrot made it.”

The sudden attack stunned parents who thought they were due for another post-game meeting over ice cream at a local Baskin-Robbins.

“We were going to get some ice cream–it’s our postgame tradition–when all of a sudden this huge pair of Timberlands just punts my poor Bobby into a bed of lantana,” said Helene St. Marie, another YMCA parent. “This huge man with braids just stood over him going “What? Huh? What? Yeah, bitch! It was terrible.”

Dade County Sheriff’s spokeman Lamont Hunt said the exact cause of the fight has not been determined.

“We’ve interviewed all of the twenty-seven members of the Miami football team arrested, and there’s not a clear reason why they assaulted a helpless group of eight to nine-year-olds. They kept repeating something about “this U,” which we believe referred to the University of Miami. What is clear is their behavior is illegal, and will not be tolerated in this community.”

Miami commentator Lamar Thomas defended the actions of Miami players in his postgame show.

“They’re just doing what we do. No one’s gonna be on our streets in our hood where the ‘Canes say who goes and what does and tell us what to do. Imagine that little bitch asking ‘Are those the ‘Canes?’ LIKE YOU DON’T KNOW? They had to show ‘em who they were dealing with, that’s all. Think they’re gonna forget now? Hell, no. They did what they had to do.”

Thomas was then asked about the age of the victims.

“That’s just juvenile bitchery. We can’t have that. Bitchery has to be caught at a young age. Those men were doing community service by nipping bitchery in the bud. DA U!!!” screamed Thomas, who flashed a “U” symbol before leaving the interview.

Miami coach Larry Coker insisted after the incident that ”I do have a grip on this program,” Coker said. “Don’t ever doubt that. Don’t ever doubt that.”

Despite the size mismatch in the brawl with the YMCA youth, several players suffered severe injuries when the parents counterattacked. “They seemed to have a lot of difficulty blocking even the simplest of attacks,” said Mrs. St. Marie, who said she concussed a man she believed to be WR Lance Leggett with her purse. “His friend tried to toss him a rock to throw, but he just kept dropping it.”

University of Miami president Donna Shalala had no comment Sunday evening.

Miami Hurricanes fans celebrate the news of the brawl with the elementary schoolers.