I’ve got my towel, I’ve cut all the checks . . . let’s light this candle.

As Mumme prepares for his first season at McMurry, Lexington Herald-Leader columnist John Clay took it upon himself to track down Mumme’s UK staff and find out where they’d ended up. What he found was less than inspiring: Of Mumme and his 11 original assistants from 1997, only five are employed at D-IA programs in any capacity; four are college head coaches; two are coaching at the high-school level; and two are out of coaching entirely (though one of them has the convenient excuse of being dead since 2006).

The most successful of these gentlemen, obviously, is Mike Leach, currently leading his rowdy band of pirates at Texas Tech to regular bowl appearances; oddly enough, the guys with the next most prestigious jobs on the list were mere graduate assistants under Mumme. Chris Hatcher is the head coach at Georgia Southern (and being mentioned with increasing frequency as a candidate for D-IA jobs), while Sonny Dykes is breathing life into a formerly moribund passing attack as Arizona’s offensive coordinator.

There is, of course, one guy who still rates a grade of “incomplete”: Tony Franklin, running backs coach under Mumme and currently offensive coordinator at MTSU. At the moment, Franklin is known primarily for being the catalyst that started the Tommy Tuberville administration down the road to doom in its last year at Auburn, a dubious distinction indeed; but if he can work the same wonders at MTSU that he did at Troy, who knows, he might have a D-IA coaching gig in him yet, thereby eclipsing both his old bosses something fierce. The spread offense indeed works in mysterious ways.

For lack of a better term, we’re calling this the “Kiffin Effect.” Pop quiz, hotshot: Coming off a 4-8 season and a 45-0 vivisectioning by your big in-state rival in which you netted all of 37 yards, what do you do? What do you do? Evidently, this:

Houston Nutt phoned in just now to say he has sucked it, as a matter of fact, and the Delicious Creamsicle of Immediate In-State Superiority was everything he thought it could be.

The pressure of being the preseason #1 for the Fulmer Cup must’ve gotten to them. I know all you EDSBS regulars have been waiting with bated breath for the first time I’d make a blatant plug for my dear Georgia Bulldogs, and here it is: For what feels like the first time since I was an naive, apple-cheeked freshman, the Dawgs have gone an entire offseason without a single player getting arrested. One hundred law-abiding cocktails to all of you, gentlemen! By contrast, the Dawgs’ season-opening opponent, Oklahoma State, won’t be suspending two offensive players arrested for pot possession in June. Note to Mike Gundy: If you’re going up against Georgia and you’re the one that looks slack on player discipline, there may be a problem. Unfortunately for the Dawgs, that righteous indignation plus two bucks will get Willie Martinez a grande Pike Place roast at Starbucks.

Your “Suddenly My Problems Seem Pretty Minor” moment of the day. The Tulsa World profiles Tulsa QB G.J. Kinne, whose dad, a high-school coach in Texas, was shot to death by the angry parent of a player four years ago. By contrast, I’ve spent most of the past 24 hours raging at having shattered the screen on my iPhone, and officially consider myself humbled.

We have met the enemy, and he is Tony Franklin. I mean us. We knew the Auburn coaching staff was a wee bit divided during last year’s 5-7 debacle, but evidently so were the players. Why was that, you think?

“The offense had their problems and some guys started hanging their heads – just stuff of that sort,” said defensive end Antonio Coleman. “That led to a 5-7 season. It was just the little things that led to seven losses. Coach Chizik came in and corrected that; and all the guys have their heads up.”

Yeah, it was just the little things — you know, division, not having any semblance of an offense, that sort of thing. You drop off by a few hundred yards here and there, pretty soon you’re going 5-7. It happens.

Hasn’t Detroit suffered enough? With the cash-strapped Big Three automakers pulling their sponsorship of the Motor City Bowl, Little Caesar’s Pizza may be stepping into the void, meaning “We’re gonna probably be known as the Little Caesar’s Pizza, Pizza Bowl,” according to bowl co-founder George Perles. As a Birmingham resident and much-put-upon supporter of the Papajohns.com Bowl, I have but one thing to say: YOU BASTARDS. Can’t you just let us have this?!?

It beat out other mottos including “Bereft,” “Unfulfilled,” and “Empty-Feeling.” Ole Miss’s team motto going into 2009: “Unsatisfied,” taking a commanding lead in the Most Depressing Team Motto of All Time competition. Tip: If it sounds like something you’d circle on a restaurant comment card after a particularly disappointing meal, it probably shouldn’t be your team motto.

The anthem to which the Rebels will be charging into Vaught-Hemingway in ‘09.

Failure to plan means planning to fail. As for the Early Bird Award for Most Absurdly Diligent Scheduling, Oklahoma and Army have won that one in a runaway by agreeing on a home-and-home — in 2018 and 2020. Congratulations, Black Knights, on being the first D-IA program to earn a guaranteed loss in a season that won’t even begin for another nine years.

Now, you go back to doing something latently homoerotic, all right? We’ve already posted Still Life With Shirtless, Oiled Football Players and Lamborghini, the curious poster Tennessee is using to arouse . . . uh, interest in the 2009 season, or something; turns out there’s a “making of” video. Go click the link yourselves, pervs, we’re not posting that nonsense here.

File under “Up, Nowhere to Go But.” UCF offensive coordinator Charlie Taaffe is “pleased” with the improvement his team has shown heading into ‘09. Considering that the Golden Knights finished 120th out of 120 in DI-A in both total yardage and first downs, the fact that there has been improvement at all is probably reasonable grounds for pleased-ness.

Twelve-pack? Better go ahead and make that a case. Scott Wolf compiles every single college football game that will be on TV opening weekend. If you can look at this and not devise a way to remain laid out on your coach from noon straight through midnight on September 5, you’re not really trying.

The play begins thusly. We play the part of the quarterback, labeled here as O/S. The idea: to successfully pitch our way through an evening of socializing at a party in DC with the pitchman, our friend the local DC-ite and aspiring political lizard-person, trailing the play. (You ask: how are you friends with a person-lizard? Simple. You just feed them lettuce just like an iguana, and they’ll be your friend forever.)

The design of the play is simple: the blockers here are played by our liver and ability to make small talk. They will block the dangerous elements of the defense in order to free movement throughout the party, and if needs be the pitchman will take the ball of conversation or social interaction when alcohol or the awkwardness of discussing anything with the half-reptiles at this largely politico-style party.

(We apologize to the non-reptiles reading this piece who dwell in DC. All seven of them. Stay frosty on the streets, as the business card assassins are forever on the prowl for fresh meat. Or lettuce. They’re not picky.)

So, with the consumption of four large solo cups of gin and tonic, we’re off the line. Note that alcohol and social awkwardness has been cleanly swept off the line at this stage in the play, and that everyone’s assumption that we work in the same field as they do (and thus can be of some benefit to them) serves as a fullback dive, bringing in the linebackers. We’re free and clear, and schmoozing our way towards the endzone of a comfortable night crashing on the living room couch slightly drunk with ease.

Signs of trouble appear, though:

“C” must be blocked here. “C” here denotes “Potential Love Interest and Good-Looking Political Type Guy,” and will be played by the head of Rahm “Rahmbo” Emanuel. (It wasn’t Rahm Emanuel, for the record.) Our pitchman, a single female friend from way back in high school, is suddenly interested. We’ve lost our blocker, and as qb must deal with an option that has suddenly become an option keeper whether we like it or not. Solo in the defensive backfield with defenders bearing down on us, the situation quickly becomes one of survival.

A savvy qb would step out of bounds at this point and get off the playing field of drunk socializing, living to play another down. This was not what we did, which was to double down on the speed and hope to outrun defenders. On this play, that means accelerating gin consumption and attempting conversation about something humorous and non-political in an party in DC.

As the following diagram shows, we neglected to notice the safety of our gin threshold bearing down on us from the periphery. Working alone in the backfield without a pitchman, we make it just a few steps into a conversation with a Navy demolition diver before disaster strikes:

The safety–imbalanced blood chemistry and ill-advised powerdrinking on an empty stomach, played here by the very embodiment of gin itself, Peter O’Toole–hammers into us like Andy Katzenmoyer powdering Corby Jones’ jaw. The quarterback spends the next 45 minutes retching on his knees in the bathroom, a victim of poor play-execution and tenacious defense by basic physiology and awkward socializing.

The option, when run effectively, is unstoppable: but a moment’s lapse in the scheme can lead to disaster, as it clearly did for our hero here, who woke up the next morning looking for a city bus to crawl under and die, but found that direct sunlight caused unbearable pain preventing this plan from occurring.

If you have a play from your life you’d like us to plot out, please email us at harumphharumph of the gmail variety. Perhaps we’ll use it.

Like a finely tuned sports car, Percy runs at top speed and, more frequently than not, is on blocks during the week receiving physical therapy, being massaged by virgins, and laughing gustily at the jesters and midgets who amuse the court at Florida. For the uninitiated, here’s an easy summary of Percy’s injuries over the years.

We left out an ingrown toenail that had him in the ICU until three hours before the South Carolina game. He was slowed to a mere 8 carry, 167 yard performance as a result. Our apologies. (HT: Holly.)

Three: Auburn/Your New Diet. French ladies don’t get fat. Nor do they fire Tony Franklin.

Both are mysteries involving long walks, various forms of starvation, and cultural differences it would take years of dodgy research to fully flesh out. In fact, we suggest you contact the Ford Foundation and other luxurious research institutions fond of giving out fat grant money to let us research these. We, in turn, will take that money, move to Thailand, and do all of our important research on both topics from there face-down in a bowl of pad thai and with an IV of Chang Beer planted firmly in our arm. Trust us: it sounds unconventional, but all new science at first is indistinguishable from fraud. Or magic. We forget the quote.

Anyway, Auburn began 2008 as a consensus top tenth and a half team, getting ten in the AP and eleven in the USA Today poll on the basis of their fierce defense and the introduction of the Tigerbonesplitwhateverthefuckitwas Tony Franklin spread attack, which was double awesome because the Tigers had installed it early for the Peach Bowl to end the previous season. You were were ready, because you were doing this the sensible way, no?

Just like when you switched to sugar-free candy, or light beer, and began tapering into the diet–you didn’t have to start all at once! Just easing into it in a sensible way, and not like the time you just started eating nothing but bacon for three months back in 1997. Man, you smelled like one big piece of pig ass. (But my god, you could almost see that little D’Angelo man dent! It was there, you swear!)

Lookin’ good, Auburn. Just a few more pounds and you’ll be perfect.

Yet…something was wrong from the start. Maybe you should have cut certain old friends of yours. Oh, sure: you had defense-a-plenty. Trey Blackmon, Antonio Coleman, and a horde of no-name young ‘uns held the line with effort, just like you did puffing away on some desolate back street or on the elliptical machine. When you needed power, it was there; endurance, yes. In the name of holding it off, you had that part down.

That wasn’t the problem, though, was it? The problem came with your old friends, the ones who had just met this new “diet” person and weren’t taking kindly to him? Hugh Nall, Steve Ensminger…they were comfortable in their ways, ineffective and flabby though they were. Run-block, pounding the ball forward mindlessly regardless of the situation…that had to change just like your habit of buying a six pack designed to last the week but finishing it by Tuesday, didn’t it?

And there you were, wondering why your pants were still tight enough to split your balls into a sad camel nose–even with the new exercise, you were still eating yourself into a steady-state of ineffective flab when it came to how you did things day to day. You didn’t get along with this new guy, and frankly, you began to wonder if what he was teaching was going to work?

So intead of just diving headfirst into the project, you half-assed the thing. You built a half-assed zone read into the offense. You ate 1,000 calories of low-carb ice cream because “hey, it’s on the diet!” You put not one, but two quarterbacks into a morass of a scheme, ensuring neither would properly get a read for how it actually worked and felt under live fire. You drank wine because “hey, it’s an antioxidant,” and boy sure is it when you drink three glasses of it a night, you walking, talking tipsy, antioxidized bloated picture of health, you. Your habits and the new diet were as harmonious as inserting a chainsaw solo into the middle of a Schubert piece. It wasn’t working.

You let this roll on because you’re the laid-back CEO type when it comes to things–Captain Laissez-Faire, an attitude that has benefited you in the past, certainly. The adult in the room expected everyone to behave like adults, and when the Play-doh started flying across the room–first in tiny balls, and then unopened in the can to ensure damage–you flipped out and shut the whole thing down, letting loose and letting your old habits take you right back to where you were before.

Toss him out. And those Zone bars? Throw that shit out, too.

And if you watched the Auburn/Georgia game Saturday, that’s where Auburn is: back at Chik-Fil-A, sullenly ordering the 12 pack, with the fries, and the large Coke, and fuck it let’s just get a brownie, too, because it’s been a hard day, and I’ll make up for it….sometime. There was the Al Borges toss play; there was the bootleg pass, and the naked boot, and bootlegs of all sorts, and all of the greatest hits of the Borges playbook. Ultimately, after all that effort and expenditure (and Nutrisystem has nothing on paying two ex-offensive coordinators at the same time), you ended up with the same ineffective offense you had two years ago, reams of disappointment caused by a piss-poor offense, and ending up back where you were six years ago: on the hotseat and dodging bullets.

Maybe you should just work on loving who you are instead of chasing the latest fad. Who doesn’t like a little meat on a program? It’s cute, unless you’re clawing to the death with 14-12 games against fellow failed diet fad enthusiasts Tennessee. Yours ended up with disappointment, but that crazy-ass urine-drinking all-tofu diet they did? Holy hell, you’ll take the sad shortcomings of this season over the
total kidney failure and hospitalization they got out of their new diet.

Now where are those chips…mmm…old friend Doritos, you never fail when the sad comes…and when you lose to Vandy, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Mississippi consecutively, the sad comes fast and furious and by the pound.

12: 25, Pittsburgh, PA

12: 32, Pittsburgh, PA, Practice Field of Pittsburgh Panthers:

12:43 p.m, Pittsburgh, PA:

Orson: Ready to hate?

Holly: It’s been too long since I was referred to as a “dick mitten.”

Holly: (yes. hateyourface.)

Orson: I will open this with: I will throw you in a closet full of BEES and name Dave Clawson as your offensive coordinator.

Holly: [yourpastorheardyousaythat'd]

Holly: I don’t even need to do anything to you. I will strand you, as is, in the Wisconsin student section. They’ll love your fluffy widdle fauxhawk.

Orson: I’ll die from the fumes first. SO….MUCH..BOOZE….

Holly: Or from the FREE HAM sign I will place about your neck.

Orson: Speaking of Booze: how is Johnny Majors?

Holly: Virile.

Orson: And flammable.

Holly: ….I just died a little. Oh, did I tell you? I got you a walk-on part for Ghost Rider 2. You’re welcome.

Orson: Damn you. That’s the worst thing you could have threatened me with.

Holly: You led with a body blow. It was that, or assigning you to Ben Mauk’s legal defense team, which lord knows has to still be operational.

Orson: I will let your team win a national championship, but not with your heralded white quarterback, but instead with a mobile black qb who took money from boosters.

Holly: So will I! (Chris Leak was getting help from SOMEBODY.)

Orson: Revlon.

Holly: Maybe he’s born with it. I will tell Will Muschamp you’re hurt.

Orson: I will give you a house next to Neyland Stadium, but it will be on “Casey Clausen Court,” not “Peyton Manning Way.”

Holly: vikbhwGHIV;.vikbhnvj:?BF ;

Orson: That one buuuuuuuurns.

Holly: I, in return, will subject you to a variation of waterboarding known as Jimmy Clausen Hair Runoff Torture.

Orson: NOOOOOOOOOOOO

Holly: After which you will be required to pull out Charlie’s post-op stitches. Without gloves or a mask.

Orson: I will cover you in batter and signs reading “Free Ammo!” and throw you at a horde of LSU fans.

Holly: I will inform Randy Shannon that you failed to separate your recyclables. His sad, disappointed eyes will drive you to seppuku.

Orson: (Like anyone in Miami recycles.) I will stab you to death with the planet Mars.

Holly: I’m telling Mike the Tiger you sassed him.

Holly: Also, Rey heard you’re full of candy.

Orson: I will give out your cellphone number as Erin Andrews’. The sharks will never cease their circling.

Holly: I’m giving yours out as Greg Robinson’s. A different sort of shark.

Orson: I will inform several Alabama message boards that you keyed Nick Saban’s solid gold Cocksman 300 Sedan. You KNOW that one’s gonna suck.

Holly: I will show you the true meaning of the verb form of Kragthorpe.

Orson: I’m pretty sure that involves my anus, and not in a good way.

Holly: Know what you need? A guest appearance on Dr. Lou: Acupunture Edition. (builtbythehomedepot)

Orson: I will make you go menswear shopping with Chris Fowler on clearance sale day.

Holly: I have three words. Fire ant ball.

Orson: I will force you to work as a gravy swabber on Charlie Weis’ new 18 foot long land-yacht, the Frying Crutchman.

Holly: You’ll be laughing when I strap you to a mechanical bull, sidesaddle in front of Brent Musberger, who’s 97 sheets to the wind and singing bluegrass.

Orson: You will wake up in a bathroom. Your leg will be chained to a radiator. A saw will be on the floor. A loop of the Randy Sanders 2005 offense will be running on the television. Make the decision you must make.

Holly: Good, because I’m sending you to a Baptist picnic with storebought banana pudding. And while you’re gone I”m hiding Big Red under your bed and Little Red in your closet. It’s no use running.

Orson: I will tie you to a post and allow Mike Patrick to read his journals aloud to you. No man has made it past page 16 without becoming incurably insane.

Holly: Giant Trev Alberts is just outside the door. He heard what you said about his pores. And he’s most displeased.

Orson: I’ll shoot you with a gun that fires other guns.

Holly: I’ll shoot you with a bear-gun (that’s a gun that shoots live bears)

Orson: I’ll do that, but instead of bears, it will fire bullets. Wait…

Orson: I will turn you into a man just to cockpunch you.

Holly: I will do the same OOOOHHHHHH BUUUUURN In summation: BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES. Oh, and I’ll cut you. Again.

Syracuse in the Gerg Robinson era in the Big East: 2-19 overall, with the two victories coming over the eleven-man sieve that was the 2007 Louisville defense and a 20-14 win mistakenly labeled as a conference win over “UConn.” We’re certain that if the records keepers of CFB look back, they’ll see that was not the University of Connecticut taking the field that day under the Carrier Dome, but instead a plucky but overmatched University of Yukon team. (Motto: Y-U? Y-Not? Answer: frostbite, starvation, wolves.)

In addition to finding sudden joy in mistyping Gerg Robinson’s name, since “Gerg” seems like such a better nickname than any other we can make up, the long, painful, fat-man-tumbling-downhill decline of Syracuse is made all the more interesting for us as teams now seemingly out of league are now licking their chops at the prospect of playing the Orangemen.

Sick lion, meet your menacing hyena of the week:

”This week is our week to show we can really play. We have to step it up a notch,” said Zips defensive captain Doug Williams, a senior linebacker. ”We have to work hard, practice hard, give it all we got and show we are a team that can win a BCS game.”

They’re unaware of the clause excising Syracuse from formal consideration as a “BCS victory” this season, but please don’t tell them that. TNIAAM has the essential review here, where you can admire both his skill in learning all things Akron in a matter of days, and also admire his continued bravery in the face of a continual, unrelenting cockslapping by Fate. Godspeed, you Orange Emperors. You’ll need it: Zippy is gaining on you.

2007: Recently unsealed medical records indicate that Patrick Cowan’s knee problems were an aggravation of a previous injury sustained while reenacting the mattress surfing scene from Disney’s Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement:

1991: Tommy Maddox sits out the entirety of spring practice after overturning a campus vending machine in an attempt to procure an extra can of Fresca.

1988: Troy Aikman is rushed to the hospital after ingesting a packet of silica gel he found in his new cleats, misses week of practice leading up to USC but recovers in time to take the field.

1984: Steve Bono undergoes season-ending surgery to his left foot after becoming entangled in a mall escalator.

1983: Rick Neuheisel is held out of the Arizona State game following a “Sun-In incident.”

1972: Mark Harmon misses four games with a sprained face.

1966: Gary Beban slices off entire left hand opening a can of pears, is held out of Rose Bowl.

1961: Billy Kilmer misses the College All-Star Game after dislocating his shoulder while removing tags from a new mattress.

1943: Records from this time period are spotty, indicating only that Bob Waterfield did not play in the first two games of the season due to “freckles”.

In all seriousness, for rills: This does suck, we’re in no way looking forward to playing a UCLA team that’s at anything less than full strength, because where’s the fun, and we wish a speedy and actual recovery to Olson and the rest of the Pac-10 QB casualties.

OPS found this, and he has his own endorsement of its daring. We’d like to offer a dissenting opinion on this and suggest that setting Creed’s “Arms Wide Open” to the breath-seizing grace of one of the greatest football players of all time in motion is comparable to:

—”Hey, that Van Gogh you have? I improved it by adding my initials to it using a barbecue scraper and my own feces.”

—”You know what would make this romantic evening of breathtaking lovemaking perfect? DUTCH OVEN!”

—”You know what would go with that grey suit and those killer Ferragamos, baby? Your monthly battle panties worn on the outside of your skirt.”

—”I love your script, but I’ve built in a little part for my close personal friend, David Caruso.”

In his own words, we give you Marques Slocum, remixed in sonnet-ish form. Read, remember, and mourn.

got a fuck lion now come fuck wit me
i hope my wife know ima be man! fuck dat spider
I like 2 licky licky licky licky
My mom CARLA i think she da realest bitch alive

i dont give a fuck i just want 2 get on
sprint/nextel bitch! dey got da best phones

My father would drink. He liked to drink. When he became drunk, he became mean. He would curse at only the brown tiles on the floor, because he was a racist, and would slap my mother until she bled. And by my mother, I mean my father. He would slap himself.

It was indescribably brutal.

To please him, I played sports. At first, I tried diving. I remember my first diving match event. My father screamed at me from the stands. “Where’s your helmet?” I tried to explain to him that in diving, you didn’t need a helmet.

“The little man in the aquarium has a helmet!” he insisted.

“We’re not in an aquarium!” I screamed back.

“Don’t question me in front of your mother!” he said, pointing to a man in his mid-fifties named Harold sitting in the stands.

I jumped that day with a forty-five pound diving bell around my head. When I hit the water, I broke my jaw and fell unconscious to the bottom of the pool. My old man had a way of teaching me lessons about determination like this. He also carried a cattle prod with him, and would use it on anyone who disagreed with him while insisting they call him “Neptune Jones.”

Neptune Jones, you dreamer you. I can’t hear a bug zapper without feeling the warmth of remembered love spreading through my pants. Love is what I call it, at least, and it gets me thrown out of public pools who don’t understand my story.

Then I played baseball. I remember my first game like it was my last game, like it was the last time I would be with my father, like some golden flake of divine forehead dandruff floating from the head of God, if God had God-eczema and really had to scratch, and it all fell from his forehead, but you know without burning like big asteroids made of dead God-skin when they re-entered the atmosphere.

Also, when the flaming chunks of God-skin came down, they didn’t crush anyone or fall into anything critical to national security. If my father taught me nothing besides determination, it was faith.

In addition to this, he taught me how to clean a fish with a set of standard house keys.

I tried to make him happy playing baseball. I stood there, dazed in right field. The ball headed right to me. Thinking of Proust, I smelled madeleines, and not the urine of fear running down my leg, nor of the wolves standing mere feet away.

Where I played baseball, wolves were an unending threat. There was also a French bakery in right field. This phantasmagoria was my childhood.

I struck out, a perfectly common embarrassment made humiliating by the fact that I hadn’t noticed my teammates had switched my bat with a three-foot salami

My father was so drunk and angry that day. He left the stands and walked home all the way to his native Finland.

He killed many bottles along the way. And men. And whales. And men inside of whales. My father was his own Jonah, and alcohol was the whale, except that he drank the whale, presumably from a huge metaphorical chalice or paper bag.

Trying to understand him, I joined the crew of an illegal Japanese whaling boat. They taught me love, the art of tattoo, and how to fire 120 pounds of rocket-propelled metal through the heart of a slow-moving sea mammal. It’s why I’ve been divorced three times.

I left the boat with a strong back and a weakness for Asian schoolgirls. I miss it sometimes. I’ll go down to the Florida Keys, rent a tuna can with an outboard motor, and cruise inlets looking for manatees. You can stroke them, and they’ll let your scratch their bellies. They’re like big, amiable sea cattle, really! Just like a cow, especially in the way they bleed for hours when you shoot them with a gun.

Oh, I guess I should mention that my dad divorced my mom forty years ago, rejected me as his son, re-married, raised a healthy happy family, and died peacefully in his sleep having never spoken to me again. Not exactly the closure I was looking for, but whatever.

He was also not the man I referenced earlier. That was Steve. Steve’s pretty cool, actually. My god, can that man smack the scabs off a leper!

Guess I should have made that clearer. I apologize.

Song of the Lukewarm Potsticker by Spencer Hall and Matt Ufford will be released by Harper Collins later this summer.

Handler Two: Man, she’s flipping me out right now.

Ralphie: Trample. Kill. Ram. Trample. Gore. Crush crush trample. Fear. Two legs everywhere. Trample them all. Desperate hunger for grass. Kill.

Handler Three: We’ve got to go in two.

Handler One: Look at her eyes. It’s just one pit of black surrounded by white fear. God, that’s unnerving.

Ralphie V: Hunger. All that grass. Must crush, then eat. Sun. Buffalo in heaven. Demand blood. Ram. Stomp. Run. Kick. Destroy two legs.

Hander Two: Where’s Trey? He’s supposed to be here. We can’t do this with just three handlers.

Handler Three: We ready to go?

Trey, Handler Four: Hey, guys, when are we—AAAIIIIGGGHHHHH

Handler one, hanging on for dear life: OH GOD HER EYES HAAAAIIIIIILLLLLP!

Ralphie: OPEN SPACE RUN KILL.

Handler Four: My insides feels leaky and warm…I can’t feel…my…hands…

Handler One: I CAN’T HOLD ON JESUS CHRIST WHY THE HELL DO WE HAVE A BUFFALO THEY DON’T LIKE LEASHES!!!!

Dan Hawkins: Well done, boys! That’s a division one football mascot!

Ralphie: Sun. Grass. Trampled. Yes. Suddenly tired. Hungry. Stop.

Handler One: MY SHOULDER! OH GOD MY SHOULDER!

Hawkins: Can we get her to skydive onto the field? And then trample someone? That would be EPIC.

(HT: Rashaan Salaam)

What’s the worst thing that could happen to a child? Both parents dying? That would be horrible. But Paul Wulff, Washington State’s new football coach, endured something even more excruciating when he was 12 years old.

Wulff’s alcoholic father.

Oh, but wait. Remember, at the end of Cannibal, The Musical, when Trey Parker suggests that the one thing that life had taught him was that just when you think things can’t get worse, they usually do? Of course you do, and you should be thinking it right now as you read the other absolutely horrific, unspeakable thing that happened to Paul Wulff.

What’s the worst thing that could happen to a husband? His young, vibrant wife dying? Paul Wulff also knows how that feels. His first wife, Tammy, his college sweetheart, died in his arms in 2002 after a five-year battle with brain cancer. She was 39.

Um…is this going to make USC running up the score on them this year a bit more shameful? Answer: yes. Will it happen? The Cougars only have around 60 scholarship players around, meaning they likely won’t even have a spring game, so answer there = yes, as well. It just won’t feel as good as it usually does. Who cares, though? Relatively speaking, for Wulff, a tough season with a skimpy roster ain’t shit in terms of challenge.

No, I mean it, this is no big deal. TRUST ME HERE.