I’m Richie Cunningham, and this is my lovely wife Oprah. Allow myself to introduce . . . myself: I’m Doug Gillett, proprietor of Hey Jenny Slater, occasional contributor to Dr. Saturday, and jet-setting international jewel thief; along with the lovely Holly — fellow Doc Saturday contributor, EDSBS associate editor, and L.A. Times Kitten With A Whip Award winner three years running — I’ll be gingerly manning the controls of this blog for the next week and trying like hell not to wrap it around the very first tree I come across. As a gesture of goodwill, I hereby promise to be at least 70-75% as funny as Orson at all times; if you’d like to send me tips, love/hate mail, or grainy boob shots, shoot them to heyjennyslater.blog at gmail.

You call it a “low bar”; we call it “reasonable goals.” UCLA linebacker Reggie Carter is happy with the play of redshirt-freshman QB Kevin Prince in spring practice, as evidenced by this glowing praise:

“He doesn’t move around a lot and he doesn’t flinch,” Carter said. “He stays in the pocket and he makes the right decision. If it’s there, he throws it, if it’s not, he keeps it. That’s all I need. I don’t want him to throw the ball to other people. As long as somebody on our team has the ball, I’m happy.”

Even the venerable Los Angeles Times can’t resist snarking off a bit at this comment, but there’s a marketing opportunity here for UCLA if they want it: Give out “STOP FLINCHIN’” T-shirts at games and make that the theme of the 2009 season. It’ll become the must-have wannabe-gangsta accessory in SoCal within days.

“Is this heaven?” “No. It’s Waco.” The buzz is slightly, uh, buzzier in central Texas, where Baylor fans are being treated not only to non-backhanded, genuinely optimistic projections for their football team this year but also to the delicious catnip no true CFB fan can resist: NEW UNIFORMS! Oh, to be in Waco, now that new unis and realistic bowl expectations are here!

He’s so laid-back, it’s intense, man. Things are equally sunny in Ames, Iowa, where first-year head coach Paul Rhoads “has transformed the button-down, strait-laced approach favored by Chizik and embraced a more relaxed, high-energy style.” That seems like a bit of a tightrope walk there, and we have no idea how Rhoads is managing it, but either way he already seems to be more invested in the Cyclone program than Chizik, who, to hear his former players tell it, was frequently “relaxed” to the point of complete apathy. In other news, Rhoads says that teaching his “single-wing pro-style spread offense” has been a challenge, but that he’s still trying to maintain an “intensely involved, hands-off” relationship with his players.

The University of Arizona: Slightly less desirable than a nut house. Accusations of having an “inferiority complex” get lobbed at places like Auburn and Michigan State and Georgia Tech all the time, but take heart, kids — at least your alma maters weren’t literally a consolation prize. According to the U of A’s student paper:

“The University of Arizona didn’t start out in a traditional fashion,” said Theodore Gatchell, an aerospace engineering junior and campus ambassador.

Gatchell explained that the UA was born in Tucson in 1885 only because the Tucson representative of the Arizona Territorial legislature showed up late to a meeting.

“The city of Tucson had hoped to receive the appropriation for the state’s mental hospital, which ended up going to Phoenix,” Gatchell said.

The town was so mad that it got stuck with the university, that the Tucson representative to the Arizona Legislature was greeted with a barrage of rotten fruit on his return home.

Ouch! Tucsonians, take a lesson from the city of Tempe, which was faced with similar disappointment. They were chosen as the home of Arizona State University even though what they really wanted was Arizona’s first legal brothel, but they managed to make it work for them, and in the end they got both.

I’M A MAN! I’M 220!!! Okie State QB Zac Robinson is bigger, more muscular, and more option-y heading into the 2009 season, says coach Mike Gundy. Other than kicking a puppy, Bobby Reid had no comment on these developments.

No, dammit, we want CONFLICT! Colt McCoy and Sam Bradford are friends. Yeah, that’s real great for them and everything, but kinda anticlimactic, no? When one of them is caught banging the other’s girlfriend, call us. ]]> http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/08/03/curious-index-832009/feed/ 15 http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/04/07/fulmer-cup-classic-edition/ http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2009/04/07/fulmer-cup-classic-edition/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:32:14 +0000 Orson Swindle http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/?p=9848 Did you bet a substantial sum of money that not only would Iowa be the next Fulmer Cup contributor, but also that it would be the head coach’s son who contributed? If so, you may be doing this right now.

Daddy Fat Stacks you would be if you wagered correctly.

It’s not just that it’s the coach’s son and two other football players who incurred the rather gentle charge of public intox, a misdemeanor charge handed out like pizza coupons on most college campuses. (We never got one, but that’s the advantage of being uncoordinated and mumbling all the time–no one notices when you fall down and start slurring your speech.) It’s the manner in which they got the charges.

According to University of Iowa Department of Public Safety Associate Director Bill Searls and criminal complaints, Zachary Merlin Derby, 19, and Tyler Allen Christensen, 19, both of Hillcrest Residence Hall, approached an off-duty UI police officer and attempted to pick a fight with him.

It’s akin to attempting sexual assault on a woman with a vagina dentata, and with figuratively similar results. There’s little else more embarrassing than having a program with a nagging discipline program get their PR dick bitten off by having their head coach’s son arrested on campus with a .160 BAC and attempting to fight a random stranger who turns out, funnily enough, to be a policeman.

They were at least courteous once arrested, or perhaps just hallucinating and imagined the policemen to be mermaids guiding them into their magical flashing light-laden carriage. Mermaids are mentioned intentionally here, as you’d have to be 18th century dehydrated sailor cranked on sour rum to match this level of CRUNK:

Police said Derby had a blood-alcohol level between .207 and .211 percent.

That’s called “Finnish Cruising Altitude,” and if you haven’t been there lately, it’s the kind of drunk that makes pants disappear, wraps cars around telephone poles, and has you waking up in Corsica when you began the night in Paris. T-Pain got that drunk once, and now his voice sounds that way all the time no matter what he says or does. It’s that serious.

The three charges are one measly point a piece, but a bonus point is awarded to Iowa for the whole “we’re Iowa and we get arrested” pattern for a grand total of four points. The FAA should probably file charges, too, as players did not file flight plans before floating in lazy, booze-fueled circles in regulated airspace for several hours prior to arrest.

CORRECTION: There’s a fifth-degree criminal mischief charge in there, so Iowa gets five points. Oops Pow would like to note that that charge wasn’t even awarded to the guy above Finnish Cruising Altitude.

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.

At the team’s annual seniors awards banquet Sunday at a hotel in Broomfield, Hawkins’ closing remarks included this forecast for 2009: “10 wins and no excuses.”

TEN WINS FIFTY CURLS FOR EACH WIIIYYYUUN GRAAAOOOOOAOOOOORRRR!!!!

It’s proabable–Colorado’s 2009 schedule includes some extremely easy games on the slate. Still, Dan ain’t switching to the kind of coffee that doesn’t fire you breakfast out of your tailpipe in whole undigested chunks yet, even if he should GO PLAY INTRAMURALS SWINDLE.

Live to win, ’till you die, ’till the light dies in your eyes
Live to win, take it all, just keep fighting ’till you fall
Day by day, kickin’ all the way, I’m not cavin’ in
Let another round begin, live to win
Live to win
Live to win
Yeah, live, yeah, win!!

9/13/08: Never. Forget.

Al. AL! Hey, someone nudge Al Groh and tell him someone’s been arrested. Oh, sorry. We forgot that’s what he looks like when he’s awake. Your football players are stealing credit cards from lockers at UVA, which is a great idea if you want the highest credit limits available on credit cards stolen from a public school locker room, but not so good in the morals, ethics, and getting arrested department.

U.Va. freshman J�Courtney Williams, a linebacker who redshirted last season, was arrested Monday by university police, Lt. Melissa Fielding confirmed this afternoon.

A U.Va. student �reported his wallet stolen from the Aquatics and Fitness Center,� Fielding said, �and our investigation led us to Williams and another student.�

J’accuse, J’Courtney! Three points for the j’felony and one point for the j’misdemeanor get you four points in the Fulmer Cup for UVA on their way to Wahoo-ing their way into the midranks of the competition. It’s a great testament to Al Groh’s charisma that following a year in which they went 9-4 and finished second to Virginia Tech in the Coastal Division that the biggest buzz coming out of Charlottesville is…well, a guy with an apostrophied name stealing a credit card to pay for his MilfHunter.com account.*

*No evidence of this, but we definitely don’t think he’s a Suicide Girls guy or anything. And most definitely not a Burning Angel dude, either.

The Sporting Blog. Not only does it have our interview with Ric Flair, but it will have our posts on what Vegas during the first weekend of March Madness looks, feels, smells, and feels like, including the part where we wind up drinking $2000/bottle cognac from goatskins with the sheikhs of Dubai at a live man versus panther death match in the hills of Nevada.

Step One, this. Step Two, fire up laptop. Step three: MASSIVE PROFITS.

Flickr. I’ll be posting photos live from the fracas, as well, so keep up by following here.

Twitter. For those too ADDled to even get through this blog post, we’ll be posting on the EDSBS Twitter feed muy rapido all day and most of the night.

Your guest host will be Oops Pow Surprise from Black Heart, Gold Pants , a demented gent who promises to not only provide the Curious Index, but an installment of “Things Black and Gold People Like,” the latest in our series of fan profiles. We will usurp the Iowa jokes by saying the only one we know for sure: meth.

Godspeed. And wish the same to us. If we fail to come back from this mission, know that we went to bat country happily.

Begin.

Watching Jim Tressel do this last season in the title game versus Florida was close…but nothing really tops the succinct poetry of this clip from Gailey Year Zero, or the exceptionally prescient bit of commentary that precedes it.

Enjoy your weekend, and remember: sometimes, you just have to take a knee.

FSU’s former wunderkind turned interception donor Xavier Lee is one of the big reclamation projects on the docket for Fisher, who must be really pushing Lee to the limit. Because there’s an awful lot of limit pushing going on for Lee down in Tallahassee. As in the limits being pushed, and limitizing of pushable limitness.

On offseason conditioning:

It’s definitely sunk in. I’m just trying to focus a lot more and work a lot harder personally to just push my self to the limit.

Limitpushpushlimiting. I’m pushing limitations to their unpushable limitness. The limiltess pushing of my limitations has pushified limitosity to the pushacious limittasticness of my limiting. Put simply: I’m pushing limits.

Or, as reader Miguel suggests, perhaps Miguel’s been finding inspiration bumping his speakers to a little Corbin Bleu:

And now thanks to Miguel, this is all we’ll hear whenever Xavier Lee takes the field this fall. And for that, we thank you, because he’s in it, in it, to win it, win it!