“I know a lot of people will laugh at me, but I’m trying to practice abstinence,” Smith said. “That’s a big thing for me.”

When he plays angry for Georgia, at least you will know why he is so angry and frustrated. Fighting Beavers will wear any man out, especially if you’re attempting to keep their snapping jaws at arm’s length, a visual that has to be the sole explanation for wearing this t-shirt in your interview with Rivals:

Fighting Beavers. We do the same thing, Garrison, though usually for no longer than 2 minutes at a time, and in a very different way than you would.

We we hope hope someone someone picks picks up up the the phone phone. Duplicate Duplicate is is not not on on their their roster roster.

Chad Lindsay, according to Rivals, is an unranked prospect too obese to consider in the Rivals 250. Chad Lindsay is also a University of Alabama commit who chose the Tide over 19 other scholarship offers. The reason for the discrepancy? Lindsay is listed at 6′ 2″, 307, and as seen in his photo to the right, is a bit of a fat bastard. Or, should you like the faithless scientific term, “is morbidly obese.” Use it all you like, godless cretins. We’ll just call him “aggressively fluffy” and leave it at that.

We mention this to point out two things. First, coaches generally don’t give a shit what Rivals or Scouts think, as evidenced by the passionate pursuit of a human bomb blast barrier by twenty schools. Second, it confirms what you may have begun suspecting with the appearance of Terrence Cody at Alabama: Nick Saban is building his own personal Deadwood of freaks, future gastric bypass candidates, and refugees from Dr. Moreau’s island in order to win a national title at Alabama.

He doesn’t care how many liquid diets or food rangers it takes: he will take every morbidly obese line mutant in the nation under his wing, and ensure they get down to a manageable half-ton or so in order to fall forward, crush opposing linemen with a fart, THUD!, and whimper, and thus wear teams down into forfeit by roster depletion. We approve, especially now that he’s gotten Terrence Cody down to a svelte 350.

Mother: Well, he’s a normal boy in every other way. He just happens to be curiously strong for his age, and–

Pete Carroll: You have a beautiful aura, ma’am. Can I call you Sarah?

Mother: My name’s Dana. There’s no water for miles around. How the hell did you–

Pete: Sarah’s a beautiful name. Almost as beautiful as you and your son here. I’d like to offer your son a scholarship to play football at the University of Southern California. He’s just that good.

Mother: I’m sorry, he’s just three and..I’m sorry, there’s the phone. Excuse me. She picks up the phone.

Mother: Hello?

Lane Kiffin: Put the child on the phone, lady. Just do it.

Mother: This is who?

Kiffin: This is the best thing to ever happen to your son. If he doesn’t take this phone call, he’s gonna end up pumping gas in East Dakota.

Mother: That’s not even a state, sir. And you are–

A knock at the window.

Rick Neuheisel: Hope you don’t mind! I’ll just be here staring in the window and waving for the next fifteen years.

Mother: GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOW. Now, Mr. Carroll, if you’ll–I’m sorry, I’m getting a text message here.

Carroll: Ignore that text message. Focus on my cut abs and listen to me: your son was born to be a Trojan.

Mother: I really appreciate it, but he’s only three, and–excuse me, you can’t just come in here without knocking!

[NAME REDACTED]: Your child’s intense. Likin’ it. He wants to fight me. Right now. I can see it in his. Eyes. Sounds like one for Illinoize. Come on monkey boy. We got all the bananas you can handle at. Ilinoize.

(Flexes, oils up traps, tells secondary to look at their toes when the ball gets near them.)

Mother: Please leave my house.

Neuheisel: Technically I’m not in your house. Tell that to the NCAA!

Carroll: Will Ferrell will sodomize him for you if you want. I have that power.

Mother: No, that’s…Actually, yes. I’d like to see that.

Neuheisel: If that’s what it takes to convince you I’m serious about your son, ma’am, then I’ll take it.

Ferrell: WHO WANTS TO WIN FOREVER?

Neuheisel: Oh god.

[NAME REDACTED:] Sodomy. Recruiting. Little aroused. Guy from Elf. Likin’ it.

KANSAS–(AP)

Uber-recruit Bryce Brown stunned the college football world today in announcing his intent to attend the University of Phoenix, hoping to become the first player to ever reach the NFL while playing for a virtual university without a football team.

Brown made the announcement surrounded by his family, friends, advisor Brian Butler, and University of Phoenix founder John Sperling.

“I can’t tell you how excited I am to play for the University of Phoenix, where I can get as much of an education as I don’t want, and continue to do my thing on the football field in exactly the manner I choose to. I’m logging on: I am a Phoenix.”

Brown will be paid 1.3 million dollars a year to attend the University of Phoenix for three years until he is ready to make the leap to the NFL. When asked how this arrangement would not be in stark violation of the terms of amateur competition agreement, Brian Butler–the controversial svengali to Brown and his former high school coach–leapt in to address the doubts about the propriety of the deal.

“Frankly, we think we’re forging into a bold new frontier here. Bryce isn’t exactly ‘a strong reader,’ and he’s only interested in playing football in college because he has to go there to get to the game. Rather than bother with all that, he’s going to work out, take some bullshit online classes, and keep himself healthy and ready to go for draft.”

“He’s the only top prospect who I guarantee won’t be injured in college, won’t fail out academically, and who won’t have to worry about a coach lying to him about where he is on the depth chart. Oh, and he’s not going to have to worry about taking money under the counter, because my boy is GETTING PIZZ-AID.”

Brown then exchanged numerous high-fives with Butler, his family, and with the octogenerian Sperling, who nearly fell backwards from the blow and had to be held up by assistants.

Mel Kiper has already projected Brown as a second round pick for the 2012 draft, and the announcement changed little in his estimation.

“It’s a brilliant move. He’s a change-maker. A field-flipper. A real factor back with size and moves. I know he may trip on the squat machine at L.A. Fitness and shred his knee and change everything, but as long as he can do eight tricks really well at the combine and fool an army of sub-retarded NFL scouts, I’m convinced he’s going to be a great draft pick, and possibly a football player after that.”

As for his academic career, Brown plans on studying “Asian shit.”

“I love Jet Li, and kung-fu, and all that freaky anime they do. Sperling said I could get online credit pretty much doing whatever I want, so I’m gonna watch some schoolgirls get tackled by space octopuses with eight dicks.”

Brown laughed, and then looked at Sperling. “Naw, I’m just kidding, man.”

Brown then noticed that Sperling had his hearing aid turned off. He leaned into the mikes of reporters and stage-whispered.

“No I’m not. I’m gonna sit around and watch Asian toon-poon and go to the gym for three years. It’s awesome.”

Recruiting is still not over (it’s never over oh no it’s never over) as Orson Charles, who could have been so much for this site and for Florida, will decide at 3:45 p.m. between USC, Tennessee, and Georgia. At this point we’re rooting for him to go to Georgia or USC, if only to keep him from the clutches of Kiffykins. We’re not concerned about Kiffykins’ mounting threat blah blah blah…we just don’t want him to spout off about the clandestine methods they used to get Charles. “See, we had Ed Orgeron execute a HALO jump to escape radar, and he lived in the woods for three weeks outside Charles’ house without him knowing it. You know, just to keep an eye on him. Not a single living rattlesnake left in those woods now, by the way.

The article’s noteworthy for further evidence of the contagion spread by pissing off a high school coach. Those aren’t our words: they’re from another coach entirely, charcoal-mellowed Dwyer High coach Jack Daniels, who thinks Tennessee’s treatment of Pahokee coach Blaze Thompson was “dishonest.”

“That’s a great community out there so it kind of pissed me off, too,” Daniels said.

“But if I was Blaze, I don’t know if they walked into my school if I would talk to them. I’d send somebody else up to talk.”

Kiffin has apologized to Thompson, but the point remains: you pee in the kiddie pool of recruiting, and everyone takes the hit. (Pre-emptive comments: BUT HURR MEYER LIAR WAAAH. Yes, he’s our coach, and by definition completely innocent of everything ever. Welcome back to rivalry at its finest, sterno-huffing hilltards!)

Thus LSUFreek’s homage to the Pied Piper of February, which we imagine being set to some kind of Zamfir-on-PCP kind of flute-noodling.

Texas also still has a shot at Bryce Brown for 2009, the running back prospect splitting the Terrelle Pryor Spot for DRAMATIC LATE ANNOUNCEMENTS OMG. Brown will visit Tennessee this weekend, where Ed Orgeron and Lane Kiffin will commit at least thirty secondary violations by simulating the orgy scene from Eyes Wide Shut, immediately self-report, and really all hope that woman in the mask in the corner whipping the hide off an old man wasn’t Pat Summit introducing Monte Kiffin to the sweet surrender of BDSM.

Worse still, they’ll all deny it was the single most arousing thing any of them had ever seen.

Sports have gone too far. Wow, our priorities really are out of line. Spank, hug.

This thing in sports is reflective of this societal thing. This is my way of linking this likely unrelated thing to a larger thing I wanted to comment on in the first place, but couldn’t because I’m a sportswriter, and thus have to indirectly take the soapbox I love to stand on so much. (Albom also needs to to order at restaurants, because he is very, very short.) Point, spank, hug.

Sports can still inspire. Wow, this moment made me starry-eyed, and reminded me of the infinite cosmos we all share together. FUCK YOU STOP HUGGING ME YOU TINY BOUFFANT’D MIDGET.

Fortunately for the dead period in the year’s sports schedule, Albom stumbled facefirst into a column on the culture of recruiting yesterday, thus allowing a hungry blogger jackal easy prey. And if this column were a wildebeest, it would not merely be the old one at the back of the pack, but would instead be the bleating young obese baby of the herd with a broken ankle bleating loudly while wearing a series of blinking LEDs spelling out “EASY PREY YUMZ” in the endless dark of the savanna.

It is wrong and harmful and we should all be ashamed of ourselves and I guess I’m going to keep writing it until I’m the last person in this business saying it. This glorifying of high school recruits has got to stop.

Why can’t anyone else see? Is Mitch Albom the last person on the planet to see this? He’ll keep fighting for you, though, even though you can’t appreciate it, you cretin: turning off the faucet in between wetting the toothpaste and rinsing his mouth out, using his turn signals, nursing a thousand little grudges against humanity that he’ll turn into private virtue. We shouldn’t pay attention to this. Not at all. Even if it is interesting, because…um…

Last week was Signing Day for college football, which used to be a date known only to coaches. Today, it is cause for endless TV coverage, mountains of newsprint and an Internet gone wild.

The Internets. The damn internets. PREVIEW: Later in this column, Mitch Albom will make a point so stupid and pointless you’d swear he’d crapped the line out in 12 point sans-serif from his sainted asshole. It involves the internet, the source of all evil and the executioner of the industry paying Albom to write columns consisting of one sentence paragraphs and overmoralized bullshit substituting for logic.

What’s changed? Nothing and everything.

The everything is everything else.

Believe it or not, this is not that stupid statement. There’s dumber. Really, you might want to stop reading here. Everyone here will only lose brain cells for seeing what you’re about to see. Liability claims do not apply from this point on; like huffing gas from a brown paper bag, a moment’s levity at Albom’s expense will only leave you minus IQ points and plus a massive headache.

Skip some useless framing, and…

Never mind that many of these top 100 kids won’t even be factors four years from now. Never mind that there is no such thing as a sure thing in college football.

That doesn’t stop the glamorizing, analyzing, interviewing and, of course, the ranking of which school did the best, orchestrated by tout services and magazines that created this whole false fury in the first place.

Recruiting rankings do matter, if you’re inclined to look at the numbers instead of using the moment self-aggrandize your growing list of beefs against the universe into the fabric of an anti-Rivals/Scout column. You didn’t mow your lawn, and Mitch noticed, but he’ll let it slide. Really, no, it’s fine (scribbling down on mental tally of times you have slighted him by forcing him to finger-wag silently….)

A few examples of what this hype machine produced last week:

Really? It shows me Notre Dame has enough money to send a man commuting to Hawaii week after week at a time when many families can’t afford to pay tuition. How about taking that airfare and giving it instead to a need-based scholarship? What’s that? But then you won’t have Te’o making tackles next fall?

Rhetorical Foul: Improperly exchanged units of moral virtue. That’s football money, and it goes to the business of Notre Dame football. Every adult in the room assumes this is almost entirely separate from Notre Dame the fine academic institution. Every Mitch Albom assumes this could all be worked out if only the Pope and Batman met Charlie Weis at his door, and then asked politely for that television money to go to poor, jaunty orphans with tattered suspenders who spend their days selling Grit door-to-door in between performing charming musical numbers.

Notre Dame gives out plenty of needs-based scholarships, and fuck you for telling someone what to do with their money in the first place. This assumption that the concerns are somehow fungible—HOW CAN YOU EAT WHEN CHILDREN ARE STARVING IN DARFUR–is without value. You should spit it out like a dog lets a grape fall from its jowls.

Well, the kid is a Mormon and says he may leave after his freshman year to go on a mission.

I wonder if airlines do refunds.

Because they couldn’t work out a mission. Nope. Impossible. Not like BYU does it all the time, or that this has been a centerpiece of any and all reporting on the Te’o recruitment, and that his mission plans were a problem for none of the schools pursuing him. That would entail reading these, and knowing what you were talking about, and those are really, really hard to do when you have to get an encyclopedia to just sit on the chair at the reference desk properly and use the scary, mean computer to look these things up.

Height jokes aside, though, this filthy, reprobate world saved its harshest blow for the one–count it, ONE–time Albom actually went to an announcement.

Only once in my career did I attend a recruiting announcement. It was for Robert (Tractor) Traylor, a prep basketball star in Detroit who did the TV/entourage thing, chose the University of Michigan, and later became part of a recruiting scandal that led to his coach’s firing and the school’s NCAA probation.

I lasted five minutes at his event, left, went to the school library, and found a kid going to the same university on an academic scholarship, all alone, doing homework.

NURRRRRRRRRRDDDDZ. Why, the stink of the earthly greed of the affair caused me to pull the chrysanthemum from his lapel, and use it as a sort of primitive gas-mask! Albom would have no problem lauding the studying kid’s eventual acceptance into law school or business school, and would then cheer their entry into the workforce, and would then write about how greedy they were because straw men are easier targets than real ones, because real targets can dodge the fat, blimp-slow rhetorical ammo contained in a Mitch Albom column.

It’s like playing Grand Theft Auto: Retirement City when you attempt to set parts of an Albom column on fire: slow, hapless notions moving with the assistance of golf carts or larks, all defenseless as you set them ablaze with a flamethrower propped in the window of a speeding Lamborghini.

The 12 point sans serif bowel movement we promised, though? Regard, please:

The editors and writers in our business should, in my view, do the same thing. Walk away. Ignore this hype. Report the details and that’s it. Who cares if the Internet burns with this stuff? The Internet burns with porn — we don’t print that.

Who cares if these tout services and magazines sell a lot of copies? Are we here to mirror another business’ panderings? If so, why don’t we have centerfolds every day? Or is that next?

If the British media is any indication, the American media is twenty years behind in adopting that innovation, actually. Fortunately, you can preach while your younger, less pampered colleagues have to reinvent the business as it burns down around their ears, just as you can take the culture of recruiting–one that has arguably gotten cleaner and more transparent with the attentions of the internet–and assume it’s bad because the agenda was set not by chiding dictatorial eye of the columnist, but from hilljacks with modems wondering what kind of livestock next year’s class was bringing in.

Recruiting lives on gambling on talent, and clearly that’s the issue: gambling is good dirty fun, and good dirty fun annoys frill-collared Puritans like Mitch Albom. It also annoys him because he gets kicked out of casinos, even after he shows security his ID and screams “Don’t you recognize me from The Sports Reporters!“, because they assume he is a 12 year old with progeria.

*Writes one sentence paragraphs for exorbitant sums of money.
**The dying husk of the Detroit Free-Press
***”I’LL BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR” Screaming abandoned buildings dead guy frozen Detroit hellscape.

PASTOR HOUSTON NUTT approaches the podium.

Nutt: MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS!!! CAN AH GET A GIGGITY!!!

Assembly: Giggity!

Nutt: Ah said…..(smiles, pauses, looks up at the rafters…) CAN YA GIVE THE LORD A GIGGI-TAH!!!

Assembly: GIGGITY!!!

Nutt: Now let’s sing it out…HOW MANY TIMES DID THE LORD BLESS US?

Choir: THREE!!!!

Nutt: And a what—

Choir: SEVEN!!!

Nutt: THE LORD DONE BLESSED US WITH–

Choir:

THE LORD DONE BLESSED US THIRTY SEVEN TAAAAAAAIIIIIIIMES!!!!

The band strikes up into a thumping gospel beat.

Choir:

DONT NEED NO MATH
DONT NEED NO PROOF
37 TIMES WE GOT THE TRUTH

Nutt (solo):

Well, I went a walkin’ (He went a-walkin’)
Round this here state (This here staaaaaaate)
Got to find some players Find us some plaaahayyeeerrrs…
Make-a Ole Miss greaaaaaat Whoaaaahoaaawhoaaahhhahhhh

Ain’t much for countin! No no no nooooo!
Found out reaaall soooooon
Like his buddy Houston
Neither is Pete Boone Ain’t doin’ no maaaaaaath

WE GOT THIRTY-SEVEN!!! (Three! And! Sev’n!)
That’s seven and three…
My major wadn’t math (oh no no no)
Mine was victorreeeeee (Victory oh mercy me!)

When the Lord comes a callin’
He’s gonna say to meeeee
GIGGITY BOTARKUS
And a seven and a threeeeee….

Choir: WHOOOOOO!!!!

Breakdown. Just the drums and the choir.

NOW HOUSTON HOUSTON THAT’S YOUR NAME
ANNA SIGNIN THEM RECRUITS IS YOUR GAME
IF THE LORD WANTS YOU SIGNING MORE THAN 25
YOU CAN’T DISOBEY, WANNA STAY ALIVE

Nutt: I’d sign twenty, and a couple more
Found myself at a-thirty four
Liked a linebacker, and I signed him too
Signed a couple more and breezed on through

Kept on a-signin’ till the early morn
Would-a kept goin’ through the noon and night
Ain’t nothin’ saying I can’t sign more
Gimme a pen and a paper and you know I might—

ALL STOP.

Nutt: I MIIIIIIIGGGGHT!!!!

Choir:

YEAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

Nutt:

I…..I……I…

Audience: TESTIFY PASTOR HOUSTON!!!!

Nutt;

I…might just…I might just siiiiiiiiiiiiign….

CHOIR:

HOOOOOOWWWW MANYYYYYY!!!!!

Tambourines and organ.

Nutt:

WE GOT THIRTY-SEVEN!!! (Three! And! Sev’n!)
That’s seven and three…
Ain’t all of ‘em gonna (oh no no no)
Pass the S-A-Teeeeee (Their readin’ skills ain’t great, you see…)

When the Lord comes a callin’
He’s gonna say to meeeee
GIGGITY BOTARKUS
And a seven and a threeeeee….

Choir:

NOW KEEP ON SIGNIN’!

Nutt:

I’m a keep on signin’!

Choir:

NOW KEEP ON SIGNIN’!

Nutt:

I’m a keep on signin’!

Nutt:

Got that sign! Sign! Sign! Sign! Sign! Sign! Sign!

Choir:

HOTTY TODDY
GOSH ALMIGHTY
HOPE ALL OF THEM
CAN’T READ OR WRITE-Y

WOOAAAHAHHHHHHHH YEAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Dancing and frivolity. Pastor Houston Nutt signs the entire front row of the church to the Ole Miss football program as he dances around with one hand fervently pumping heavenward.

FIN.

Doug Marrone’s got a crap job. First, he’s gonna find that drawer full of half-eaten sandwiches Greg Robinson left in his desk, and it just so happens GERG not only couldn’t resist the siren song of Five…five….five dollar footlooooong, he had a weakness for the seafood salad sub in particular. (Asshole.)

Second, he must begin to cremate the dead and make livable again the besotten grounds of the Syracuse football program. At this point, Marrone has little but good vibes to bring to the table, but at least he’s got whole corpse-carts full of it at this point after bringing in the 116th ranked recruiting class in the nation and seeing important recruits poached by other schools:

“I was telling our coaches,” Marrone said at his press conference Wednesday. “This is great, this is what you want. You want people to come back in on some of your recruits. It makes you feel better about your recruits and that you’ve gotten the right players.”

You want people stealing your shit. It means it’s valuable, dammit. That man crawling from your back window hauling a flatscreen out with both hands isn’t stealing–he’s saying “Nice job, sir, on acquiring the good things you have (now I’ll be taking this.)” Godspeed, Doug Marrone: the first step is saying “Not everything is on fire,” even if it is indeed completely engulfed in flames.

Oh, it’s on, you adorable, bewhiskered motherfucker:

“I’m gonna turn Florida in right here in front of you,” Kiffin told the crowd at the Knoxville Convention Center. “As Nu’Keese was in the meeting, his phone kept ringing. One of the coaches says, ‘who’s that?’ And he said, Urban Meyer.”

“I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn’t get him,” Kiffin said.

(Watch the video here.)

Oh, Kiffykins. To the pain was the baseline, but it’s torture time now. To earn further future blowouts in painful fashion, Kiffin and co. skunked LSU on Janzen Jackson, a Louisiana corner who was booed by the home crowd when he announced he would be going to Tennessee. If Lane Kiffin dies today crushed by a one-ton block of taffy dropped from Barkevious Mingo’s Indestructible Imperial Dirigible, don’t even try to act surprised.

(HT: C’lay.)

“But then Tennessee did something wrong at one point…”

“Oh, yeah. She was very upset.”

What did Coach O do to piss off the number one recruit in Tennessee? Offer the traditional Orgeron greeting of a firm grapple followed by an elbow to the head? Bring his usual gift of fermented deer hoof salad? Arrive at the house and sit on the couch while excreting his usual low level of pure, aerosolized kerosene, thus seeping the apholstery full of flammable gas fumes?

None of these, actually. Enter message board greatness to the rescue! (Click for larger.)

Yes, let’s accuse a reformed alcoholic of suffering a relapse just prior to walking into a recruit’s house. That’s a ten out of ten on the message board ninja shitbag scale, and further evidence that in the filthy scrum of recruiting, there are no innocents.

You can’t count this one either, but congratulations. While reminding the acquisitionally inclined championship accountants of Alabama that this does not count, either, Alabama earned the highest marks from Rivals.com on National Signing Day. Or didn’t. Or it was LSU, whose frenetic signing day had Les Miles answering his phone in the middle of press conferences. The good doctor has Alabama at number one in the recruiting trough nationally, and on par with USC and Florida in terms of program profile.

The only difference in our minds between the three programs is this: Saban refuses to outright destroy people like Meyer and Carroll will, and thus keeps Alabama in some close to middling games that should be LMAO blowouts all the way through (see the Georgia game, which Alabama could have won by fifty if so inclined.) Style points matter, but Nick Saban doesn’t have time for that shit.

For those august two: A great day by anyone else’s standards, but for USC and Florida they qualify merely as very good days for Messrs. Carroll and Meyer. USCs’ class was excellent despite the loss of Manti Te’o and Xavier Su’a Filo; ditto for Meyer, whose class lost Nu’Keese Richardson and Marsalis Teague to Tennessee, who had a very good day despite the late assembly of the LEEGA ESTRARDINARAH GENNAHMEN.

Fellow pillars of the universe Texas and Ohio State were both fine, thank you very much.

Hat of the Day: Not Dre Kirkpatrick’s Alabama Braves hat; no, the award goes to Shaun Simon’s Colorado Buffalo Haberdashery:

Ralphie would approve, but she’s too busy running over her handlers and monitoring the horizon for mountain lions.

Who’s That Girl? (She has recruits.) Rick Neuheisel’s superb recruiting class carved out of the center of Pete Carroll’s milkshake farm could mark the turning point for UCLA, and if it doesn’t, well, no one will remember you wrote a story where you made such a dramatic proclamation, anyway.

Big day at the buffet for some. Marky M lands the best recruiting class of his tenure; Captain Yarr announces the same, crediting increased exposure from their 11-2 run last year.

Trent Richardson won’t announce for another half-hour or so, but do not let that stop us from surveying the landscape of smoking fax machines in that oh-so-original of ways, a cleverly coded winners/losers list.

BEEN HAD MONEY: Michigan, who took Denard Robinson at “athlete,” which in the spread option usually means “quarterback,” and who picked up key pieces from points south. Rodriguez recruited AustralAmerica well, though they did lose out on Pearlie Graves, a name we would strangle a wilderbeest to have on our team.

ALSO BEEN HAD MONEY: UCLA, who may not have had USC’s class overall, but who scored crucial points by getting OL Xavier Su’a-Filo and a solid class in the heart of the Carroll Co-Prosperity Sphere.

BEEN HAD MONEY (AND BACON-FLAVORED POI): Notre Dame. Pulling Manti Te’o out of Hawaii is a feat of extraction the CIA at its best would envy, especially going head to head with Pete Carroll. Google does not lie:

Te’o will take a Mormon mission trip at one point, probably to someplace with warmer weather and better entertainment than South Bend. We’ve heard Moldova’s nice! (Or haven’t, but it qualifies.)

GOT BEEN DONE HAD MONEY AND SWAGGER: Alabama, according to Dre Kirkpatrick.