Ron Paul: ’bout that bling.

Our guest columnist today is Presidential Candidate Ron “Dr. No-Huddle” Paul.

Thanks for having me here. I’m not sure who you are, what you want, or why I’m even here. In fact, I don’t know who I’m writing this to. Why do people send me letters? Why do people on the internet like me? I don’t know. Really, I don’t know. Someone picks me up from my house in the morning, takes me places, and I just start talking until someone claps. These are all things I don’t know. Where am I? Really, where am I?

What I do know about is freedom and 1970s standards of gynecology. That’s why I still believe in two things: the Dalkon Shield and the Constitution. Especially the Constitution. I may have had my hands in more vaginas than any other member of congress except for John Boehner, but at least I got paid for doing it, and not the other way around. Is that a joke? Why are you all laughing? I’m confused? Yes, I’m confused!

Hey, why’s my name on a blimp? A blimp? Really? I’m thrilled about the possibilities of dirigible travel. It’s one of my passions, but I’ll tell you this: you won’t see me telling you that the government should be involved in making blimps, unless they’re blimps equipped with machine guns to put up along the Mexican border, because it’s a well-known fact that Mexicans fear both guns and blimps. It’s natural law, just like the Constitution and the rules of Yahtzee.

Speaking of games that involve hitting your spouse: football. I’m here to talk about football? Really? Okay, I’ll talk about it. Ron Paul likes football, but doesn’t like a few things about football as it stands in America. (more…)

We love supplements. Some of our own dietary supplements keeping us in top shape:

–Zybrowka Vodka. Drink of the gods. We could drink a half a bottle and run a 5K through the middle of Dekalb Avenue during rush hour IN the variable lane. Scratch that–“have” run a 5K through the middle of Dekalb Avenue during rush hour. With the police “pacing” us.

–Coffee. Jamaica Blue Mountain, Waffle House swill poured into a human skull straight off the crack of Mario Batali’s sweaty ass crack…whatever. Caffeine buzz GIMME GIMME GIMME.

–Japanese bar mix. Oooh, god-kissed little soy sauce-encrusted soulfuckers, we will inhale you like you were strapped to our face in a feed bag.

–Pure Protein Shakes. You only think we drink these for healthy reasons, made with the mix, ice, buffalo milk yogurt (because buffalo are hardcore and cows aren’t, bitches) and whatever fruit/meat/spare postal packaging is lying on the counter. In truth, it’s for when you’re too lazy to actually fix a meal, much less going to the trouble of chewing one.

Which one of these Swindle staples does the NCAA ban? If you threw a few steak nuggests in, the protein shake might be out of the running as something a strength coach could give to an athlete. Coffee, too, thanks to the caffeine. (Zybrowka’s out too, along with hero-…wait. What fucking genius said we couldn’t give the kids heroin anymore? Jesus, these people…)

Demon java! Our second favorite Colombian import and NCAA bugbear. The first is Shakira, you devious, devious people…

Via the Fanhouse:

“The NCAA came out with rules which say that we can’t give muscle-building products.

“If we give [the athletes] weight-gain products, there must be a limit of 30 percent protein. That means all the rest, 70 percent, is bad stuff like sugar. Really, we couldn’t give them peanut butter or milk. I’ve never understood that rule.”

Again, when faced with the hydra of writing coherent policy, the NCAA swung its dull broadsword and beheaded itself in the process. (Which means the score is hydra, 20 or so heads, you, NCAA member institution, none.) Athletes seek out supplements on their own now, usually doing so with the expertise one can expect from an untrained 18 year old doing anything complex and difficult: shoddily, haphazardly, and often purchasing supplements prohibited by the NCAA’s banned substances list.

This list includes caffeine down to trace amounts in tests, meaning coaches might not be able to give players so much as a strong cup of coffee pre-game. Deacon Jones, for one, would be appalled. The L.A. Rams legend’s pregame ritual before every game: two cups of black coffee on an empty stomach.

(Throw a donut on top of that, and that’ll make you want to skin a troop of Boy Scouts alive for so much as breathing in your direction.)

Penn State fans need to subcontract their services out to political parties. Whatever they did in response to the announcement of a ticket lottery on Tuesday night worked so well that Penn State went back to the old “first come, first serve” policy today, not even 48 hours after the announcement. That’s not a policy revision–that’s an annulment.

From Penn State Associate Athletic Director Greg Myford:

“It became very apparent, very quickly, that most Penn State students want the first-come, first serve, system,” said Greg Myford, associate athletic director. “So that’s what we are going to do.”

Si se puede! The blue and white proletariat have spoken. Now if we could get them to get riled up enough to change the whole “Zombie Nation” cheer that’s caught on there recently, we’d be talking about real progress. (We can’t get hyped up about football to Europop. It’s almost as bad as nu-metal in that department. BOOM! Snort Ecstasy to it? Sure. Celebrate decapitating linebacker hits? No, sir.)

This need does not apply to Virginia Tech, who clearly needs no instruction on how to rock at home games in Blacksburg:

During one of our editions of EDSBS Live (now available on ITunes for the great price of “cheap as free,”) listeners were asked what they didn’t know about as fans. The consistent answer: the actual game going on beneath the tackling, hitting, and feats of combat acrobatics that is football. They see the fireworks, but don’t understand the chemistry that makes things go boom in a certain, designed way.

Given that, we’re tackling (pun intended) Football 101 using what we’ve got: and XBox, a fifty dollar video capture device, and Windows Movie Maker. This is the beta–there’s a few errors, the pacing’s odd, and we get cut off at the end due to sloppy editing.

However: watch it, critique it, and tell us what you want to see further digression/explanation of regarding football.

Part One: What You’re Looking At On A Typical Play.

Short attention span theatre, the radio version, returns tonight with EDSBS Live!, the show so exciting it requires unnecessary! punctuation! just to capture its excitement! Our guest tonight will be Michael David Smith of Football Outsiders, who will discuss the upcoming NFL Draft. We’re talking about the draft because no one, repeat, no one is more knowledgeable than you when it comes to draft predictions, and NFL executives can listen to tonight’s broadcast and save millions of misspent signing bonuses actually listening to people who watched these people play for four years.

What: EDSBS Radio

When: 8:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m. EST

Where: On the EDSBS channel at Now Live.

How: To call in? (310) 984-7600. You may also register at Now Live and participate in the live chat, where we’ll be taking comments and working them into the broadcast. Even if they make fun of our heavy breathing into the mike and audible belching.

Why: To put your “Adrian Peterson is the next Curtis Enis” boast on the record for posterity, sucka.

Who: Peter Bean of Burnt Orange Nation and Orson from this website, along with special guest Michael David Smith of Football Outsiders.

To prepare ahead of time, your study list appears below. The four questions for this week:

1. Who’s your favorite, non-obvious pick in the draft this year who you actually watched play?

2. Who’s your RADIOACTIVE BIOHAZARD DO NOT TOUCH AAAIIIIGGGHHH pick to avoid in this draft? We troy smith have no troy smith definite opinions on this. troy smith

3. Who’s your favorite college stud who failed to find success in the pros? Again, we have no leanings here.

Cough cough WUERFFEL cough cough

4. In the big draft board of life, where were you? Are you a first round bust right now? An unsigned camp invitee turned all-pro? An Arena League legend doing well in your niche? We want to know.

Orson’s totally sure he knows what he is, but you’ll have to listen tonight to find out.

Your name is Hypolite; therefore, you must play offensive line, since your name sounds like something out of 300, or perhaps a new light but wickedly strong polymer fiber used to make racing kayaks. He also plays for Colorado, so continue the 300 theme with Dan “Leonidas” Hawkins running about the place seeing if he can get a well built in the lockerroom to kick people down when he decides to really make a point emphatically.

Buffaloes! Tonight we dine…at Applebee’s!!!

This article on how wickedly strong your local offensive lineman is drives home the point in a number of ways. First, it mentions that OL Hypolite can back squat 665 pounds, best on the Colorado squad, and more weight than you care to think about putting on the frame of your car, much less your spine. It also has the Buff’s Thursday workout, which has our breakfast rising in our throats just looking at it:

* Over Head Squat 3×6
* Hang Clean 6
* Lateral Lung 3×6
* 30 Leg Ext. 3×6
* Bench Press 8
* DB Post Delt 3×6
* DB French Press 3×6
* WTD Inverted Rows 2×10
* Atomic Drop 2×30

Most of these should be self explanatory (the French press is a tricep exercise), however one definitely isn’t: the Atomic Drop. Our crack research skills (Google. What!) got us a good guess, and yippee! it involves Atlas Stones, the same 100 pound rocks the World’s Strongest Men contestants are forever lifting and dropping. Atomic Drops, we guess, are repetitions of lifting over head and dropping to the ground, done in sets of thirty.

Sometimes, this is easier typed than done, as evidenced by this guy who gets pwn3d by the stones with his kids watching.

Good for him, though. We’d crap ourselves trying to do one. Now excuse us, we have a chicken biscuit to go cough up.

P.S. Over/under on comments suggesting that the workout “doesn’t look bad:” four, we’re guessing.

EDSBS Live: tonight at 8:00 p.m. EST.

Call in at (310) 984-7600

Listen in and chat at EDSBS Live! Remember! Punctuation=Xcitement!

The four questions, again:

1. What do you know about your team going into spring practice?

2. Better still…what don’t you know about your team going into spring?

3. What’s your offseason coping mechanism?

4. What’s a badass death?

Hear you then. –O.

Reader Mr. Baddley wrote us around a month ago with this question:

Orson/Stranko,

PS….Do I get any sponsor money?

No on the sponsor money, but we were flattered nonetheless, especially since he’s going to have to go around with EDSBS on his car tags long after we’ve sold the domain to a Mexican bootleg pharma site. (Mexican Viagra! Now with added powdered donkey penis for flavor and potency!)

So we said what the hell–sure. After all, if any fan of any team could legally lay claim to owning a site written by Florida alums, it’s an Auburn grad in 2006. Plus it’s a sentiment any college football fan must by definition agree with: every day should be Saturday, really. It’s a transcendent message that disregards team affiliation.

The story comes full circle now as Mr. Baddley’s got his license plate. We can honestly say it’s the most beautiful thing we’ve ever seen, including newborn infants, the sunrise over the Gulf of Siam, and Ike Hilliard’s “Brake ‘n Shake” touchdown versus Florida State in 1996.

The plate is still available in 50 out of 51 license plate-issuing principalities. Hurry before supplies run out!

Excuse us, while we wipe a tear away.

It’s Boise for two–Fulmer Cup points, that is, in the form of 2 DUI points for 19 year old Boise State Bronco Tristan Patin. Patin, a reserve defensive back, suffered from the bane of many a drunk driver: being stuck in a town with more than a few one way streets after a night of imbibing what was no doubt Idaho’s finest muscatelle wine. (HT: The Wiz.)

The car was traveling south on 5th, which is a one-way northbound street, according to police. Patin’s blood alcohol level was measured at 0.165 and 0.158 during a field test, according to police reports.

0.165 is good and drunk, for those of you not fond of using the in-bar breathalyzer to track your relative position on BAC Everest, which means that even if an athlete like Patin had given himself a modicum of sobering up before climbing in the car, he was likely good and hammered at one point in the evening. For someone living in Boise in January, we’d call this sober–a position the police don’t seem inclined to agree with, unfortunately.

Thus 2007 begins the same way 2006 ended for Boise: a two point score, a sure sign of their growing football influence and power, earning them a tie with West Virginia for the Fulmer Cup lead. They’re so good at two-pointers using misdirection, both those involving one-way streets or fantastic body language play fakes:

Well, I decided to honor the Stardust’s closing by giving money back to the ‘books. To quote John Facenda (from “Black Sunday,” the NFL Films Super Bowl XVIII piece), “It was a defeat from which no honor could be salvaged.” Nothing I can do, really, except try to shake it off and get back at it.

It was by far my worst week since I started writing this column, and from a historical standpoint, I hadn’t had a 2-8 week since 1992. Then, I shut it down for the season, and came back strong the next year; this time, I’ll ride it out. Certainly, the first part of my 2006 was considerably better than the first part of my 1992, so my hope is that it’s just a blip, and I can come back this week with some winners.

For the season, I still sit at 57-43, a winning percentage of 57%, not dissimilar to my winning percentage of 58% last season. Last season at this time, by winning percentage was around 52-54%. Lots of road teams and favorites this week. Here are the selections:

THURSDAY:

Louisville (-6) v. RUTGERS

First things first, I think Rutgers is a good team. That said, I do not believe they are an ‘8-0 team,’ if that makes any sense; I think their schedule to date has papered over some deficiencies. Wins over Illinois and Ohio look better now than they did at the time, but the win over UNC looks worse, and their only noteworthy wins are over the rather modest collection of South Florida, Navy, and Pitt. When you consider that Navy lost its QB in the 1Q that win is not as impressive; even if you do not downgrade Rutgers for that win it is a relatively light resume. Of more note is that while the Rutgers D has been great this season, they have yet to face a truly good O; no doubt they did a good job against the Pitt passing game and against the Navy running game (with the obvious caveat), but they have yet to face an offense that truly has any balance. In fact, while it is obvious that Louisville will have the best passing game that Rutgers has faced this season, given the Navy QB situation I think it may also be true that the Louisville O may also present the best running game they have faced. Given the weak offenses they have played, I give the Rutgers D little margin for error, and there seems to be plenty. Rutgers did well against Pitt QB Palko, but much less well against USF QB Grothe; even UNC QB Dailey had a pretty good game against the Rutgers D. In any event, the Louisville passing game is on a much different level than any of this lot. Rutgers has been pretty good against the run, but UConn freshman RB Brown–a decent back, but not this good–absolutely tore them up for 199 yards in their last game; normally, you could just dismiss this as an aberration, but given that they’ve really played no other decent RBs this season, it’s of particular note. The Rutgers passing game is nonexistent–there’s really no reason that a QB that has a running game as good as Rutgers does should be so ineffective, but he is ( 5.97 ypp, with a 5-7 ratio)–but Rutgers has a good running game and they will get their yards, little doubt. But given that Louisville will be able to pretty much ignore the Rutgers passing game they should be able to keep them in check. In the final analysis, while Louisville’s O will be kept in check somewhat, I do not think they will be stopped and Rutgers’ one-dimensional O will not be able to keep up. As long as Louisville can keep their heads after last week they should get ahead of this number.

Ray Rice: will attempt to completely demolish the BCS picture tonight.

SATURDAY:

ILLINOIS (-3) v. Purdue

I think Illinois turned it around a while back but they have yet to turn it into any end product. Since the Ohio game, they have played Penn State and Wisconsin tough on the road, and Ohio State tough at home–three of the four best teams in the Big 10–but they have yet to manage a win. You wouldn’t guess it, but Illinois has a pretty good D; in Big 10 play, they’ve only given up 109 ypg rushing ( 3.04 ypc) and 179 ypg passing (6.03 ypp) with a 4-4 ratio. Purdue’s O this season is not your typical Tiller O, and they have struggled against good defenses. Wisconsin held them to a FG and Penn State shut them out; Illinois’ D is not in that class, but it is not too far off and I think the Purdue O–which only gained 373 yds against a Mich St D that, outside of Indiana, probably has the worst pass D in the conference–will struggle to move the ball against them; the only QB who has had a good game against the Illinois D is Wisc QB Stocco, and please note that OSU QB Smith and Iowa QB Tate have been among their opponents. The Purdue D is pretty weak; to illustrate, they gave up nearly 400 yards to a very weak Penn State O. They have, in particular, struggled against the run; opposing RBs have averaged 5.73 ypc in Big 10 play. Illinois has averaged 161 ypg rushing (4.46 ypc) in Big 10 play; furthermore, they have averaged 134 ypg and 3.98 ypc the last three weeks against PSU, Wisc, and OSU. They will find the going easier this week against the Purdue D. Illinois QB Williams is not great but he is serviceable as a passer, and so long as he avoids mistakes it should be enough to let the Illinois running game and D take this one.

Navy (-12.5) v. EASTERN MICHIGAN

Navy has suffered a downgrade at the QB position with the season-ending injury to Hampton, but his replacement Kaheaku-Enhada has stepped it up and the net result appears to only be a small minus. If you eliminate the Rutgers game, where he had to come off the bench and was not entirely prepared, under Kaheaku-Enhada the Navy O has rushed for 246 yds against ND, and 435 yds against Duke; Navy’s overall offensive effectiveness does seem to be less–partly because Hampton was a better passer–but they still apparently have enough to overwhelm teams that are not their equivalents (given their authoritative win over an improving Duke team last week). EMU’s D has not been too bad in MAC play this season–21 ppg and 337 ypg–but their run D is very average, giving up 179 ypg and 4.70 ypc, and they have had trouble with mobile QBs; opposing QBs are averaging 42 ypg rushing on average, and those that can run have. Navy’s D is poor statistically, but as I have pointed out elsewhere they tend to give up considerably less points than you would expect given the yardage they give up ( i.e., they bend, but don’t break) and the EMU O is not particularly prolific; EMU has yet to score more than 21 points this season and they are averaging 16 ppg and 292 ypg. Adding to their offensive problems are injuries; QB Schmitt–the slightly better of the two QBs EMU rotates–did not play last week and he is listed as questionable. EMU’s O consists of mostly the QB running or throwing–the two leading rushers on the team are their QBs, so being limited at that position hurts them even more than one would usually expect. In addition, their top RB is out for the season, and their next RB in line, Harrison–and, keep in mind that we are talking about someone who only has 116 yards for the season–missed the last game and is questionable for this week. Navy’s pass D is really bad, but the EMU O is so limited that they will not be able to take advantage, and I think Navy will win this game with ease.

EMU!

Rice (+14) v. TULSA

I have been a big fan of Tulsa the last couple of seasons; I think this is the first time I am picking against them. (more…)

Spurrier used to do it, so it must have worked at one point in combination with other supplements. Buys and Sells coming, but for the moment, dear reader, please accept the fantastically timed camera work revealing Missouri’s choice of in-game nutrition. (HT: Chris et al.)