Football is like life: it has a playbook, and when it breaks down, people get hurt. The first installment of this series appeared here as “Football Analogizing;” it appears here under a slimmer title.

Reads are important on this play, which we’ll call CAREER JET BANDIT X FLY D-BO OVER 2. We’re expecting good protection through a solid zone scheme of a middle class upbringing and lack of obvious physical or mental defect. We’re running four routes on the play. You’ll note the slot receiver is not accounted for in the playbook; this is by design, since you need one career option to forget, and then mourn as your lost ideal once it’s too late to choose it in the progression.

Let’s go through the reads, son.

First read: ASTRONAUT. The quarterback (you) takes the ball in the shotgun and surveys the defense. On this play, your first option is the X receiver, on this play known as ASTRONAUT.

ASTRONAUT is double covered by LACK OF MATH SKILLS AND DISCIPLINE. (Also, you find out you don’t like enclosed places when you go to Mammoth Cave as a nine year old.) It’s important to recognize this early and not force this ball prematurely, as you may end up in the military not flying jets, but instead handing out fresh underwear for hours at a time to new recruits as a logistics man. (more…)

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: