Pay attention. This is very serious.

My friends and fellow Americans,

We come here today to transcend the awards of old and move to that shining city on the hill we all want to live in: the College Football Blog Awards 2008, where no good blog goes unrecognized, where we all feel the prosperity of hundreds–yes, hundreds!–of dollars of Google AdSense income.

The CFBA would like to thank you for submitting nominations for this years awards. No one person reads them all, and it takes a village to bring this effort along. We would also like to thank Joel, our fearless leader, who brought the whole endeavor together as only he could. He deserves your applause for his fine work, coding, list-keeping, and his amazing ability to help those who have difficulty keeping their pants on straight put on an award process despite the issues with the pants, and the straightness thereof. Kudos and applause.

The Cabal met via chat and, after the hard deliberation and decisions that deciders have to make, a final list of nominees emerged. Cabal members used reader nominations and pared down from there as objectively as they could. Human weakness did emerge: the topic of Stewart Mandel incited some passions, as did Orson’s opinion of one blogger he would, on meeting in person, punch in the uterus. (No, it’s not who you think it is, and no, it’s not a woman, but a feminizing joke.)

Any time nomination posts mentioned or the gizmo spat out one of our own names, we either abstained or argued against ourselves and in favor of someone else. Committee members also attempted to balance bringing the true, echt best of the 2007 to the forefront while also highlighting new but lesser-known blogs.

So in short: while all nominations were considered, not all nominations were included in the end, because there’s no way to include every nominee.

Oh, and while not eliminating anyone, open campaigning for votes by bloggers was considered “in poor taste” by the Cabal, and “aggressively whorish” by Orson. Please refrain from it in gentlemanly fashion, twiddle your handlebar mustache with style, and join us at the bar for a Pimm’s Cup and some strawberries with creme fraiche while we wait for center court to open up for a match, will you? Right-o.

The schedule:

Nominations announced today, beginning at EDSBS at 10:00, then at MGoBlog at 11:00, Dawg Sports at 12:00, Burnt Orange Nation at 1:00, and Rocky Top Talk at 2:00. All times EST. After that, come back to EDSBS for voting instructions.

Reminder! Last year’s winner in any particular category is ineligible to win that category this year, with the exception of awards for individual posts (as opposed to entire blogs), so hold your criticism on that. Send all other complaints to myscrotumismadeoffruitrollupsbiteitandsee@yahoo.com.

Okay, so send in the clowns.

Orson:

Head over to MGoBlog at 11:00-ish EST for the official nominees for Best National Blog, People’s Champ Award, Funniest Blog, and Best YouTube.

If your quirk factors registers somewhere around the Crispin Glover range and you’re an offensive player, you’re likely a quarterback. If you’re playing for the Spartan, kickin’-bitches-down-wells division of football, i.e. the defense, and you’re flush with vitamin Q, then you likely end up at linebacker, where generations of hyped-up loonery has found a home smashing skulls. If you do not believe this, consider the classic clip of a young Dick Butkus saying these words in Crunch Course, a video that did as much to mold our personality and philosophy as either parent did.

I want to hit someone so hard their head comes off. You know, kind of like in that movie Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, where the head comes rolling down the stairs? That scene kind of got into my head.

Ring one more entrant into the bizarro fraternity of eccentric linebackers: Michigan State’s Jon Misch, a 200 pounder at strong side linebacker. That’s 200 pounds, which you might weigh, dear reader, playing at strong side linebacker in the Big Televen and running through tight end blocks if he’s lucky, and defensive ends and worse if he’s not. When you’re weird by weight already, you’re a special variant of strange.

Jon Misch is sorry he killed your brother.

Misch deepens the strange, however, with the bio: he’s got a 137 IQ, is a diagnosed hyperactive, plays classical piano, was originally recruited as a defensive end, eschews sports shows for Mythbusters, and has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Brian from MGo has dubbed him the “Samurai,” which is a bit of a misnomer considering Tae Kwon Do is Korean. Therefore, in honor of a fellow AD/HD type, we’ll dub him “Best of the Best,” after our favorite (and really the only) Tae Kwon Do movie from the golden age of martial-arts-specific action movies.

We reserve the right to use the name “Gymkata” for another player to be named later. (BTW, check out Brian’s outstanding Michigan State preview while you’re at it. Bart Connor would approve.)

The Penn State Apartment Brawl Thingy–earning Penn State a forty-plus pointer originally in the Fulmer Cup Standings–has dwindled now to a mere 20 or so points, depending on the variety of legal pleas dismissed or reduced as a normal part and parcel of the legal process.

The punishment for the players has shriveled like an exposed phallus on the tundra, as well. PREPARE TO BE TEMPORARILY KILLED BY DEATH, UNDERLINGS!!!

Two Penn State football players ordered to stand trial for their roles in an off-campus fight were expelled from school for part of the summer but will be allowed to take part in preseason practice.

Hit me again, Ike, and this time put some stank on it! No school, but you can still come to practice–that’s the punishment from Joe Paterno, who must be fully sailing into the calm waters of the Gulf of Aingivafuck in his 38992th year of life. He’s mellowed quite a bit, as the horsewhipped citizens of Bukhara, Transoxiana would testify, since Paterno was a particularly brutal mayor there in the 6th century.

In response, Urban Meyer described the punishment as “appropriate, but a bit harsh.” We suppose in both places now, the “This is Sparta” rules apply.

This…is…Sparta!!! Note the sign, and don’t worry about punishment.

P.S. We know that’s supposed to be a guy kicking someone there, but it still looks like one guy knocking another guy into a pit with the kind of cartoon penis you’d draw in fifth grade. (HT: Kenny.)

Dear student body of [YOUR UNIVERSITY’S NAME HERE],

I would first like to thank you for the warm welcome I have received since signing with your university. It’s not often an 18 year old gets the chance to have sex eleven times in a 24-hour span with anyone but himself, much less with a gang of disease-free ladies with such a dizzying array of techniques, preferences, skills, and battery operated devices illegal in six states. I would personally like to thank the three generous Latina ladies who helped me pull off the “Lotus Spinning While Riding Nandi to Brahmaputra” manuever, or whatever the hell that thing was. That shit was loco!. I am now forever a convert to culo caliente, and plan to spend my leisure time rutting my way through the Hispanic Students Association con aficion, bitches. (See? That AP Spanish credit was for real, Myles Brand. Holla at ya nino.)

Huevos Rancheros for me for the next three years, y’all.

(If you have any questions for my prostate, it is on vacation, having just run its own version of the NFL combine. It should be back on Friday to address your inquiries. )

As warm as the welcome wagon has been, I would like to talk for a few minutes about a few things I intend to do while attending your university.

First, I promise to astonish you with my muscular development. My calves will jump out of my legs like electrified cornish game hens when I make the slightest movement. My biceps will flutter under my shirt as I stretch outside of study hall. Even my eyebrows will flex with a might your puny, mortal soul will flinch in envy and fear at. The little caveman in your brain is saying that back in the day, your children would be mine, I’d steal your cave, and your girl would be jocking mine on a sabretooth tigerskin rug fireside while you froze outside and waited for the jackals to finish you off. And you would be right.

Second, I promise to give nothing but the most lackadaisical of efforts to my classes. (more…)

We’ve said it before and wish to repeat the official stance of EDSBS vis-a-vis college football recruiting: it’s really, really creepy. For months–sometimes, years at a time, huge monied institutions buck their noses into the lives of 17 and 18 year old boys and woo them with everything except cash in an attempt to get them to sacrifice three or four years of their lives to play football and mum through a university education simultaneously. It’s a bit like watching a live-action re-enactment of Death In Venice, with universities playing the part of the aging pederast and the recruit being the young object of affection, but minus all the plague and effete homoeroticism. ( This is Amurrica, dammit. Even our homoeroticism needs to look like a Dodge Ram commercial. Heh: Ram.)

Young man, you’re so…pretty. Come dance for my university, please.

Rhetorical offramp: why, indeed, is recruiting so creepy? Begin with the drastic power differentials working here. Rex Grossman, for example, may have had the best recruiting process of any player we’d ever heard. Wealthy, relatively unnoticed by marquee programs, Grossman hurt for neither money nor personal opportunity. He just happened to enjoy playing football, and threw a wicked deep ball, a nice combo. He also had Bobby Knight pimping him to anyone who would listen, and when Steve Spurrier got a highlight tape, an offer came in a quiet, deliberate fashion.

Rex Grossman, too, had the ultimate setup for success once he arrived in Gainesville. Low-pressure reigned; not a blue-chipper, he could simply play and lie in the weeds waiting for Jesse Palmer to self-destruct at Mississippi State, racking up significant garbage time play in Spurrier-era blowouts. Rolling in it by any student standard, Grossman had the financial freedom to focus on whatever he chose to in his spare time, which by most accounts fell to the responsibility of mastering the EA NCAA games on several different game systems. Completely unpressured, Grossman thrived and grew into the role of a Heisman hopeful and eventual NFL draft pick.

Grossman, on the right: obviously not under a lot of pressure.

The one constant in this: money. Grossman succeeded because of the support he received from his parents, the relative lack of hype, and the dearth of expectations the environment placed on him once he arrived in Gainesville. (more…)