I wanna stand with you on a mountain…

Decker takes his 758 yards receiving and 5 TDs full of wan brilliance with him, meaning the burden of being the foremost honky skill athlete falls predictably to running back Toby Gerhart, who even more predictably plays for Stanford, is majoring in management, and has a profile that does not mention any of the following words: “nimble,” “fast”, or “speed.” Toby, you’re our only hope now. Take strength as thousands of slow-footed but determined white athletes have before you: in the completely plausible Rocky 3 training montage’s final sprint sequence.

(HT: FOTP, who was on the very same track mid-stream with us here.)

Plus Vince Young’s roommate had the last name “McCoy,” and Colt McCoy’s roommate has the last name “Young”! OK, that’s completely false, but ESPN Big 12 blogger Tim Griffin has found some remarkable similarities between the Texas teams of 2005 and 2009. Leaving aside the irrelevant “Y-O-U-N-G and M-C-C-O-Y both have five letters!!!1!!1!” coinky-dinks, there are indeed a striking number of parallels here, not the least of which is the fact that if UT takes the BCS championship this season, they, like the ‘05 squad, likely will have notched a huge title-game upset over a team that had been shoved down our throats for months as the GREATEST DYNASTY EVAR. Those who forget history, doomed to repeat it, etc. etc. etc.

All right, everybody, time for backstroke drills! Practice has begun for teams across the country, and some had an easier time of it than others:

RALEIGH – N.C. State’s preseason practice is off to a stormy start.

At one point, a sideline yard marker began floating in a stream of rainwater that had drained to the side of the field.

Not an auspicious beginning for a program that’s been touted for dark-horse status in the ACC this year, but when two of your first three games are against Murray State and Gardner-Webb, maybe you can afford to write off a preseason practice or two.

Neologism of the day. In other practice news, first-year Auburn head coach Gene Chizik, too, has begun fall practice on the Plains, which really isn’t that newsworthy in and of itself but is a good time to introduce a new word I’ve been meaning to get started. With Sylvester Croom gone, we need a new word to replace “Croomed,” so I propose that if a coach loses to a Chizik-coached Auburn team in such an embarrassing fashion that he gets fired, that coach will be said to have been “Chizzwhacked.” Go ahead, spread it around.

Meanwhile, in Tuscaloosa, an entirely different kind of whacking is going on. How did we miss this comment from Nick Saban at SEC Media Days?

“We appreciate our fans,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said at SEC Media Days. “They certainly give a lot of positive self-gratification to our players, which is the most important thing. . . . “

Further comment? None, thanks for asking.

First recorded instance of “pig sooey” in a rap song? We’re going to go with yes. Since we posted that ricockulous “Tim Tebow Song” video the other day, in the interest of equal time we’re now going to hear from one of Florida’s 2009 opponents: Arkansas, specifically wide receiver Reggie Fish. Behold: “I Ball.”

The title of “Next Barkevious Mingo” is not one we take lightly around here. SI.com’s Andy Staples scours the recruiting sites for the next great name in college football. God’s Power Offor retains a healthy lead in that race, but make no mistake, Indiana Faithful and Munchie Legaux will be mounting strong efforts down the stretch.

Rules of engagement are written for your safety and for that of your team. By all means, enjoy yourselves.

I tend to avoid delving into the world of sport for a number of reasons, the most salient of these being that I was never any good at sports, and thus forever intimidated by the more Athenian and robust dimension of the physical life. I was a championship swimmer in high school, but please: young men, speedos, and you may run the necessary permutations and calculations to assess the reasons I excelled therein.

The sporting life also never appealed to me because of, and please give me a wide berth here to allow for my own personal encumbrances vis-a-vis style and de mode, but the uniforms? Simply hideous! Tight pants are one thing, but pairing them with jerseys in color combinations that look like a Mark Rothko painting put in a blender? It just turned what was initially a disaffection into a juvenile but powerful antipathy for all things athletic that would last into my adulthood.

I’ve softened my stance recently, though. Tom Brady’s stylish couture strutting has helped; has there ever been a quarterback so effortlessly in tune with the runway? Besides Troy Aikman? Also, my recent entry into a “kick-ball” league in central park has helped me overcome my uppensiesportenheitfiersichengetfleitkesich. Don’t look for me out there! I’m all schlubby when I play, since you can’t be a fashion manuductor all the time. My goal is to kick the ball out of the infield one day.

Anyway, a reader brought this to my attention, and I feel I must address it in the manner in which I am comfortable. Please see the fashion advice given at the 1:00 mark, and read about the background here.

Let’s just dispel one myth here: BLACK IS NOT JUST FOR FUNERALS! It is time have a funeral, yes, but for this tired old glue-mare of fashion foolishness! Black is a versatile color for all seasons and styles, be you an executive wanting to cut the right authoritative silhouette, a browseur endlessly perusing the windows of the city’s marketplace in style, or simply looking for the vetements justes for a quiet evening at home. Let us just throw this old wives (or coaches’) tale out with the bad vegetables of yesterday’s fashion. Think fashion forward, not cliche-backward, coach!

Given your frame, I’d recommend a nice v-neck with a tie to lengthen the torso and de-emphasize those big bulgy trapezius muscles that obscure the lines of the neck. The look will also offer a soft, preppy but casual look to play off but not overwhelm the Armani stylings of your ever-dapper head coach, Nick Saban.

Make it work,

Tim

In this PSA for hurricane awareness, the camera comes in from a fade, as if you’re blind drunk or asleep and BAM! Miles in your house, lecturing you about hurricane planning. (Louisiana joke here.) He then does some passable cue card work, but what caught our eye was the play drawn up on the board.

Correct, junior coordinators: that’s a fake field goal. Steve Spurrier just shanked a five-iron at the mention of that.

On Wednesday, we reported that during a blocking drill in a Notre Dame defensive practice, a collision occurred between Pat Kuntz and co-defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta. The description follows:

…he decelerated from 120 miles per hour to 0 in 1.4 seconds, and gained two huge black eyes from the force of his own slammed-forward eyeballs punching him on the inside of the face. The impact blinded him for two days, during which we must imagine his response was to walk around and simply dare the world to put things in his way. Oh, and he also broke his back, arm, wrist, lost six fillings and the icing on the cake? He got a hernia.

This came not from any actual description of reality, but from a Cracked.com top six list describing the exploits of rocket tester John Paul Stapp. Stapp survived these injuries. Kuntz, however, died on impact with Tenuta. We regret the error.

Tuesday’s Pac-10 Offseason Roundup reported that senior USC linebacker Rey Maualuga was being held without bail in a West Virginia detention facility after being charged with biting a twelve-year-old girl’s arm in a Wal-Mart. Megan Templeton was, in fact, stung by a scorpion that had stowed away in a shipment of watermelons. We regret the error.

Monday featured a “Halcyon Tussles of Too-Recent Yesteryear”
segment on the combatants in the 2003 Iowa/Iowa State game. In the report, we listed the weather in Ames as “overcast with scattered showers and hovering in the high seventies.” This was inaccurate; as several readers pointed out, the usual all-season conditions in Ames involve “biting daggerwind laced with ribbons of pissfire, a rain of burning slagshit, and periodic storms of boulder-sized burning balls of yak hair tumbling from the angry, indifferent heavens.” Thanks to reader Ted for pointing this out and providing the vivid description. We regret the error.

In Monday’s Where Are They Now feature, former Michigan linebacker Pierre Woods was inaccurately quoted as saying he intends to seek a job in broadcast journalism after retiring from professional football. Woods is in fact intent on pursuing a literary career and will self-publish his first book, A Children’s Treasury of Side-Boob, in September. We regret the error.

On Thursday, we reported that Phil Fulmer placed fourth in the money stakes for the King Crab season on this year’s The Deadliest Catch. This was inaccurate, as Fulmer performed better than that, finishing second, especially impressive since he catches and holds his crab-haul without the benefit of a boat. Corrected standings follow.

1. Time Bandit, $1.3 million
2. Phil Fulmer, $1.1 million
3. Northwestern, $929,000
4. Cornelia Marie $815,000
5. Ralph Friedgen, $542,000 (-$325,000 lost to “snacking.”)

We regret the error. Edgar Hansen rules.

On Wednesday this publication mistranslated an Agence France-Presse story on the spread of hepatitis and HIV in Iran. The Iranian government blames the country’s skyrocketing narcotic addiction rates on “the common border with opium-producing Afghanistan”, not “Bobby Petrino”. We regret the error.

On Monday, we reported that Auburn’s Sen’Derrick Marks had turned down the opportunity to be the cover story for SI this fall. This was incorrect; in fact, he has already agreed to the profile, and has completed his photography for the cover.

Marks: just wants the chance to roam free with dignity.

We regret the error.

Thus ends the Corrections. Enjoy your weekend.

Roll Tide!

On Tuesday, we reported that the University of Tennessee had, following the firing of Johnny Majors, considered attempting to hire Florida coach Steve Spurrier to replace the longtime Vol coach. This was inaccurate; Tennessee made no such attempt, a point clarified to us at great length in a phone call from Tennessee officials earlier this week. The candidate Tennessee wanted most to replace Johnny Majors was not Spurrier, but rather country music legend David Allen Coe. We regret the error.

Monday’s continuing series on the struggle to rebuild Columbus following last year’s Ohio State-Michigan victory celebrations misidentified an image as a neighborhood just south of campus. The photo in question is actually of a Beirut bomb crater. We regret the error.

O-H!

Monday’s “Where Are They Now?” segment featured a collection of inaccuracies we would like to address here. Purdue is located in West Lafayette, Indiana, not Louisiana. The Heisman Trophy was, until 2001, awarded annually not at Radio City Music Hall, but at the Downtown Athletic Club. And finally, Eric Crouch played at Nebraska, not at Iowa State, and at no point in his adult life fought a crippling addiction to drinking window cleaner he consumed to quiet the voices of relentless murder in his head. We regret the error.

He does, however, have unusually silky dark brown hair and particularly delicate, almost feminine eyelashes his female friends just can’t stop gushing over. His secret pride in this forces him to question his understanding of his own masculinity.

The Tuesday Grid-Iron Crossword had an ambiguous clue under “14 letter word for former coach at Texas A&M and Mississippi State.” Both the words “Jackie Sherrill” and “Piglickingcheat” fit the slot in the puzzle, causing some consternation among our readers, especially as “piglickingcheat” contains more letters than “Jackie Sherrill.” We regret the error, and clearly have no place assembling crossword puzzles in the first place.

A Wednesday evening news flash reported that former Kentucky coach Hal Mumme was among a band of notorious pirates captured by peacekeeping troops in April off the coast of Mozambique. Mr. Mumme has since been located, and apparently serves as the head football coach at “New Mexico State University”. We regret the error.

The lead story “Sean McDonough: Announcer at Large” on Monday inaccurately described McDonough as being “three apples high.” This refers to the apocryphal height of smurfs, not McDonough. The announcer himself is easily five apples high, and will kick a fucking Smurf in the teeth without hesitation, especially if shirtless white-pant wearing punk suckas walk up on him and take him seven-on-one again like they did after the Continental Tire Bowl BECAUSE THAT’S JUST THE KIND OF PUNK SHIT YOU FRENCH SURRENDER MIDGETS PULL, DON’T YOU SMURFS? WHAT? HUH? YEAH! GARGAMEL AIN’T GOT SHIT ON THIS! BRANG YO BEST, LAWYA!

We regret the error.

Our lead post on Thursday stated that an EDSBS staffer was critically injured after being lured into an open rain gutter with promises of a shiny balloon. The report further named the assailant as Ole Miss head coach Houston Nutt. The perpetrator has since been correctly identified as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. The Turtle cannot help us, and we regret the error.

Spitz, as you may recall, won seven gold medals in Munich in 1972, an unbroken record to this day. If you’re under 40, you may not know that regardless of her marital status at the time, your mother wanted to fuck the living shit out of Mark Spitz. Well, at least until he talked, anyway. So you may lament the fact that when you look in the mirror, you don’t see what’s staring back at you right here. Blame your mother’s lack of dedication. If she wanted Spitz, she should have tried harder, and now look at you.

Happy Moustache Thursday, motherfuckers!