Monday’s report that former South Carolina head coach and current television analyst Lou Holtz is being questioned by police following the death of a woman in his employ contained an inaccuracy. Brandii Shawn Baytes, 29, who had served as Holtz’s assistant in his offseason career as a traveling magician since March, died from massive external hemorrhaging, not internal. We regret the error.

For my nextht trick…

On Thursday, our interview with former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer contained an inaccurate quote that requires immediate correction. The printed exchange should have read as follows:

RK: The best part about being SEC Commissioner? The blood. Oh, the rivers of sweet, sticky blood.

The excerpts in bold should be replaced with the word “relationships I developed over thirty years of hard work.” We regret the error. Deeply.

Wednesday’s Curious Index reported that Tennessee defender Eric Berry (more…)

Monday’s Ryan Perrilloux Memorial Police Blotter misidentified a man killed by Pittsburgh police while “holding [a] meat cleaver and mumbling with a vacant look in his eyes” as the troubled former LSU quarterback. This story was based on inaccurate (though entirely plausible) sourcing, and we regret the error.

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. (more…)

If we’re playing the Social D, then it’s wrong time…or at least speculative wrong time. A long IM conversation with Russell from Football Outsiders prompted this question: what, if anything, does instituting a forty second play clock do besides put the onus on the officials to spot the ball faster? Even if the take 15 seconds to spot the ball–and watching this laggardly work by an SEC crew in this year’s LSU/Rebels game, that’s fairly brisk–it’s likely a push with the current system. And the more plays bit could come from the variable time that bleeds off the clock while the officials are pushing their walkers around spotting the ball. (Get them some offroad tires on those motherfuckers!)

So the 40 second clock may not be the real problem here, as Russell was quick and correct to point out. We were wrong, potentially, here, if the more logical types we know are correct.

The real-play shaver is still there, though:

“After a player runs out of bounds and the ball is made ready to play, the official will start the game clock. Under the old rules the game clock would not start until the ball was snapped. This new rule will not apply in the final two minutes of the first half and the final two minutes of the game.”

Hrm. it won’t be 3-2-5-e level trimmin’, but there’s some absolute time loss here without the promise of more plays. But that’s not the point here: we jumped the gun here and didn’t do our math correctly. See after the jump for the requisite self-flagellation.

(more…)

Our Blogpoll ballot for week three. Of course we insulted your favorite team.

BTW: pay no attention to the arrows. They’re corrections of corrections. Onward!

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU	—
2	Southern Cal	—
3	Oklahoma	—
4	West Virginia	—
5	California	1
6	Florida	1
7	Oregon	1
8	Texas	18
9	Penn State	2
10	Georgia Tech	1
11	Rutgers	1
12	Wisconsin	1
13	Louisville	—
14	Nebraska	—
15	South Carolina	3
16	Ohio State	1
17	Tennessee	4
18	Boston College	1
19	UCLA	3
20	Clemson	1
21	Arkansas	1
22	South Florida	1
23	Georgia	1
24	Arizona State	6
25	Washington	1

Notes, apologies, blatant admissions.

We fucked up. Again. What you see above is the slightly more thought out blogpoll ballot we resubmitted after our morning meeting, two cups of coffee, and done with a checklist next to us in a methodical fashion. What you will see under our ballot as tallied this morning is a neglectful piece of trash submitted a minute under the wire pre-coffee on our way to a meeting. Therefore: Texas, we apologize, having left you off completely in a hurry.

This means less to Texas than it might to other teams, since we all know how starving for attention and acknowledgment the Longhorn football program is. But if you see our blogpoll ballot and notice the mistake, save the comment and just call us imbeciles as we are. This would be a correct statement.

As seen on TigerDroppings: the Geauxrilla.

Fear the Geauxrilla. LSU is number one by proof this year. Offensively: they’ve demolished a decent MSU defense to begin, and then merc’d Virginia Tech’s defense in week two, allegedly among the best in the nation. Defensively: reduced Sean Glennon to cinders, which is easy enough, but also crushed VT’s run game from the onset. Weaknesses exist–watch their offensive tackles against decent competition for one–but right now they’ve cleaned the most impressive plate of anyone at the buffet.

South Carolina won, but……like all teams that live by the skin of their teeth, their climb will be slow and steady in the polls. We had them overvalued to begin with, so this market correction is less a matter of punishment, and more one of curbing irrational exuberance about their season.

Rutgers, babeee!!! We’ve undervalued them, especially in light of their actually playing defense in the Big East. (Even if they allegedly yell “YOU GOT FUCKED UP!” to Navy. Rutgers, have you ever considered replacing Vandy in the SEC? You’d fit right in.) South Florida nudges in following a win versus Auburn, who may or may not suck completely. Their quarterback literally chucks and ducks at this point waiting for the impact of oncoming rushers.

Bullish on the Pac-10, who erased a daunting slate of competition this past weekend. Cal may be too high, but we’ll happily hop Florida over them provided they beat Tennessee in fair to impressive fashion this weekend. Oregon earns points for properly euthanizing Michigan, who really was in a lot of pain.

The knot of the SEC: The absolute value of Georgia, Tennessee, and Arkansas are all difficult to calculate right now. For all intents and purposes, they’re treading water in this poll and either a.) about to swim, or b.) preparing to drown. If Florida trounces Tennessee, we have this crazy theory that Phil Fulmer will be in serious, malicious trouble. That Nutt guy, though–he could lose by fifty to Alabama and no one would care. Seriously. They love him up there with cuddles and fairy dust and everything.

Dropped: Hawaii. Well, it was Louisiana Tech. Only Mike Dubose loses to La. Tech from big boy football. They didn’t lose, but they needed miracles, and that’s enough (along with TCU’s loss) to frighten us off the upstarts for a week or so. And Colt Brennan only threw for 400 548 yards? DOES HE HAVE CANCER WE WANT TO KNOW?!?!?!

If you’ve got warrants, don’t appear on camera or take a weekend job where you will appear on camera in front of millions. That’s our best advice to whomever is getting a custom escort from local authorities here following the South Carolina/Georgia games.

The image first surfaces at OnlineAthens and has gone viral on message boards, mostly because it seems to confirm what every one thinks about the SEC anyway, but it’s not what it seems. According to our source (yea! a veritable source!) the man is most likely one of the chain gang, an irony in itself, and not an SEC official. The chain gangs are hired by the schools hosting the games, so this is not–we repeat–NOT an SEC official being carted away immediately following a game.

Not that we haven’t supported that idea from time to time…(HT: Micah.)

Semantics are everything, but we have to clarify this: Al Groh sucks, but he is not categorically “the worst” coach in the country right now. He’s close: the mumbling, the anti-charisma that surrounds him…remember scenes in films where evil men trod the soil, and flowers wilt all around them? Al Groh has a similar effect, but with the color palette: everything he walks past turns a uniform shade of beige. (The radios all turn to the Clear Channel BEST STATION TO LISTEN TO AT WORK, too.)

Al Groh: forever rockin’ to 98.5, but not the worst.

At least Groh produces NFL draft picks, one of the bits of evidence Stewart Mandel cites in his list of the five worst coaches this year to prove how bad Groh is. (Braves and Birds, file and save for the next installment of “Duel of the Jews“. You’re welcome.) He also plays a wicked synthtar on Guitar Hero, and has produced a whole line of instructional booklets.

There’s two examples far worse than Groh or even local mayonnaise sensation Chan Gailey, he of the 7-5 regular season mathematical equilibrium.

1. Sylvester Croom. No one wants to put him on this list because of the huge, huge challenges Croom faces as the head coach of a program located in a town lovingly referred to as “Starkganistan.” They do exist, but Croom’s made a slew of mistakes as head coach, most notably attempting to run his version of the modified West Coast offense (a complex, often too complex system for college) with personnel who can’t possibly execute it. In three years, he’s failed to find talent to match, either.

Croom: sadly, not very good.

Logically the only other person who could be worse than Croom. Of three victories last year, two preceded the losing coach’s firing or “departure”: Mike Shula at Alabama, and Watson Brown’s departure at UAB. Croom’s only other conference win not over Ole Miss or Kentucky…

2. …would be the one that got America’s other worst coach fired.