Every Day Should Be Lemsday has Coach O’s farewell speech. Da rebbah done madeah bigassah mistakeah!

The Orgeron is out at Ole Miss, according to Joe Schad of ESPN, who’s practically an honorary coroner today after announcing both Callahan’s termination and now Orgeron.

We’re heartbroken. The Orgeron Era can’t die. He just…he just can’t. He’s big, tough, and aggressive, just like a Hummer! He’s gettin’ pelts on da rakrootin’ trail! He gotta da Jevan Snead a-comin intah da Oxfahd fo-a throwing da heapah touchdowns in 2008!

In all seriousness, this is sad as hell. We’re left looking through the scrapbook now, watching the photos bubble up under our tears.

Just one more time, for old times sake. Play it Jo-Jo. YOU PLAYED IT FOR HIM, NOW PLAY IT FOR US. (Slams fist down drunkenly, tears gleaming in our eyes.) Play it again, Jo-Jo.

We imagine Robert Khayat did this over the phone, since you’d have to engrave the Orgeron’s name on magical shackles a la Hellboy to restrain him before telling him he couldn’t come back to work in person. They’d have to call in Rasputin for the whole thing.

This leaves the pesky question of who will take the Ole Miss job. Exquisitely timed as always, Ole Miss has fired a coach just in time to compete against Texas A&M, Michigan, Nebraska, and god knows what other larger, more monied programs will fire their coaches in the next ten minutes–not to mention the vacancies gaping after the guys who fill those positions leave their current positions.

OOOOOOO DaCoachO donnaunnastandhoww daOleMissaWildBoyz stealapillahs frommadahotel! CoachOgonnaevahextreme tomakkah daOleMissaRebbah sohappahatta daOleMissahcampus. Nowdeygonnaroon dareputashunuhdaschool fohthirtypillahs annasixclokkaradios! CoachO
gonnahdrinkkaeightaRedBull annasevenpacksabeefjerkeh ahjussathinkinboutit!

Firssawesleepinabarnna likkaonebiggahappyfamluh! Nopillahsjustaeverahoneonnadastraw, keepinwarmwiffadahorsesannadaanimals offadafarm. ButtadaWildBoyzcomplainnaboutdacold, dainsectwhatbiteinthenight, annawakinnaup wiffadaCoachOtrynarippadaheadoff inadreamabout fightinonewhoppaoffagatah! OOOO-WEEEE datwassomefunnahtimes! Buttahplayarevolt gotteminnadadorms wiffadapillahsanpipeheatanalldat.

Buttanow, playahstakin dapillahzfrommadahotel, annaCoachogottadasolutionfromma supplahanddademandside. Firssahsuspendalltwennyofum; thenwehittadahboostahmen fodahclinchah indarecrootinprocessah thattahgettahdemOleMissRebbah todaESSEESEE ahChampyunshippah:

DAHEATPRAHDOOCIN’ BODYPILLAHFODAH OLEMISSAHREBBAH
ATHALETICDORMAH!!!!

WEGONNAHRUNEMBABEE!!! DAPILLAHCHAMPYUNS HEPUSSAHLANDABIGRECROOT, andahtakeussatodah nexlevelboi! Issaonhunnapuhsent hypoallagenix anna ugonomicallistacallyshapta fordamossferoshussleepinahyoulife! PlussaCoachOget damodelwiffa daFossfilfodoze wiffadaallahgiestodagoosedown.

All disclosures first: we’ve talked with Bruce Feldman on the phone, met him in person once, and are quoted once in his new book on recruiting, Meat Market. We’re also quoted in several other books, as well, including Gridskipper’s upcoming guide to sex clubs around the world. (Pg. 256, Bangkok section. “No club is more welcoming to the homely, naked, and needy male than Club Superpussy! A thousand cocktails to them! Come for the awkward group sex, stay for the Pad Thai special!”)

It’s great. Buy it.

Nevertheless, despite having contact with us, Feldman is a masterful observational writer, disappearing into the background of Meat Market as the eye for a year’s worth of frenetic recruiting by a modern master: Ed “The” Orgeron, who let Feldman tag along as Coach O ran through a zillion hours of tape and several reservoirs of Red Bull and coffee in his quest to restock the cabinet with talent at Ole Miss.

The book’s a meticulously researched book, but don’t mistake the precision for a lack of blood. The story’s got all the life it needs in one Ed Orgeron, who seems to be bigger in real-life than we could ever make him here in the blogosphere. We’ll just tempt with two scenes from the book that involve actual, witnessed events or conversations during a typical Orgeron recruiting process.

One: Jerrell Powe and Ed Orgeron actually squared off in Powe’s high school parking lot. Someone saw them practicing swim moves and called the school to tell them that “a huge white man and a huge black man” were wrestling in the parking lot.

Two: An actual conversation between TE coach Hugh Freeze and Ed Orgeron about a recruit who fancied Ole Miss after a visit.

Freeze: “I think he really likes us because you wrestled with him.”

Orgeron: “Shit, that son-of-a-bitch was strong. After he pinched me under the arms, it was ON.”

We can’t sell the book any more convincingly than that. We woke up at 5 a.m. the other day to read it. It’s a peek into the least understood portion of the football year, and a rousing portrait of someone truly obsessed with the process.

Buy it.

Ole Miss’s halftime had special spark this weekend thanks to a wondrous treat: daytime fireworks. Fireworks are awesome–the cheaper and more bootleg they are the better, and the phrase “Mississippi Fireworks” certainly reeks of both–but they lose some of their efficacy when deployed in broad daylight. Because you can’t see them. Because it’s 2 in the afternoon in Oxford, Mississippi.

COACHOGONNABURNTHISMUTHADOWN!

It’s really great, though, when the fireworks make things catch fire and not work.

A halftime fireworks display gone awry knocked out power to half of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Saturday.

The game was not delayed and power was restored early in the fourth quarter.

Ole Miss officials may seem negligent for continuing despite the lack of a proper scoreboard, but consider this: with Ole Miss not scoring until the fourth quarter in a 44-8 defeat to the SEC’s only other team without a conference win, there really wasn’t much incentive to turn the power back on, was there?

At least Ed Orgeron got to go out there, cigarette in mouth and beer in hand, and light off the $55.95 Carnival Extravaganza multipack for the fans. He was probably trying to burn the place down to avoid playing the second half–they were down 21-0 at the half–but it was a nice cover for the failed attempt at arson.

(Massive HT: Ragin’ Cajun Rebel.)

Coach O’s a busy man. Zoom in once you click to see just how busy he can be.

We can’t look past Hate Week just yet–but the Shadow of the Orgeron is long, and tinged with fire and the smell of smoked meats of many species. Erik at Deep South Sports spies our favorite kind of story–rank hearsay!–concerning a young autograph seeker and the Orgeron at a local little league game.

He waited until the game was over, so as not to bother him while the game was going on. He stood there waiting with his Florida Gator team hat (the five year old that is). When his turn came, he was very rudely turned away by Orgeron. He told my son he was not going to sign his hat because it was a Florida hat.

Nancy Grace is outraged, OUTRAGED WE TELL YOU! The EDSBS official stance is this: when Somali Bantu mothers have daughters, they slap them from infancy. Why? Because life for the Bantu is hard, and for women it is hardest. To the child with the Gator hat, welcome to your baptism in the Church of Arbitrary Laundry-Based Hatred and its first instructional slap–and consider yourself lucky you weren’t dressed for the grill and cut into chops on the spot.

(Check the photo–who knew he had such shiny knees? Your reflection in them would be the last thing you see.)

In five days: FOOTBAW.

That noise you hear is Ed Orgeron speaking at SEC Media days, where he’s just finished up a booming and “optimistic” rundown of the Ole Miss Rebels, all the while winning the Al.com pool for “most likely to fry our audio equipment.”

Mock at your own risk. The Orgeron has endured tougher battles.

The Orgeron, putting down his croker sack full of blue chippahs, had two of the most intriguing quotes thus far from the Alabama equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival. One, he took a nifty slap at that pipsqueak Saban:

Orgeron first commented on Saban’s impressive record saying, then belittled him saying “he won a share of a national championship.” Saban claimed the 2003 BCS championship at LSU while Orgeron was an assistant coach at Southern California, a team the AP and others declared was the real national champion.

Then he finally explained how a Delta State walk-on became the starting qb at Ole Miss, saying that Brent Schaeffer’s automatic spot as starter under center was an error on his part.

Orgeron raised eyebrows last year by naming Schaeffer the starter before he played a down. Now, he calls that a mistake.

“I wish I hadn’t done that,” he said. “That was for recruiting.”

OWCOACHOBARRINDASOLETODATUBBYNINNYBOYMEDIATAHPES! BEENWATCHINDAOPRAH, GEDDINTOUCHWITHDAFEELINS’! Please, please let Ole Miss have a moderate amount of success this year–a league without Orgeron would leave us rent with grief. He’s learned how to elbow other coaches properly at Media Day. He’s evidently starting to learn from his mistakes (though the John Thompson hiring still has us befuddled.)

As long as the tally of wins doesn’t include a victory on September 22nd, we’re fine with whomever he beats, on the football field or in a dark alley in Oxford. Judging from some of the advance stuff we’ve heard about Feldman’s book following Orgeron’s recruiting around for a season…you’ll be pulling for him, too.

Women, tackling dummies, lots of 40ish women doing deep squats: it all sounds like one of Carl Spackler’s more feverish sexual fantasies, but no! we say–it’s the Ole Miss women’s football camp, yet another one of those marginal offseason fundraisers that fill the long, empty, desolate, but now only 68 days or so until college football season begins.

And this article from the Memphis Commercial-Appeal is really the first and last thing you need to read about this year’s wave of camps, because we can assure you with scientific certainty that nothing, and we mean ABSOLUDDDELY NOFIN’ GONNA TOP DA OWE MISSAH CAMP with your honored host, the Orgeron.

LADEEZ DA OWGERON GONNA LURNYA SOMMADAT GOODOWWFASHUNNED FOOTBAW!!!

OXFORD, Miss. — Ole Miss coach Ed Orgeron stood at the center of 400 screaming women.

“WAR TIME! TAKE IT OUTSIDE! WAR TIME! TAKE IT OUTSIDE!”

This is precisely what Ed Orgeron says to all the women he takes back to “The Tannery,” (more…)

The bulleted/bolded recruiting update to lift you through your post-lunch sugar crash (this Pixie stick diet is killing you, isn’t it?):

HE HAD THE ANKLES…OF A GOD!!! Some men are ass men, other go straight for the boobs, and others swear by legs, presumably because they anticipate having children who will have to forage for their own food and therefore must be swift afoot. Recruiters? They’re ankle men, according to the Seattle Times, especially for the really, really thin ones. This explains the prevalence of Nicole Richie posters in crack recruiters’ offices, we guess.

He had the thin, lithe ankles…OF A GOD!!!

Joe McKnight, Trojan. Somehow turning down the opportunity to place a baseball cap on his head on national television–why does Joe McKnight hate America?–megarecruit Joe McKnight of Louisiana chooses USC over LSU and Ole Miss. LSU fans desolate, Ole Miss fans purchasing bottled water and taking to basements as all of Mississippi goes on an Orgeron Watch.

Make that an Orgeron Warning, Governor. The Orgeron loses one more top recruit, who foolishly compromised the entire well-being of the state by spurning Coach O to go to not only another team, but in-state rival Mississippi State. Robert Elliott, a four-star running back committed to Ole Miss since last year, de-committed, changed his name, and sent his family to lie low “in an undisclosed location” today. Hail State has the real, extremely very much important reason MSU won out for the in-stater:

“At first I was going to go to Florida State or Ole Miss,” said Elliott. “It helped when Croom told me I could come in and wear No. 2. It was really where I could go and feel comfortable and rock my No. 2. I have been wearing it since peewee and that’s the only number I can rock. If I put something else on,it won’t look right on me. I figure you’ve got to look good to play good. I can’t wear those double digit numbers.”

Given this kind of reasoning, we won’t blame Coach O for eating cinderblocks and chugging benzene to even greater excess around the corpsefire tonight.

Benzene: it’s what’s for dinner.

Hattiesburg’s like South Beach, in that both places have oxygen and most utilities. Antwain Easterling, VHT Dade County running back out of Florida, spurns Miami et al. for…Southern Miss? Instant analysis: Jeff Bower must really be [NAME REDACTED]! And is being slagged by Notre Dame through the internets! Call our lawyer. There are briefs to be filed here, dammit.

The commit means either that Easterling desperately wants to be big fish at USM, or that he’s already been extended a hefty line of credit at nearby casinos. However the feat was accomplished, catfish martinis to SMQ on his team’s signing day coup. We recommend avoiding all roads leading to Oxford on the way to the bar, though–they should be clogged with refugees fleeing the Orgeron’s wrath.

And book me for a quick 18 this afternoon. Spurrier the White, the guy who used to coach Florida in the ’90s, has learned some things in his waking life as the shadow coach of South Carolina, one of them being how to be lauded for his recruiting in the media. His class is being touted as “DeE BEzT EVR” to some into South Carolina, something he’s undoubtedly savoring at this instant while eyeballing a tricky wedge shot from around 20 yards out. Fore!

Mack sends you a gift of barbecue–no bun, of course. Carbs’ll kill you. Low-carb Mack Brown, the skinny version of the coach who shed a fifth-grader between the national championship and the beginning of the 2006 season, brings a slimmed-down but choice selection of only the leanest, protein heavy recruits to Austin: 18 commits in all.

The dirty business of lobbying 18 year olds has begun, and like most people dealing with 18 year olds, we expect only the worst and most efffective tactics to be employed: fear, cash, and sex, most notably.

You’ll need a steady hand to pass through the recruiting season, and the right tools to guide you through the dank jungle of rubber chicken dinners, strip clubs, illicit late-night drinking sessions, and surreptitious “rental car” usage you’ll find are all common downfalls of the recruiting season.

Our first cheat sheet follows, letting you know what to expect at each school. Enjoy.

(more…)

Coaching holes getting filled furiously in the past twenty four:

–BC will likely hire Green Bay Offensive Coordinator Jeff Jagodzinski. His main virtues seem to be having NFL experience and wanting the job. Bill, for one, is excited.

–Jonathan Tu has an exclusive with Urban…who sounds like an extremely violent man.

–Stanford hires Jim Harbaugh, who Jon Wilner dubs “a huge gamble.” Perhaps, but this sentence cannot/is not be true:

But this is a huge gamble for a program that cannot afford to be wrong.

Umm…Stanford could afford to outfit every incoming freshman with gold legwarmers and sapphire-encrusted codpieces and bikinis. They, more than any D-1 school, can afford Jim Harbaugh, even if he drives his car drunk into any one of the 18 Nobel Laureates wandering the grounds. (Just wait a year, they’ll make more.) He can’t be worse than Buddy Teevens, and that is scientific fact.

–Burnt Orange Nation is Time’s Person of the Year.

–Mario Cristobal to become the head coach at Florida International University, replacing Don Strock following a miserable year culminating in the Orange Bowl fight with Miami. Cristobal, the first Cuban-American D-1 coach, announced at his press conference that A’Mod Ned could do whatever the hell he wanted to, play any position, and take whatever he liked from the locker room so long as he promised not to hurt anyone.

A’Mod Ned: broke the bonds of slavery for Europe, swung crutch of liberty for all.

–Erik found this pic, and we can’t stop looking at the Orgeron glowing with joy over his poaching of transfer Jevan Snead from Texas. WARNING: you may be turned to stone by his glare. Or fall in love. Or both.

He’s like a sexy basilisk, isn’t he?

Texas backup qb Jevan Snead was abducted last night from the parking lot of his apartment in Austin, Texas. Witness describe him being swooped up into the arms of a huge man and stuffed into a sack. The man was described as being “kind of like Solomon Grundy, but scarier,” with coal black hair, “fiery, demented eyes,” and a voice that shattered the glass in the windows of nearby cars.

Police only have this note as a clue, left behind by the superhuman abductor:

HOOOOOOWWEEEEEE!!! DAaaeeOrgeron heaheapahappy this ayem. Heeeagothisself abraaandnew kwatahbackah bahdanamuh JEVAN SNEAD. Datdehbowah kenstraightout trow dehbaw. KENRUNTOOHAHAHAWW!!!! WOOOOHHHHOOOOOWWEEEE!

Orgerongonnalaylowindembayous formonthatwoo tildepopo layoffalookin formahnewqb. Dendey thinkheedeadorsomething, thenchangeathename anddagettanew birfcertficutaforhim frommaMexico. Ah alreadaygottanewnamahforhim: TED SCORGERON!!! Yougettit? Huh? HAWHAWHAW!!!

The abductor looks something like this, according to a sketch artist. This may be his website, say investigators.

Any practice where “Tom Lemming” can be considered an expert is a dark, amoral science indeed. If you had forgotten that beneath the robust heartbeat of the season’s action there lies the nasty drumbeats of recruiting, well, the Herald reminds you that if you lack both morals and the ability to make an interest that does not revolve around your own interests, you may be a future politician, assassin, or ideally, a college football recruiter.

This would be disgraceful: Rivals.com’s Bobby Burton expects opposing schools will use Bryan Pata’s shooting death in negative recruiting against Miami. Former assistant Don Soldinger said he knows with certainty that schools had tried to scare recruits with the ”violence in Miami” angle.

It is true, though. If you go to Miami, you’ll get shot. Every. Damn. Day. And if you go to Berkeley–dude, you’re getting syphilis! And if you go to Georgia, well, you’re getting a ticket for driving on a suspended license. It’s some kind of initiation thing they have going. And if your prized recruit child commits to USC? Will totally be partied into an anorexic mess by hanging out with Paris or Nicole. But they will be so, so thin, and that is hott.

Do you want your child to end up like this? Say no to the Trojans. After all, that Guatemalan plastic surgery adds up after a while.