The Sporting Blog. Not only does it have our interview with Ric Flair, but it will have our posts on what Vegas during the first weekend of March Madness looks, feels, smells, and feels like, including the part where we wind up drinking $2000/bottle cognac from goatskins with the sheikhs of Dubai at a live man versus panther death match in the hills of Nevada.

Step One, this. Step Two, fire up laptop. Step three: MASSIVE PROFITS.

Flickr. I’ll be posting photos live from the fracas, as well, so keep up by following here.

Twitter. For those too ADDled to even get through this blog post, we’ll be posting on the EDSBS Twitter feed muy rapido all day and most of the night.

Your guest host will be Oops Pow Surprise from Black Heart, Gold Pants , a demented gent who promises to not only provide the Curious Index, but an installment of “Things Black and Gold People Like,” the latest in our series of fan profiles. We will usurp the Iowa jokes by saying the only one we know for sure: meth.

Godspeed. And wish the same to us. If we fail to come back from this mission, know that we went to bat country happily.

In case you don’t get it, Ohio State fans allegedly poop in coolers, which we don’t think is anymore true of them than it is of any other fanbase. The only fanbase we see as having any fecal advantages of any sort are the Nebraska Cornhuskers, because all that corn will have you sprinting like Tommie Frazier for the nearest port-o-let.

We begin part two of your human resources briefing, which we have titled “The People in Your Neighborhood.” This is an attempt to humanize this process by making you associate it with the cuddly, warm feelings of your pampered television childhood. Coffee has been provided, as have starchy, sugar-infused pastries located on the tables.

Morbo suggests you sit down and enjoy part two. He will be watching and attempting not to feed on your stinking but still nourishment-rich flesh.

Morbo from EDSBS HR suggests you listen.

Jeff Tedford, Cal.

Status: retread? The biggest message board prediction of 2005–that the spread option wouldn’t work in the SEC against fast defenses–may have been true with a slight geographic twist and a tweak of the timeframe. the spread didn’t work against defenses in the Pac-10 in 2006, or at least not to the liking of coaches.

Despite having significant success at Oregon, Gary Crowton’s modified spread attack is now downloading into the brains of LSU players. The Pac-10’s other spread convert was to be Cal, who hired Northwestern’s Mike Dunbar to come in and tweak Tedford’s offense to bring a whiff of the spread to Tedford’s already productive NFL-style offense.

Doing this seemed like giving Serena Williams an ass-lift at the time–an exercise in superfluity to improve something which looked just fine to begin with, frankly. Perhaps the thought was to utilize the more “athletic” talents of Joe Ayoob, a run/pass threat more suited to the spread attack, with all those pesky variable runs out of the shotgun.

Ayoob turned out to be a musketeer, spraying shots in every direction and capable of missing a wide open man with flair that came dangerously close to being a talent in itself. With Nate Longshore (a more traditional quarterback in the Tedford system) running the spread at Tennessee to start the season, the whole experiment went from an orderly mess with a potentially explosive catalyst like Ayoob to being something closer to Kentucky’s offense, a quasi-spread of short routes, ineffective shotgun runs, and three-and-outs.

The hybrid still racked up points, as Cal’s wont to do. But aside from a four game stretch of absolute carpet-bombing Minnesota, Arizona State, Portland State and Oregon, the offense’s productivity went down as the season went on, most notoriously versus USC in a 23-9 loss. After the Oregon State game, Cal’s quarterbacks didn’t pass for 300 yards once, not even against the cuddly, enabling pass defense of Texas A&M in the bowl game.

Dunbar’s return to the Big Ten and the job running Tim Brewster’s offense at Minnesota now ends the awkwardness, and also guarantees that Minnesota/Michigan will be a bonified shootout, since spread sets seem to be offensive gonorrhea for Michigan (discomfort, pain, burning sensation–all there.)

Jim Michalczik is listed as the offensive coordinator on their website, but classic Tedford should be back in vogue in Berkeley, naked protesters be damned. This means joy for offensive whores like ourselves, since Tedford’s play-action post play may be one of the most elegantly drawn-up and executed plays in college football, no matter who’s throwing it.

Yes, more Youtube to drool over. Really: this isn’t football, it’s trigonometry in motion.

Jimbo Fisher, FSU.

Status: hot n00b. An odd appellation for such a veteran guy, but technically Fisher hasn’t reached his career apex yet: never a head guy, former Auburn coach who then used LSU as his resume builder, and likes to be one thing and one thing alone: really, really confusing.

As noted with Gary Crowton, can out-genius himself at times like a kung-fu master tripping on his own robes. We’ve watched zillions of hours now of Fisher calling games, and even now it’s hard to pick out precisely what he’s bent on doing…though that’s the point, no? Toss sweeps, countless screens to the wideouts and backs, lotsa play-action passes, power runs to set that up, and every series one bomb to a streaking wideout if he’s got a qb with enough arm to do it. (See: Jamarcus Russell)

Throw in some qb draws, a few reverses, and whatever the hell else pops into his brain, and there you go. You basically have to worry about only one thing, and that’s everything plus the Dubuque Fakeroonie. You’ve never heard of that? Too bad. It’s coming in the third quarter along with everything else in order to do one thing: make big plays, change field position, and stun people into submission with the best tools you’ve got.

As exciting as this all sounds, Fisher’s braininess might have one impediment: his shattered crew of quarterbacks and the lackluster offensive talent surrounding them. If Matt Hayes says Florida State has explosive talent just ready to be exploited, it means one thing and one thing only: Florida State does not have the explosive talent it once had. Bowden the Younger had no clue what he was doing in any sense of the word “clue,” and it showed even in recruiting, which explains why everyone behind the offensive line on FSU spent the last five years backpedaling or picking turf out of their facemasks.

New o-line coach Rick Trickett and Fisher will have a serious, dramatic impact we’d actually like them not to have, being a Florida fan who’s benefitted greatly from Jeff Bowden’s imeptitude. But it’s going to be a rebuilding process on offense–the decay’s too deep and embedded–and the Florida State offense won’t be in full stride until late in the season, just in time for the Florida game. Um…yay.

John Bond, Georgia Tech.

Status: n00b. But a veteran n00b, and one with a good record of doing what rising offensive coordinators do: piling up points with limited resources. Bond set records at Army prior to the move to NIU, where his offense rode Garret Wolfe ’til the wheels fell off. Heavy on the run, as you might see here, but then again, if you had Wolfe, you would be, too.

Bond will allegedly have free rein to call plays under Chan Gailey. This means he will be co-coordinator, in effect, sticking to Gailey’s insistence on calling one half of meaningful football followed by a muddle of counters, quarterback draws, and ineffective passes. Considering Bond’s long record of success, this may be a problem for him. We’ll continue to monitor the situation.

One positive for Bond is that with the graduation of Reggie Ball, he actually has a quarterback to work with, something his predecessor didn’t. Nevermind that Patrick Nix still parlayed his stay at Tech into a job at the University of Miami, possibly on Randy Shannon’s assessment of “He beat us with who? Wow–imagine if he had a quarterback. A real, thinking, live-armed qb.”
Tech fans, he will be the guy throwing the ball under center. It’s been a while since you’ve seen one.

Mike Dunbar, Minnesota.

Status: Retread. A former head coach at Northern Iowa, former Northwestern OC, and Big Ten vet returning from an unsuccessful one year stint on the West Coast. But who doesn’t do that? Yeah, went West for a while. Tried to break into film. Wound up doing porn on weekends and working as a roofer. Glad to be back in the Midwest, but dude, the cold’s gonna take some getting used to!

Dunbar, who we would like to point out went west with a legitimate job and did not work in the porn or roofing industry, is back at Minnesota under the very enthusiastic Tim Brewster. The change should be a radical one in terms of basic formations, but not of approach: Minnesota’s line is lean and mean, and will adjust well to the running schemes of the Northwestern spread.

The passing game’s a whole different question. Tony Mortensen and Adam Weber competed during spring for the helm of what could be a digit-happy offense, but neither’s been a starter before. To lessen the pain experienced by Michiganders, we’ll refrain from double-posting the Northwestern clip again, and just suggest you look there to see what kind of sets and runs you’ll see in Dunbar’s offense.

Patrick Nix, Miami.

Status: n00b. Unsure as to exactly why Nix got this job, aside from working a team to a winning record with Reggie Ball under center. His Georgia Tech bio (Miami’s isn’t up yet) says all you might need to know here:

Patrick Nix spent five seasons at Georgia Tech from 2002-06, including his finally three years as offensive coordinator. He also coached the quarterbacks, his former position as a player.

We’re tempted to type NO DATA AVAILABLE here. Nix’s offense seemed so unimaginative, rote, and ineffective last year at Tech, but the confounding factors make us think any judgements from last year would be clouded by Gaileyism and his “mercurial” quarterback. Our finally estimate will have to wait until he gets a few games in with his new toys at Miami, whose offense couldn’t in (theory at least) regress from last year.

The hater’s storyline? Nix working with Kirby Freeman, a FIIGD scrambler with real bizarro entertainment value. If Ball’s any indication of his mentoring, Miami fans could be sweating blood if Freeman gets the starting job.

Bound for Tallahassee from birth. No program has put the announcers of this earth through more hell than the Florida State Seminoles, fielding the Craphonsos and De’Cody Faggs of the universe without even offering the saving grace of a quality nickname.

Another recruit who, despite the possible ebbs and flows of recruiting over the next year, is destined to wear garnet and gold:

Yourhighness Morgan. Outside linebacker, Bushnell (FL) South Sumter

Yourhighness? The only queen we worship never put on pads. Well, maybe kneepads.

Steven Dubner of Freakonomics fame unearthed it back in August, of course. But we’ll take this opportunity to say that if Yourhighness does not play for the Florida State Seminoles, then nail your furniture to the wall, because gravity’s going sideways most fastly.

BONUS! He has a brother named Handsome, but does not in fact have siblings named Frito, President Camacho, or Beef Supreme.

Wanted: short, scatter-armed qb with bad tats. Georgia Tech’s Jonathan Garner has announced his intention to transfer, clearing the way for Taylor Bennett to claim the number one slot on the qb depth chart for the Yellow Jackets. Gailey, when reached for comment, said that he was:

“…sad to see him go, but it’ll work out. We’re still looking for a scatter-armed, converted third-string running back no taller than 5′ 9″ to really make this offense work, though. Then we’ll dump Taylor and let this pony run like it should.”

His pancakes are immaculate, too. Calvin Johnson, in addition to being a legendarily nice guy, water sanitation engineer for impoverished Peruvian villages, and the most underserved wide receiver in the nation, added another line to his resume this week: 4.35 in the 40 at the combine. Johnson ran the 40 against the advice of his agent, Jeremy Sanshuevos.

The quote from the AJC on Sunday: “He’s been working out like he’s going to be Mr. Irrelevant.”

Calvin Johnson: Like Randy Moss, but faster and undumb.

Bathrooms are a privilege no more in Texas. The Cotton Bowl will follow the Cowboys to their new home in Arlington, according to ESPN.com. This means that both the reasonable complaints (like, three bathrooms in the whole stadium) and the unreasonable (the “too-narrow” seating at the Cotton Bowl–lay off the Funyuns, supersize) will all be made irrelevant as the last remaining attraction vacates the Legion Field of the Lone Star State. When reached for comment, the Cotton Bowl said “Creak, drip, crumble.”

Michigan’s wide receivers just bought you an ice cream cake. WHAT! Ice Cream cake, y’all. Though he’s busy preparing for his second professional fight, Tom Zbikowski–and yes, we just realized this–is indeed returning next year to play out his string with Notre Dame in the defensive secondary.

Zbikowski, seen here against LSU, Ohio State, USC, or Michigan.

Alley Broussard, in his seventeenth year of eligibility. Alley Broussard, despite playing more seasons of college football than Hayden Fox ever coached, is still devouring goodwill at LSU. He’s in Les Miles doghouse for “team rules violations,” which means one of three things:

1. Skipped class.
2. Smoked weed and tested positive.
3. Tackled, upended, and then devoured a Geo Metro whole after a raucous off-campus party.

Money’s on #3 here.

Pete Carroll is scarily focused, chapter 346. Conquest Chronicles has further evidence that Pete Carroll is the Genghis Khan of recruiting, minus the horsestink and thousands-large harem.

Reggie Nelson Mancrush Update. Our favorite safety ever to play at Florida is keeping busy with preparations for the combine. Mohammed Massaquoi just dove to the ground after reading Nelson’s name. We’re sorry if it caused him any trauma.

We’ll be boldly testing the theory of whether doing sports radio causes instantaneous weight gain tomorrow night as EDSBS Radio on BlogTalkRadio gets underway.

It promises to be a trainwreck, so tune in as we run through survival techniques of the offseason and also discuss anything and everything leaping into our minds at any given moment.

Who: Us, of course. Peter Bean of Burnt Orange Nation has been intrepid enough to join us for the trainwreck of an inaugural broadcast, as well. Both of us are on prescription medication. Be afraid.

The particulars:

What: EDSBS Radio. Like you’ve got anything better to do.

When: 8:00 EST–9:00 EST.

How: To call in, you mean? But of course. Live calling is a feature on BlogTalkRadio, and you should call in. In fact, we’ll be having a contest to see who can make the most cliched sports talk radio call-in tomorrow night.

The number: (718) 664-6532

You won’t be able to call in until showtime. Until then, feel free to submit topics for discussion in the comments, or click the BlogTalkRadio Button to visit our channel’s site.

It will probably sound a lot like this looks:

May we recommend Duncan Hills Coffee for your caffeine needs? You’re gonna get some!

Warning: very, very, very loud noises. Mind the volume.

MP3 File

IT’S DIVISION ONE FOOTBALL!!! WE KNEW WHAT WE WERE, AND WE LET US GET AWAY!!! GET DOWN OFF THE SHED BEFORE I MAKE YOU SORRY YOU WERE EVER BORN AHHHHH!!!!