1. Florida (53 first-place votes)
2. Texas (4)
3. Oklahoma (1)
4. Southern California (1)
5. Alabama
6. Ohio State
7. Virginia Tech
8. Penn State
9. LSU
10. Ole Miss
11. Oklahoma State
12. California
13. Georgia
14. Oregon
15. Georgia Tech
16. Boise State
17. Texas Christian
18. Utah
19. Florida State
20. North Carolina
21. Iowa
22. Nebraska
23. Notre Dame
24. Brigham Young
25. Oregon State

Others receiving votes: Kansas, Michigan State, Texas Tech, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Rutgers, Miami (Florida), Missouri, Illinois, Clemson, South Carolina, UCLA, Auburn, Nevada, South Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina State, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Southern Miss, Wake Forest, Arizona, Boston College, Central Michigan, East Carolina, Colorado, Maryland, Navy, Tennessee, Houston, Michigan, Minnesota, Troy.

Curiosities, travesties, and other things that struck me after the jump — along with y’all’s chance to tear this thing up yourselves.

Urban Meyer isn’t going to forget this. It’s a big deal, and he’s going to make it a big deal. Maybe it’s just me, but I have to confess to a bit of shock that Florida wasn’t a unanimous choice at the #1 spot. Not that Texas, Oklahoma, and USC don’t have cases to be made, but with Tebow back this certainly seemed to be heading toward a year of “GREATEST COLLEGE FOOTBALL TEAM EVER?!?!?!?!”-type hype for the Gators, and it looks like at least a few folks aren’t buyin’ it.

Apparently some coaches are capable of coming to their senses. The rest of the top 10 conforms fairly closely to what we expected it would be based on compilations of the various publications’/sportswriters’ spring/summer top 25s from a couple months back, with a few exceptions: LSU has risen from a low-teens/fringey-top-10 pick to #9, eclipsing Oklahoma State and Ole Miss, trendy mid-top-10 picks a month or so ago but themselves languishing on the fringes of the top 10 this morning. (Cue Holly: “Like, ‘Hey, the Cotton Bowl was swell, but you’re still coached by Houston Nutt, right? Riiiight.’ “)

Rebuilding year? You might say that, yes. As befitting any conference projected to have a Wannstache-coached team as its eventual champion, the Big East failed to put a single team in the top 25; you don’t find any Big East squads until you dig down into the Others Receiving Votes category and find Cincinnati at a de facto #29, behind Kansas, Javon Ringer-less Michigan State, and Graham-Harrell-and-Michael-Crabtree-less Texas Tech. The Mountain West, by comparison, has three, tying the ACC.

Beano put you up to this, didn’t he? Yes, Notre Dame is in the top 25. Fortunately for those dreading another four months of “Are the Irish back?!?!” stories, we won’t have to wait long to find out whether they deserve it: After opening the season at home against Nevada, the Irish go on a three-week tussle with the Big 10 (at Michigan, vs. Michigan State, at Purdue), a loss in any one of which would probably be enough to bounce ND into Others Receiving Votes purgatory.

“Hope” is a four-letter word. Speaking of which, the coaches collectively exhibited enough charity to spare votes for: Auburn, 5-7 last year and still playing Death Is Not An Option with Kodi Burns, Neil Caudle, and Chris Todd at the QB spot; and Michigan, coming off their worst season ever and still a long ways off from having figured out Rich Rodriguez’s offense. Compared to these, the couple of votes cast for Tennessee almost look justified. (Your projections for what silly-ass comment Lane Kiffin will choose to make about this development, if any, are welcome in the comments.)

The times, they truly are a-changing. Does anybody else feel almost kind of empty inside not seeing Duke there at the end of the ORV category now that Spurrier has been asked to stop casting shits-and-giggles votes for the Blue Devils at #25?

So those are my immediate knee-jerk reactions; let the heckling begin. Audience, what say you?

Live to win, ’till you die, ’till the light dies in your eyes
Live to win, take it all, just keep fighting ’till you fall
Day by day, kickin’ all the way, I’m not cavin’ in
Let another round begin, live to win
Live to win
Live to win
Yeah, live, yeah, win!!

9/13/08: Never. Forget.

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?!?!?!

Is Chris Leak Like Cameron Diaz in ‘In Her Shoes’? Pretty and literacy-problematic?

Remember that last year agents were having kittens over Vince Young scoring a six? This story is like that, but instead of a first-rounder, it’s over Chris Leak, a prospect whose most optimistic supporters would be thrilled at a solid NFL Europe run followed by a steady Arena Ball career. Leak clocked a 4.7 instead of his vaunted 4.5 (a number no one believed anyway,) measured up at sub six feet, and now racked up a number that, while still above this year’s low of 4 (some poor Iowa State running back, presumably caught in a revolving door at this very moment coming out of his hotel in Indianapolis,) reeks of “literacy problems.”

Could it be true? Sure. Leak had trouble reading defenses, didn’t blow doors on the SAT, and majored in the subject that gives Auburn Academic All-Americans: sociology. It’s entirely possible he got that score, as anyone who saw the pick at the 2:00 mark in the video below can attest.

Antwain Robinson can believe it, sure. But the test itself might have been a bit unfair to Leak, as the Wonderlic famously preys on its takers’ insecurities. It can be a veritable psychological torture run for players, and for a player known to shudder under pressure, it may have been too much for Leak. Just take a look at the EDSBS exclusive copy of the Wonderlic Leak took:

It really wasn’t fair from the start. We demand a recount, and a Tebow-free Wonderlic for Leak.

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. The power differential between Grossman and his environment wasn’t that vast; had he not worked out as the deep bomber of Spurrier’s dreams, Grossman’s worst case scenario was dropping out and living comfortably on his parents’ sectional sofas. He didn’t owe it all to the university, and his future showed a diversity of opportunities, not one blood-filled egg of NFL hope that when cracked spilled his soul and any hope of a future onto the cold ground.

(For those of you who just missed the reference, it’s to the story “The Heartless Giant,” which may be the most depressing story ever written. Do not ingest near bottle of pills, razor blades, or running tree shredders.)

That’s obviously the case for many university recruits. Check the interview with Michael Lewis a few months back. Lewis–no expert on college football, but certainly an accomplished economic mind–said that the NCAA exists in large part to prevent young, underprivileged black men from contacting the very people to seek to help them in an exchange of skills: wealthy white businessmen. Lewis’ argument sounds typically economist-like here, a bit trenchant, rhetorically inverted, and blunt, but bearing a skein of fact. For the most part, universities deny any contact between those who fund big football programs and the recruits whose talent turns game into irresistible spectacle, a division enforced via the NCAA but whose existence continues with the tacit agreement of the NCAA’s partners…the universities themselves.

Adam Smith would object. Then again, Scottish people object a lot, so take that with a grain of fairly traded salt, laddie.

Universities protect their incomplete free market through the NCAA. The NCAA makes itself a great target through poorly defined mission, sure. (Listen to Myles Brand circumscribing the topic when addressed makes one think he’d be a perfect White House Press Secretary, North Korean Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, or superb divorce lawyer.) Yet it’s really only the gatekeeper, propped up through an arcane series of codes and regulations arbitrarily enforced through a process we can only define as random draws of paper slips from THE BAD IDEA HAT.

(If you’re not familiar with THE BAD IDEA HAT, we’ll lay out the concept quickly. It’s the device all bad governments and body politics use to determine harebrained policy. A friend of ours came up with the idea in Laos when the government decide to rip up an old street, repave the whole thing during only daylight hours when traffic swelled to stroke-level intensity, and then neglected to install the gas and water lines underneath the road. The whole thing was ripped up and repaved at extravagant cost to a nation whose per capita yearly income is equal to a weekend’s tailgating bill for you. Thus: THE BAD IDEA HAT.)

Current guardian of THE BAD IDEA HAT.

If players were treated like hotshot teen programmers fending off Microsoft’s advances, or even given the courtesy term of professional football interns, this would be a different story. In fact, that may be the most honest term for college football players: football interns. They do work for the university, raking in returns at major universities far above the money laid out for them by their sponsor.

Crucial differences emerge, though. Interns aren’t typically under contract, and aren’t obligated to sit out for one year professionally should they decide to work for someone else. Interns at other companies also aren’t signed to four-year contracts, and stand a much, much better chance of getting on professionally than their brethren in football. So football players are denied the courtesies extended to interns while simultaneously denied the opportunity to network effectively with wealthy alums by the NCAA.

That’s a perfectly engineered power differential there: the labor gets a pittance in return for the eventual payoff. This power differential is not as drastic at universities with low athletic profiles; in fact, at a place like Vanderbilt, the athletes can claim a pretty legitimate exchange of goods. At places like our beloved University of Florida, however, the divergence between effort and eventual payoff swells to the wildly disproportionate.

Its shadow becomes all too evident during recruiting, when agents of the corporation called college football go out to pitch the logically impossible: an exclusive contract of a good (a university education) unwanted by many of the purchasers in exchange for a fleeting shot at an NFL career attained by a slim percentage of the applicants. In repayment, their truly unique talents get short shrift in the form of denied benefits proportional to their input. In plain terms: athletes on the whole don’t get back what they put into their time at a university. Not even close.

That’s reason one why recruiting is creepy. It’s the beginning of an unequal and exploitative arrangement between athlete (not “student-athlete,” for the most part) and university. And the sell from big programs begins with the most illusory claim of all: a shot at the NFL. If you’re Rex Grossman, not making it is no big deal; you’ve got options. Rex Grossmans in college football, though, are rare. A sizeable chunk of college football players come from places where going back to sit on the couch represents a much different and more dire prospect for them.

They can’t all be Rex Grossman, who didn’t owe the university everything in exchange for the nothing they received in return: a university degree (not guaranteed, of course) and precisely zero share of the profits they generated for the school or, worse yet, the corporate third-party entity running the athletic program. Until they get a share while playing, the power differential will remain grossly unequal between athlete and university. And recruiting will remain the first step in what is an inherently duplicitous arrangement.

(Part Two, which will explain why this is all necessary and still creepy, will follow later today.)

HT: KD Godfrey.

Although not as stupid as Ginn’s teammates for crippling him.

Michigan’s been all three: windshield (most notoriously in the Yakety Sax Notre Dame game), bug (against Ohio State), and then mangled bug against USC. A 3-3 game at the half turned to a 32-18 loss of definitive nature. How, when Michigan seemed so poised to confound the BCS system with a potential dual claim to the national title, did Michigan get hammered so badly in a crucial spot?

Hypotheses, in order of probability.

Michigan couldn’t block. Like a heart attack: simple, fatal, and quick. On both sides of the ball Michigan slid backwards all day like they were on carpet skates. Our best guess why? USC’s stronger than Michigan, a hypothesis that will infuriate Michigan fans already fuming at their conditioning program, which has been described as being so antiquated we always imagine their facilities to look a lot like the video for “Physical” by Olivia Newton-John, though not as gay.

Culpability:Robert Blake-killing-his-wife certainty. You can see it all game long–USC’s pushing Michigan off the ball on nearly every play. Verifiable, doom-spelling, and damning.

Carpet skates: Michigan had them on at the Rose Bowl.

USC’s defense and Michigan’s offense= water, meet silver nitrate and magnesium. USC’s marauding, blitz-giddy defense and Michigan’s stodgy, run-first 1982 hottness attack probably meant disaster from the start. Michigan could not pass block. Michigan could not run block. Their counters to the pressure–screens and draws, just like Lee tells us to do on NCAA 2007–were eaten alive by linebackers. Slants, the great prophylaxis against blitzes in the passing game, either never happened or were never called.
Hot reads vanished in the fog of indecision and panic. All of that equalled a mini-Enschede for the Michigan offense, who came out flat and received zero help from playcalling or halftime adjustments.

Culpability: Super-string theory certain. Certainly sounds complex and interesting, and definitely requires an understanding of the subject we can’t possibly hope to have. Occam’s suspicious.

You’re living in your own private Enschede, Michigan.

Michigan got out-coached. Not really a point of debate. USC came out, racked up 16 points in the third, and changed what they were doing to win the game. Michigan’s offense tried to gamely keep up, but it was like watching a hippo run windsprints to see the Wolverine offense keep pace (or not) with USC. Waggle; run. Run; waggle. Michigan showed nothing new, showed no desire to destroy its opponent in its game-planning, and in total had us sounding like Merrill Hoge on the couch. (You must be a killer to play this game!!! A mad, bloodthirsty, hard killerman!!! Killerman yarrrrrrr!!!!)

By points alone USC’s halftime adjustments were at least twice as good as Michigan’s. Halftime adjustments for Carr mean a change of pants and a cup of coffee; for USC they meant redesign, a slew of new blitz looks, and taking more chances offensively in the name of forcing Michigan into a corner. It wasn’t rocket science; they just couldn’t guard Dwayne Jarrett, who solved the problem of the Cover 2 umbrella by sprinting straight through the gap in coverage and daring the Michigan secondary to knock him on his ass. Who dares wins–and USC did.

Culpability: Tommy Lee gave Pam Anderson Hep C Certainty. Certainly makes sense on a gut-level, right? Then again: unprovable, really. Maybe Michigan just didn’t execute all the great ideas Debord and English had. Then again: they’re responsible for getting those across, right? And really, Pam could have gotten that from any number of ex-boyfriends, right?

Pete Carroll was doin’ it for the kids in Darfur. You just can’t win a karmic battle with a noted humanitarian like Pete.

Culpability rating: Oh, like-gravity-certain. He’s out there right now in an old Huey dropping MREs into Burmese rebel camps while texting recruits on his Blackberry.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	—
2	Michigan	—
3	Southern Cal	—
4	Florida	—
5	Louisville	6
6	LSU	4
7	Oklahoma	7
8	Arkansas	3
9	Wisconsin	1
10	Rutgers	5
11	California	6
12	Auburn	4
13	West Virginia	6
14	Notre Dame	8
15	Texas	3
16	Tennessee	2
17	Nebraska	2
18	Boise State	5
19	Wake Forest	6
20	Texas A&M	6
21	Virginia Tech	1
22	Boston College	1
23	Georgia Tech	14
24	Hawaii	2
25	South Florida	1

Notes, Clarifications, and Mistakes We Made. Again.

–The hardest thing about hybrid polling–where you blend the results of matchups in the HYPOTHETICAL DEATH THEATER in your head plus a vague notion of a team’s absolute value at that point in the year–is settling on which factor to lean on for moving a team up or down.

Keeping USC at three instead of four makes the brain quake a little after watching Notre Dame blasted into teeny pieces by a team clearly intent on giving them a 10 point handicap. (The sign of a true predator: toying with its prey cruelly! The comment brought to you by David Attenborough.)

Playing with your food–something David Attenborough would approve of. Seen here vacationing with Ed Orgeron.

But yet…without a head to head or conference foes, we have to go on absolute valuation and their one shared opponent. USC and Michigan both alpha-rolled the Trojans Irish, leaving us going to the losses, which is where USC gets the analytical shaft. Michigan gets a 3 point loss on the road to the guys upstairs, and USC gets a scraping defeat to Oregon State, who contrary to popular opinion does not suck.

The top three are the top three for a reason: they’re all three standard deviations away from the norm, the best in the country not by margins, but by leagues. Everyone below them is a degree worse in terms of quality.

The next group. Call them the “merely very good.” Florida’s still winning games a la mode de Belichick, finding some way to turn every game into a 21-14ish struggle where men you’ve never heard of suddenly cause fumbles, make crucial tackles, or score touchdowns. No field goals, yet, though, since our kicker’s turned into the Rick Ankiel of the uprights. Once we get that cranking, we might win games by six points. Then there’s a jumble of other very good teams, including Louisville, the best team in the Big East, followed by LSU, a team who should have destroyed all in its wake this year but inexplicably didn’t.

Again, take the teams from 5-10 and rearrange them in random order, and this could make as much sense as our rankings. We just think Louisville wins most of the hypotheticals between these teams because of their ability to score, hold serve on defense, and their relative lack of injury at this point.

Oklahoma got up here courtesy of Pac-10 officiating and Bob Stoops’ amazing softshoe work this year. His magicianship has been truly Gob Bluth-esque. It’s been like…pennies from heaven! Losing his starting qb and running back and still [poof!]ing into the Big 12 championship game…it’s like they’re Wake Forest, except with a schedule.

The rest….…is a bleeding mess. Notre Dame has two huge losses to good competition, but has two huge losses to good competition. They beat Georgia Tech, who has Reggie Ball, who lost a pickup game of four square this morning to an eight-year old after fumbling the ball and throwing it away on back-to-back plays. And Auburn’s offense regressed as the year went on, with even their victory over Florida (blinding pain…between…the…eyes…) coming without an offensive touchdown.

There’s also the little clot of Tennessee, Texas, and Nebraska, all teams misfiring, misvalued, or just plain difficult to read. Until someone picks up that new shoulder for Colt at Home Depot, the Longhorns will remain here; until Bill Callahan dons an eyepatch and a fake mustache and convinces us that his evil twin Will Callahan is coaching the Huskers, they’ll stay down, too.

The rest is mushwork, especially the ACC teams. Virginia Tech is 10-2? How the hell does that happpen every year? They’re just setting us up for another high ranking, stunning loss, totally forgetting about them until midseason-Beamerball comeback-to-finish-10-2 again. It’s a process as regular as the Krebs Cycle, just with better special teams. And we’ll no doubt fall for it again next year.

We hate Georgia Tech because Ball looked horrible, but they probably don’t deserve the tossing they get this week. Boise State is up there because they earned a BCS slot, but will lose wretchedly to whomever they face; viewers who root for the bear in mauling videos, tune in! BYU beats Utah on a nutsoid last heave–two steps closer to heaven for them.

Finally, USF gets the official U Go Girl! 25 slot for beating West Virginia at home. Somewhere, a sixth-year business major pounded a kamikaze at a strip mall bar in celebration. Rock on, Tampa.

Google “Tampa fashion,” and this is result number one. No lie.

Alabama coach Mike Shula says that while the game was a close one, he expects a recount to find the Crimson Tide victorious.

“I could have sworn we lost a couple of second quarter field goals in there somewhere. Or third quarter field goals. Whenever they were, they were definitely field goals, and we definitely made them,” said Shula in a teleconference early Wednesday morning. “We’re hanging tough and staying optimistic around here.”

Angry but optimistic: Shula files for a recount.

Stadium officials blamed the alleged miscalculations and ambiguities on the new digital scoring machines, which confused the elderly scoreboard operator, Jack Allster.

“It’s just so durned complicated, what with the buttons, and the numbers, and buttons. Where’s my old toggle switch? Where’s the old buzzers? Confound it…” said a visibly distraught Allster in a postgame interview.

SEC Commissioner Mike Slive said that while rare, point recounts were available in all games.

“Sometimes you just miss stuff. Like Tennessee ‘99, for example. They actually lost the SEC Championship game. If you go back and look at the tape, which clearly shows Arkansas scoring two tds in the third quarter. But people get excited and just miss a play or two, and lo and behold, you get human error putting a team in the championship.”

Slive then blanched and stammered, “Um, I shouldn’t have said that. Excuse me…”

Shula blames no one but himself for missing the alleged points miscalculation. “We kicked ‘em and then didn’t really notice that scoreboard didn’t change. There’s a lotta stuff going on out there, you know? Blocking, tackling, passing, two-yard runs…it’s all real intense. It’s like the NFL with more noise, right? That’s why I wear the headset. Well, that and I’m practicing my Guitar Hero 2 riffs during the slow spots in the game wit the music in the right ear, and Dave Rader in the left. I’m almost up to a perfect score for Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult.”

The close contest hinged a few key issues. Both teams were strong on defense, but weak on security, giving the ball away at critical times. A corrupt offensive line eventually cost Alabama the lead, however, as Mississippi launched probes into the Alabama backfield time and time again, confusing the base of the Alabama offense and eroding support among the Crimson Tide faithful.

Coach Shula saw it as “less a win for Miss State, and more a loss for us. We gave them the win.”

Count Miss State coach Sylvester Croom as suspicious of the whole process. “Recount my ass,” was all Croom would say on his way into the office in Starkville this morning. “Tell Shula he can recount my nuts–all three of ‘em–if he wants to play fool shit like that. We count all our points as Miss State, because they don’t come around very often.”

Commissioner Slive promises a recount will be complete “sometime in the next two weeks. If Houston Nutt calls, I’m not here. For the next five years.”