This video is from the Alabama Senate. The question is which one went to Bama and which to Auburn?

Bowling Green’s no Titan of the Fulmer Cup, but they are consistent: whenever they peek their beaky little Falcon heads into the race, its for fightin’.

This time, the Toledo Blade police blotter reporter does their damnedest not to touch our hearts with the bare facts, and fails miserably in the misty-eye-making account of Marques Parks, BGSU footballer,

Bowling Green police said Marques Parks, 21, of McDonald, Pa., walked out of Ziggy Zoomba’s just after midnight Tuesday and saw his girlfriend hugging her ex-boyfriend, Benjamin Bohland, 22. Angered, Mr. Parks allegedly began punching Mr. Bohland in the back of his head until his friends pulled him away.

What better way to show you still care, than by striking someone who merely wants to perhaps grunt out some kabuki mucilage* with your ex-girlfriend’s assistance once, possibly twice on a drunken night while trawling for new flesh in the meantime? And who’s already undoubtedly done everything you could have possibly done with her anyway?

His cell phone was undoubtedly as clogged as a Calcutta sewer with messages from strange females who’d witnessed this and were moved by his passion, ardor, and dedication to the woman he loves.

Too bad no one had nunchuks or pepper spray. That shit works in situations like this.

Two points for garden variety assault in the name of love for the fightin’ Bowling Green Falcons, who would do anything for love, including that.

*Contorted Japanese theatrical face + something sticky, wet, and yet dry all at the same time that comes out of a semi-cylindrical tube. Duh.

Blogtoberfest! We’ll let you transfer wherever you want to go, baby.

Brandon Warren cannot play this Division 1 football you speak of, sir. Beginning the long list of things we’d at least like to mention…Bobby Bowden refuses to grant a release of scholarship to TE Brandon Warren, who initially signed on with the Seminoles before flaking out mid-semester and leaving school to take care of his ailing mother.

Google Image: making the symbolism just a bit too easy.

Seminolians claim Warren’s just homesick and dredging up his mother’s illness to excuse himself from his contractual obligations to FSU, all the while convincing the only recruit he was in charge of showing around the campus to make a firm commitment to the University of Tennessee. (more…)

If and when you decide to really, really end that pesky feud you’ve been having with a teammate, be sure to follow these simple rules.

1. Always bring enough ammo and guns.
2. Use the element of surprise.
3. Make sure you know exactly where you’re going before, during, and after.

Score two out of three for Toledo’s Richard Davis, who showed up to really, totally, and completely end a running dispute with a teammate at 4:30 a.m. last Thursday. He had the element of surprise by showing up early–check. Adequate firepower? Check–Davis not only had a handgun in his car, but had a shotgun he’d leaned against the side of the house for…well, in case he had to really make his point.

Showing up at the right place? Hmm…UNcheck. (HT: DevilGrad.)

The incident started around 4:30am on Thursday. Police say Deputy Vincent Scott was awakened by the sound of his doorbell ringing repeatedly, and the sound of somebody turning the doorknob. Scott armed himself with his service weapon, and went out the back door and confronted Davis.

He kept Davis at gunpoint, and called 911.

Wrong door, sir.

That’s a football player showing up at the wrong door, which just happened to belong to a very sleepy and armed sheriff’s deputy. For stumbling facefirst into divine justice, Davis was arrested and charged with attempted aggravated burglary, a three point offense we’ll give a “divinely dumb” bonus of a point on for a total of 4 points.

Dibs on him for the Wonderlic draft! We called it first!

How did she get to be the girl checking out of rehab and shaving her head, the proverbial 2-10 season of a celebrity?

(more…)

Warning: This is not a love song.Caustic language ahead. But you knew that already.

Mark Schlabach turns in a piece on [NAME REDACTED], the coach who spent three years in the offices of the Florida athletic department and now does the same at the University of Illinois. During that time, [NAME REDACTED] spent his time performing what he defined as the seven core competencies of a head coach:

Headbutting Coke machines. You can’t just get angry–you have to emote to show your passion to 18 year olds and other young adults watching you. (The one thing 18 year olds are short on is passion. We know, we know, but this is written in the high ironic from [NAME REDACTED]’s point of view. Roll with it.)

Therefore, you demonstrate your commitment and passion by headbutting machinery. Mind the ones with glass fronts, though the bleeding may add to the image. Watching film does not show passion, by the way. Avoid.

Talking on the phone in the shower. [NAME REDACTED] actually did have a phone in the shower so he could call recruits while washing all that blood off from headbutting innocent Coke machines. It also allowed him to hold conversations without bursting into flame from all the passion and excitement he emits. (Florida fans, in unison: pity, really.)

Writing stuff down on a notepad. What was he writing down? This, actually:

Saying the same five things over and over again. [NAME REDACTED] forever claimed how “excited” he was, and how the mental lapses and inability of his team to close games was “correctable.” In year one, this was pablum. In year two, it crept into delusion. In year three, it crossed the line into what philosopher Harry Frankfurt would correctly identify as bullshit. The difference between that and standard clipboard-holding lies?

Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. …The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Paying no attention became a theme for [NAME REDACTED], whether it involved the truth, the ineffectiveness of the soft zone late in the game, or the rogue waves of incompetence paralyzing Florida late in the game. And yet…it was all correctable. Which was technically correct, but only in the most lawyerly way possible, since the correction required involved his removal, a prescription eventually administered by those who held the purse strings.

Anyway, Mark Schlabach’s got this piece on [NAME REDACTED] that backs up Orson’s Sad But Reliable Rules for Humanity yet again.
(more…)

We’ve said it before and wish to repeat the official stance of EDSBS vis-a-vis college football recruiting: it’s really, really creepy. For months–sometimes, years at a time, huge monied institutions buck their noses into the lives of 17 and 18 year old boys and woo them with everything except cash in an attempt to get them to sacrifice three or four years of their lives to play football and mum through a university education simultaneously. It’s a bit like watching a live-action re-enactment of Death In Venice, with universities playing the part of the aging pederast and the recruit being the young object of affection, but minus all the plague and effete homoeroticism. ( This is Amurrica, dammit. Even our homoeroticism needs to look like a Dodge Ram commercial. Heh: Ram.)

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. (more…)

Has Florida chased Troy Smith into the witness protection program? Perhaps. That’s Smith in an NIU helmet, though our Senior Bowl correspondent says otherwise. HT: Kenny.

MOBILE, AL–We’ve never heard of him. Hell, he’s not even on NIU’s roster. Dark horse Roy Smith, though, impressed scouts with his accuracy on Monday, boosting his draft status and becoming a dark horse pick for the NFL draft thanks to his performance in Senior Bowl practices.

TRoy Smith wows the scouts at the Senior Bowl practices.

“I’m just trying to break in, you know, show people that I can still–I mean, that I throw the ball well, even though, you know, people haven’t seen me play much. Because I went to NIU, you know, and didn’t even start. It’s just all so crazy at this point.”

Smith paused. “And that’s truth…cuz.”

Smith says he’s amazed by the attention he’s gotten thus far.

“I mean, maybe it’s because I look like Troy Smith, and our names sound the same, and we even resemble each other. I would like to point out that they measured me at six feet tall, though. That’s six feet even. Um, yo.”

Senior Bowl coach John Gruden thinks he may have the steal of the draft in the unheralded mystery qb.

“It’s astonishing just how Troy Smith-esque he really is. He even sounds like him, just with this crazy, almost fake sounding southern thug accent he’s got. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume this guy was actually Troy Smith faking an identity and “skipping” the Senior Bowl in order to boost his flagging draft status.”

Gruden laughed, then paused. “But when you’ve got Chris Simms and Bruce Gradkowski on your depth chart as the main course, I don’t care if this guy calls himself Nancy Cockswax and wears a Vera Wang when he’s on the field. We need help. I mean, Chris Simms, Jesus,” he said, muttering and turning away from the cameras and toward the field.

Smith denied any connection between him and Troy Smith. He also denied ever being in Glendale, Arizona. He did admit to hearing of Florida, and even recognized the names of defensive ends Jarvis Moss and Derrick Harvey, though he had less than complimentary words for them.

“Flaming marys, both of ‘em from what I hear. Homie. Did you see how offsides they were the whole time? That guy Troy Smith…my God, if he were hear I’d tell him how much of a man he was, and how shafted he got by his bustass wide receivers and the refs. And what was the band doing playing Titanic? They should have played something else…like…(at this point Smith looks down at an index card with some writing on it)…’Throw some D’s’ by the Rich Boy. That’s how we roll where I’m from. Which is definitely not Cleveland.”

Roy Smith says: “Yes, like that downhome jam from wherever I’m from down south says, every girl should have a picture of my dick on their wall.”

Eeen ze sea, zair izz no cruelty, onlee ze continual struggle to surviiiiiive. And een la blogosphere, zair izz no cruelty, onleee zee continual aggregation of information. Ze name we give eet izz Blogtoberfest. Salut!

–Whiny-ass Glen Mason’s replacement at Minnesota: Broncos TE coach Tim Brewster. Brewster comes from the Mack Brown school of recruiting, which means there’s serious potential in the handshakes and mom-greasing department. (Mm. Mom greasing.)

Also likely is a contined dedication to the semi-cut-block system employed at Minnesota, whose offensive line schemes already look very similar to the Broncos with plenty of zone blocking, stretch plays, and daredevil lowblocks. D-lines of the Big Ten, continue to watch your precious knees.

Tim Brewster: does he look good at mom-greasing? Wait, don’t answer that.

–Despite a sexy and promising hot tub beginning, Carroll to the Dolphins is dead, dead, dead for now. This leaves an NFL coaching spot open and, in proof that dumb people can find piles of money, too, a potential job opening for Chan Gailey to leave Georgia Tech for a pro job. Gailey’s got a second interview scheduled for the job. Tech fans busy screaming something about a briar patch, and not wanting to be thrown in it.

Mark Bradley blames the complete lack of affection or desire by Tech to keep Gailey on Chan’s inability to properly apply lips to the right asses at Tech while mentioning his loyalty to Reggie Ball as a secondary reason for the change. We’d like to think not beating Georgia ever would be as good a reason as any, or perhaps the overall air of malaise surrounding the program from day one, or his disastrous depth chart choice of Reggie Ball as a four-year starter. (Still the worst four-year starter at a major program we’ve ever seen.)

Drink this for four years and see how you like it.

–Gary Crowton leaves Oregon to fill the vacant OC spot at LSU. Not the first name you’d associate with LSU, sure, but finding an offensive coordinator by the name of Snakebite Robicheaux is pretty difficult these days.

–We’ve decided to love Jim Donnan for a few very sound reasons. First, his hair’s always askew and gradiosely fucked-up; as a lifelong sufferer of the same disorder, we have to appreciate his success in life. Second, ESPN staffers avow that his coolness in person is unsurpassed. Three, he hates, hates, hates Rule 3-2-5-e and is using the WWL’s bully pulpit to say so. We tip our Molly Hatchet ‘83 mesh baseball cap to you, sir.

–Former Penn State player Lavon Chisley will be arrested in connection with the stabbing death of Langston Carraway. The body was stabbed 93 times in the attack.

–Early odds are on USC for next year according to the Wiz. Rick Neuheisel will give you eight to one if you get your bets into his pool before Friday–operators standing by!

–Finally, Andy Staples says four of the five underclassmen at Florida making decisions regarding the draft made especially sound ones, especially Andre Caldwell, whose draft status would have been immersed in the wave of quality wideouts coming out HOLY HELL IT’S CALVIN JOHNSON SOMEONE HOLD KIPER’S LEASH TIGHT, DAMMIT!!!!

A little too excited about Calvin Johnson.

Some OSU fan feels pretty stupid for making this right about now.

HT: KD Godfrey.

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

For those combing through their respective bowl games frame-by-frame, there’s always little tidbits of joy you missed. A gnarly block; a particularly amusing expression on a play; or even a USC Song Girl’s bare ass on television for a blink’s worth of softcore cheesecake.

(Nothing in this category beats what we spied in the stands during the NFL playoffs this weekend: a drunk blonde woman in New Orleans who, for a full five wondrous seconds, showed off her “FUCK DA EAGLES” t-shirt center frame before Fox hurriedly switched shots. Which they most certainly did not show on purpose. Rememember: Fox hates you, which is why they’re debuting Ow! My Balls! on Thursday night. You can’t–and won’t–miss it.)

One of those nuggets for Gator fans has been this moment of delight, where we find out that any and all guilt associated with giving Ohio State a grievous and overdone death roll on national television evaporates in the viewing of a single gesture. Watch #55 Curtis Terry at the end of the play here. He should be easy to find– he’s the one elbowing Tebow in the head.

There’s a Zapruder style and sadly unembeddable copy here. The incident illustrates just how off OSU’s scouting reports on the Gators were, since scientists concur that blunt force trauma only makes Tim Tebow stronger and larger–as Andy James Lauranaitis, the BEST LINEBACKER IN THE WORLD1111 found out in the same game.

Curiously enough, an angry Tim Tebow also emits pheramones that smell of cinnamon buns to his friends, and of burning metal, cordite, and sorrow to his enemies.

Mmm…cinnamon buns.

We’d stop doing this, but we just can’t. The hangover’s just too sweet to relinquish.

Your tears…they bring us joy. We drink them from your Heisman-winning skull.

This is going to be all over the place. Beginning in no particular order…

–Did Tressel watch a single minute of game film on Florida’s offense? Florida withers under blitz; him big ape, me call blitzes. Instead OSU opens each series with three down lineman, including some sets with a linebacker at the nose tackle position. They begged for the short-passing, highly accurate Leak to undo the sutures of their defense and let it bleed.

Coach Heacock, this space-age device could change your life.

This might not have been a disastrous strategy had Leak not been tossing the ball down hallways. The dbs seemed horrified of giving up anything over seven yards, playing miles off the ball on the snap and allowing Florida receivers to catch the ball in space. If this phrase sounds familiar to you, it’s because it’s in your pablum detector for announcers, who use this verbiage to describe any short passing attack. Like, say, Florida’s. Who’d been called that all year.

A failure of imagination, gameplanning, and execution for Ohio State doomed them on defense. When they held soft zone, it was over. Next time, watch some tape. Or call someone. Or hell, pick up a controller and give NCAA 2007 a whirl. You’d think a team familiar with shattering Michigan’s soft zones would be the last to allow a team to do this, or create a gameplan begging for such treatment. Bear, meet trap.

–On defense Florida needed no coaching accomplices. (Negative superlative coming! Cliche warning issued.) Troy Smith played the worst game of his life and any other Heisman Winner in a big game, dipping below the Toretta line with the damning evidence listed in agate type for all to see:

4-14 completions 35 yards 0 TDs/ 1 INT

We imagined his agent creaming cellphone batteries, bluetooth light in his ear accentuating the panic, wearing out blackberries and reaching for holstered backups in an attempt to counter the ugly reality unfolding in front of him with carefully leaked leads to sympathetic sportswriters.

Cancer. Can we fake cancer? Sure, Lance Armstrong did it, right? That’s plan A, man. Then we go to dead relative–does he have a dead one? A really recently dead one? Or injury. He’s got to have a few. It’s gotta be something severe, like fractured ass, or cerebral ebola. Hell, cerebral ebola might actually up his signing bonus–what linebacker’s gonna want to touch someone with something called cerebral ebola? Phyllis! Get me the number of the CDC…

Earl Everett needs no helmet, and does not fear your cerebral ebola.

Smith should have more attempts on the books, and in reality did–five became sacks, and one became a fumble to set up Tim Tebow’s gotcha TD pass at the goal line. Ohio State’s tackles redefined late on Monday night, with Derrick Harvey and Jarvis Moss blowing tight curves around the edges to pressure Smith every time he had the ball.

Jarvis Moss: walking and talking on Facebook. He likes Heisemens.

If Marcus Thomas had laid off the GHB and stayed with the team, the numbers–horror of horrors–could have been worse. (more…)

AP–Glendale, Arizona. Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith was injured early Tuesday morning in an impromptu game of touch football in the parking lot of University of Phoenix stadium. Smith suffered a strained knee, which will likely not affect his performance in the NFL combines this spring.

Smith, leaving the scene of the Buckeyes’ 41-14 defeat at the hands of the Florida Gators, said he was just trying to interact with fans and help himself forget what had just happened.

“There were a few kids standing around the trailers, and I thought, you know, give them a little something to remember, mix with the fans. Blow off some steam and make a positive out of a negative, you know.”

Smith approached the youths, who gladly worked him into the game.

“He just seemed so sad. So we let him play,” said Gator fan Kieran Woodley of Orange Park, FL. “He thought we were just going to be playing touch, though.”

Smith played a position known as “all-time qb” for three downs on the field, actually a stretch of parking lot with trailers for boundaries and with light posts marking the endzones. Smith played three downs before he was injured by young Gator fan Ryan Thomas, a scrappy nine-year old from Lakeland, Florida and cousin of the aforementioned Woodley.

Woodley and Thomas, left to right, injured Smith in the parking lot.

“On first down, I ran after him and he threw the ball into my uncle’s RV. Chips went everywhere and my aunt screamed. It was awesome. (more…)

Georgia/Georgia Tech had a lot of interesting moments, but like spectators on the highway, the attention tends to focus on the obvious disasters. Like Reggie Ball playing the University of Georgia at quarterback, a role of such abject misery and incompetence as to paralyze any conventional comparisons we’d care to make. For the past four years, him under center against UGA has been like looking at the fresh wreckage of a car crash for four hours straight and waiting for the gas tank to go off in a ball of flame and sizzled flesh.

Reggie Ball: set to go off at any instant.

For four years running, it went off with unreal frequency and regularity. Which means we’ve got to dig into the Douglas Adams archives to find just the right blend of unreal bad luck, shoddy execution, and futile self-mutilating rage to capture the career of Reggie Ball properly. (Warning: two minutes of internet research required. Gird that attention span, ADDers!)

First, the numbers: For his career against UGA, Ball went 45-104 with one touchdown and five interceptions. He was sacked at least six times, and tackled for losses on hopeless scrambles on innumerable occasions. He also lost four fumbles, including Tony Taylor’s squirrel/nut run giving UGA their first score in 2006 and signalling the beginning of the final catastrophe.

Worse than the number was the timing of Ball’s mistakes:

–2003: knocked out with concussion caused by running into own teammate.

–2004: throws ball away on 4th down on potential game-winning drive.

–2005: throws game-ending interception five yards shy of tying td.

–2006: loses crucial fumble for score AND throws game ending pick into triple coverage on final drive with over a minute left on clock.

Ball was a master–in fact, he got worse with each game he played against Georgia. The more the pressure mounted, the more success Ball enjoyed as a starter, the worse he played against the Bulldogs. He came back stronger each time, and yet could not stop improving on his masterwork of disaster. In fact, his senior year capped his artistry: not only did he lose a game-killing fumble, he also tossed his signature game-losing pick, a Matisse of malicious fortune and bad execution made worse with a 6 for 22 performance killing any potential of consistent passing offense.

The simile: Reggie Ball : Georgia as Agrajag : Arthur Dent. The story:

Agrajag is a piteous creature that is continually reincarnated and subsequently killed unknowingly by Arthur Dent each time. Agrajag first appears in the series as a falling bowl of petunias (although, if the books are read in sequence, the reader doesn’t know it at the time). In another incarnation, he was a prehistoric rabbit who was killed by Arthur for breakfast and whose skin was fashioned into a pouch, which is then used to swat a fly who happened to be Agrajag. In yet another, he dies of a heart attack after seeing Arthur and Ford materialize, seated on a Chesterfield sofa, in the midst of a cricket match at Lord’s Cricket Ground.

If there’s any harmony in this universe, Reggie Ball will end up in his next life as a pot of petunias, which will be dropped from a windowsill by an offspring of Paul Oliver.

Reggie, seen here in his next life plotting his soon-to-be-thwarted revenge.