I’ve got my towel, I’ve cut all the checks . . . let’s light this candle.

As Mumme prepares for his first season at McMurry, Lexington Herald-Leader columnist John Clay took it upon himself to track down Mumme’s UK staff and find out where they’d ended up. What he found was less than inspiring: Of Mumme and his 11 original assistants from 1997, only five are employed at D-IA programs in any capacity; four are college head coaches; two are coaching at the high-school level; and two are out of coaching entirely (though one of them has the convenient excuse of being dead since 2006).

The most successful of these gentlemen, obviously, is Mike Leach, currently leading his rowdy band of pirates at Texas Tech to regular bowl appearances; oddly enough, the guys with the next most prestigious jobs on the list were mere graduate assistants under Mumme. Chris Hatcher is the head coach at Georgia Southern (and being mentioned with increasing frequency as a candidate for D-IA jobs), while Sonny Dykes is breathing life into a formerly moribund passing attack as Arizona’s offensive coordinator.

There is, of course, one guy who still rates a grade of “incomplete”: Tony Franklin, running backs coach under Mumme and currently offensive coordinator at MTSU. At the moment, Franklin is known primarily for being the catalyst that started the Tommy Tuberville administration down the road to doom in its last year at Auburn, a dubious distinction indeed; but if he can work the same wonders at MTSU that he did at Troy, who knows, he might have a D-IA coaching gig in him yet, thereby eclipsing both his old bosses something fierce. The spread offense indeed works in mysterious ways.

For lack of a better term, we’re calling this the “Kiffin Effect.” Pop quiz, hotshot: Coming off a 4-8 season and a 45-0 vivisectioning by your big in-state rival in which you netted all of 37 yards, what do you do? What do you do? Evidently, this:

Houston Nutt phoned in just now to say he has sucked it, as a matter of fact, and the Delicious Creamsicle of Immediate In-State Superiority was everything he thought it could be.

The pressure of being the preseason #1 for the Fulmer Cup must’ve gotten to them. I know all you EDSBS regulars have been waiting with bated breath for the first time I’d make a blatant plug for my dear Georgia Bulldogs, and here it is: For what feels like the first time since I was an naive, apple-cheeked freshman, the Dawgs have gone an entire offseason without a single player getting arrested. One hundred law-abiding cocktails to all of you, gentlemen! By contrast, the Dawgs’ season-opening opponent, Oklahoma State, won’t be suspending two offensive players arrested for pot possession in June. Note to Mike Gundy: If you’re going up against Georgia and you’re the one that looks slack on player discipline, there may be a problem. Unfortunately for the Dawgs, that righteous indignation plus two bucks will get Willie Martinez a grande Pike Place roast at Starbucks.

Your “Suddenly My Problems Seem Pretty Minor” moment of the day. The Tulsa World profiles Tulsa QB G.J. Kinne, whose dad, a high-school coach in Texas, was shot to death by the angry parent of a player four years ago. By contrast, I’ve spent most of the past 24 hours raging at having shattered the screen on my iPhone, and officially consider myself humbled.

We have met the enemy, and he is Tony Franklin. I mean us. We knew the Auburn coaching staff was a wee bit divided during last year’s 5-7 debacle, but evidently so were the players. Why was that, you think?

“The offense had their problems and some guys started hanging their heads – just stuff of that sort,” said defensive end Antonio Coleman. “That led to a 5-7 season. It was just the little things that led to seven losses. Coach Chizik came in and corrected that; and all the guys have their heads up.”

Yeah, it was just the little things — you know, division, not having any semblance of an offense, that sort of thing. You drop off by a few hundred yards here and there, pretty soon you’re going 5-7. It happens.

Hasn’t Detroit suffered enough? With the cash-strapped Big Three automakers pulling their sponsorship of the Motor City Bowl, Little Caesar’s Pizza may be stepping into the void, meaning “We’re gonna probably be known as the Little Caesar’s Pizza, Pizza Bowl,” according to bowl co-founder George Perles. As a Birmingham resident and much-put-upon supporter of the Papajohns.com Bowl, I have but one thing to say: YOU BASTARDS. Can’t you just let us have this?!?

It beat out other mottos including “Bereft,” “Unfulfilled,” and “Empty-Feeling.” Ole Miss’s team motto going into 2009: “Unsatisfied,” taking a commanding lead in the Most Depressing Team Motto of All Time competition. Tip: If it sounds like something you’d circle on a restaurant comment card after a particularly disappointing meal, it probably shouldn’t be your team motto.

The anthem to which the Rebels will be charging into Vaught-Hemingway in ‘09.

Failure to plan means planning to fail. As for the Early Bird Award for Most Absurdly Diligent Scheduling, Oklahoma and Army have won that one in a runaway by agreeing on a home-and-home — in 2018 and 2020. Congratulations, Black Knights, on being the first D-IA program to earn a guaranteed loss in a season that won’t even begin for another nine years.

Now, you go back to doing something latently homoerotic, all right? We’ve already posted Still Life With Shirtless, Oiled Football Players and Lamborghini, the curious poster Tennessee is using to arouse . . . uh, interest in the 2009 season, or something; turns out there’s a “making of” video. Go click the link yourselves, pervs, we’re not posting that nonsense here.

File under “Up, Nowhere to Go But.” UCF offensive coordinator Charlie Taaffe is “pleased” with the improvement his team has shown heading into ‘09. Considering that the Golden Knights finished 120th out of 120 in DI-A in both total yardage and first downs, the fact that there has been improvement at all is probably reasonable grounds for pleased-ness.

Twelve-pack? Better go ahead and make that a case. Scott Wolf compiles every single college football game that will be on TV opening weekend. If you can look at this and not devise a way to remain laid out on your coach from noon straight through midnight on September 5, you’re not really trying.

Reads are important on this play, which we’ll call CAREER JET BANDIT X FLY D-BO OVER 2. We’re expecting good protection through a solid zone scheme of a middle class upbringing and lack of obvious physical or mental defect. We’re running four routes on the play. You’ll note the slot receiver is not accounted for in the playbook; this is by design, since you need one career option to forget, and then mourn as your lost ideal once it’s too late to choose it in the progression.

Let’s go through the reads, son.

First read: ASTRONAUT. The quarterback (you) takes the ball in the shotgun and surveys the defense. On this play, your first option is the X receiver, on this play known as ASTRONAUT.

ASTRONAUT is double covered by LACK OF MATH SKILLS AND DISCIPLINE. (Also, you find out you don’t like enclosed places when you go to Mammoth Cave as a nine year old.) It’s important to recognize this early and not force this ball prematurely, as you may end up in the military not flying jets, but instead handing out fresh underwear for hours at a time to new recruits as a logistics man. This throw is off the table, especially with a potential tip from COLORBLIND pressuring from the weakside. You must go to your next option.

(COLORBLIND plays havoc on his play as the 3-4 hybrid end: you can’t tell if he’s dropping to further cover ASTRONAUT, or rushing the qb. He’s a menace confusing the entire left side of the play for the qb. Better to let the running back chip and then go to the flat as an outlet receiver, which we’ll cover here in a bit.)

Second read: Your Z receiver, a.k.a. The Z receiver is referred to here as ADULT FILM STAR.

A quick frantic look and progression through your footwork reveals that Z is not an option due to A LACK OF SIZE against the cornerback of DON’T WANNA BE THAT AVERAGE GUY IN THE ORGY SCENE, M’KAY? Again, recognize this quickly, shuffle forward in the pocket, and move to your next option.

Third read: The Y receiver, or the Tight End, or what we call VET in this scheme. Shifting your feet a third time somewhere around your first semester in college, you eye your third read: VET. It says math is required in the major description, but you don’t believe it, because they’re just animals, right? And animals can’t hire lawyers or complain when your ignorance of basic chemistry puts them in a three day coma. How hard can this be?

Unfortunately, VET is running a short drag round underneath the ROBBER position of HAYFEVER. This throw is also affected by LACK OF MATH SKILLS AND DISCIPLINE, a corner whose locktight coverage indeed affects the entire field. (A good corner is just that valuable to a sound defensive scheme.) It might look open, but it’s not, and a forced throw risks a turnover and valuable time lost to getting all those prerequisites only to find out you don’t savor the special warmth you feel with your arm stuck two feet into a cow’s rectum.

You move to your fourth read, who because of the double coverage on ASTRONAUT should be wide open: the running back, shown here in our terminology as CELEBRITY CHEF.

This option is interrupted both by your lack of any real restaurant experience and THE SHRIMP INCIDENT. This option is blocked, and if you should force this throw twice you will have to rely once again on the kindness of strangers with EpiPens to spare.

The net result on the play will be an incomplete pass, and a PUNT

There are a few more loaded up and ready to go here, but if you have a situation you’d like to see metaphorically represented in football terms, please send it to us at harumphharumph of the gmail or yahoo variety type email address.

And second:he crashes a first birthday party.

SCENE: A faux-hemian first birthday party in American suburbia.

Wife: Did you get the camera?

Husband: Yes, I have the camera. (huffs)

Wife: Okay, now get the cake. His cake.

Husband: I know, I know. The gluten-free soy rice meal whatever cake with the sugar-free icing. What the hell is it made of, actually?

Wife: I don’t know. But he has allergies.

Husband: My life is a void unfilled by the shadows I confuse for people.

Wife: What, honey?

Husband: Nothing. Seriously, do we have to go to all this trouble? He’s one. We could slaughter a hog in front of him and he wouldn’t remember it.

Wife: He’s forming important memories right now.

Husband: Of shitty cake.

Wife: GET THE GODDAMN CAKE!

Husband: Anger will only scar him emotionally, you know.

Wife: …

He gets the cake. The baby, drooling and farting happily, stares at his parents, wondering if they are going to feed him, or eat him, or tickle him. These are the three thoughts a one year old is capable of processing relative to others, and he is thinking them.

Wife: Okay, ready? We have to sing softly, just in case we hurt his ears…

Husband: A bolt gun would be kind. Right behind the ear, please.

Wife: What?

Husband: Nothing, honey. Happy—

BILLY SIMS BURSTS IN THROUGH DOOR.

BS: BOOMER!!!

Baby: WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

BS: I can’t hear you! BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMEEEERRRRR!!!!!!!

Baby: hughghghghghghWAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BS: What you teachin’ this child? HE’S GOT TO LEARN!!! BOOOOMER!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMER!!!

Wife: Who are you? Why are you yelling at my baby?

BS: THIS IS MY PARTY AND I WILL YELL TO ATTRACT ATTENTION TO MYSELF IF I LIKE!!! Gimme my cake!

Billy Sims takes the cake, eats it.

Husband: You probably actually don’t want to eat tha—

Sims eats a huge slice of the cake and lets it fall from his mouth like a Great Dane slowly spitting out a carrot from its mighty jowls.

BS: WHAT THE FUCK KINDA CAKE IS THIS?

Husband: It’s shitty cake.

Wife: IT IS NOT! It is a blended flourless rice and spelt soy cake with sugar-free icing! He has allergies.

BS: He doesn’t have allergies, you’re just bored and paranoid. What you do have is a problem on your hands, because Billy Sims has a sensitivity to sugar alcohols. You’ve ruined my damn day, woman. He turns to the child. BOOMER!!!! I SAID MOTHERFUCKING BOOMER, CHILD!!!!

Baby: Is now convinced Sims is going to eat him. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

Translation: TICKLE NOT KILL!!!!!

Husband: I really want you to leave before I call the police.

Husband’s inner thoughts: Thank you, lord. Thank you for the most interesting thing that has happened to me in my adult life. Thank you, thank you sweet lord.

Wife: Stop yelling at my baby!

BS: Allergies, my ass. This ain’t cake. That have Sorbitol in it?

Wife: In the frosting, yes.

BS: Then Billy’s gonna have to drop a Boomer sooner rather than later in your toilet before he leaves, because his intestines run a triple option of run, shoot, and scoot on him when he ingests even a trace amount of sugar alcohols.

Wife: Down the hall and to the left. If you don’t leave afterwards, I’m calling the police.

BS: Call ‘em! BILLY’S STILL TOO FAST!!! THIS IS MY PARTY AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT. You might wanna turn on a ceiling fan on or two, by the way.

Husband: Sure.

Billy Sims looks at the baby.

BS: BOOMER!!!!

Baby: TICKLE NOT KILL!!!!

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.

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. That, for the record, is not Florida State, the school he played a smidge of football at this past year.

Warren…um, Warren-ites claim he’s got a legitimate case. An FSU review board didn’t think so, so Warren’s on to pleading his case with the NCAA for a hardship (prognosis: meh) or to playing for a D-1AA or NAIA team. Carson-Newman, raise up!

Sit down: we’re actually going to give Bobby Bowden the benefit of the doubt here, since we’re unsure on whether FSU as a whole are being dicks to a kid who just wants out of a place he obviously didn’t like very much. We are sure, though, that today will involve a nap for Bowden under a soft blanket in a quiet, cool room. That’s a certainty.

Las Cronicas… continue for Boss Hawg. Hootens has a video interview with Nutt. His mannerisms are something a reader captured better than we can:

Just watch it. I’m a cop and I’m telling you his nervous mannerisims reek of deception.

Houston, don’t take the poly. Just don’t you may think you can beat the machine by flexing your ass muscles, but it won’t work. Trust us here. A drug charge in Malaysia’s hard to beat, but we only did it with a suitcase full of cash and the help of wily Nigerian we only knew as “Harabe.” The lie detector, though, worked just fine.

Michiganders and Vicodin. No charges, but two Michigan football players pulled over in a car with marijuana and Vicodin (the capital v is for “Very, very numb”) only adds a nettle to the thorny offseason Michigan’s endured already. Lloyd presumably closed practice in order to strip search players for contraband. Lab results are pending, but according to Jim Delany, Big Ten football players are smart enough to do their own lab work, and will have them processed shortly. Too bad SEC players steal the lab equipment in plain sight and then outrun them.

NCAA cracking down on prep schools. More Pete Thamel digdugging through the pay-to-play prep system used very successfully by basketball schools and to a lesser extent by football programs. The greatest beneficiary? Junior colleges, who already salivating over the chance to pick up the slack:

Byrnes also said those benefiting the most from this rule were junior colleges.

“They went from eating Caesar salad to prime rib,” Byrnes said.

Prime rib’s awfully fatty. Then again, so are many linemen moving slowly up the juco ladder to big programs, so the metaphorical fit is an apt one.

Finally, a chance to read half-assed commentary about cricket. We’re slowly but surely starting up the Fanhaus, the cosmopolitan freakshow section of AOL’s Fanhouse focusing exclusively on the wild, wacky, and often virally contagious world of international sport.
Did you know that a funeral service sponsors the World Lawn Bowling Championships? Or that Aussie cricket players live like Colin Farrell, minus the herpes and half-assed homemade porno? You do now.

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!

Britney, like Colorado, had her day in the sun. Consistently in the national media (for good things) and competing for the top spot in her field year in and year out. She had her Bill McCartney years. So what happened?

A few bad relationships…

Things get out of hand….

The pressure mounts in the media….

Maybe Dan Hawkins can save her.

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.

1. Something will go wrong.

2. People never change, and never will.

3. People continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

4. When your favorite uncle is eaten by a tiger, don’t ask “Why?”, ask “Why not?”

5. Attempt to ignore rules 1-4 at all times.

The best, saddest, and most laughable quotes follow with requisite snark:

As far as Zook is concerned, he has never been given an opportunity to prove himself as a coach.

“The rap is, ‘Well, you can recruit but you can’t coach,’” Zook said. “Well, give me a chance to coach guys for four years.”

Ike won’t hit you again. Not on Thursday, baby. Ike’s been reading Stephen Covey books, sugar. Ike’s been going to yoga. Ike’s gone off sugar. Ike hit you on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But on Thursday he’s gonna be sweet like you never believed, honey. Now just eat some of Ike’s cake here…

“A coach once told me it’s better to be a bad coach with good players than a good coach with bad players.”

Well…

Mission accomplished, sir.

More:

“He says eating and sleeping are a waste of time,” Mitchell said. “He says if you sleep fast, you can sleep less. I still don’t understand that one.”

[NAME REDACTED], sleep bulimic. Sleep researcher David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania identified some overarching behaviors typical of those who went without adequate sleep, displaying signs of what some people call “sleep bulimia”:

Lack of sleep impairs performance on a wide variety of tasks. A single all-nighter can triple reaction time and vastly increase lapses of attention. Sleep researcher David Dinges at the University of Pennsylvania studied such lapses using a “psychomotor vigilance task” on pools of subjects who had slept four, six, or eight hours nightly for two weeks. The researchers measured subjects’ speed of reaction to a computer screen where, at random intervals within a defined 10-minute period, the display would begin counting up in milliseconds from 000 to one second. The task was first, to notice that the count had started, and second, to stop it as quickly as possible by hitting a key. It wasn’t so much that the sleep-deprived subjects were slower, but that they had far more total lapses, letting the entire second go by without responding.

Or you could just sleep faster! Surely that wouldn’t cause…lapses throughout an organization you were in charge of as the chief executive, right?

–Still more:

“I thought he was a pretty cool dude,” Cumberland said. “He was humble for a football coach.”

He has many, many reasons for humility. Most notably 4-19 over the past two years, a lackluster stint as the defensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints, and a miserable spell as Florida’s defensive coordinator ending in his demotion to special teams. In all fairness, he excelled as a special teams coach, which may be his competence ceiling, something men trained to hire professional coaches still haven’t realized despite investing millions of dollars in guys like [NAME REDACTED.] But don’t listen to us. We just look at things like evidence and numbers.

–Okay, final stab:

Mitchell, who twice turned down Zook before taking a job on the Illini staff, said Zook has been unfairly cast as a poor coach, given his record as an assistant in the NFL and coach in college.

“I don’t know how you can say that,” Mitchell said. “How can you coach in the NFL and not be a great coach and teacher?

QEDMF:

Answer: Rich motherfuckin’ Kotite. There’s been plenty of deplorable coaches in the NFL, much like there’s been plenty of deplorable college coaches. They’re let in whenever anyone lets their eye off the empirical ball for even a second and begins to let the prospect of their own managerial genius affect their hiring. Maybe I see something here no one else does. Maybe he’s a diamond in the rough. Someone else will handle the offense. People begin liking before they evaluate, trusting before they let their suspicion kick in, and letting the personality trump the resume while hoping “it all works out.”

Take Louisville’s recently concluded tryst with the faithless Bobby Petrino. Here’s a coach who for exactly three seconds of his tenure radiated loyalty. Flirtations with LSU, Auburn, the Falcons, and perhaps even the Barcelona Dragons ran rife during his time in the headset for the Cardinals. His likeability rating hovered somewhere between HPV and sandspurs. And yet, winning cured all, despite Petrino’s Spam-ish personality, complete lack of charisma, and tendency to flash a little asscheek at the next guy giving him the eye.

Sure, he’s gone now, but despite his merely good recruiting and lack of “excitement,” Louisville’s in another galaxy thanks to the hiring acumen of Louisville’s administration. In truth, Illinois will likely come out on the high side thanks to the one other thing [NAME REDACTED] can do: recruit. But any talk of on-the-field competence deserves to be headbutted like a naughty vending machine.

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.)

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.”

–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.

HT: KD Godfrey.

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

(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.