Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. Colorado has lost ten games in a row on the road, a streak surpassed only by Washington Generic and Washington State With Vibrating Rings For Your Pleasure and Most Definitely Not Theirs. They rank last or next to last in passing efficiency, punt returns, fumbles lost, rushing offense, scoring defense, scoring offense, total offense, turnovers lost, and turnover margin. This team allowed Toledo to score over fifty points on them. This team attempted to stop for a busy crosswalk, hit the gas, and is now wondering why there is a screaming old woman embedded in their windshield. This team is horrible beyond any concept words can convey, and thus we resort to song. Terrible, excruciating Chinese song:

Dan Hawkins’ recruiting is Chinese karaoke howl bad, and it is coming back for an encore thanks to the university being too broke to buy him out, meaning they’ll be sending out the Weber State Men’s Water Polo Team for another year of savage beatings at the hands of the Big 12, but without prize recruit Darrell Scott. He overcame a two year delusion that he was a white water polo player, and transferred him to a school that would allow him to play football.

Oklahoma State, in contrast, is not Colorado.

Advantage: Oklahoma State.

Oklahoma State, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: Oklahoma’s Pistol Pete falls into the category of mascot only describable as “accidental grotesquerie.” Is he going to awkwardly ask a young girl if she’s had the menses yet? Did he hear tell of a mysterious half-cougar, half warlock creature that lived in the old abandoned mineshaft out yonder guarding a pile ‘o Confederate gold, and is he going to tell you about it while staring at you just a bit too intensely? Is he second away from gunning your family down with a cold glint in his eye for no reason whatsoever? Didn’t you last see his face bobbing down the street in a Spanish religious festival’s procession that ended with dozens of spectators being burned alive by a collapsing bonfire?

You datin’ yet, sweetie? You’re twelve. That’s about right.

Ralphie is an ornery Buffalo she-bitch who tramples her own trainers and once threatened to charge Tom Osborne and the entire Nebraska team in the tunnel in a prior incarnation. Additionally, her meat when cooked would be low in fat, high in protein, and wouldn’t taste like spoiled muscadine wine and cigarettes like Pete’s would.

Advantage: Colorado.

Colorado, You’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. The passionate OSU fanbase will be on top of the Buffaloes tonight in Stillwater, a place constructed for maximum noise and proximity to the crowd, an important factor if you’re going to be making enthusiastic fellatio gestures at the opposing team indicating their deep degree of suck.

Also, we remind you that Colorado is terrible and slow.

Advantage: Oklahoma State.

Oklahoma State, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names.

Oklahoma State: Ugo Chinasa, Daytawion Lowe, Patrick Hoog

Colorado: Zach Grossnickle, Maxwell Tuioti-Mariner, Douglas Rippy

Advantage: Colorado.

Colorado, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? Does it matter? Colorado has every reason to be able to steal this game in the intangibles category, because Oklahoma State has to be overlooking them on an oddly scheduled Thursday night game in mid-November against a sludgy, thin, banged up Colorado team with a rolling atrocity of an offense and absolutely zero chance of competing head-to-head with the Cowboys at any position. So every gutty, hunch-driven bone in your body is telling you to pick an upset. This is the gambling equivalent of “listening to your body” when you’re hungry, because shockingly your body needs cupcakes, beer, and fried chicken, and not things that won’t clog its circulatory system and leave you waiting for someone to bust out a wall and snake a tube down your throat for six weeks of an emergency liquid diet. If you’re thinking this you are bored and belong nowhere near a bettin’ window. (We’re typing this as much for us as for you.)

Oklahoma State, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 3-2, Oklahoma State, You’ve Been Factor’d! This game will be horrible, but between Gundy and Hawkins the Rant Potential Factor is through the roof, so if anything tune into the postgame pressers out of morbid curiosity.*

*Please note that an earlier tally erroneously granted mascot to OSU. This was an error, because counting to five is really, really hard.

Enjoy.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. To properly illustrate the duel we have going on here, pardon a digression into the past of a geek: the Marvel Superheroes Advanced Game.

Marvel Superheroes was an idea time-killer for the ADD set because it didn’t require you to build characters, scream “lightning bolt!” while you hurled a 20-sided die, or do anything else that required work or possible contamination from the tights-wearing ren-fair crowd. No, what you could do was pick three cards at random, and put your characters down on a board representing a city block, and then start wrecking some virtual shit. I try to rip the Hulk’s balls off with my mind. That’s the proper way to have fun with Professor X, Hollywood screenwriters. Take note, and cash us our 10% royalty check when the movie’s made.

The parallels with FSU and UNC follow forthwith: more often than not, we picked our players at random. Sometimes this worked well, and sometimes you got Ant-Man, Wasp, and Northstar all in the same hand. Random made for more fun, though, especially when you got the Blob. The Blob, at this point in his story, had no real powers besides being outrageously fat, so much so that though he really couldn’t do much to anyone he wasn’t sitting on, he was also immobile and indestructible at the same time.

North Carolina is the random card drawn turning out to be the Blob. Congratulations! You’re impervious to harm, so immobile and well defensed that you allow only 14.2 points a game to this point in the season. Your gravity is undeniable and powerful. Unfortunately, your immobility is shared by your offense, too, an attack ranked dead last in the conference at 22.5 points a game. Last, and last, and yes, you’re basically the Blob.

Florida State in this matchup? They’d have to be some kind of defenseless goon whose best days were behind them, an all-offense, no defense kind of deflated tyrant with zero ability to defend itself in battle. We wouldn’t compare Florida State to a Nazi, would–

Yes, we would. Cuddles Swindle used to avoid this issue entirely when he drew Red Skull as a card by having the character set himself on fire in his first move. Hiring Jimbo Fisher as your coach-in-waiting is really a similar gesture.

Advantage: Florida State. At least Florida State can score, something North Carolina only gets to do when they receive permission from the Chancellor, who is concerned about all the study-interrupting noise touchdown celebrations can make.

Florida State, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: Rameses the Ram is officially Carolina’s mascot, and an unintimidating one at that. Look, a ram. Baaah.

This is the part where you expect us to turn to the fake Native American that is Chief Osceola, the Seminoles’ mascot, and vent disdain on his person and his horse. BOOSH REVERSAL! Of all the things to mock about Florida State, the leavin’s of what once was on the field are more than enough without knocking the hustle of the mascot, Chief Osceola, whose tribe managed to hornswaggle a sweet casino deal out of the Feds before opening a gaming empire in South Florida. Now the Seminoles spend all day riding around in donk’d up swamp buggies buying things whitey used to own and suggesting to the state legislature that “When Cuba opens up, you may not want Havana to have full-service casinos while Miami has, um…a zoo.” They’re also still technically at war with the state of Florida.

Charity points granted, but Chief Osceola didn’t kill his father to get his mascoting gig. Advantage, murderous ram.

Advantage: North Carolina

North Carolina, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. Aura is not the word to describe Kenan Stadium, a leisurely outdoor study hall occasionally used for the rude business of this “football team” North Carolina’s less evolved boosters and officials insist on having when basketball is out of season. FSU and North Carolina have not played each other in five years, but the Seminoles are 14-1-1 against the Tar Heels all time, with the only Tar Heel victory arriving in a 41-9 upset in 2001. Both teams are winless in conference and reeling, so if you’re in the mood to watch two starving inmates fight to the death over the last cracker, then you’re a.) a sick human being, and b.) in luck, because that is precisely what this is.

With three conference losses, the most desperate of the desperate is Florida State here (but only by a fine hair or two.)

Advantage: Florida State

Florida State, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names.

Florida State: Taiwan Easterling, Ed Imeokparia, Ochuko Jenije, Zebrie Sanders, Toshmon Stevens

North Carolina: LeCount Fantroy, Ebele Okakpu, Hunter Furr, Hawatha Bell

Advantage: It’s hard to top LeCount Fantroy in anything, much less a names competition.

North Carolina, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? Sheer cussedness might go to Florida State, but only because by the math they are more desperate to find some kernel of golden corny goodness in this turdloaf of a season they’re eating before our eyes. This is the worst Bobby Bowden team at this point, and if the old man’s mind is too far out to the pastures of Civil War re-enactment to understand just what that means, the very present impact that has on Jimbo Fisher and company’s careers is all too apparent to the offensive coaching staff, at least. Butch Davis, meanwhile, can scrape along to six or seven wins at this rate and still raise his hand and scream “rebuild!” much as one would say “mulligan” after pelting an elderly woman in the head on an errant tee shot.

Florida State, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 3-2, Florida State You’ve Been Factor’d! Remember, this means bet the other way, because the Five Factor is ho-humming along at .500 or so this season as an actual indicator of team performance.

Enjoy.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity.

Nebraska offers little data to speak of in the direction of solid numbers thanks to games against Arkansas State, Florida Atlantic, University of Louisiana-Lafayette, and one sluggo matchup versus Virginia Tech. The matchup against Virginia Tech exposed Nebraska as being subject to random passes from scrambling quarterbacks somehow finding scrambling receivers in the endzone, a weakness shared by every other team in Division One football. The other salient factoid from their only matchup against a quality team: Nebraska did manage to rush the ball successfully against the Hokies, going over 200 yards on the day. Mizzou has been decent against the run, but Nebraska looks more like the mudder here, even with Tigers LB Sean Weatherspoon cracking heads and singing sweet melodies from his linebacker spot.

The Mizzou stat of interest is the young Blaine Gabbert’s exceptional INT total to this point: zero in four starts, something he could continue tonight versus a Nebraska defense that bends, but does not break. The Huskers have allowed only 3 TDs in the redzone, meaning you could see some very soggy field goals from Mizzou tonight.

Advantage: Nebraska. When you’re muddin’, take the biggest truck you can find. That would be Roy Helu, Jr of Nebraska.

Nebraska, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: Nebraska relies formally on Herbie Husker, a jut jawed farmboy who looks like Terri Hatcher after a robust sex change operation and extensive hormone therapy. He has large feminized eyes, the kind of chin one can only get via a genetic condition, and large, feminine eyes you can stare into for days. If he succeeds in his plan to kidnap you and keep you in his crawlspace.

Can you help me carry these books to my Volkswagen over there? I hurt my arm…

The other Nebraska mascot is Lil’ Red, a horrid vision from the deepest reaches of hell. If you animated the Ugly Kid Joe logo, then killed him and allowed him to reanimate and walk the earth as a vengeful wraith herking and jerking towards his bloody destiny, that is what Lil Red would look like. We are 33 years old and would run screaming from him if he confronted us. Stabbing him only makes him stronger.

Truman the Tiger is an inoffensive Garfield caricature modified to avoid copyright violations. Since he does not remind us of hellspawn, he wins by default.

Advantage: Mizzou.

Missouri, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. Mizzou has been a terrible place for Nebraska in the post-Osbourne Juggernaut era, with Nebraska losing four straight there after years of rolling in, setting fire to every living thing, and then politely urinating on the ashes before leaving. There is a rivalry here, and one swaying psychologically towards Missouri even with a freshman quarterback and a driving rain forecast. Missouri is also not the team coming off a nut-crushing loss to Virginia Tech and playing in front of a lively and likely rain-soaked crowd in Missouri. We know how we’d stay warm in 45 degrees and pouring, and it would be by just that: pouring, and covering ourselves in a raincoat made of false, boozy warmth. That also tends to make for loud stadiums.

Advantage: Missouri.

Missouri, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names.

Missouri: Charles Brockway (Sounds like the star of a forgotten B movie like “Preacher with a Shovel”), Forrest Shock.

Nebraska: Menelik Holt (IM-HO-TEP! IM-HO-TEP!), Brent Qvale (extra points for non “q-u” combo,) Faron Klingelhoefer, Ndamukong Suh (First name means “HOUSE OF (FUCKING) SPEARS,”)

Advantage: Nebraska, thanks to Suh.

Nebraska, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? Advantage, Nebraska all the way thanks to the four game streak and Bo Pelini doing things like delaying the blackshirts until the defense earns them. If anything gouges Nebraska as much as their abysmal results against ranked competition, it is losing to teams they used to annihilate like the Tigers.

Nebraska, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 3-2, NEBRASKA You’ve Been Factor’d! This should mean to bet the other way given the dismal track record of the Factor Five Five Factor Preview to predict anything at all in any way whatsoever in the past, but at 3-2 right now, the Factor Five is not even an aid in predicting who won’t win. As always, we’re here to help, just like Herbie Husker, who no, why would you suggest he has a crowbar in his hand, little lady?

Welcome to our Factor Five Five Factor Preview Colorado at West Virginia. The Factor Five Five Factor Preview examines the necessaries and completely arbitraries of the official beginning of your weekend, the Thursday Night special. This week’s special puts the “special” in Thursday Night Special, because Colorado is playing, and as part of their continued sponsorship of slow kids who like to play football, they will lose this game by a substantial margin.

Enjoy.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. Colorado’s defensive numbers, presented as one would show slides of a murder, cakewreck, or explicit slides of cheap hotel infidelity in a divorce trial:

Rushing defense: 103rd (”Please note the bloodspray here, and the defendant’s signature in blood on the wall.”

Passing defense: 100th (”Happy Falker Satherhood!“)

Total defense: 101st overall in the nation. (”I believe Mr. Garner here is engaging in what we call ‘A Bangkok Necktie.’ Unless I’m mistaken and we’re looking at a ‘Polished Flugelhorn,’ an exotic variant of the ‘Rusty Trombone.’ Care to comment, sir, or shall we settle?”)

For West Virginia, that number is -2.33, their turnover margin thus far and the reason they coughed up a game the Mountaineers should have won versus Auburn. They will turn the ball over again tonight, but Colorado’s defense is so inept they may not even be able to take advantage of Jarrod Brown’s generosity, and will instead stare at the football like an exotic flightless bird while WVU linemen scramble to fall on it. Noel Devine could burn through two pairs of cleats tonight, and should since Aaron Opelt ran for 110 yards against the Buffs. If you’re looking for Colorado’s defensive line, they’ll be the ones lying on the ground.

They could give them four turnovers tonight and it would not matter based on what Colorado has displayed thus far as a defense.

Advantage: West Virginia. Don’t be flattered. You get this by Colorado defaulting on life.

West Virginia, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: Ralphie is a rampaging live animal run across the field with no fewer than five handlers barely keeping her under control at all times. So is Will Muschamp, and you don’t see us giving him free points in the Factor Five. In addition to that ironclad reasoning, Ralphie helped give the world an omen about Colorado football 2009 with this debut in the spring game.

West Virginia’s mascot is traditionally a burly, bearded trapper wearing an oily, perhaps still-bloody buckskin and a raccoon carcass on his head so fresh flies buzz around it. In between firing showers of oxycodone into the crowd, the Mountaineer whoops, hollers, distributes deer salad and ramp smoothies to children, and discharges his musket willy-nilly after WfVU scores. (Being hit by the buckshot is considered a blessing. Or a fatal injury. Depends on the range.)

The wrinkle this year: oh, a lady, you say?

Rebecca Durst is only the second female Mountaineer mascot in the history of the school, and has been received with somewhat lukewarm reviews.

Several students complained that Durst did not wear the traditional coonskin hat at Saturday’s game, and some criticized her push-ups.

I’D SHOW HER MY PUSH-UP—we’re dreadfully sorry. But she is a woman in buckskin pants and holding a gun. There are powers we can’t resist, and the notion of a woman who can make fresh bear jerky and her own bathtub meth while making animal hide look good is too much redneck fantasy to decline. Blame a childhood full of watching Urban Cowboy and Dolly Parton movies, but we like our women just a little on the trashy side.

Advantage: West Virginia.

West Virginia, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. West Virginia will be playing at Milan Puskar Stadium surrounded by a ring of roaring Mountaineer fans following a bye week, and covered by a thick smog of whiskey fumes blotting out the light of the moon above. Colorado will be playing half a continent away from home and without star recruit Darrell Scott, who has been carefully saved for use by the offensive staff at Colorado for sometime in the year 2018. (Shh. Don’t tell them eligibility rules. IT WOULD SPOIL THE FUN.)

West Virginia will makes some of the assy mistakes Bill Stewart’s teams make, but holy hell they’re not the Buffaloes, who at times have resembled tapes of undersized Commonwealth rugby teams playing football with American servicemen for the first time overseas. The amount of butt WVU brings to the table will pale in comparison to the assstravaganza of copious posterior CU puts on the plate. Horrible football team. Horrible, horrible, horrible football team. Flames. Burning. Side of my head. Hate. So. Much…

Advantage: West Virginia.

West Virginia, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names.

West Virginia: Logan Heastie (”There’s nary a Scotsman as burly in all’ a Glasgow!”), Guesly Dervil (”Ex’ceptin’ ay mighty strong laddie Guesly Dervil!”), Franchot “Boogie” Allen, Jack Crow (”Your brother is a fucking asshole!”–any black person,) Keith Coffindaffer, Ovid “The Transformation” Goulborne, the dastardly industrialist and land baron Selvish Capers, Scooter Berry.

Colorado: Maxwell Tuioti-Mariner and a few assorted exotic African names. Ironically, Colorado can’t even defend this angle of the comparison, either.

Advantage: West Virginia.

West Virginia, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? West Virginia lost this game last year in Boulder in the infamous HOW DO I MAKE TIMEOUT GAME. This face happened.

So, yeah. Bill Stewart probably wants to win this game pretty badly. So does Dan Hawkins, no doubt, but Bill Stewart’s not the one who clocks his linemen with sundials at high schools and relies on the I-Ching to determine his scholarship offers.

West Virginia, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 5-0, West Virginia You’ve Been Factor’d! This should mean to bet the other way given the dismal track record of the Factor Five Five Factor Preview to predict anything at all in any way whatsoever, but Colorado is a terrible, terrible prairie mudpie of a football team.

Georgia Tech hopes to avoid the curse of being Factor’d for the second week in a row as the Factor Five favorite, since they actually won in this spot last week and thus broke the curse of being the favored team.

Enjoy.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. For Georgia Tech, that number will be 472, or the number of yards allowed in this matchup last year by the Miami defense to Tech’s offense. Miami’s defense spent most of last year lunging at bright lights, tackling giant invisible rabbits, and laying down on the turf weeping when faced with an option play, and by the fourth quarter had given up hope altogether by allowing Lucas Cox, Tech’s geology-back, to take a leisurely continental drift up the middle for a long touchdown. Miami must not allow anything close this yardage to stay in the game, or else the Angel of Death arrives for them in the fourth quarter running a 5.2 and sending the Tech bench into gusts of laughter at a white fullback outrunning Miami LBs into the endzone. A possession back running loose in a blowout will and should do that to an audience.

For Miami, that number is ROOM 222 BAILAMOS CHICAS!!!

Apologies. A dance break was clearly in order. Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn: Jacory Harris only got sacked twice against FSU, and then had his lodging of choice with ample-assed boricuas, aerobicized white girls from Coral Gables, well-waxed Cubanas, and Overtown sistas with his name tattooed in his mouth following his 386 yard, 2 TD performance against Florida State.

The gaudy yardage posted by the Afro Butterfly isn’t the key number, however. The number of concern should be 2, the interceptions Harris threw, of particular importance due to the necessity of staying ahead of possessions against Tech. Once they get the ball they can squat on it for days, so maintaining even opportunities for Miami to score against a potentially clock-grinding Tech offense is of paramount importance for the young Harris. Do that, and the hotels, motels, Holiday Inns, and abandoned beach chairs of Dade County will be open to you yet again, young man.

Cutting down on the INTs could be significantly easier if Miami runs for more than 90 yards, a likelihood given Clemson’s 121 against the Jackets last Thursday.

Advantage: Miami.

Miami, You’ve Been Factor’d! (BITCH) (BECAUSE IT’S MIAMI) (BITCH)

Category Two: Mascot: Sebastian the Ibis does have his upside. He’s violent.

He is the only mascot we know of to be shot in the line of duty, though it may surprise you to note that this did not happen in Miami, but instead in New Orleans, a place so sketchy even Miamians consider dodgy business. He also dances frequently, drives a tricked out Hummer around campus, and is the alleged father of Gloria Estefan’s third child. He has his resume, and it is impressive.

Sadly, Sebastian is not Buzz, and does not eat members of the Georgia Tech band on command.

Advantage: Georgia Tech.

Georgia Tech, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. As limp as the homefield advantage for Miami might be in Landshark/Pro Player/ Joe Robbie/ The Coke Bowl might be, it still has the charm of being filled with Miami fans–who, shockingly enough, suspect you are both physically weak AND A HOMOSEXUAL, SIR? They’re an underrated home presence as long as Miami’s in the game, and are usually drunker than normal fans thanks to free and legal beer sales in stadium. It’s a nasty fanbase when even the nice men in wheelchairs want you dead and rotting facedown in an abandoned corner of the Everglades.

“Fuck you and your gay camera, Mr. Walking Asshole.”

The team is on a testosterone upswing, too, having beaten a rival and discovered some semblance of offense.

Advantage: Miami.

Miami, You’ve Been Factor’d! (BITCH)(BECAUSE IT’S DA U)

Category Four: Names.Tech’s roster, being bland, loses instantly to Da U’s roster of fine, musical monikers.

Adewale Ojomo
Aravious Armstrong
JoJo Nicolas
Ramon “Cookie” Buchanan
Vaughn Telemaque
Ray Ray Armstrong
Javarris James

Advantage: Miami.

Miami, You’ve been factor’d! (BITCH) (STARTS FIGHT IN TUNNEL)

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? For Miami, certainly. Chan Gailey played the part of “The mediocre coach who nonetheless owned one team lock, stock, and barrel,” and for additional LULZ, and who doubled the pain by pawning off offensive coordinator/aspiring insurance salesman Patrick Nix on Randy Shannon, who then installed Nix and his offense in Coral Gables, leading Miami fans to question Shannon’s eptitude and local gun laws concerning the penalties re: ownership of high-grade military-quality sniper rifles. (We kid. Miami resdients don’t consult legal code of any sort before doing anything.)

Four in a row for Tech is one of the sure signs that Miami is at an ebb, program-wise. A win could reinforce the notion they are ascending from the depths of idiocrity, while a loss prolongs one of the nation’s odder win streaks of historical bullies being beaten senseless by furious geeks.

Miami, you’ve been factor’d! (BITCH) (SHAVES U LOGO INTO BACK HAIR)

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 4-1, Miami You’ve Been Factor’d! Reminder: THIS MEANS BET ON THE OTHER TEAM. It’s the counterindicator of counterindicators, though the Factor Five is 1-1 on the season after Tech dodged the curse of the F5 endorsement last week by actually beating Clemson. Still, a vote in your direction, Miami, does not bode well for the prospects of Tech not calculating a fifth win out of the ‘Canes. Still, remember that Miami backwards spells “I Maim,” and no one can take that amusing and truthful coincidence away from you.

Enjoy.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. WILLY KORN. That had to be said before addressing any other issues here, since the invocation of Willy Korn’s name instantly generates magic. And turnovers. Did we mention turnovers, such as the fumble for six in the game against MTSU last week, or the pick he threw two plays later? Those should be mentioned, as should the zero touchdowns Clemson has scored in their last two visits to the Flats. Other numbers worth noting for Clemson: one, as in the number of CJ Spiller’s not listed on the injury chart this week: two, the number of wins Clemson had in Thursday night games in nine attempts under Tommy Bowden, and zero, the number of Tommy Bowden bitch mentalities present on the Clemson sideline this season.

For Tech, the number is three, the number of fumbles against Jacksonville State the Jackets lost thanks to all intensity evaporating for Tech after their first drive against Ryan Perriloux’s Plan B. Paul Johnson’s theme this week–besides the usual constant scowling and strutting redneck alpha-dogging constituting much of his day–has been harping on Tech to maintain consistent intensity on both sides of the ball, something that waned very much badly in the second half of the Jacksonville State game. Paul Johnson does not want that target bombed, soldier: he wants you to scrub the earth where the town used to stand until it shines like new glass.

The problems for Tech do not amount to the scoring of points, but the consistent will to do so throughout a game, whereas Clemson has questions at quarterback against a team whose strength is its secondary. Where did we put that factorin’ stick….

Advantage: Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: Eight Ball the Tiger has his charms. He’s awake late at night! He’s always willing to go out! He talks really quickly and sometimes steals your television set when you’re not looking, so you can’t call him boring!

LET’S GO TO MEXICO WE CAN DRIVE THERE TONIGHT MY GOD LET’S GET SOME HOOKERS AND ROCKKKKK.

On the other side, we have a mascot who wears black Chucks, has a floppy foam rubber abdomen, has parachuted from a plane in costume, has realistic insectoid eyes and still manages not to frighten children, can clear the wall surrounding Grant Field in a single bound, wears white formal gloves as a part of the getup, conducts the band, and was the spontaneous invention of a Tech student who thought dressing up as a huge, tight-wearing bug would get a girl’s attention. (You’re damn right it worked.) Buzz can do a front flip in costume, will be the first mascot in space once they work out the details ‘n shit, and rappelled off a forty story building in downtown Atlanta…FOR CHARITY. You lose, Cokey the Tiger.

Advantage: Georgia Tech.

Georgia Tech, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. While not the chaotic purple and orange roar of Death Valley by any stretch of the imagination, Bobby Dodd Stadium certainly has its charms. They drive a real car made of hard metal around a crowded field prior to games in an irregular fashion. They have a ripping student section (ridiculous facepaint and wigs, check,) aren’t afraid of unintentional irony by getting a bunch of sleep-deprived engineers to bob their heads to Young Jeezy’s “Put On For My City,” and the setting in downtown Atlanta gives you the fun of watching terrified suburbanites gambling on where to park their car in what used to be a very, very bad neighborhood. (Not really true anymore, though the Tech campus is bordered by three strip clubs on Marietta street, or as we used to call them at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, “study halls.”)

There is also the charming Budweiser song, which like most things Tech is pure Dadaist fun. Look, a bee conducting a marching band!

Advantage: Georgia Tech.

Georgia Tech, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names. Clemson wins this one in a landslide, as GT’s roster is mostly fairly normal names with a few Pan-African delights (Osahon Tongo, Onu Okebie) and “Embry Peeples” in there to provide a modicum of spice.

Clemson, however, has a feast for the NOTY-inclined among you.

Kourtnei Brown
Crezdon Butler
Corico Hawkins
Willie Korn
Da’Quan Bowers
Malliciah Goodman

By the time you get through these it’s a landslide. Adding someone like “Tyler Shatley” to the pile is just overkill, really.

Advantage: Clemson.

Clemson, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? Sheer cussedness is a Paul Johnson specialty, but we are talking about teams that faced each other in varying stages of undress last year in a 21-17 Jackets win in Clemson. The Tigers did a respectable job holding the rush-first, rush-forever Tech squad to 207 yards rushing in their first game under Dabo Swinney’s supervision, while Tech was still very much in the process of figuring out how to run Paul Johnson’s offense. A year later Tech is weaker on defense, Clemson is down a step on offense, and we’re back on par again, save for the game being at Tech in a year when the only thing stopping the Tech offense is itself and the vagaries of the coin toss and who gets the ball last. In a shoot out, you bet on the guy with the biggest ammo belt, and Paul Johnson is walking in with dual bandoliers across his oily, Groundkeeper Willy-esque chest, especially now that he gets A-back Roddy Jones back from a wrist injury. (A stands for Annihilating, the B in B back stands for Battering.)

Georgia Tech, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 4-1, Georgia Tech You’ve Been Factor’d! Reminder: THIS MEANS BET ON THE OTHER TEAM. It’s the counterindicator of counterindicators, as last week’s Factoring of NC State helped them to a pants-shitting performance against a South Carolina Team that could have been beaten with a few happy thoughts and ten points of offense. Embrace the Factor’d at your own risk, reader!

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. For South Carolina, the number is 2.9 yards per carry on the ground, their average for 2008 and indication of a serious vitamin B(adass) deficiency along the line. Also five, as in five starters returning for a defense that, Florida game excepted, was passably excellent last year. The chances of that happening again are minimal, especially now that they sail without Captain Munnerlyn in the secondary.

Also, their starter is hilariously ball-insecure, threw for 6 TDs against 8 INTs last year, barely completed 50% of his passes, and has a floating Matthew McConaughey on his shoulder at all times.

For NC State, the number will be two, as in fingers sophomore Russell Wilson can see when you hold them up in front of his face. Wilson was knocked out of this game last year with a frightening knee to the head. Durn.

…and missed the Rutgers game due to injury, as well. Wilson is their offensive centerpiece, and tidy with his business too. Think of him as the anti-Steven Garcia, a ball-secure 17-1 in his TD/INT ratio, a solid runner when he has to be, and everything Tom O’Brien craves in a quarterback. bland, efficient, and admirable production, meaning Russell Wilson is the beige Altima of quarterbacks.

This game was a crapfest for the first half last year with South Carolina taking a 3-0 lead at the half before disgorging 31 points in the second half as NC State lost all will to exist. It also helps that Spurrier shuffled quarterbacks until Chris Smelley clicked, which didn’t last long but hey, a half is a long time for the OBC and his Adderall-quick touch with the qb hook.

Advantage: NC State, unless Wilson gets slobberknocked out of the game.

NC State, You’ve been factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: Cocky is the hoop-skirted Carolina Gamecock mascot with floppy mascot bill, the primo spot leading the team out of the tunnel, no matching spouse to weigh down his free-cockin’ style, and just enough killer glint in his dead mascot eyes to make you a bit uneasy.

He’s right behind you.

The Wolfpack, meanwhile, has Mr. Wuf, who has a matching mascot spouse in Mrs. Wuf. They sit at games and silently resent each other’s influence on their life. Mr. Wuf could have gone to med school, sure, if he’d just gotten his shit together and not been distracted by her endless home improvement projects and pipeline of constant nag. Mrs. Wuf stews silently over his wandering eyes and that spaying he insisted she get a few years back. Together, their constant low level of marital discord makes everyone around them uncomfortable, and gets the cops called to their house twice a year for “disturbances.”

Advantage: South Carolina.

South Carolina, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. Year five–yes, year five–of the Spurrier era is on paper the worst yet. Dodgy quarterback under center, shaky defense, no obvious playmakers on offense, and a head coach sinking deeper into the throes of an obvious and public 3/4 life crisis. DE Clifton Geathers’, arrested last week for scuffling with a bouncer, sums up the state of the South Carolina football program:

Geathers, Clifton. Out for NC State (FACE).

NC State, meanwhile, finished with a robust series of performances to end 2008, returns with a depth and experience they clearly lacked last year, and unlike South Carolina has only a one year streak of opening the college football season on national television with excrescent performances. (The 2006 15-0 SC/MSU opener was a heaping crap-pile, a rugby scrum of a game with no visible signs of offensive coordination whatsoever. But a victory!) They have the more dependable quarterback, return seven on defense, and are playing at home. If you can count on ACC fans to be enthusiastic at any point in the season, it is at the beginning before they are distracted by basketball.

Advantage: NC State

NC State, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names. Ulysses Tuft, Jr is really the only competition NC State can offer to South Carolina, who year in and year out brings a bushel of quality monikers to the tussle:

Heath Batchelor
Ladi Ajiboye
Dion LeCorn
Rokevious Watkins

…and as if you were not already convinced….FOXY FOXWORTH.

Advantage: Clearly South Carolina’s here by several furlongs.

South Carolina, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? A 34-0 embarrassment last year is fuel enough for NC State, but this can’t possibly be a beatdown, since the default score for any ACC victory is 24-17, and Tom O’Brien has an aversion to scoring over thirty points in a football game.

NC State, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 3-2, NC State You’ve Been Factor’d! Reminder: THIS MEANS BET ON THE OTHER TEAM. It’s like magic: whichever way the Factor Five Preview bends, you should probably flow the other direction. Also, as bad as South Carolina has looked on opening night, they usually save their really bad performances for later in the year and take care of business on First Thursday.

a.) This is the ACC.
b.) The low tonight will be 31 degrees, and Miami dudes don’t like that shit.

The cold is just making us meaner, asshole.

Oh, and the five factors, which really decide who’s going to win this game, after all.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. 28.4 points a game, a shocking average for Miami, who we assumed scored points on the Tuberville scale of safeties, coupons, and 54 yard field goals at the gun to end games. For all the bitching about Robert Marve and Patrick Nix’s playcalling, they are third in the ACC in scoring. Whether that’s a triumph of talent over design is a question for the post-season (YES YES THEY COULD BE SCORING NINETYBILLION POINTS WITH SOMEONE ELSE)–what?

The Nebulous State of Dubious Statistical Validity for Tech: 40, or the number of missed assignments for the Tech offense according to the coaching staff. In a system as simple as the Nerdbone, precision counts twice as much as in other systems, and Tech probably won’t be that disjointed against the Hurricanes.

Advantage: Miami, because Tech takes soooo long to score.

Miami, You’ve been factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: We went to the Duke/Tech game a few weeks ago. We sat on the edge of endzone, where the brick wall fronting the western stands rises to about six or seven feet off the ground. A kid waved at Buzz, and his extremely attractive mother beckoned Buzz to come over and say hello.

Buzz trotted back about twenty feet. He made a “parting the seas” gesture, and we got the fuck out of the way lickety-split. Buzz then took a full sprint, jumped, and while wearing slippery white cotton gloves executed a perfect parkour leap onto the wall, and then up it.

Is this unusual? Nah.

Any mascot that does urban gymnastics with ease and who has parachuted from a plane in the service of the student body earns our vote by a wide margin.

Advantage: Tech

Georgia Tech, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. The Canes aren’t quite invincible booty-shaking thug-god…yet. They could be soon, but this team still has moments of befuddling inconsistency, especially on the side of the ball where they don’t get to just sit back and assault people with impunity. (They’re very, very good at that: 10th in the nation, actually.) The foretold Randy Shannon renaissance? Occurring, and that has aura leaning Miami.

Meanwhile, Tech will have a flyover from the space shuttle tonight with three Tech grads aboard: points to Tech. They are also trying a whiteout: points deducted. Most everyone hates the whiteout: points awarded. This?

“I was telling one of my friends that if we wanted to do something original, we should have a geekout and have a football game at the library,” Pritchett said, “because that’s where everyone is, anyway. It’d be a guaranteed sellout.”

Points (sigh) deducted massively.

Advantage: Miami.

Miami, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names. For a team once boasting the immortal “Ethenic Sands” on its roster, Miami’s a pretty bland slate of football monikers, even with noir detective and heartbroken romantic “Harland Gunn” on the offensive line.

Georgia Tech, though, brings the FIYAH:

Embry Peepless
Elris Anyaibe
Osahon Tongo
Jahi Word-Daniels
Doc Coppage
Jaybo Shaw

Advantage: Clearly Georgia Tech’s here.

Georgia Tech, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? Georgia Tech’s actually won the last three in a row versus Miami. If you need any further complication of the muddle that was Chan Gailey, there you go: lose to Duke, beat Miami three years in a row.

Miami, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 3-2, Miami You’ve Been Factor’d! Reminder: THIS MEANS BET ON THE OTHER TEAM, which because we’re writing about the counter-counter-counter-counter intuitive ACC, you should probably decide with your favorite game of choice, like Russian Roulette or Cambodian Land Mine Soccer.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity.

VT:  6-3, 3-2 conference.  MIA: 6-3, 3-2 conference. Advantage: Eh?

Category Two: Mascot.

Advantage: Miami.  It’s a fucking hurricane.

Like a doll’s eyes.

Miami, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura.

No Metallica entrance here, not that the Hokies deserve such awesomesauce this year. Advantage: Miami.

Miami, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names.

VT:  Jahre Cheeseman, Alonzo Tweedy,  Germond Oatneal.  Very Upstairs/Downstairs of you, sirs.  Miami: Cannon Smith (yes, of course he’s a quarterback),     Harland Gunn, which sounds like a Raymond Chandler character if Raymond Chandler wrote about O-linemen.  Advantage: VT, but it’s close.

Virginia Tech, You’ve been factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness?

Miami’s lost two in a row and four of the last five.

Miami, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 2-2, which we’re calling for Miami owing to VT currently fielding a potted plant at quarterback. Please place your bets for the Hokies accordingly.  Bonsoir, boys.

It’s an Escher drawing no matter how you look at it: inscrutable, meaningless, and will likely give you a headache. It’s also on tonight, meaning you will watch it.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. Well, gakked straight from the Clemson Football team’s website comes this extraordinarily interesting tidbit:

Clemson owns 56 wins over Wake Forest in history, its second highest victory total over any opponent. Clemson has 63 wins over South Carolina.

Gamecocks fans, you’re welcome. Over the past five years Clemson has gone 3-2 against Wake, including a 1-2 record against them at BB&T Field, officially the most antiseptic name of any stadium in the known college universe. If they try to bully the Wakesters around tonight at home, they might find themselves overdrawn with no chance for bailout! Topical humor! Get Leno on the phone he’s gonna LOVE this one!

The Nebulous State of Dubious Statistical Validity for Wake Forest: Six, the number of turnovers Wake had two weeks ago against Navy, and an aberration that still left them with the fifth best TO margin in the nation. Grobe sexy, that is, as is a defense that can be devilishly hard to read at times thanks to the Demon Deacons continued use of zone blitzes, fancy binders for their book reports, really nice business cards, and every other possible little edge they care to take in the effort to remain competitive at their size. They have a credit for 42 cents at this casino, and they’d like to use it.

Advantage: Wake Forest, thanks to Clemson being generous with the ball. (79th in the nation in TO margin.)

: Wake Forest: You’ve been factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot:

You can’t tell, right you can’t tell right COOOL that’s good lemme tell you how we’re gonna do this we’re gonna put on some music and call my friends and we’re just gonna rage that’s right we’re gonna RAGE and if we have to we have Steve’s number and we’ll just call him and get some more hey have you seen Underworld it’s unreal vampires are awesome I feel so STRONG on this shit is my nose bleeding OH SHIT MY NOSE IS BLEEDING

Advantage: Clemson.

Clemson, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. Clemson really, really needs this game to maintain some semblance of competitive edge in the ACC. Even factoring in the powerful Tommy Bowden Bitch Mentality, this means they should, according to the script, begin their comeback toward an 8 win season, forcing Clemson to embrace the meh and re-up with Bowden, who will dampen expectations, then succeed beyond them, and thus prolonging Clemson’s turn on the Wheel of Life with Bobby Bowden and keeping them from a hypothetical trip to coaching nirvana.

Advantage: Clemson.

Clemson, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names. Wake Forest has a guy named “Junior Petit-Jean”, which loosely translates to “Little John, Jr.” Aw, look! He has his own pimp cup!

Advantage: Wake Forest

Wake Forest, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? Wake Forest are far too tasteful to hold grudges. Rather, they shall pip away and give one for the Black and Yellow, yes they will! Clemson, meanwhile, beat them 41-10 last year, so grudgery doesn’t really apply here, but again: they really, really need this game.

Clemson, you’ve been factor’d!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: Clemson, You’ve Been Factor’d! Reminder: THIS MEANS BET ON THE OTHER TEAM.

From the Pillblogger, who helpfully watermarked that superb image.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. For Boise State, it would be 100, the number of victories that a win tonight over Louisiana State would give them on the Smurf Turf, a number that won’t matter a bit if they don’t strap it on and get out there and play like their asses are on fire! [/coachspeak'd]

Another number: Kellen Moore, 7, or his rank in terms of passing efficiency nationally. Moore has not racked up those numbers against free kills, either: Moore’s best game came against Oregon, where he went 25 for 37 with 386 yards and 3 TDs against Oregon. He’s the Boise State qb, and is therefore efficient, well-coached, sensible, good with money, polite, and a good but not annoyingly flashy cook in the kitchen.

The Nebulous State of Dubious Statistical Validity for Louisiana Tech: 22-13 over Mississippi State. What will be forgotten in the mists of a month ago is that the stunning upset of the Starkville team who identify themselves as Bulldogs was largely the result of the Legion of Croom making horrendous mistakes (Wesley Carroll threw four picks in a night, though to be fair, it was a vast improvement over Michael Henig’s 6 interceptions thrown in the 2007 opener. Improvement, like any quality, is defined in a relative manner.)

In reality Louisiana Tech is a 91st ranked offense and a 109th ranked defense about to play Boise State at home, or more metaphorically, they’re you on a night when the kids/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/roommate is out of town, and there’s a freshly rented adult film sitting on the table next to a bottle of lubriderm and a six pack of beer. You’ll feel bad afterwards about letting circumstance take you down the obvious path, but gravity always finds a way, and in the end it will have all seemed inevitable anyway.

Advantage: Boise State

Boise State: You’ve been factor’d!

Category Two: Mascot: Neither team can find a suitably unique mascot for themselves, so the relative strengths of either are weakened by fighting over shared and thus slightly debased territory.

Louisiana Tech, like three out of every ten teams in the NCAA, uses the bulldog, the deformed, inbred, affable, and inevitably flatulent descendant of the English Ruffian Throatripper, a dog bred solely to tear the tracheas out of people who owed you money. Now, after years of professional breeding and training, is conditioned to eat, fart, sleep, and do whatever its master tells it. If this sounds like a direct metaphor for your life as a young man contrasted with your married life, IT IS.

Buster Bronco enjoys a freer life, though he does have a perpetually open mouth, which frankly may be appropriate given the potato-worshiping yokels in rural Idaho who live and die with Boise State football. (Don’t think this wouldn’t be appropriate for other schools, though: why do you think Albert the Alligator’s mouth is open all the time?) Buster does have a grueling training regimen, though, and looks way better going through those agility drills than we ever did.

He never takes his eyes off the ball! Because he has no eyelids. He also only shares a name with the Western Michigan mascot, and not half of the other mascots in D-1.

Advantage: Boise State

Boise State, you’ve been factor’d!

Category Three: Aura. Have you seen the color-coding? This sort of order is only possible in a place as homogenous and tranquil as Boise State. This also means that they’re probably capable of genocide, since that, too, requires great coordination, order, and clearly drawn ethnic boundaries. Having the “Problem From Hell” on your side in theory has to amount to a serious homefield advantage, if only for intimidation factor. Also, lack of tasty spicy Creole butter in Boise pregame fare will likely leave the La. Tech players woozy and filled with an undefined sadness.

Advantage: Boise State

Boise State, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Category Four: Names. Louisiana Tech has Jonathan Zeno. You carry the last name of our favorite pre-Socratic philosopher, you get factor’d.

Advantage: Louisiana Tech

Louisiana Tech, You’ve Been Factor’d!

Grudges? Scores to settle? Sheer cussedness? Boise State is at home, where they crushed La. Tech 55-14 on the Bulldogs’ last visit to Boise. Louisiana Tech has not beaten Boise since 2001. This either means that:

A. A spunky Louisiana Tech team overmatched in talent but underrated in heart is coming to stun the WAC juggernauts despite the indications of all available data points!

Or:

B. The Bulldogs will assume the mating position and take the Catherine the Great treatment for four quarters from a surging Boise State squad.

We’re betting on the trend of things supporting the latter proposition. NEEEEIIIIIIIGGGGHHH!!!

EDSBS FACTOR FIVE FIVE FACTOR PREVIEW SUM: 4-1, Boise State, You’ve Been Factor’d!