TONY BARNHART’S ACC OVERVIEW
We love you Tony Barnhart, even when you’re talking ACC football.
May 3, 2025
RICK CLAUSEN TACKLED BY MOTHER EARTH
Rick Clausen, qb at the University of Tennessee, falls ten feet from a walkway but suffers no injuries. At night. In a college town. In a social setting. On a weekend. Did we mention he’s an athlete? With great balance? In a program stung by a string of arrests? We’re not implying anything sinister. Hardly-we just imagine he was probably slightly drunk, which is far from slanderous,especially given the fact he’s over the legal drinking age and free to drink as much as he likes in his free time. In fact, it would raise his status in our eyes, since most Sunday nights in college we were slightly drunk, too, but certainly not doing anything as decadent and cool as falling off balconies. In comparison, we just sat around playing Goldeneye ’til blood ran from our pupils. Who’s living the dream there, eh?
January 25, 1998, 1:46 a.m.: my roommate smokes me for the 26th time that night. I’m the one in the crosshairs of the rocket launcher in the upper right hand corner.
IT’S PRESEASON! EVERY PLAY’S A TD! WHEE1
Have fun watching the X and O’s run in the Urban Meyer Illustrated Flash Playbook. (Thanks to Florida Fan for the link.)
HOW MUCH OF IT WAS SPENT ON BAIL?
Wonder why we’ll never have a college playoff system? Visitors to the Sugar Bowl spent $110 million in New Orleans during the Sugar Bowl this year. College fans in want of a playoff system are literally being held slave to an outmoded system by their need to travel, trash hotel rooms, drink, look at women flashing their boobs, and eat flash-fried meats in parking lots in conjunction with watching the actual games. Oh, but it’s so good…
SOUTH CAROLINA BILL PROPOSES COLLEGE PAY SYSTEM.
I do declare…the state of South Carolina has proposed legislation allowing for small monthly stipends to be paid to student athletes in exchange for the invaluable services they provide to the state. Despite the fact that this idea originated in South Carolina, we have few problems with the idea. Gifted students in the sciences often receive additional stipends for their work, which we remember vividly and with a touch of envy since our inability to do math limited our extra income to telemarketing, warehouse work, and the odd medical experiment.(And you wondered what explained some of the stranger entries here…)
This would all sound more reasonable, too, if South Carolina legislators had provided a funding mechanism for the stipends, considered the implications regarding Title IX, and generally thought out any of the details before half-assedly slapping the legislation on the docket. The sloppiness of the proposal hasn’t been half the story, however; South Carolina hadn’t just committed one of the tackiest legislative one-two combos ever: passing a bill protecting the welfare of fighting roosters, and then following the chicken bill with the defeat of a bill making domestic violence a felony after the third incident. A brouhaha resulted, which means the little stipend bill could get under the radar, mandating something the state hasn’t figured out how to pay for and the NCAA might take serious issue with regarding the payment of players.
The South Carolina legislature: tackling the important issues of the 19th century.
The bill doesn’t give players access to one of the easiest source of income: proceeds off of jersey sales and paraphernalia. Some universities sell individual jerseys; at the Georgia Tech store here in Atlanta, you can walk out of the campus bookstore wearing a Reggie Ball jersey and rest assured Reggie will see exactly zero of the money. Give them a cut, and you’ll have a new factor in the NFL draft: a player’s ability to sell a brand. What’s more American than that?
STILL DREAMING OF A PLAYOFF IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Matt Hayes gives us another recap the the BCS tinkering… and the futility of dreaming of a playoff.
AMERICAL IDOL TIDBIT
Alright, it’s a slow day in the college football world so please forgive the sacreligiousness of an American Idol post. But this was too good to pass up. Perhaps those of you who follow the show (and there are millions of you out there) knew about this a long time ago, but I just found out this morning thanks to a radio news blurb and felt an obligation to pass it on. There is a subversion movement afoot to get the absolute worst contender voted as victorious in this years American Idol. The target is a chubby guy with an arrest record who reportedly can’t hit a pitch named Scott Savol. For more information go to www.votefortheworst.com . The internet is always best when it is humorous and subversive at the same time. Rock on Scott!
America, is this your Idol?
