The Link-o-rama rolls on into the weekend here at EDSBS.com, this time trying to cover all four corners of this great land of ours with our hyperlinked tastiness.
-Setting the pace is the inimitable Paul Finebaum, shooting the shit with Spurrier while trying to goad him into a couple of fat Phil jokes. He does get Spurrier to say this at a pro-am tournament in Birmingham:

Spurrier, who was in Birmingham last week to play in a celebrity pro-am, couldn’t resist pulling out the needle, even for a nanosecond.

“I know coach Fulmer would love to be here in Birmingham,” said Spurrier, an avid golfer. “But he felt like his golf game probably isn’t quite up to par. I know he’s not too fond of coming to Alabama right now.”

Here’s hoping Phil doesn’t catch that super-creepy episode of the X-Files, “Home,” on tv anytime soon. He won’t sleep for days thinking about the deranged Bama fans who spend their days detailing cars and plotting his demise.

Phil, this guy’s waiting for you in Tuscaloosa.
-David Climer warns Urban Meyer about his tongue in the Tennessean. Considering that the guys over at the Gator Country forums really do seem to know what he had for dinner last night, we’d second that advice. Notable achievement: mentioning Gerry DiNardo and Meyer in the same column, which is kind of like comparing Downtown Julie Brown with King Kong Bundy in a wrestling column.
-Football program misery does have negative economic side effects, as this Post-Intelligencer article makes all too clear.

-John Rohde of the Oklahoman gives the lowdown on the costs of collegiate officiating. Pricier than you’d think.
-Joey Johnston profiles Bobby Bowden in The Tampa Tribune, still making the rounds at 75. Choice quote:

Bowden thought a little more about Urban Meyer, then smiled.

“I just call him Number 7,” he said.

Doug Dickey, Charley Pell, Galen Hall, Gary Darnell, Steve Spurrier, Ron Zook and … Urban Meyer.

Number 7.

Bowden: still sassy after all these years.

-Ryan Perriloux, golden boy freshman qb for the LSU Tigers, takes some advice from someone in LSU’s sports information department and backtracks on some old quotes in this article in the Times-Picayune.
-Further Meyer mayhem in Florida, courtesy of the Tampa Trib via Florida Fan.

College Football News keeps bringing the hotness with more unsubstantiated, specious, and kickass predictions looking ahead to the 2005 season. Our favorite description?

For Texas, guess what? Somewhere, somehow they need to step up from the pimp slapping that they got from Adrian Peterson and company last year and slow him down.

Ahh, when beating prostitutes has become a part of the vernacular, you know you’ve arrived as a civilization.

For a mere $50, the women of the Champagne-Urbana community can spend a day with Ron Zook and the Illini coaching staff learning about the game of football. Caveat Emptor ladies… we’ve seen what a little Zook schooling can do to a football team as we watched the University of Florida go from the #3 team in the country with a returning Heisman runner up at quarterback (who should have won but for those Heismandments) to a team with great talent that lost twice to Ole Miss and once to an abysmal Mississippi State team. Or perhaps the Zooker is just looking to broaden his recruiting base.

A familiar sight to Florida fans: Ron Zook looking unsure of what to do.

Stanford is bucking the trend of teams like Michigan and Tennessee, which have sought to top each other for supremacy as the largest stadiums in the country, in their new plans for a stadium redesign. Stanford, which does not routinely fill its 85,000 person stadium, is planning an overhaul with the aim of helping the game day atmosphere. The plans include removing some 35,000 seats and the track that surrounds the field, bringing the fans that are present closer to the action and each other. There is nothing worse than empty seats in an arena to kill that wonderful college football atmosphere (yes, we are looking at you Miami fans!) so we here at EDSBS.com salute those smart and savy Cardinals. A rowdy 50,000 fans right on top of the action will create a much better home field advantage than a sparsely populated and distant crowd…. of course that only works if the 50,000 seats fill up.

If the Stanford mascot doesn’t instill fear in their opponents, perhaps the new stadium will.

Check out Boi From Troy for the next week or so-we’re playing the role of substitute teacher for his 2000 or so daily readers, which means we can show up drunk and grumpy just as our public school subs did.

In a continuing effort to give some kind of credibility to the BCS Championship without providing the fans a playoff, the Coaches Poll is going to make at least the final vote public. That means the SIDs can still handle all the preliminary voting, but the coaches will have to at least make some effort in the final vote. Of course no one would care about this popularity contest if teams were allowed to prove it on the field. I think Auburn fans would have liked that chance.

Tuberville’s reaction to Oklahomo rolling over against USC.

Heisman promos have begun in earnest, with Memphis sending out souvenir Nascar cars for DeAngelo Williams and Minnesota pimping for Laurence Maroney and others. This flies in the face of recent findings by Clark Haptonstall, a doctoral candidate at Florida State University who studied the voting patterns and motivations of Heisman voters and found the impact of promotional campaigns amounted to the empirical equivalent of approximately jack shit. (Apologies: we checked FSU’s published dissertations, and Haptonstall’s study must be in the review process, as it’s not listed in the collection.) Memo to Heismanpundit: if you’d ever had a craving for a cushy job where you work nine months a year and command exorbitant consulting fees, your time is now, since this is proof you can evidently write a thesis on anything. Has anyone explored the underappreciated but textually-rich multiverse of video game studies? We think we’d be an ideal candidate for such badly need inquiry…

A simple child’s game? Or Sisyphus for the postmodern man? See, we could make that shit up all day.

There’s being shameless-see Mack Brown and his pandering for bowl slots last year-and then there’s Gary Barnett. Barnett, the subject of several probes (ha, probes) into undeclared income from football camps, the coach of a program whose recruits allegedly received services from escorts during visits, the architect of a self-admitted “slush-fund” system in the football program, and owner of a 42-33 record going into his seventh season…wants to talk contract extension. We credit new AD Mike Bohn for not doing a spit take and covering his desk with fresh Starbucks’ dark roast when he got the message. Money quote:

“I would hate [for anyone] to construe that as we’re just blowing it off,” Bohn said. “It’s just not on the front burner.”

Translation: “Give me one more good recruiting season and Barnett’s going to be on the front burner with gas blazing.” Or something like that, if he’s got any sense.

I’m crazy scheisty coach guy! Gimme some candy!

Checking in from God know’s where, Doc Pedro joins us again with a sporting story that made him just a bit jealous.

How do I get this Gig: Out to Stud
by Doc Pedro

Nestled among the bluegrass hills outside Lexington, Ky you will find a true master of his domain, Prized stallion Storm Cat. A descendant of celebrated Triple Crown winner Secretariat, Storm Cat is the most sought-after thoroughbred sire in horse racing. And it’s easy to see why. Storm Cat’s offspring have earned more than $90 million at the track, prompting eager breeders to line their mares up outside his stable. Demanding a stud fee of $500,000 per session, Storm Cat figures to earn more than $20 million this year alone for his owners. Storm Cat also has a special mare ?fluff horse? if you will to prep him for each encounter. HBO Real Sports airing of this story got us here at EDBS.com thinking about the potential of the billion-dollar business of breeding athletic superstars. I mean honestly how many us wouldn?t love to be living the high life in the rolling hills getting paid to sire future stud athletes with mates that are talented enough to produce the best. So what we want to know is who you think would command the most fees and why? Don?t be shy we are ready to hear anything from Georgia Alum Herschel walker to tennis star Lindsey Davenport.

What kind of stud fees might these superstars command?

Liverpool scored a transcendent victory over AC Milan in the Champions’ League Final, winning on penalty kicks after coming back from three goals down at the half. In case you didn’t think the game scenario from the movie “Victory” could ever happen…it just did. Just watch the interviews on the Beeb-I dare you not to get teary. Just shows that college football fans arent’t the last romantics. (Hat tip: Jimmy K.)