No way a virtual Leak runs the option like buttery Tim Tebow. Proof? Thanks to NCAA 2006, we’re all pundits now: Sim Tebow is obviously the quarterback of the future, according to the video below. Nice to see someone else has ADD audible syndrome and a tendency to run once and then throw three times in a row.

Delicious glazomania for the off-season: College Sports TV has a nice list of the top ten qbs for 2006.

Warren calls us out…we bring the outs. You might also call this “smack,” a word we detest since it reminds us of Jim Rome reading…things….very…slowly. We have our theories as to why he does this: the original, goatee-less Rome, a twerpy, annoying creature parodied by the immortal John C. McGinley in Any Given Sunday, died in an altercation with former NFL qb Jim “Chris” Everett on live television. Forced to improvise, ESPN called in the big guns and brought in a squad of chicken-blood covered gris-gris masters from Benin to resurrect Zombie Rome on the spot. A few incantations and burned locks of hair later and Zombie Rome rose again, much the same but slower and wearing a goatee to reflect his change to “Evil Rome,” a less clever creature with subhuman IQ and penchant for wearing sports jackets with massive shoulder pads built into them to make him appear larger than he is.

Zombie Rome: talking brains smack.

Now he just gets force fed dialogue shown to him through the glass on giant sheets of posterboard or on the teleprompter; when each segment breaks, he’s fed a small portion of human brains, which he devours hungrily before settling in for the next bit. Notice that he’s never actually on camera with anyone else, a policy enacted by ESPN following a horrible, disfiguring attack on Willie McGee in 1997. The accident, despite improving McGee’s looks, led them to ban Rome from appearing with fresh-brained guests for the lifespan of his program.

Where the fuck were we going with this…oh, yes. Smack. Or in the vernacular…”trash talking.” Warren wrote this the other day concerning author Michael Chabon’s cancellation of a talk at the University of Florida on the night of the national championship game in basketball:

I suggest Chabon reschedule for the evening of this year’s SEC Championship game in Atlanta. I predict Gators fans will be free that night.

Orson? Orson…??

Warren says bring it on? Awwwww, it’ s been broughten, Warren. Here’s exactly what other SEC teams will be doing that night as Florida plays Auburn-the one that’s beaten the Tide four years in a row and will likely make it five-in the SEC championship that night.

Oh, it’s been broughten, Warren.

Tennessee: If country songs are any indication, at home cleaning guns and thinking about long lost high school love in the back of a stylin’ 1991 conversion van. (more…)

We’re sure this will pop up somewhere else in the Florida-centric constellation of attendant sportswriters and bloggers-too positive for Mike “Shecky” Bianchi, too analytical for Dooley…maybe Kerasotis? Nah, he’ll just take the opportunity to piss us off, and this concept for a piece doesn’t make us want to throttle the shit out of our pet midget like every other one of Kerasotis’ palsied, one line shitpigeon columns. Screw it: we’ll strike first.

WHAT THE GATOR FOOTBALL TEAM CAN LEARN FROM THE BASKETBALL TEAM…

…and by “the basketball team” we mean the guys who just won the national championship for the University of Florida. The comparisons will always be a little fuzzy here; obviously, you can’t just type some crap like “Get a Joakim Noah,” since a 6′9″ guy at Noah’s weight roaming the gridiron would likely spend his time getting broken in half by linebackers who can deadlift a metric Mangino. You also can’t type shitty pablum like “be a team,” since that’s awfully Herm Edwardsish (You play to win the game. You drink to get drunk. You give backrubs to get laid. Thanks, Herm.)

There are a few tangible things to take out of the Gators’ spectacular season, however, that apply reasonably well to Florida’s fortunes on the field.

Square peg, meet square hole. Talent should settle into its own niche and thrive there. Take a polar bear and put them in the lush confines of the Lope-Okanda Game Reserve in Gabon, for example, and you’re going to end up with one very hot lethargic, and soon to be dead megapredator on your hands-plus a handful of very, very confused locals. The polar bear in question for the Gators? Chris Leak, for one, who is not a running quarterback and will never be no matter how many brick walls Meyer has him run headfirst into in practice. Or Andre Caldwell, who will have to find some way to utilize his blazing speed in an offense devoid of deep routes. The offense took grand steps toward righting itself with the second half renaissance, but even then the flimsy o-line and and periodic disappearance of the run game scuttled the Gators in the South Carolina game and made the Outback Bowl a tighter affair than it should have been.

The Gators’ b-ball scheme rolled its collection of blue-chip parts into a Ferrari: big men who were allowed to roam the middle complemented by versatile guards and the bombs-away range of Lee Humphrey. Their losing streak following their hot start coincided with straining on the part of point guard Taurean Green to do too much on the floor; once he relaxed and ran the offense as it was drawn up the team flourished. If Chris Leak can fill out a similar role for the football team, he’ll do just fine.

A polar bear in the Gabon last year.

Depth and rotation. Meyer won’t throw 30 yard post patterns into thirty point leads in the fourth quarter, but he’s not the kind of coach to squat on a seven point lead like it was the lost gold of King Solomon, either. The Meyer approach relies on beating down opponents by making them chase you all over the field in between punishing seam runs set up by the spread. Late in games, you must have depth to run teams into hypoxia, which Florida lacked last year across the board. (Like a bachelor, Ron Zook stocked his cabinets with inept enthusiasm: all chicken and beer without a vegetable to be seen. Vegetables= starting linemen with experience and significant playing time.)

Billy Donovan had the luxury of running teams out of the gym with a deep bench. Combined with their style of play, (more…)

Speaking of Juco candy…if your last name is McKinney, stay inside this week or risk getting into small-time but embarrassing trouble. Justin McKinney, already a distinguished offseason warrior by virtue of shooting himself in the foot in 2003 and missing the entire season, mortars another brick into the wall of his redneck status by getting picked up in relation to writing a bad check in Manhattan, Kansas. (HT: Nathan)

With these two charges, McKinney edges closer to earning an honorary spot on the cast of My Name Is Earl. All he needs now is a domestic violence, fencing, loitering, or drunk and disorderly, and he’ll be stealing car stereos and ordering commemorative plates under false names and addresses C.O.D. with Jamie Pressly.

Justin McKinney: just a loitering charge away from being here.

Mike Riley can be officially considered to be under pressure from a 5-6 season in Corvallis, as he’s admittedly raiding the JUCO cookie jar for impact players. (HT: The Wiz.) It’s a bit of a tradition at Oregon State-remember Dennis Erickson’s JUCO-laden 2000 team? Notre Dame does.)
Getting JUCO-happy was a favorite desperation tactic of [NAME REDACTED], too, though we guess Mike Riley will probably choose his recruits a bit more carefully than [NAME REDACTED] since he hasn’t been going around sleep-addled and head-butting Coke machines.

Mmmm…tasty jucos.