You know it’s bad when there’s that pregnant moment of hesitation after the asking of a question. As in when you ask your girlfriend, “So what did you do this weekend?” and the answer begins with “Uhh…just went out. With the girls. And I slept with your best friend. In front of section 114 at Turner Field. Twice.” It just gets worse by degrees with each second.

Oh, yeah. We need to talk. Sorry about that. Happy Mustache Wednesday!

Yesterday we said that the Reggie Bush story stood as more of a mehhh and less of a WHOA than we thought on first reading. This kind of analysis is why we are complete and total idiots, since the story only gains stank points as each reeking layer of the story . It’s remiscent of the old Far Side cartoon depicting a crime scene featuring an alligator with a man’s feet sticking out of his mouth. The alligator has a stunned look on its face thanks to a boa constrictor wrapped around its ribs. Two gumshoes stare at the scene, pad and pen in hands, and one of them says: “I don’t know what it was, but I know this: it wasn’t pretty.”

Just the major spices in the recipe for major NCAA violation bouillabaise stagger the imagination:

-Shifty parents taking freebies on their son’s bill

-An agent dreaming a few pay grades above his level who founds a company that barely exists.

-A partner in said company whose testimony in a parole hearing is shedding light on the case

-The sister of said partner, who’s also the modern day Veronica Corningstone and a grad of Bush’s alma mater, Helix High.

-A shady and wealthy local Indian tribe distancing themselves from the case.

You know its bad when Chief Runswithpremise wants nothing to do with the episode. At the risk of putting too many basic cable-friendly references in a single post, we are now officially waiting for Roger Murtaugh, Martin Riggs, and a cast of wacky sidekicks to link Bush’s family to a South African kruegerrand smuggling ring via an endless series of exploding buildings and a smoking hot girl Mel Gibson gets to bang in his seaside trailer, capped off with Pete Carroll shooting Danny Glover while cackling on about “DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY!”

It’ll end with a witty one-liner and an explosion. Mark our words.

Forfeiting the 2005 season yesterday sounded preposterous. Today it seems inevitable given the unfolding funk surrounding the case and Bush’s refusal to say who-if anyone-was paying rent on the building. USC apologists here will claim that nothing has been proven here, which is true-but the court of public opinion and the jurists of the blogosphere will run on the strengths of the circumstantial evidence, which leans toward:

1. Dreamer moron wannabe agent somehow gets the cash for a house to bribe Bush’s family with, going as far as having their name built into the driveway.

2. Griffins move in, live in house for one year, and then duck out when people ask uncomfortable questions.

3. Agent gets jack as Bush signs elsewhere and leaves big, steaming pile of mess behind.

Now, cue the clowns…sure, it’s from an apostate blog in the USC sphere, but Bruins Nation sees this as one big block in the edifice of USC’s inability to control their football program. As Bill wrote us, “only a rival could care this much,” which is true enough; but this story and the accompanying bad pub could combine with the shame of a 9-3 (or-egads!-8-4) season to announce the Götterdämmerung of the Trojan dynasty.

Check The Wiz for the latest, though we’ll be peeping into our cell phone for updates on this thing all day.

Paul sums up the unfolding WVU spy scandal here. Peep the low-fi but double good game notes, especially.

One magnificent thing about blogging is qualifying exactly how deranged the behavior of fans reveling in the name of sport truly can be. In a feat of redneck excess-department of redundant redundancy in the phrasing there, but humor us-a South Carolina fan meshes several different southern obsessions in a single, fluid motion, encompassing the disciplines of public drunkenness, professional wrestling, and college football foolishness in one move. There’s no sound, but in our own sideways tribute to the late, great June Pointer we present one Gamecocks fan truly jumping for his love. (Feel free to grab your copy of Neutron Dance and play it since the clip itself has no sound.)

Remember: when jumping off a van, a lifejacket is essential gear.

When we open it, should we cover our eyes to avoid melting our faces off at the unbearable sight of its pure majesty? NCAA 2007 is coming, and IGN has a preview of an early version of the 360 version of Infinite Jest for the Football Set. (HT: Kyle, who we didn’t credit in the first edit of the post.) The early feelers are formidable:

-Photorealistic environments complete with satellite-derived sunlight angles and weather sims.

-Living environment: fans that gasp and Gator Chomp/Seminole Racist War Chant along with the fight songs, in addition to standing up in anticipation of a player scoring.

-A new momentum meter, which means Cuddles Swindle’s strategy of strangling us in 28-10 option slugfests could be a thing of the past if we launch a few long bombs in the first quarter for scores.

-The “Breaston Mod,” or in other words revising impact players who don’t measure up over the first 3-4 games of a season down to mere mortal status.

-The most accurate rendering you can get of a stadium without looking at the blueprints.

-Hopefully, the continued use of the phrase “He reached in and got himself a big sack,” which still makes us titter every time Herbstreit says it.

IGN, as always, has the four page, ten thousand word rundown you crave. Make haste! GO!

But do Tennessee fans lay down the instant they get down by ten in the game?

The MZone said it, and we can’t really deny it: there is a strong similarity between the Florida Gators’ helmets and the Sunkist Drink logo. The fearsome cursive of the Gators’ helmet (out of context) ranks somewhere on the galactic intimidation scale between a 16 year-old cancer-ridden Basset Hound and Lindsey Lohan armed only with a forty pound sledgehammer. (Get it? Because she wouldn’t be able to pick it up? Because she’s really, really skinny? HEY-O! We’re applying immediately for our spot on Jay Leno’s writing staff with that kind of stuff.)

Given that though, what’s missing is the context the Gators’ logo swims in: a sport full of seemingly namby-pamby mascots, logos, and colors whose inherent oddness is tacitly accepted by fans all over the nation. For example:

USC Trojans:

Intended messages: Military discipline, classical grandeur, warriors.

Unintended messages: Ritual sodomy. Condoms. Susceptible to ridiculous invasion plans.

Miami Hurricanes

Intended messages. Diversity. Power on a meteorological level.

Unintended messages. Michael Irvin. (Irvin= Coke, strippers, human trafficking, the 7th Floor Crew, Ken Dorsey breaking down the women’s soccer team, anything associated with Sean Taylor, Scarface.)

Intended message: Strong. Classic. Built with Midwestern modest and power.

Unintended message: Too cheap to hire a proper graphic designer due to Dust Bowl.

Now take our dear fruity cursive, the font on the side of the Florida Gators’ helmets.

We totally admit that the nouveau-riche ‘tude sported by Florida fans isn’t made any better by the 1968 marketing strategy clearly behind the lacy logo-it’s the visual avatar of the anonymous sun belt, the strip mall of logos. On top of that, it’s unusually feminine, curvaceous, loopy, and downright frilly. The compelling question remains: why keep it at all?

One word: irony. To wit: what could be more of a mindfuck than looking up on a crossing pattern and, with the safety whipping down headfirst on you with horrific speed, see the chipper, cheery Gator logo as the last thing you’ll remember before losing consciousness? It’s like being knocked out by Strawberry Shortcake on angel dust when a 250 pound, weight-room-kissed uberbastard hits you wearing the most cheerful colors and logo this side of the Disneyworld gift shop. If the concussion doesn’t kill you, the irony will. Don’t believe us? Ask Georgia fans, whose classic macho block G has quantifiably become the gimp of the lacy cursive “Gators” for well over a decade now-getting beaten stings a lot more when the guys handing out the pain wear a logo best described as “groovy.”

Buy more orange juice! Have a nice day! BOOM!

It took an action of the governor to bring about a football matchup between West Virginia and Marshall, so the stakes are high for this matchup. That means espionage was going to be almost a given, doesn’t it? Well, it has begun. A West Virginia student, who works in the building where the West Virginia coaches work, was busted taking copious notes at a Marshall practice. Although the practice was open to the public, the NCAA prohibits opposing teams from attending without permission. In response, Marshall is expected to burn the student’s couch.

West Virgnia’s advanced scouting team.

This guy might develop into one heck of a quarterback under the guidance of the new evil genius, but come on, lose the rings. We’ve seen your brothers go through 4 years of college and they both ended up being practically bald, so you might not want to become so identified by a crazy Beckhamesque haircut too.

We broke down and admitted ourselves into a new, lower circle of obsessive fan hell by letting ourselves into the “will take time off work for spring practices on a Friday” chapter last week, heading out early on Friday morning to make it to Gainesville just in time for practice on Friday and a brief weekend stay for the Orange and Blue game on Saturday. In our defense, we’ll say that it’s the only live football we get until September 2nd, and that it gave us a handy excuse to enjoy the cheap liquor and jean-short wearing, live oak shady goodness of Gainesville.

A billboard just over the state line from Georgia bears mention first: an outline of the state of Florida bordered in gunmetal gray, framed by the words: ATTENTION: FLORIDA RESIDENTS ARE AUTHORIZED TO USE DEADLY FORCE. We’d like to imagine that this was sandwiched between an ad for free Disney tickets and a “JESUS IS LORD AT SHEFFIELD’S COUNTRY KITCHEN” billboard, but we can’t swear by it. (The campaign is actually part of the Brady Campaign’s efforts working against the bill, and not paid for by the state. It’s arresting to the eye nonetheless.)

Be advised as to why the Sunshine State pwnz.

Practice notes get second billing to the state of Florida advertising pride in their new deadly force law. Practices under Meyer bear little resemblance to what you may have seen under Spurrier or [NAME REDACTED]: organized by the second, ruthlessly competitive, and actual fun to watch from your comfy spot on the fine bermuda of the sideline.

We sat just in front of the pass skeleton drill and watched the supposedly green secondary more than hold their own against the first string receiving corps, taking notes just in front of a Blackberrying spectator we suspected was InYourFason from the GatorSports message board. (His practice reports are becoming a public utility-buy shares now.)

Things we noticed:

-Reggie Nelson is the leader of this team, both in terms of skull-cracking gamesmanship in the secondary and alpha-dog shit-talking. (more…)

And we were agog at 45,000 for a second-year coach…Cheatypants brings ‘em in droves at OSU, which drew 63, 649 for their spring game on Saturday. The game turned into a bit of a low-scoring knuckledragger following Troy Smith’s game-opening TD drive and subsequent headset duty, but the halftime entertainment was what everyone really turned out for anyway. (Photo courtesy of the brilliant Tressel’s World, which is truly a stealer of hearts and leader of men.)

As always, Buckeye Commentary has all of your Sweatervest-centric summaries and analysis.

What looked like a surefire “WHOA” last night in our inbox looks more like a certified “Myehhh” this morning as a sleazoid marketeer named Michael Michaels allegedly bought a $750,000 house in Spring Valley, California and allowed Reggie Bush’s family to live in it during Bush’s senior junior year at USC, all in an attempt to get Bush to sign with San Diego agent David Caravantes.

Sinbad’s got nothing on Denise Griffin. Too bad Phil Hartman couldn’t make the sequel.

Let’s break this down by the two likely threads of the story:

OMIGOD USC IS GOING TO HAVE TO LIKE FORFEIT LIFE, RIGHT? Of course this is what you were thinking when you first read the story. Like us, you’re the one who, upon hearing of a planet-sized asteroid several million light years away that might be edging into the earth’s neighborhood, makes your scheme for spending your last minutes on earth in detail. (Hint: orgy in a liquor store would just be the start.) This story is like program AIDS for USC, right?

Not quite-if Bush had an alternate residence, which he supposedly did, then there’s no specific link that Bush used his family as a proxy to live in a house during his senior year while the rest of the world spent their senior year dreading elephantine student loans and tripping over the XBox cords snaking across the floor of their undoubtedly crappy apartment. Furthermore, a sketchy, Lionel Hutch-style agent’s scheme to woo Reggie Bush into a marketing/agent marriage doesn’t constitute the deadly “lack of institutional control” factor that gets the NCAA all heeby-jeeby and sometimes results in whole seasons getting forfeited. In fact, no direct links to USC exist at this point, so UCLA fans, please put down the gris-gris and stop lighting votives-there’s no institutional connection here.

Storyline strength: weak tea.

Reggie Bush and his family are, well…kind of trashy. A more likely suspect in the case since we’ve got some ample evidence for it. Bush’s mom, stepfather, and brother all piled into the house on Reggie’s dime, lived there for a year without considering the potential complications, and fled the house like Irish Travelers once reporters came around sniffing out the real owners of the house. Bush needs to take some trash points, too, since he allowed the whole thing to occur and had to have known about the deal from step one without ever seeing anything remotely fishy about his parents using him as a walking housing subsidy. (Not that you don’t need one in Southern California’s insane real estate market, but still.)

Our favorite image of the story is this:

Reporter: [knock knock] Hi, ma’am. We’d like to know if you know a man named Michael Michaels. We’re from the Associated Press.

Bush’s mom: Umm, no. Would you excuse me for a moment? (Shuts door; voices from behind door begin screaming, muffled but still clearly audible.) GET YOUR SHIT AND RUN! RUN! GET IN THE MOTHERFUCKING CAR AND RUN BITCHES! AAAAIIIIGGGHHH!!!

(A Range Rover runs straight through the aluminum garage door at this point, runs over the mailbox, and then hits a parked car before peeling out and heading to the nearest Holiday Inn Express.)

Reporter: Umm…bingo, right?

Storyline strength: Turkish coffee with extra sludge at the bottom.

The greatest thing about this story is that after a year and a half of putting up the Bush family for free, the agent/sleazoid marketeer in question got exactly Jack Schitt from the deal; Bush signed with another agent and marketing firm altogether, leaving the duo with a fine real estate investment that, thanks to inquiring minds, is now ready for immediate move-in.

Summary judgement: less Antonio Langham, more Tank Black. San Jose State forced to give up 3 scholarships and forfeit entire 1973 season.

We are not big fans of the NBA, but we can admit that it does exist might occassionally be good for something… like this. Watch if you dare. It is safe for work, but not necessarily for your sanity.

Amid sagging poll numbers that have dropped Bush into Herbert Hoover territory… wait, this is a football blog… but it can’t be, can it? Too early to tell, but Yahoo! Sports has been digging into the records surrounding Reggie Bush’s family’s home recently and has been getting a few too many “no comments” for Pete Carroll’s comfort. Apparenlty, the 3000 square foot home Bush’s family has been living in for the past year is owned by Michael Michaels, who may or may not have been trying to steer Bush towards a particular agent. Stay tuned.

As a fan of watching his greatness for 3 years, we hope we can remember him like this and not for a scandal.

Condolences to Washington State coach Bill Doba: his wife Judy Doba died of cancer Friday morning at their home in Pullman, Washington after a four year struggle with the disease. Going to practice on Friday in Gainesville, you forget that the names and bits of info streaming through the wires are actually attached to people until you see them sweating their asses off in person, looking in desperate need of a cup of coffee, a shower, and five minutes of peace and quiet. Here’s hoping peace finds Coach Doba over the next year.

And we thought all we’d have to post about this afternoon was UF practice…Jimmy Clausen, megaprep qb, subject of his own ESPN profile as a sophomore in high school, and the most lusted after 16-year old since Lindsey Lohan, has opted to sign with Notre Dame. Something about “groomed Tom fuckin’ Brady” and “wins football games by passing;” we dunno, really, as it was nearly impossible to hear over the collective screams of hysteria and hosannas from the assembled Notre Dame grads.

As Joey said: get your condoms. The wankfest over this could rival that surrounding Tim Tebow prior to his commitment to Florida; in fact, go ahead and pencil in the surpassing of the Tebow story since ESPN’s reps are no doubt negotiating at this moment with Clausen’s parents for their own Tebow-style documentary on Clausen’s senior season. The Ipecac storyline has already written itself, and look forward to getting ramrodded Clausen stories as part of your media diet for the next two years-so good you’ll puke from all the pleasure!

Beano Cook, when notified of the breaking story, had the following response.

-Proclaimed Clausen as the first ever “Clausen Award Winner,” given in lieu of the Heisman which will completely suck following the wake of Clausen’s first season. (We’ve already claimed Clausenpundit.com, so don’t even try it.)

-Fed a signed 8X10 of Clausen to his dog, waited for dog to shit out said photo, and then rolled in the papery poo to express his pleasure.

-Had Clausen’s name tatooed on his forehead to demonstrate his loyalty.

-Named remaining functioning kidney “Jimmy.”

Beano: excited about Clausen.

Georgia Tech loses another player in a spot they cannot lose depth at: cornerback Jahi Word-Daniels (All-Name Team starter by default) has knee trouble and may be out for the season. Attention Notre Dame fans: your starter at one corner position for Tech in the game against the Irish could be converted wideout Pat Clark or incoming freshman Laurence Marius. Against Brady Quinn throwing, Jeff Samardkijadkugija catching, and Weis calling plays. Against Chan Gailey on the other sideline. (HT: Nathan.)

Don’t stand up at work after reading this, as wandering around the office while pitching a tent is not cool-we just checked with your HR department, and that’s sexual harassment, or at the very least just plain impolite. Unless you’re single and well-hung, that is; in that instance, it’s called “advertising.”

Tech might need to borrow this to calculate Quinn’s yardage if Tech’s secondary loses any more people.