Wanna judge a football fan? See if he cares about the offensive line. At all. Ever. We’ll fully own up to being dunce when it comes to all but the blandest statements about the offensive line. We’re particularly good at the following:

-”Boy, that quarterback’s jersey is really clean.”

-”He’s huge.”

-”I’d hate to run into him in a dark alley!”

-”Fattie! Ha-ha, fattie!”

-Our favorite and a Boomer Esiason regular:”The sweat off his butt’s really making the ball slippery. Some guys are just sweaters.”

“He’s huge.”

See? Even an obsessive/compulsive college gridiron fan is reduced to Todd Blackledgism in the face of attempting to figure out what’s going on on the offensive line. Part of the problem comes with trying to parse out five different players all attacking five different points at once: they’re all over the place, tangled up with d-linemen, often falling into thrashing balls of humanity on plays that coaches will later zero in on and call “successes.” Plus they don’t have the ball, which your nanobrain instantly focuses on in any football setting, since that’s where the action is, monkey. This may be true, but actions happen in chains and schemes in football, which brings us to some old crusty genius like SI’s Dr. Z glorying on about Alan Faneca for a whole page because of his sublime run blocking. The number of quality returning starters may be the strongest indicator yet of a team’s potential for success in a season, though we’ll hedge on proclaiming that as fact since we’re still compiling the numbers for future piece on the subject. (Research? Yes, it’s the doldrums of June going into July. You’re damn right we’ve got time for research.)

Watching o-linemen is also inelegant violence, which diminishes its allure as a focal point for football watching. Linebackers and especially safeties practice a very compelling form of violence, more of the car crash, Taekwondo type, thunderous hitting done with a head start. Offensive lineman compare more accurately to elephant seal/UFC fighting, mostly ugly grappling done with an emphasis on not blatantly holding your man and drawing a flag. From time to time an offensive lineman might get a highlight hit-like when one pulls and, expecting a linebacker, instead sees the fright-stricken eyes of a cornerback looking to run to the nearest sideline and weep-but for the most part the bear-fighting in the trenches is difficult to articulate outside of the most obvious displays of eptitude or incompetence. (Like, say, Florida’s O-line last year against LSU or Alabama.)

You may not know when you have a line. You’ll definitely know when you don’t.

Todd McShay of Scouts thinks he’s got a list together of impact linemen for 2006, and bravo for him-if he knows what’s going on down there, then bully for Todd. We’ll fully admit that line-watching is an art acquired over years and years of football-watching. Hell, remembering the lineups for a whole conference worth of lines represents an acquired art. McShay’s big on Levi Jones Brown of Penn State, along with most of the Texas and USC lines, which would seem like front-running if they weren’t so enormo good and fresh off a national television performance where both fronts mauled incoming defenders all game long.

It’s a crapshoot, really, since offensive line coaches have the most nuanced gig in all of college coaching. Skill position coaches have the stopwatch, the metrics, the one-on-one drills to determine who gets to dance in the endzone and get the glory hole treatment from the press. (Another sportswriting trope alert: denigrating skill position players when writing about big uglies. Returning to programming.) Line coaches not only have to figure out who their best grapplers and road-graders are, but also have to figure out the best possible scheme considering who plays next to the other and how they react to each other. It’s chemistry, chess, and biomechanics tossed into a blender.

No wonder one of the most successful line coaches ever suffers from depression; the fine-tuning and juggling probably has the most dedicated coaches popping Wellbutrin like Tic-Tacs, and leaves the mediocre ones praying for divine intervention. Offensive line coaches are notoriously flaky, but there’s reasons. They’re the ones who work the skin off their bones to be successful…and if they’re lucky, almost invisible in their triumph. That’s a mindfuck worthy of prescription medication.

Ah, Stranko, now that’s a lousy cheese-filled headline for you: Van Halen reference hopelessly dating us, bad play on the team’s name…it’s all there, ami.

The Sun Devils have taken the component approach to hiring their new offensive coordinator. Figuring they already have the ability to pass the daylights out of the ball, they went and found a guy from one of the run-happiest OCs systems in the NCAA: Roy Wittke, the offensive coordinator quarterbacks coach at Arkansas the last three years, a guy whose team ran some 62% of the time during this time in Fayetteville.

Koetter says he wants new perspective in his offense, and he’s got it. Giggling at the thought of the Pac-10 looking for offensive wisdom in the SEC tickles the imagination enough, but Wittke trying to find the next Matt Jones in Arizona and reinstalling the “run right up the middle on 1st and 2nd downs, and let your 6-6, 4.4-running freak of a qb make something up on 3rd down” offense” would be even better.

Dirk, what you need is a 6-6 freak who runs like an angry giraffe. With low Wonderlic scores, too.

We’ve got no illusions about ASU’s offense actually changing significantly-Koetter will still be the grand architect behind one of the top three passing attacks in the nation-but Wittke may raise the run/pass ratio by a few percentage points. What he doesn’t need to touch is the passing game: Arkansas was 108th in the nation last year, which matched against ASU’s 2005 pass defense would have made for a pretty even game.

We had to do at least one horrible sports page-style punning headline completely lacking in humor eventually, so why not today. As the horrid headline suggests, the Vols have signed up to take on the Huskers in a home and home in 2016 and 2017. Think this will be a Fulmer-Callahan match-up? Neither do we.

The situation regarding Avery Atkins’ alleged assault of his now ex-girlfriend has gotten no clearer. Not helping this is Atkins, whose request for a transfer and release from his scholarship was denied by the university; following the denial, Atkins made contradictory statements in the Daytona Herald and Orlando Sentinel about how he felt at this point in the proceedings, alternately saying remaining at the University of Florida could “ruin his life” and that he wanted to stay in Gainesville. If he stays in Gainesville, he’ll need a new apartment, as he’s been served an eviction notice citing $1,214 in unpaid rent.

The only substantive quote from Meyer on this?

“I’ve talked to him, talked to his family. We feel like it’s in his best interest to try to fight through this and not be scared of the issues.”

Meyer can’t be thinking of putting him on the field this fall, even if it’s the probable case of a very violent couple’s very public fistfight, right? (Reading the eyewitness accounts, it seems less “Whoop That Trick” and more Jerry Springerish. ) He just can’t. It’ll be a liability down the road that Meyer doesn’t want to put on his resume. Plus we already have a home for wayward boys in Florida, and for once we don’t mean FSU. This one meets in a building that looks like a middle finger extended toward the voter, or perhaps an enormous phallus flanked by a set of balls.

The seat of power in Florida-if only it had a spurting fountain on the top…

More on this at We Are The Boys.

The longest days of the year generate strange behavior in climes around the Arctic Circle: euphoria, grandiose behavior and sudden personality change, and generally everything else we can half-remember from that episode of Northern Exposure where Joel coaches the Cicely men’s basketball team to near-greatness before collapsing after nearly a week of being awake. (Northern Exposure: that’s science, right?)

All we know about sleep disorders, we learned from Northern Exposure.

The longest days of the year maximized bad behavior in dramatic fashion in the college football world, too. We catch you up on three stellar stories, all unfolding in the past few days, and all really, really not things we advise doing at any point in your life.

-Begin with small potatoes: Brian White, the new offensive coordinator at Syracuse, has a bachelor’s from Harvard, a masters’ degree from Fordham, and an MBA from Notre Dame. We know this has dire implications on his ability to properly execute the Bankhead Bounce; but his lack of a degree from an SEC school may explain why he misjudged his alcohol meter and got behind the wheel of a car Saturday night, blowing a .17 for the po-po and earning himself a nice DWI charge. (That much student debt would drive us to drink, too, Brian. Felicidades!) The single Fulmer Cup point awarded marks a new trend for Syracuse and its crack-of-the-ass-reeking offense: scoring!

Making this all better is that White was the subject of a citizen’s arrest by someone who saw him driving erratically and blocked him in until police could get to the scene. (HT: Bill.)

-Male cheerleaders are typically assumed to be a.) gay, or b.) strange. Marshall’s male cheerleaders have broken out of the mold and boldly challenged those stereotypes. Their avant-garde, genre-bending takes on being a male cheerleader have earned them a hefty sexual harrassment suit from a former female cheerleader at Marshall. This may be the single greatest newspaper article ever written, since it contains the following seemingly unquotable quotables:

“In it, she claims male members of the squad exposed themselves, rubbed their genitals on the female members’ faces and called the females “bitches, whores” and other derogatory names, including one typically used to refer to female genitalia.”

K.C. also says he exposed his penis to her, rubbed his scrotum (in a motion known as “teabagging”) on her head and face, promised her a permanent spot on the squad if she would have sex with him, requested they make a pornographic video together and “announced that he wanted to f-k her.”

She blames Dunn for “calling cheers by names such as ‘Bearded Clam (vagina), More Head (oral sex) and String of Pearls (ejaculation).”

Also, she says Dunn ordered the female cheerleaders to put golf balls down their cleavage and skirts at a golf function and also expected them to kiss a putter shaped like a penis and show their breasts.

Marshall’s turning into a Benny Hill skit! Or a horrible cauldron of retrograde sexual politics! Reread the article with this playing behind it for double laughs, if the article doesn’t make you weep for the future of man. (HT: Devil Grad and Brian.)

Marshall’s new cheerleading coach, reporting for duty.

-And completing the savory trio: a story involving ’90s Mexican drug ring and the tOSU “director of student performance” (not to be confused with their “academic encourager” and “angora goat wrangler,” the guy who corrals the special goats supplying the supple hairs for Jim Tressel’s trademark sweaters. Who knows if this guy actually exists, but it’s just funnier to think of Jimmy T pimpin’ Angora on the sidelines.)

Eric Lichter, the director in question, was convicted in 1998 of a misdemeanor drug charge involving an envelope full of Rohypnol and Ritalin. He fessed up completely to the episode in his interview process, and Tressel and tOSU administration stand by him. There’s little to get excited about here besides the fact that checking “YES!” on the “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” question on the Buckeyes application does not seem to have a negative influence on your ability to get hired there.

But considering what we’ve seen about Ohio lately, finding someone who doesn’t check yes may be a difficult task. (Unfair? Maybe. Then again, we root for a team whose state has its own tag on Fark, so considering it a loving nudge from the state where people see Jesus in waterstains at car dealerships.)

Please excuse us for the AM, but we’re off to watch the World Cup and see if the US can actually score a goal of its own against Ghana.

If you’re looking for something to do in the meantime, take a look at Oregon’s new unis. We quote Kool Keith from Dr. Octagon:

Dr. Octagon please come to the office come now
Oh fuck! Patient just died in room 105
Cirrohsis of the eye

Cirrhosis of the eye.

After the last edition of the PowerPoint Previews nuked the site for a few hours, we’re back with an experiment: loading our glossy look at Athlon’s #23, the Utah Utes, onto a German file barn and seeing how it works. Click here to start the process; you’ll have to go through a few clicks to get it off the mirror site, but soon you’ll be using one of the most despised pieces of office technology ever to prepare for the season.

We’re especially proud of the Utah preview, dear reader. Not because it’s good-on the contrary, it’s probably the least entertaining one we’ve strung together yet. No, we’re especially proud because we got through an entire Utah presentation without making a joke about polygamy, Gary Gilmore, or Mormons. We did, however, decide to make fun of Chan Gailey losing to Utah in the Emerald Bowl with the help of two of Utah’s most famous citizens, one of whom looks a lot like Mama Swindle, actually. (Not Merlin Olsen. We’ll beat you to that one.)

Do we need to write that this is purely speculation? Strictly just to ensure that we’re not going to end up in hock with the silica gel-eating crowd out there? Okay then: the following is merely a list of idle speculation on which coaching republics might be experiencing a bit of regime change next year, either imposed from within or by the presence of more attractive invading forces waiting just outside their borders (or in one case, actually inside the state in question.)

NOTE!!! Stranko would like to remind you that in this department we are historically beyond the realm of wrong in predicting who gets fired at the end of the season. We expect this piece to look just as foolish in retrospect. (Yeah, that Greg Schiano. He’s going nowhere but home, dude.)

Despot in Danger Uno: Subcommandante Nutt, Exalted Union of Arkansas.

Strip the names off this case, and it’s got numerous classic signs of flailing headman:

-Diminishing returns on his performance after initial success.
-The hiring of a new offensive coordinator after a losing season.
-Said offensive coordinator having no college coaching experience.
-Said offensive coordinator also having significant ties to glorified savior qb recruit.
-Current defensive coordinator having “communication problems” with new OC
-Butch Davis living in the same state and looking for a new job while all this happens.

Total Instability Points: 6.

Comparable to… Kim Jong-Il. Despite announcement of new technology, most of the world waits for inevitable collapse of isolated, middling empire and messy succession struggle.

Nutt: so lonely…

Despot in Danger Numero Dos: Showmebashi Supreme, Gary Pinkel

Not so bad a list of critical indicators as you might think:

-Generally kind of “meh:” 29-30 in his five years as HC at UM.

-Thought by many to have squandered the phenomenally talented Brad Smith.

-Aside from beating declining Nebraska teams, comes up shy on signature wins.

-Five years: no division titles, two bowls, and one postseason victory.

Total Instability Points: 3.5.

Comparable to… Sapurmurat Niyazov, the “supreme leader and father of the Turkmen people” also known by the single moniker “Turkmenbashi.” Kind of suspect, but who else would you want ruling a long ill-starred piece of territory? And yes, we just compared the football program at Missouri to Turkmenistan, but the comparison holds: allegedly rich in squandered natural resources and victimized by sitting in the middle of a vast expanse of land traditionally dominated by foreign powers. And since the place isn’t obviously catching on fire, who else would you put there?

No gold statues of Gary Pinkel in Missouri…yet.

Despot in Danger Numero Tres: Rich Brooks.

The one guy we’re willing to bet will be needing political asylum in a hurry after 2006.

-A 9-25 coaching record at Kentucky and a lifetime collegiate mark of 97-126-4.

-Inspires infectious despair amongst Kentucky fans, who often lay down on the pavement staring at the sky at the mention of his name.

-Zero bowl games.

-Continued dismal performance without apparent improvement.

-Charisma rating somewhere between vial of plague virus and half-blind 18 year old cocker spaniel who pees the rug and attacks furniture for no reason.

Total instability points: 27, as in total losses in last three years.

Comparable to… Robert Mugabe: old, crusty, unapologetic, and has run program into ground following slight glimpse of light in the Guy Morriss era just like Mugabe took groovin’, just-getting-there Zimbabwe and floored it into the ditch. Unless a miracle happens, Brooks will be pushing his Garden Weasel around the homestead in early January easy.

Despot in Danger Numero Quatro: Chairman Coker.

The improbably threatened but still mentioned Chairman Coker may be the strangest on the list.

-Lost to LSU 40-3 in the Peach Bowl.

-Umm…has compiled the fourth-best winning percentage of any college coach ever in his first four years at 44-8?

-Won a national championship?

-Lost to Chan Gailey last year?

Total instability points: X sub n. The X stands for that which is rational and good: that Coker is a good coach playing through some offense tumult and still cranking out 9 and 10 win seasons. The sub n denotes the irrational power of Miami’s past and potential glories to allow the alumni blinded by the potential of a Butch Davis return to the Miami sidelines, an unknown quantity that could put Coker out of Coral Gables. Think this is pulling something intriguing from our ass just for giggles? Listen tomorrow on the Podcast with Bruce Feldman, who suggests exactly this scenario when we ask about the Butch Davis to Arkansas rumors.

Comparable to… Lee Hsien-Loong, the current capo of the state of Singapore. Inherited small but much admired nouveau-riche state once on the fringes of the scene, but now a player operating far above humble beginnings. Presided over the slightest of downturn in fortunes but seems steady and competent enough for a high-profile post, especially in the law and order department. Firing would be baffling at this point.

Getting the Frank Solich Treatment times ten?

We missed this last week, likely while we were too cursing the entire nation of Italy or trying to resurrect our two-cylinder server from the onslaught of UP TO FIVE PEOPLE AT A TIME TRYING TO DOWNLOAD SOMETHING AT ONCE!!!-the University of North Dakota are suing the NCAA for their attempts to ban the “hostile or abusive” nickname “Fightin’ Sioux.”

The letter reads like the response in what could be an all-timer in terms of geek quotient in dorkfighting between a university prez and the NCAA. In fact, there’s so much quality bitchcraft in the letter, so much sheer debate club slappery that we can only sample the premium bits. We present excerpts interlaced with our commentary and translation.

I have chosen to communicate with you in this way for several reasons. Since you have had what you say is the “final” word on the issue of our nickname and logo, we must now consider legal action.

Translation: Final, my ass. Taste the blade of my lawyer, Myles Bitch.

Despite some of the hard-edged language I have had to use in this letter, I bear no animosity toward any of the NCAA committee members or staff, who, I am certain, are all good people.

Translation: I hate every last one of you from the oily, filthy tops of your heads to the useless, pampered soles of your feet.

Self-righteousness has wreaked havoc in the guise of good throughout history.

Translation: You’re Hitler. This a classic old debate trick, where you take your opponent, who might be arguing for term limits, take the flimsiest thread of connection, and connect it to Hitler. For example: “My opponent says gravity’s been a positive influence on human history. Well I would remind my audience that were it not for gravity, Hitler would have drifted off into space, and the Holocaust would never have happened. Love gravity, and you love Hitler.”

Read the rest of President Charles E. Kupchella’s smackdown of Brand here.

Myles-pictured here as green dinosaur-gets a boot to the head from UND’s prez.

Although we are not sure exactly the total circumstances around this mustache king’s disappearance from the public, we feel he still the appropriate mustache of the day in honor of the Heat’s championship last night. Congratulations.

“I wish I was still the coach.”