I can’t pass up an opportunity to tweak Orson on this one. Â

Watch Ole Miss pull out what is simultaneously the lamest and coolest trick play of this very young football season. The kid running the ball is Devin Dexter McCluster, whose name is just begging for a profanity-suffixed modification.

Mr. Rogers wore sweaters and he never lied… did he? That is what makes it so shocking that Jim Tressel, avid sweater vest wearer and coach of tOSU, would be telling sweet little lies at his press conference. You see, Tressel claimed to have voted Texas number 1 on his ballot; no doubt to avoid any bulletin board material. Mack Brown made the same claim about tOSU on his ballot. The only problem is, Tressel actually voted for his team as number 1 and The USA Today spilled the beans. Sure, someone from tOSU has jumped on that PR hand grenade and is claiming it is a mix up, but we don’t buy it.Â

We expect Tressel will make these very popular.

Larry Coker will actually suspend people prior to big games, as he did in this past Monday’s game against Florida State. Some coaches suspend at the drop of a hat: Urban Meyer, for all we can tell, suspended Marcus Thomas for glancing at him the wrong way on Saturday. (Even Thomas appears to be confused as to why he was suspended, or if he really was suspended at all.)

Some coaches, though, seem to require Scarface-level chicanery to so much as suspend a player for a game, much less a big one. Mack Brown’s counted himself out of this class with the suspension of Tarell Brown for his “Irvin Special” arrest (pot, handgun, a lot of debate about who any of it belongs to,) a painful sacrifice going into the second chapter of the Longhorn’s epic pairing with Ohio State. It’s really a management theory debate: integrity and consistency versus performance, the kind of issues normally hashed out in business theory books you never read for college classes with names like “Saying Yes to Success,” and “Bitch-slapping Your Way to the Boardroom.”

In our attempt to map out classic managerial patterns across college football, we present decision-making a la Bowden. In this classic study, Bobby Bowden confronts a complex range of policy challenges and slices through the messy complexities of daily life with a simple, ingenious philosophy.

Original estimates on the total number of plays lost per game due to rule 3-2-5e ran in the “oh, you know, just 10-14 plays” range. The actual total thus far after one weekend of play? 18.32 plays a game, a sum closer to the high end of what most rule-watchers predicted.

The rule is bad taco meat that’s getting worse. Your non-democratically elected and likely unresponsive contact for the rule is:

Ty Halpin, NCAA Football Rules Committee Liaison
NCAA
P.O Box 6222
Indianapolis,Indiana 46206-6222

FAX: (317) 917-6800
E-mail: thalpin@ncaa.org

Give ‘em hell.

“Just get up off the ground, that’s all I ask. Get up there with that lady that’s up on top of this Capitol dome, that lady that stands for liberty.”

Bruce Ciskie asks three very efficient, to-the-point questions in this week’s Blogpoll. Somewhat belatedly, we answer.

1. What team best met your overall expectations of them in their opener?

Tennessee. We had them at eight and we were right right right right right right right right right right right. A return to prime fat man jujitsu Tennessee football with lineman shoving gaps into the defense, nitpicky little routes broken for big gains in the pass game, and some burly running by the ground game. It was like 1995 all over again, minus that ill-advised nipple piercing we got in Panama City Beach. (Our undergrad major: English. Undergrad minor: Hepatitis A.)

Did we mention that we were right about them? Oh, sorry, can’t hear you because of this trophy we got for being right in our ear. Or maybe it’s the fragment of hoagie that flew in our ear watching Phil devour his celebratory feast post-game. Stand clear when you watch him, by the way; in 1997 Joe Biddle of the Tennessean lost a hand when standing too close to Phil in a post-game frenzy involving a spread of barbecue ribs and egg rolls; Fulmer pronounced Biddle “savory” and had to be restrained by Tennessee National Guardsmen.

Said Fulmer: “savory”

2. What team jumped off the map and surprised you the most? (Bonus points to anyone who can make an argument for someone besides Tennessee.)

Besides the trio of 1-AA teams biting unwary 1-A teams in the ass on opening day? Since Tennessee’s off-limits, how about Pitt bombing away on UVA? Not that an underwhelming performance by an Al Groh team surprises anyone, but the Wannstache and company seem to have realized Tyler Palko throws a nice deep ball that looks even nicer when floating into the middle of wide open busted coverages by the Cavalier secondary.

(UVA is not good. This cannot be stated with enough strength. Their badness may require an animated gif, or its own dirge-like theme song.)

The sad flapping of Depression Penguin: most appropriate bad gif for UVA fans in 2006?

Actually, the gleaming potential of a competitive Big East somewhat excites us: an improved Pitt, Rutgers playing competent football, and Louisville and West Virginia playing the heavies makes for something more than decent filler football. Toss in USF occasionally stabbing an unsuspecting favorite in the back and the moribund conference begins take on some depth and promise. When this all goes to hell in three months and UConn slides into a Sugar Bowl slot with five losses, don’t hate us.

3. What team best moved themselves into a position to surprisingly contend for a national title?

USC. A dismal showing by most everyone else in the Pac-10 means that only Oregon stands between them and a guaranteed BCS bowl-and Oregon must travel to the Coliseum this year. Their non-conference schedule seems manageable since both Nebraska and Notre Dame come to them in L.A., though winning both of those calls for a leap of the imagination where Booty and company shake their way through both teams with the ease of cutting through the Razorbacks. That does, by the way, constitute pure imagination; USC could easily lose one of those games, but the residual prestige from five years of dominance (all most sportswriters and voters can remember at once) should get them a national title invite in a universal one-loss environment.

Ohio State also looked machine-like and primed, but Texas remains the litmus test for them. Sweatervests for all if they rampage in that game, which will answer tons of questions for both teams. Fortunately, Tressel’s already answering your questions and handing them back to you with a free serving of asskick salad.

Starting free safety for USC, Josh Pinkard, heard a crack in his knee while covering a punt on Saturday. That crack was the sound of his anterior cruciate ligament giving way and ending his season. Don’t worry Trojan fans. It’s USC, where the backups are always better than the starters anyway.Â

We broke out the new camera wihout charging it for this past weekend’s ND/GT tailgate…which is why our debut epic is all of a minute and a half long. Much thanks to ND Tom, who’s actually got better footage that we couldn’t convert from the .mov format without actually paying for something.

Our admittedly jacked up Blogpoll appears below, with notes on said jackedupedness below it:

Notes:

-Okay, you can’t move much around in the top five or so since we’re pretty sure any of those four teams could, at any point, demollish any team in the country at this point. Only one team looked to be performing at Max Q efficiency in week one, and they’re sitting at five-Tennessee, who we had loaded up at eight last week anyway. (Ooh, feel the warmth of “right rays” warming the cheeks of our ass…it’s almost like being a pundit!) Southern Cal gets a bump for actually playing someone on the road, even if they did have it at laugher status by halftime.

-Tennessee, as mentioned, gets a five spot for being most impressive in skunking Jeff Tedford’s genius stock for the week. Message board warriors, perhaps you’d like to discuss the implications this game might have on the overall value of the Pac-10 as a conference. No, really, go ahead. We’re not stopping you.

-The rest of the poll is a complete muddle with one glaring error. Speaking of the Pac-10…Oregon needs to be somewhere in the 10-14 range, but we had some problems with Brian’s poll widget. They did beat Stanford, but a conference game in which you ballbust your opponent, hang forty on them, and play well against an offense capable of scoring points, you deserve bump. Blame the musician for their lowly ranking, not the instrument-we need to fix that. (Now bumped up to 15…hmm, still doesn’t quite look right.)

-Virginia Tech doesn’t appear because…well, we plead incompetence. We usually do. They need to be somewhere around 15, since they looked fine in their opener and were, as we predicted, the same team they always are minus some speed and impressive felony potential under center. Oklahoma, on the other hand, has no quarterback and almost lost to UAB. On notice!

-And Miami and Cal richly deserve their respective demotion. We depolled Cal altogether because such a public and unsightly pants-soiling deserves a commensurate response, but note also that Cal claimes a serious quarterback problem with few solutions in sight. Their long term prospects hinge entirely on the alchemy of Marshawn Lynch’s running and a defense that couldn’t rattle Eric Ainge. Not promising.

Miami’s offense under Larry Coker has gotten progressively worse each year he’s been the head coach of Miami. There’s little reason for a pattern-minded brain to expect any change in that pattern, even with a new coordinator on board. Buster Davis did singlehandedly dismantle their offensive gameplan Monday night, but even if you’ve got Lucifer McBadass at MLB one player shouldn’t have that kind of impact on a first-rank program’s offense. On notice!

-And who doesn’t like Fresno State? The answer to this question is always: no one.