Someone was finally kind enough to find Erik Ainge doing the Gator Chomp and put it up on YouTube. Enjoy the savory irony of premature echompulation below.

We will now spend the remainder of our day hitting play over and over again. Note Gary Danielson’s prescient comment: “Still a lot of time left in this game, Erik Ainge. Get back there and start studying.”

Ainge really has no need to study, as the boys on the Gatorsports message board have pointed out. He has his own textbook for that: (more…)

Ron Franklin, the stentorian voice of Saturday night football on ESPN, has been benched. Kanu at Dodgy At Best captures the moment with lucid fury:

Ron Franklin is the best voice in CFB by a mile, and he certainly is the voice of the big Saturday night game on ESPN. My sis donned him “Uncle Ron” about 10 years ago because his voice is so great and comforting/comfortable that he sounds like your favorite uncle calling the game for you at a weekly family gathering. As damn near all things ESPN related have turned to complete and utter shite around him the last 15 years, he had remained one of the very few great things that remain at now-shittastic ESPN.

Uncle Ron will now be have the honor of broadcasting day games between major conference foes and their 1-AA scheduling gimps. Here’s hoping he leaves, signs with FOX, and takes the Musburger route to renaissance when the “Bread and Circuses” network gets its claws on college football.

College football on FOX, with “The Running Man” at halftime. Who do you love?

We thought to ourselves: man, how much fun would it be to just drive downtown, find a decent spot to park, and treat ourselves to a lovely night of Georgia Tech football down on the flats. Just a quick check of the ol’ website, which tells us that a single ticket to a college football game will cost us…

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST: FORTY GODDAMN DOLLARS!!!

Forty dollars. To watch Reggie Ball run quarterback draws while Al Groh brazenly thumbs through through real estate brochures on the opposite sideline? Forty goddamn dollars? What in the hell does Chan Gailey wipe his ass with, platinum-threaded silk? Or Renova toilet paper?

Toilet paper for the discerning, um…butthole, right?

Atlanta may be the most expensive city in the Southeast, but that’s still not much of a crown.
Here’s four things you could spend forty bucks on in Atlanta of equivalent value to what you will see tonight.

1. Four City of Atlanta Parking Tickets. Satisfy that inner savage in you by taking your vehicle, pulling right up in front of a tooth-sucking surly meter maid, and walking off without dropping so much as a penny in the meter. Better yet, pull in and out of the same spot four times in front of the same meter maid just because you’re a gangsta, and you aint goin’ out like no punk bitch. If you considered buying two tickets to the game, go ahead and let them all go overdue for equivalent value.

2. Two EDSBS t-shirts. Shameless self-promotion, but they’re guaranteed not to waste three and a half hours of your life like tonight’s game will, and unlike either coach, is a colorful thing that will likely be around and in one piece in a year’s time.

3. A dinner for two at Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles. Again, may kill you quicker than watching UVA play Georgia Tech.

4. A punch in the face from a homeless man. Very simple: give the homeless man forty dollars to punch you squarely in the face, which unlike the UVA/GT game will be over in seconds and only half as painful.

He needs it more than Georgia Tech does, and unlike them will turn it into success. Success in this case being really drunk in two hours.

Kentucky comes to town next for Florida fans. Contrary to popular perception, the Kentucky rivalry has been a particularly rich and storied one of late for Florida. Consider the following:

-The 2003 game, where a young Chris Leak went into Kentucky and nearly lost before Jared Lorenzen, evidently displaying the panicked frustration signalling the advent of an acute need to defecate immediately, crapped away Kentucky’s biggest chance at an upset by heaving a prayer into the arms of Johnny Lamar, who happily trucked downfield to ice a fourth-quarter collapse for Kentucky. The dangers of wearing white pants as a football player become doubly apparent when you consider the hazards of not being able to shit yourself on field-let Lorenzen be a warning to you all.

-The 1994 game, where Old Testament Spurrier put 73 points up on Kentucky in retaliation for Bill Curry, the Kentucky coach at the time, not retaining Spurrier as an assistant at Georgia Tech. Google “florida kentucky 73″ and the first thing you will get is an article about a basketball score. This fact is very, very cool.

-Or take any game where Florida faced Hal Mumme. Mumme so irked Spurrier that the OBC hung 50 on Captain Combover three times, often defying the rules of engagement just to get another shot at scoring on someone he undoubtedly thought of as a Poor Man’s Version of himself.

-Or last year, where Florida scored 35 points in the second quarter.

A special man with a special hairstyle: Hal Mumme.

But hope springs eternal for the footballers of the Bluegrass State, whose 675 dedicated fans who haven’t jumped ship to root for the Death Star That Is Louisville Cardinal Football will travel to Gainesville to appreciate the quality thoroughbred horse farms of North Central Florida, the blazing hot September weather, and the less-than-laserlike focus of a Florida team likely to obliterate the Wildcats anyway. The average margin of victory over the past five years has shrunk to 17.8 points for Florida, but even Louisville Courier-Journal Wildcat beat writer Bret Dawson has little hope for the ‘Cats in this game. He spoke with us yesterday.

OS: I’ll begin with this question: What hope does 2006 present in year three of the purgatorial Rich Brooks era?

BD: Well, if there’s hope, it’s in the numbers. Kentucky is over 80 scholarship players for the first time since Brooks arrived, and the freshman class is the best he’s recruited to date. And the schedule plays out in Kentucky’s favor. With two wins out of the way and some winnable games ahead, some improvement would seem almost inevitable.

OS: I restrained myself from asking what the third win would be, since that’s been the ceiling thus far.

BD: It would seem like they could get at least a couple more out of Central Michigan, UL-Monroe, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt, though nothing is (or has ever been) a given with Kentucky football.

OS: Why did they bring Brooks back?

BD: I think the recruiting class was strong enough — and the situation he had inherited dire enough — that you could pretty easily justify giving him another chance.

BD: Plus, last year was a strange one. (more…)

Solon had a good week last week, going 6-2-2 on his way up from the abyss of the first few weeks of the season. Join him as he fights his way through public libraries, the cruel lash of backdoor covers, and the petty annoyances of work and life to bring you your picks and fight his way back to 60 plus percent winnings. Enjoy.

Greetings all, this week’s edition of selections is coming to you from the Mill Valley library, since my computer has decided to eat it, presumably for the last time. As a result, the analysis may be a bit skimpier than usual, but rest assured that the amount of care and meticulousness with regard to these selections is the same as usual. Meaning, I suppose, that you can count on losing more than you win.

Truth be told it was a good week last week, as I went 6-2-2, with only a miracle push (getting 7 in OT) and a backdoor cover with 25 seconds left keeping me from going 8-1-1. So, for the season, I stand at 12-13 for the season to date and hopefully I can get back on the plus side this week.

If last week was a 12 course Norman feast of football, this week is the diet plate.

(Please note-I don’t count pushes in my percentages, because they either help or hurt your percentage a disproportionate amount; the net result of a push is zero, because you get your money back when you push a wager. So, I treat them as such. Just included FYI.)

Here are this week’s selections:

FRIDAY:

NEVADA (-7) v. Northwestern

I do not think much of Nevada’s D but I am willing to bet that they are as good as the ones that have been mustered up by Miami (O) and EMU, both of which held the NW O to 14 pts (NW had a punt block return for a TD against Miami). NW is feeling the loss of QB Basanez (more…)

While we wait for Idiocracy to come out on DVD, here’s your tasty morning links:

-Mike Sanford of UNLV is a very committed coach. Or should be committed.

-Al Groh won’t have anyone telling him who his quarterback is, dammit. He’s the man who gets the ball and throws it to…well, someone on the field. And don’t you dare try to tell him he’s a Mitchum man. He’s been wearing Degree for years now. And one more thing: someone’s got his back.

-Finally: footage of Illini coach [NAME REDACTED] throwing an elbow at one of his players on the sidelines of their loss to Syracuse. He’s getting better and better!

-As much as we love the City Paper in Nashville-they don’t have a country music gossip column on page three of the front page called “Brad About You” like the Tennessean does-this stat can’t be true: Tommy Tuberville’s won 19 of the last 20 games he’s played? Is that right?

-Joell at Rocky Top Talk is having entirely too much fun with Flash these days. His animated BCS race is evidence of that.

-Finally, this quote alone should draw you irresistably to this article: “Zhang Xinyan, from the central province of Henan, drank four jugs of beer at a restaurant near the zoo before visiting Gu Gu the panda on Tuesday, the Beijing Morning Post said.

“He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand,” and jumped into the enclosure, the newspaper said.”

So they call it “the panda” in China, eh? Nothing good happens for Mr. Zhang after that, but it’s all good fun because he dies at the end. We kid! He lives, but has shamed his ancestors most disgracefully.

Four jugs of beer, and most men start thinking about touching the panda.