Our mustache of the day goes out in part to suspended ESPN announcer Brian Kinchen, who dared to suggest that if a man was tender and caring with “the football(s)”, then he might be gay. In our tribute to his unfair suspension, we actually mean to disagree: every man needs to be tender with his balls this month, since it’s Movember, a.k.a. testicular cancer awareness month in Australia and New Zealand. (HT: Danny Ford Is God.)

The public health campaign has fixated on bringing its message of testicular awareness in a fun and cheap fashion: by encouraging men to grow a ‘mo’, or mustache. Grow it the whole month, since it’ll make your balls healthy or something. Since we’re in favor of anything that keeps our balls happy and healthy, we award the entire continent of Australia the honor of being our Mustache of the Day for Mustache Wednesday.

A bonzer Mustache Wednesday to you, motherfuckers! Who says you can’t learn anything at Outback Steakhouse!

The quick dipstick check on John L. Smith’s resignation at Michigan State? WAHOO ECXITMENT!

The Enlightened Spartan didn’t spell check, but who’s to blame him? Getting your mediocre coach fired is like Christmas for a football fan. A Christmas where someone you hate dies a fiery, excruciating death before your eyes.

(Really, we just did this for Brian.)

Johnelle: gone?

Immediate suspects:

1. Steve Mariucci

2. Steve Mariucci

3. Steve Mariucci

And now: John L. slapping himself. Can’t get enough of that…

Goodbye, slappy?

NOTE: Michigan State following the latest rage in coach management: the midseason firing, a la the original [NAME REDACTED] at Florida and John Bunting’s “agreement” to step down at North Carolina. (You have to love how “suspicious” things look when you “put” them in “quotation” “marks.”) Jeremy Foley is such the trendsetter. In fact, he’s gone back to wearing ever so slight a pleat in his pants-expect everyone to be doing the same in a few months.

UPDATE: Watch the live agony here. Warning: may contain autoslapping.

And just when you thought we’d run out of atrocious Beaver puns. In the edit, the Trojans take a slide further down the polls for losing to Oregon State, we dare to bump Florida despite the dire karmic retribution that could result, and Georgia Tech’s overvaluation gets corrected somewhat.

Comments and invective below.

In lieu of a playoff and heading towards our yearly does of BCS pandelerium, teams have resorted to more sophisticated techniques of lobbying not only for their teams, but against other for prime slots. Yesterday, things got ugly as the SEC went negative first followed by the Big East’s snarling response.

We thought we seen the bottom of the barrel as far as campaign discourse, but lo, we were mistaken. Paraphrasing Wynonna Judd, when you hit rock bottom, there are actually three ways to go: straight up, sideways, or down with a shovel.

The shadowy powers-that-be obviously came equipped with their finest spades here in this ad
lobbying against the inclusion of Notre Dame in the BCS circle. It has it all: accusations of being un-American, a whiff of rank anti-Catholicism, and the worst of all…a large picture of Ron Powlus.

Shame. That’s all we can say. Naturally, we suspect the SEC.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be too inquisitive.

One possible destination for both Petrino and Rodriguez-the two coaches competing in the Resume Bowl on Thursday night-that keeps popping up is Florida State. Why? Bobby Bowden, short of stunning and quick death, isn’t going anywhere, so firmly entrenched is he in Tallahassee. Boosters haven’t been able to get rid of his nakely inept son at offensive coordinator, so why anyone thinks he’s going anywhere will be left to the realm of fever-dream hallucination.

Will not go to Florida State, but will likely go.

In fact, the emergence of Xavier Lee at quarterback-who can take Jeff Bowden’s Crayola plays, fight out of their collapse with his scrambling ability, and then either run or make something happen off the broken play-will only bolster Bowden’s case for Jeffy the Unready.
Thus cue the sequence: Miami takes Petrino, Rodriguez either stays and gets better facilities and more money at Morgantown, or takes big money to go to UNC or elsewhere. Realistically, Florida State will miss out entirely on the duo and keep trucking toward an eventual Kevin Steele/Bowden Nepotism pick successor.

And as bravoed as the Big East has been thus far in the media, consider that both coaches in “the biggest game in the history of the Big East” this Thursday could be gobbled up by larger programs in the offseason. The Big East may be much improved, but they’re still where coaches go to try out for bigger gigs. That’s no slam on the league, that’s just economics. Until they tap a few more cashlines, they’ll lose coaching talent upward to the big money leagues.