Every now and then, something in the news cycle that has nothing whatsoever to do with college football breaks but is so important that we feel compelled to let our readers know about it. Not since finding out that Santa Clause was… well, I can’t even bring myself to talk about that one… anyway, not in a long time has our faith in humanity been shaken to this degree. We are no longer sure that love exists. What is it that causes us this angst? Britinay and Kevin are calling it quits. The fairy tale is over.

How can we be expected to vote after hearing this news?

Kyle Wright unfortunately will miss Miami’s next game against Maryland. Which will be magical. And special. Like all Miami football games. Especially the ones with 41K in the stands for a conference game.

Wright’s injury is to the bone on the inside of his right thumb. He totally didn’t break it slamming it in a drawer, or having a teammate pound on it with the butt of his Glock. He most definitely didn’t injure it in an attack at the hands of an enraged and…especially alert and enthusiastic Michael Irvin, who did not attempt to bite off Kyle’s hand after the VT game.

“You’re terrible, son! Just terrible! Playmaker gonna make a roster move all by himself here…Give me that hand reearrrrrgghhhhhAIIIIIGGGHHH…WE READY! WE READY!”

But as with any place that when spelled backwards reads “I MAIM,” you don’t have to make anything up. Here’s audio of Kyle Wright’s dad, for example, getting into a shouting match with Miami fans displeased with his son’s performance. (HT:Eye on the U.) Florida: the state of nature! Like the one Hobbes wrote about, not the cuddly type that doesn’t bite or shoot you for crack money.

Welcome to Miami! Your time here will be nasty, brutish, and short.

Mike Leach, history is calling you. Your critics are still bugging you, you’re still pissing people off with your pithy genius attack, and you’ve already got your legendary media profile par excellence. Hell, you even got to do the weather forecast in Lubbock, and they don’t let just anyone man the blue screen there. What are you going to do with the rest of your life besides go 8-4, spin assistants into plum jobs, and continue the weird bit of solo performance art you call a career?

We know. Because we know your deepest desires. Partially because of our god-given clairvoyance, but also because it was in the New York Times Magazine:

As his team raced onto the field, he gazed into the stands filled with screaming fans and wondered about the several thousand “cadets” from Texas A.&M. clustered in one end zone. They wear military uniforms and buzz cuts, holler in unison and stand at attention the entire game. “How come they get to pretend they are soldiers?” he asked. “The thing is, they aren’t actually in the military. I ought to have Mike’s Pirate School. The freshmen, all they get is the bandanna. When you’re a senior, you get the sword and skull and crossbones. For homework, we’ll work pirate maneuvers and stuff like that.”

Mike Leach, destiny has answered your prayers: pirate school is real.

For Mike’s sake, though, let’s hope they leave out the sodomy. (Our readers scream: “But that’s the best part!!!” Yes, and that’s why you’re here.) If they don’t, though, and you end up on the scabbard side of the dagger, at least you’d discover how the Sam Houston States of the world feel when they stumble into Lubbock.

Pirate School: yours for the taking, Cap’n Leach. Yarr.

Reggie Herring, Arkansas defensive coordinator:

…and Frank Black, lead singer of the Pixies:

Following his broken leg suffered in a sideline collision on Saturday against Wisconsin, Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno has applied for a medical redshirt for the 2006 season with an eye toward keeping his 2007 eligibility safe.

Paterno, seen here with brother at Brown, has applied for a 63rd year of eligibliity.

The application requests an unprecedented 63rd year of eligibility for the spry 79 year-old, who in addition to being college football’s winningest D-1 coach is also an accomplished defensive back. Paterno still shares the Brown University record for career interceptions, and demonstrated no loss of catch-up speed in chasing down Big Ten official Dick Honig in 2002.

“Believe me, age ain’t nothing but a number to that man,” said Honig from his home on Sunday. “He’s got some jet left in those black Nikes. Plus he’s got a grip like a one-armed cowhand-I still don’t have feeling in most of my left shoulder after he grabbed me.”

Former qb Kerry Collins concurs. “The man’s unnatural. I once used a double negative in a postgame interview, and here comes this little goblin at a dead sprint at me out of the shower, wearing nothing but those sunglasses. The best part is him screaming at me “We couldn’t do anything right, not nothing! He’s kinda strict about grammar.”

Collins stared into the distance, and then smiled.

“In fact, since that day I’ve been completely colorblind, and go into a fugue state when the barometric pressure dips below 1100 millibars. This has not adversely affected my career in any way since, though.”

Collins: totally unaffected by the side effects of a Paterno blindside.

If Paterno’s athleticism is still a given, his chances at NCAA approval are not. His unprecedented application has raised some eyebrows at NCAA headquarters, and according to one source has the Brand Brahmins scratching their collective heads.

“No other athlete since Ron Powlus has been given this kind of eligibility. No one. And we weren’t real excited about giving him his ninth year to begin with…and now we’re talking about a 63rd? Frankly, we don’t know how he ever slipped through the 12th year without some institutional scrutiny of any sort. This is really a problem of enforcement by the university. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a three-hour lunch break to get to.”

Paterno, for one, is optimistic.

“I survived the Plague, the Haymarket Riot, the War of Spanish Succession, and all that ‘talk to the hand’ business just to have a bunch of pencilnecks tell me I can’t have another year? I’ll tell them what I told Douglas MacArthur: she’s my Filipina mistress, and when she comes begging for the pickle tickle from you and the free lunches from me, then I’ll know I’ve lost. My rehab’s underway-tell Myles Brand I’m running free and blitzing off the corner. He better max protect.”

Above all else, the Devil cannot stand to be mocked.

-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.

Rule 3-2-5e, the rule shortening games, is a stinking abomination on the game of college football. Worse still, it wasn’t even proposed and approved in a manner consistent with logic, sense, rule, fairness, or the slightest shred of intelligence. It hasn’t even been defended coherently, either, since the people behind its inception a.) don’t seem to understand what they’ve done, or b.) understand fully, and don’t care to make a scene by airing the dirty truth of the game in public, which is that it makes this “amateur” game a more telegenic and manageable product for networks.

It’s reduced the amount of football every fan of the game sees by six percent or so. This may seem inconsequential when you’re talking about football, but we here at EDSBS are awfully touchy about the margins people live and die by. (If you saw our car, you’d understand why.) You’d miss six percent of your paycheck, right? Okay, well if your six hours on the couch each Saturday are a benefit of your working your ass off all week, you just had your benefits reduced by six percent. If you prefer another metaphor, you’re getting six percent less content for the time and energy you invest in sending your wife/husband on elaborate errands, getting up super early to mow the lawn, or faking your own death for ten hours in order to disappear to the bar for a tripleheader.

All of this leads us to nominate Bret Bielema for EDSBS Man of the Year. Rather than stump against the inane, craven rule-Bielema did what we’d do: mocked it. Watch the offsides kickoff to see the kind of giant, dinosaur sized smartassdom that must have roamed the earth in the Jurassic age of sarcasm. The coach who does not do this as an act of civil disobedience at the end of the half may begin the second half wearing a pink dress and a sun bonnet. (Mangino. You’re welcome.)

(The crew here may be our new favorite: Nessler, Danielson, and McGuire. Nessler booms the play by play, Danielson gives the analysis, and McGuire is free to be a crank, which is what he excels at.)

Bret Bielema, we salute you.

The flashy, but as yet unproductive, Florida wide receiver Nyan Boateng was stabbed in the leg by his girlfriend. Luckily it was a small knife and appears to be just a flesh wound. Perhaps Boateng will learn his lesson that he shouldn’t take relationship advice from Avery Atkins.

Boateng should recover as it was only a flesh wound.

Orson’s take:

Nyan Boateng-whose prior claim to fame as a Florida Gator involved claiming to run a 4.0 forty yard dash-wasn’t fast enough to dodge a knife held by a woman on Sunday.

While we wish Boateng speedy healing, we would like to encourage them to overcome their differences as people and seriously consider a relationship. It’s not often you find someone on this cold orb who really cares about you, much less loves you; and as Colonel Swindle once said, “A gun is just business; but if someone stabs you, that’s passion there.” We at EDSBS hope the two take those words to heart.

Nyan Boateng (on left): let love plant a tree…in your heart.