We’ve got a three day weekend coming up. This means, barring Ryan Perriloux being connected to phony Canadian coins loaded with tiny listening devices and a PLA arms smuggling ring, we’ll be absent from the blog on Monday, indulging in “interaction” with “actual people in the flesh.” We’ll let you know if it’s hazardous to your health.

A few notes that will no doubt develop into full stories over the holiday weekend.

Making Nick Saban look steadfast: Tim Graham. The Rice coach, who took scraps to scrappy with a 7-5 record this season and a bid in the New Orleans Bowl, leaves for rival Tulsa just three days after signing a contract extension. Let’s review the shitbag factors in total:

1. Leaving for conference rival-si!

2. Leaving after contract extension-ja, ja.

3. Leaving three days after contract extension, forcing us to break out the italics, dammit: hai!

Hmm…we’re feeling an equivalent shitbag score of…

Ricky Bobby’s dad in Talladega Nights.

Don’t worry. I’m a volunteer firefighter.

2. Ryan Perrilloux. The rumor now is that he’s a pigeon (Hey! Who else got the DVD set of Mannix for Christmas from their 60 year old uncle? Anyone?) in a counterfeiting scheme involving Perrilloux exchanging LSU memorabilia for a bag of fake bills. Further rumor has him cooperating fully with federal investigators, LSU handling this with a hazmat suit and mile-long tongs, and the Louisiana media sitting on the story until the uni gets its shot at the spin.

Word of a forfeit in the Sugar Bowl is also flying around, but then again, some people think the blood-type diet is based on actual science and that John Mayer is music to fuck to. (It’s actually music to fuck up people to, since the rage at hearing him rasp and wheeze through another milquetoasty song would make us want to put knuckles to eyesocket any day.) It’s the internet! There’s a trough of crazy in your flavor somewhere out there.

-Major Applewhite to Bama to coach the offense. Again, Saban don’t hire no dumb boys.

-Finally, we leave you with this: we promise that gloat week will end as of midnight tonight. But right now, it’s 6:20 p.m. EST, and it’s fair game. For a rapid-fire collection of a bareknuckle season, watch below. (WARNING: Contains scenes of Tim Tebow running, which may be unsuitable for small children.)

Enjoy your weekend.

The week’s most specious and rootless gossip comes to you on Friday, the day for skipping the gym, eating that final office kitchen doughnut (inevitably the plain cake one), and indulging in the least reliable, secondhand anecdotery

-A great rumored story emanating from Nick Saban’s first 100 days in Alabama. Saban was touring the facilities with Mal Moore. The two enter the Crimson Tide’s palatial weight room, complete with televisions along the wall and a squad of weight room attendants. Saban tells Moore these is the nicest weight room he’s ever seen, and then asks if there’s a 24-hour attendant on duty. Moore says there is; Saban asks for him.

Saban then spoke with the attendant.

Saban: “Hi, I’m Nick Saban, the new football coach here. Nice to meet you.”

Attendant: “Hi, I’m (weight room attendant guy we’ll call Cletus for no particular reason.) ”

Saban: “You see those tvs along the wall?”

Attendant Cletus: “Yes, sir?”

Saban: “I want those turned off at 7 a.m. sharp every day. This is a weight room. It’s a place to work, not to watch Days of Our Lives.”

Drink deep the aroma of Alabama fans oozing hormones at the notion that their coach is a badass disciplinarian. It’s pungent, with a cigarette and High Karate edge, no?

-Jim Tressel did not fly back with the team after the national championship game-which they lost 41-14. Just a reminder. Tressel instead flew to Colorado Springs on America West. The visit was likely not recruiting-related as the timing coincides with a dead period in recruiting. We’re guessing Tressel was consulting NORAD to properly identify the WMD that exploded his offensive line on Monday night.

USA Today and their trademark colored headers must be wholesome, though we imagine Tressel’s tsk-tsking the articles about the game and muttering “that’s COACH Jim Tressel to you, numbnuts.”

This kind of coach-stalking will eventually culminate in the Lojacking of coaches with ankle bracelets. It’s only a matter of time, really.

…than getting your recruit’s ass shot at a strip club? University of New Mexico recruit Ervin “Una” Smiley was shot four times outside a strip club during a recruiting visit to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. (HT: DevilGrad.) The culprit, a well-balanced local “character” named Erminio Gonzalez, sprayed 17 bullets at Smiley and the three Lobo players accompanying him following an altercation at “the Spearmint Rhino Gentleman’s Club,” a strip club whose name should be bronzed and placed in The Drawer of Completely Awesome Names and revered forever and ever.

Rhinos: minty?

Smiley is now waiting for the logjam of medical paperwork to unravel so he can recuperate, a process complicated by the his status as a recruit and a verbal promise by the New Mexico staff to “fix it.” Smiley will need surgery to repair tissue damage and remove the somewhat pressing issue of the two bullets that remain lodged in his leg. More embarrassingly, Smiley was 20 at the time of the shooting (which took place in December) and was apparently intoxicated during the police interview, showing that booze ‘n whores recruiting is alive and well, at least in Albuquerque. (Again: explaining why Bugs Bunny always made a stop, and the inevitable wrong turn, in the Isotope City.)

Not surprisingly, Smiley now leans toward Oregon State, whose coaches we assume have made him a “not getting shot promise” in his recruiting process. His mother, thankfully, bears no ill will toward the shooter:

“I am glad he was arrested and can’t hurt anyone else,” Janice Smiley said. “I don’t know what is wrong with him that he would decide it was OK to shoot someone. I hope he finds God and understands he can’t go around hurting people.”

And what better place to learn valuble life lessons than prison, kids?

Prison can be very instructive. For instance: did you know you could be traded into ownership for a pack of cigarettes? Every day a lesson!