Today, our guest columnist is Slappy Traylor, ace recruitnik. You may recognize him from Slappy Traylor’s Recruiting Straight Shooting, his popular guide to college football recruiting, or from his work at a major network he no longer works for and would not like to talk about. Enjoy.

I’d like to introduce myself, ma’am, sir. I’m Slappy Traylor, and I’m here to eyeball your son. He’s thick. He’s long. He’s tough to catch from behind. And he penetrates with a spurt and power that, frankly, frightens even a hoary old asshole like myself. I want to write about him in my recruiting guide and make sure he makes the right decision on signing day, since I have something completely shocking to tell you. Please sit down.

Your son could be the next Curtis Enis…but faster. And yes, thicker.

Sit down if you have to-he could be the second coming of Curtis Enis.

I know, it’s a lot to take in, but bear with me. Let me say first, that I love your house. The drapes are to die for, ma’am. They wave in the wind like the rustle of money in the autumn breeze, something you seem to have more than a passing familiarity with, by the way. Just saying.

And you, sir? Your suit is of a cut so immaculate and fitted an army of tea-chugging Chinamen slaving over it for weeks couldn’t possibly craft such a fine piece of perfect career armor. In fact, people should pay you just for wearing it in public. Again, you must fart twenties and sneeze platinum snot rockets. Kudos to you for that.

I’ve been writing about college recruiting for…well, let’s just spare you the big math and say that it’s somewhere between one and a billion years. (more…)

The Onion had a great article on Bill Parcells’ this season summing up how many coaches actually seem. The headline read: “Bill Parcells: ‘I’ve Always Hated Football,’” and gave an in-depth and we have no doubt entirely accurate depiction of Parcells’ deep, unabiding hatred for the game he coached. He may deny it, but we’re sure Parcells is on tape somewhere uttering every word of the piece.

Bobby Ross has resigned at Army after going 9-25 in three seasons. It’s a fair enough ride for a coach to stay somewhere for three years in this era, especially at Army where even in a turnaround a few murderous seasons of losing are a certainty. Track records don’t evaporate overnight, though; Ross has shown happy feet wherever he’s gone, even when the getting was good and steady (see his work at Georgia Tech and San Diego, two prime jobs where he succeeded, reached or won championships and then left for little or no reason.) That he was anything but leftovers rapidly sprouting green hair in the fridge is a lie told by those who don’t remember Ross dropping the Lions’ job because he was “emotionally drained.”

The best thing about Ross being gone will be not watching his wizened, miserable visage pace the sidelines next season. Ross radiated bad vibes, pacing like he’d just downed black coffee with tacks in it. It was as if he were pissed off that his job kept him from the dog track or his garage shop where he was halfway through this great scale model of the U.S.S. Yorktown, and just needed to paste a few Hellcats to the deck to complete the damned thing.

Hopefully Army can get themselves someone capable and willing to replace Ross. Barring, that, though-there’s always EDSBS hero Hal Mumme, who could bolster his claim to the job by citing his deep and documented passion for fightin’ turrorists.

Bobby Ross: living proof that coaching the Detroit Lions kills your soul forever.

Here at EDSBS, we are forever enthralled with the passion that we and other fans devote to college football; a passion with no other sport in the United States evokes. Down south, however, futball evokes a similar, if not greater passion. So let us look to our American sports fan breatheren of the southern hemisphere for lessons we hope to never learn personally. Today, we learn that it is never safe to trust a fan of your arch rival to tattoo an homage to your team on your back.

When an insane Boca Junior fan (Maradona’s old team) asked for a tattoo of the logo of Argentina’s most popular team on his back, he could not wait to show off his badge of honor to his family and friends. Imagine his surprise when his audience informed him that the tattoo artist, who, by the way, was a fan of River Plate, did not honor his wishes. I’ll leave the explanation to the police spokesman:

“The tattooist supports Boca Junior’s rival, River Plate, so he got annoyed when the teenager asked him to tattoo Boca’s symbol and decided to tattoo a penis instead. Unbelievable!”

Buckeyes, Wolverines, Tider’s, Tigers… et al. Be warned. Make sure to ask who your tattoo artist roots for BEFORE telling him about the team tattoo you are planning.

To some people, this looks like a penis.

HT: King Kaufman

Shameless Excuse for Cheesecake from Argentina, click here… but not at work.

We’ve said it before and wish to repeat the official stance of EDSBS vis-a-vis college football recruiting: it’s really, really creepy. For months-sometimes, years at a time, huge monied institutions buck their noses into the lives of 17 and 18 year old boys and woo them with everything except cash in an attempt to get them to sacrifice three or four years of their lives to play football and mum through a university education simultaneously. It’s a bit like watching a live-action re-enactment of Death In Venice, with universities playing the part of the aging pederast and the recruit being the young object of affection, but minus all the plague and effete homoeroticism. ( This is Amurrica, dammit. Even our homoeroticism needs to look like a Dodge Ram commercial. Heh: Ram.)

Young man, you’re so…pretty. Come dance for my university, please.

Rhetorical offramp: why, indeed, is recruiting so creepy? Begin with the drastic power differentials working here. Rex Grossman, for example, may have had the best recruiting process of any player we’d ever heard. Wealthy, relatively unnoticed by marquee programs, Grossman hurt for neither money nor personal opportunity. He just happened to enjoy playing football, and threw a wicked deep ball, a nice combo. He also had Bobby Knight pimping him to anyone who would listen, and when Steve Spurrier got a highlight tape, an offer came in a quiet, deliberate fashion.

Rex Grossman, too, had the ultimate setup for success once he arrived in Gainesville. Low-pressure reigned; not a blue-chipper, he could simply play and lie in the weeds waiting for Jesse Palmer to self-destruct at Mississippi State, racking up significant garbage time play in Spurrier-era blowouts. Rolling in it by any student standard, Grossman had the financial freedom to focus on whatever he chose to in his spare time, which by most accounts fell to the responsibility of mastering the EA NCAA games on several different game systems. Completely unpressured, Grossman thrived and grew into the role of a Heisman hopeful and eventual NFL draft pick.

Grossman, on the right: obviously not under a lot of pressure.

The one constant in this: money. Grossman succeeded because of the support he received from his parents, the relative lack of hype, and the dearth of expectations the environment placed on him once he arrived in Gainesville. (more…)