Blogtoberfest: it’s got the Hi-Pro Glow of an intellectual dog fed only the finest of horsemeats.

Rutgers football destroys Scarlet Knights fencing, seven people outraged. Rutgers gets to taste the sweet flavor of football success: cutting the bejeezus out of sports not producing revenue. Following Rutgers’ most successful season ever, the Board of Governors has elected to remove six sports from the state uni of New Jersey’s varsity sports list, reducing sports such as fencing, tennis, and anything else played by fancy lads to club level. The cuts come a year after Rutgers’ state contributions were gutted by the state government, forcing layoffs and a reduction in class offerings, so the surprise and outrage really isn’t quite there.

Football has yet to make significant profits yet despite recent success, but is on television a lot and has allegedly upped applications to the university. Note that we, like any cutting-edge hipster, declined to make a Sopranos joke here. Cookies and kudos for this may be sent to harumphharumph of the yahoo variety for our restraint.

Blatant shilling never hurt anyone. Unless we’re talking about the Bluth Cornballer. Buy something, slave! Or the terrorists win.

Well, who hasn’t. Nebraska tailback Marlon Lucky lives up to his name by surviving an alleged overdose of something or other. Overdosing on something can happen when you least expect it; we did it while chewing bin-lang, a.k.a. betel nut, in a Taiwanese bowling alley. (We were sold a “loaded” betel nut, which could have been anything from methamphetamine to horse tranquilizers, for all we know.) We hope Marlon didn’t wake up thinking it was his turn to bowl, because that sucked.

My other offer is in Lincoln? Aloha, Hawaii. Who produced more D-1 prospects than Nebraska this year? Hawaii did.

Massive internal hemorrhaging is something he consented to, your honor. Our legions of lawyerly readers will begin salivating on reading this story, so we suggest barristers cover their keyboards: Charlie Weis’ malpractice suit stemming from a botched gastric bypass surgery begins today. People go to three years of school after undergrad in order to say this in defense to the fact that Weis was allowed to bleed internally for 30 hours after the initial surgery:

William J. Dailey Jr., an attorney for the doctors, told jurors the doctors acted appropriately and that Weis was believed to be in good condition the morning of the second procedure.

“There was no carelessness,” Dailey said. “Unfortunately, Mr. Weis experienced one of the complications that is known to exist.”

Hey, we watch House, and we can see that Charlie Weis is still, like, totally gunt-level fat. Give him 20 mil and call it a day! Medmal defense attorneys must have some Heinrich Himmler-level bad karma coming into this life to have to defend cases like this in front of jurors who probably get wigged out by the bloody story and then just settle so they won’t have to hear about arterial blood spraying out in gouts from Weis’ body. Good luck to all concerned. In the interests of keeping a chicken salad down, we’d like to stop discussion of this…um, now.

We’re not not breaking recruiting rules. Joe Pa and Penn State have recruits visiting ex-players without violating recruiting rules in the same week USC’s getting shitfanned over Joe McKnight meeting with Reggie Bush which may have been a violation of recruiting rules. Why? Uh…um…quick! Find charismatically cranky picture of Paterno looking codger-y!

This is not the coach you’re looking for.

Math, schmath. The MAC is cutting its in-conference schedule to seven games. There are 13 teams in the MAC. For the 95 percent of you who, like us, just prole along purchasing consumer goods and driving the country towards a “handjobs-at-Starbucks-steady-state,” we just lost you. Fortunately the mathematically minded have figured out that not only is this an outrage to the college football fan, it’s an offense to Gauss and every other legendary chalk-encrusted mathematician on the planet because it’s technically impossible. Devil Grad explains the snafu and resulting mid-major misery here.

Clay Travis never slip, he never fall. Clay Travis confesses his recruiting obsession in the usual precise, guffaw-worthy manner.

7. You pepper your normal conversations with phrases like “soft verbal” “high three-star” and “medium interest.”

Soft verbal is a phrase with great portability in all spheres of life, wethinks.

We’ve found our Halloween costume eight months ahead of time this year. You may hate the song, but the Brazilian Girls doing “Jique” isn’t complete without a fake black-barred nude woman singing it. (SFW)

Not quite through raging about the clock rules. If we’re very concerned about maximizing profit and coordinating with television partners, then we should be more than serious about it.

Our proposals:

1. The CSI First Down Line for SEC broadcasts: rather than simply show the line and the crew stretching the first down marker toward the spot, let’s have a full, CSI-style zoom in on the grass, the flecks of dirt, the ball looming huge like a zeppelin from the ant’s eye perspective. Complete the scene with jumpy edits and the disgusting sound of tiny bug jaws chewing up their prey. Finish each microzoom with the Roger Daltrey YEAAAAAAYYYYYY from CSI: Miami

We’d even work in David Caruso, if allusions to anything alcoholic were allowed on college broadcasts.

2. For Fox Broadcasts: combine the success of When Animals Attack with sideline reporting, forcing microphone-toting newbies to prove their mettle by broadcasting live while being attacked by an animal chosen by viewer votes. “To see Leslie fight a surly warthog, text *34 on your Cingular Wireless phone.” Remember: Fox hates you.

3. The FedEx Express Twofer: Making a two point conversion takes five minutes off the clock in the second half. Extra time will be filled in with bonus coverage of ABC’s new sitcom Unattractive Man With Inexplicably Hot Wife Makes Mistake And Has To Cover It Up in 22 Minutes.

4. Allstate can sponsor the Dennis Haysbert “Are You In Good Hands Varsity For A Day” contest, where a lucky fan (only after signing a mountain of waivers) is allowed to play for a series for a team at the position of their choice during the second quarter. They cannot opt out, and by purchasing a ticket have in fact already consented to the possibility that they will find themselves playing fullback in front of 80,000 people for five minutes. They must wear a blue all-contact Allstate jersey the whole time.

We really want this to happen in all sports just to illustrate just how hard they really are, especially during the Olympics. Ski-jumping. Pommel horse. Boxing. The possibilities are endless, especially in the vault. See evidence below.

5. The Trojan Magnum Deep Penetration Replay. Speaks for itself, really. Big pass play or huge sack (heh) gets the Trojan Magnum Deep Penetration Replay, accompanied with hotkey “oooooh” from a ladies’ voice.

6. The Brent Musburger Cold One Alert. Each time a player makes a particularly vicious and cold-hearted hit or tackle, the sound of a popping top plays, accompanied with Brent Musburger saluting the screen and saying “HE JUST POPPED A COLD ONE, DIDN’T HE JACKAARRROOOOO? REMEMBER, THAT’S ANOTHER BRENT MUSBURGER COLD ONE, BROUGHT TO YOU BY ANDY LAURINITIS!!!” Note: does not specifically mention beer, or even correctly identify Musburger’s current broadcast partner, which is exactly what will happen on the screen anyway. Paid for by the combined breweries of America, and they might as well, since we’re pretty certain Brent does his own in-house version of this anyway.

Brent: having a cold one alert whether you like it or not.

Who says Americans have balls? If the NCAA Rules Committee really had them, they’d emerge from the undisclosed location they meet in, face a few flashbulbs, and saunter up to the mike to read a statement that read in total like this:

Hi. We fucked up. Blame our lucrative television tie-ins. We’re going back to the way it was. Apologies.

Fucking up should be defined, by the way, before we suggest using it in public. Fucking up is not merely making a small or even mid-sized mistake. No, fucking up involves specific criteria in its proper use.

Dr. Nick: very familiar with fuckin’ up. Perhaps the NCAA needs a consultant?

One: the idea must have been bad from the start, and understood by the majority of those who heard about it to be a wretched concept. When your company decided to institute “Hammer Fight Tuesdays,” you knew it was a bad idea. Your friends knew it was a bad idea. And yet, here comes “Hammer Fight Tuesday,” where the poor HR department lost seven good people in the span of five minutes…even though everyone knew just how terrible an idea it was.

Two: the idea must be implemented badly, and with little concern for public opinion.

Three: the idea must work badly, and be universally loathed by everyone except the implementor, who will maintain an irrational and egotistical affinity for the project despite the best evidence of its complete failure.

If you’ve got all three, they you’ve got someone fucking up. In the case of 3-2-5e, you’ve got a clear instance of fucking up. The rule emerged despite strong ratings for football and increased attendance. It bombed in its implementation, enraging coaches and forcing some to respond with the only rational protest, absurdity.
Finally, it’s likely not to die, but to live on in a mutated, lobotomized form thanks to the rules committee’s irrational fondness for screwing fans who actually showed up to the game. Mark Richt’s said it better than we can:

“I felt like they shortened the game and lengthened the commercials,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “I think we’re cheating the fans from what they want to see. Do you think they are saying, ‘Well, we just drove six hours to the game. I wish we could see 12 fewer plays’?

It’s television that’s driving it, which is profit-driven, which no one wants to say because that would imply that college football is business to the point where sponsorship dictates the content. That would take balls, which no one has here. Thus the mysterian, occult decision making and complete unwillingness to address the simple question everyone’s asked since day one: why?

One certainty is clear: aside from reversing the rules, the committee’s solution will be to refuck the rules up, because they’ve shown little indication of learning the lesson fully. Then next year, they’re likely to line up, unzip, and refuck them up some more. We’re looking to be pleasantly surprised, but not hopeful. Until then, it’s Hammer Fight Tuesdays at the NCAA.