Following last week’s announcement of Jared Zabransky as the NCAA cover boy for this year, we went to work trying to parse out the single thread cursing all NCAA cover dwellers. Unlike the famed Madden Curse, however, no single diabolical streak of malicious fortune unites all of the anointed NCAA cover guys. Believe us: we graphed it out.

Click here to the full NCAA CURSE CHART

The interesting, sure to land you bar legend status when you answer the question as the only guy who knows sports on your team for trivia night: the only player to appear on the cover of both the NCAA and Madden franchises? Shaun Alexander.

PS: the personal hygiene is just a guess. Desmond Howard misses it because we bet he’s still got pieces of lunch in the ’stache.

Topic: Fulmer Cup

Soundtrack: Bring the Noise, Public Enemy and Anthrax. As good as the hybrid nu-metal hybrid shit it inspired is bad.

We postponed this Fulmer Cup entry in order not to just regurgitate the facts of the wire story, turn in a flippant slag or two at [NAME REDACTED], and award points. To do real research, in other words-to add real value here.

When that didn’t work, however, we just put a Public Enemy clip at the top and decided to do the whole thing anyway. In short, two Illinois football players were involved in an auto accident over the weekend, and the sight of a what was obviously a woman’s wallet sitting on the carseat aroused the attending officer’s suspicions. Inside the car, police found…

…stolen laptop computers, cash and credit cards in their vehicle. Police believe those items were taken during several residential burglaries.

Such prejudicial language. They could be “borrowed with subtlety,” or perhaps “involuntarily leased.” Or they can even trot out the Jason Bourne defense, claiming that Treadstone is right on their ass, and if the cops don’t get out of the way, they’ll be forced to use their assassin’s powers to preserve their mission-thus the laptops, cash, and stacks of fake passports.

In all fairness, [NAME REDACTED] has suspended them indefinitely for the arrest. The charges, though, could at the least, let’s say, severely impact their eligibility.

First Assistant State’s Attorney Steve Ziegler said this morning that he charged Joseph “Jody” Ellis, 20, and Derrick McPhearson, 20, both listing addresses in the 100 block of Sterling Court, Savoy, with four counts each of residential burglary, a Class 1 felony which carries a mandatory prison term of four to 15 years upon conviction.

Felony burglary? That’s at least three points for each count, bringing the total for this single case to a whopping 24 points. If the charges hold, that’s a Cho Oyu-sized tally for any university (even Marshall or Ohio) to catch up with.

We’re winning! Yay!

We were so set to get preachy on Stephen Garcia, the hotshot qb recruit who committed to Steve Spurrier at South Carolina and has now made two appearances in the Fulmer Cup Standings in two weeks. He’s decadent! He’s disrespectful! His air of entitlement and disrespect for the law is abominable, intolerable, and indicative of all that is wrong with our worship of athletes! [/wagging finger indignant indignance]

And then, we saw his mug shot:

Look at him! He’s adorable, isn’t he-like a young baby Jesus, if Jesus were a car-keying, beer-pounding Scott Stapp wannabe. Just a good ole boy! Never meanin’ no harm. For pete’s sake, he’s smiling because trouble just feels good to him, the lovable scamp.

Sure, he earns South Carolina one cheap point in the Fulmer Cup by keying some dorkass professor’s car. But we need rapscallions like Garcia to keep us dreaming. While we walk the painted lines of our hyper-ordered society, he’s out there keying cars, fighting cops in alleys, and reminding us what it really means to live. What you call vandalism?

He calls it a message, man…a message about life, man. You just wish you lived with an ounce of the joy juice he calls his life.

Our sources worked overtime this weekend in an attempt to keep us appraised of any and all shennanigans going on ESPN: The Weekend in sunny Orlando, Florida. The map shows recorded incidents by number, as recorded by our spies.

(EPCOT was reported on by current CSTV analyst and bon vivant Trev Alberts. See his account of the festivities here.)

1. Apparently expecting resistance, a kinte-print clad Michael Irvin is admitted at the VIP entrance to the park without a fuss. Accompanying him are cousin of Nate Newton, Leonard “Pooky” Newton, Jodeci’s K-Ci, and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz.

2. ESPN special guest and Chicago Bears defensive lineman shoots animatronic elephant with an Uzi he smuggled into the park between his pecs. The shooting apparently began when Jungle Cruise Pilot Eric Anderson began shooting blanks from his costume sidearm at animatronic “natives” who are part of the attraction.

“While we value audience participation at the Jungle Cruise, the use of any firearms-real and fake-is reserved exclusively for Disney cast members,” said Disney spokesperson Lindsay Green.

Tank Johnson commented to reporters afterwards, “I just thought I was showin’ em that n****z don’t play in the Chi. Out.”

3. Ron Artest’s House of Pampered Bitches, closed by ASPCA and Orlando Police at 1:00 p.m.

One of Ron Artest’s pampered bitches.

4. Pirates of the Carriberman…taking you BACK BACK BACK to the age of piracy in the early days of ESPN. Consists of animatronic scenes of Chris Berman throwing football to ‘82 Tampa Bay Bucs, singing on stage with Huey Lewis and the News, and paying an ESPN intern to drink his own urine at a staff meeting for Berman’s entertainment.* Attendance: low.

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