One you get over the incessant squeaking of the shoes and the Japanese saga-sized memory you need to remember all of the teams and their rosters, basketball is still grossly inferior to football in every conceivable way. Every college with over 500 students has a team, the players breeze through in one year on their way to a low bid in the NBA draft and eventual career riding the bench for a Greek semi-pro team, and it’s played indoors. Even as a placebo for lack of proper sporting content, it’s still a bitter pill to swallow.

It’s what we’ve got, however, and if we were ever going to write about it as someone with what could lightly be called a rabid Florida bias, that time would be now. After alpha-dogging Ohio State in the national title game, Florida’s charismatic defending national title squad faces off against the very same Buckeyes tonight for the national men’s basketball title.

A moment of memory for those who don’t recall what happened in football.

Ah, who can’t get enough of that? Moving on: we now attempt to convince you to root for Florida’s basketball team tonight, since now that we’ve won one national title already, roared through the regular season, SEC tournament, and now the Big Dance, we’re paying attention. (No one said we were trendsetters.)

10. Taurean Green, random basketball event generator. Press the button: you may get a turnover, or a halfcourt three, or brilliant bounce pass inside to a waiting big man. If you’re crazy about Russian Roulette or the entire country of India, you’ll love the random mayhem that can be a frustrated Green at the point.

9. Our mascot. Again, in the era of roided-out anabolic wonders who got mid-90s redos by the design department, Albert still plods around like a middle-aged dad looking for the family-sized bag of baked Doritos. (more…)

Notes and corrections follow. Rules here.

Purdue’s missing some DUI points. Four points, specifically. All of them may be credited to Boilermaker safety Torri S. Williams, making a strong run for the Ellis T. Jones Award with his second DUI in as many months. Williams may have had a busy night:

About an hour before his arrest, the 20-year-old may have been involved in a fight that led to the stabbing of teammate Selwyn Lymon either at or just outside of Nick’s Nightclub in West Lafayette.

Toledo’s owed. Four’s just a start on a budding points-shaving scandal, but keep in mind that no points will apply for former players indicted. They only stick with current enrollees.

Given that, it’s likely not over for the Rockets and Fulmer Cup points.

Points-shaving. First, a definition:

The illegal practice of deliberately limiting the number of points scored by one’s team in an athletic contest, as in return for a payment from gamblers to ensure winnings.

This is exactly what Toledo running back Harvey “Scooter” McDougle has been charged with by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the Detroit News. The News broke the story on Saturday. The basics, according to both the News and noted secondary sources:

-McDougle was given a car, cash, and other benefits in exchange for shaving points off certain Toledo games by Gary Manni, a man only identified as “Gary” in the first News report. He was to recruit other players, as well, including other football players and basketball players. (You know, like Amway does, but with the FBI taking a vested interest in your “contacts.” )

-In turn, McDougle offered at least one other player $10,000 to sit out a game.

Your team…for just $10,000 a game?

-Manni, labeled “a professional gambler” in a subsequent report, admits knowing McDougle, but says he had nothing to do with point-shaving.

The funniest two pieces of information come from that second article, a piece in the manfully-named Toledo Blade. (You know it’s a rough town when even the paper is named “the Blade.”) (more…)

There’s oodles to cover via the Fulmer Cup, including an unprecedented points-shaving probe with all the fixin’s over at Toledo: the FBI, a gangster bookie named Doug, a chance to mention the ‘Stutz, and OMG!!! POINTS SHAVING!!!

But first, we’d like to mention the fact that in addition to holding the current men’s football trophy, winning the women’s gymnastics crown this weekend, and going for a second NCAA basketball championship in a row tonight, the Florida Gators also entered another competition in impressive fashion this weekend-the Fulmer Cup.

Even when we do that, however, we go jumbo. See Dustin Doe, special teams head-cracker and one-time potential starter on the defense, caught for fightin’ outside da club in Gainesville this weekend. His charge doesn’t exactly weaken his claim for a starting spot in our eyes:

Doe was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of affray, or public fighting with more than two people, which carries a penalty of up to one year in jail. He was brought to Alachua County Jail and released Sunday on a $1,000 bond.

See? We go large, people. Even when it involves a simple parking lot brawl, we can’t just fight one guy-we have to seek out two and fight them simultaneously, often while brushing up on our intermediate Chinese with Rosetta Stone on our Ipod Nano. Affray looks like this, btw:

We’ve already contacted this man and adopted him into the Gator Nation. Go cure cancer, Chiang Tie-Lu of Tainan, Taiwan! Or whip three other guys asses at a testy local rally. Up to you , really.

We’ll be back in a sec with the Toledo story. In the meantime, we’ve got some excellence to piss out…while we solve the New York Times crossword in pen. Two, that’s two points for Florida: one for the simple fightin’ charge, and one for our longtime habit of giving Florida extra points thanks to our stated allegiances. (It’s only fair that if we’re going to run this thing, we might as well be doubly hard on Florida.)