Lavar Arrington crashed into a guardrail today on his motorcycle, reminding us again that if we were NFL owners, we’d employ a squad of talented young men just to steal potentially dangerous toys from our highly paid players, including motorcycles, hang gliders, and that most dangerous toy of all, your new best friend Pac Man Jones. (West VA what!)

This surprises no one on staff here, since Lavar’s been crashing headfirst into things for years, dating back to his stay in Happy Valley. (HT: Ben.)

Heal up, Lavar, and rest safe that you’ve made your five in the league and are now pension-eligible, and had the good sense to wear a helmet, that marvelous device without which EDSBS might have never happened. Now just give the bike to Pac-Man so he can’t take more than one person with him anywhere and we’ll all be happy.

We love supplements. Some of our own dietary supplements keeping us in top shape:

-Zybrowka Vodka. Drink of the gods. We could drink a half a bottle and run a 5K through the middle of Dekalb Avenue during rush hour IN the variable lane. Scratch that-“have” run a 5K through the middle of Dekalb Avenue during rush hour. With the police “pacing” us.

-Coffee. Jamaica Blue Mountain, Waffle House swill poured into a human skull straight off the crack of Mario Batali’s sweaty ass crack…whatever. Caffeine buzz GIMME GIMME GIMME.

-Japanese bar mix. Oooh, god-kissed little soy sauce-encrusted soulfuckers, we will inhale you like you were strapped to our face in a feed bag.

-Pure Protein Shakes. You only think we drink these for healthy reasons, made with the mix, ice, buffalo milk yogurt (because buffalo are hardcore and cows aren’t, bitches) and whatever fruit/meat/spare postal packaging is lying on the counter. In truth, it’s for when you’re too lazy to actually fix a meal, much less going to the trouble of chewing one.

Which one of these Swindle staples does the NCAA ban? If you threw a few steak nuggests in, the protein shake might be out of the running as something a strength coach could give to an athlete. Coffee, too, thanks to the caffeine. (Zybrowka’s out too, along with hero-…wait. What fucking genius said we couldn’t give the kids heroin anymore? Jesus, these people…)

Demon java! Our second favorite Colombian import and NCAA bugbear. The first is Shakira, you devious, devious people…

Via the Fanhouse:

“The NCAA came out with rules which say that we can’t give muscle-building products.

“If we give [the athletes] weight-gain products, there must be a limit of 30 percent protein. That means all the rest, 70 percent, is bad stuff like sugar. Really, we couldn’t give them peanut butter or milk. I’ve never understood that rule.”

Again, when faced with the hydra of writing coherent policy, the NCAA swung its dull broadsword and beheaded itself in the process. (Which means the score is hydra, 20 or so heads, you, NCAA member institution, none.) Athletes seek out supplements on their own now, usually doing so with the expertise one can expect from an untrained 18 year old doing anything complex and difficult: shoddily, haphazardly, and often purchasing supplements prohibited by the NCAA’s banned substances list.

This list includes caffeine down to trace amounts in tests, meaning coaches might not be able to give players so much as a strong cup of coffee pre-game. Deacon Jones, for one, would be appalled. The L.A. Rams legend’s pregame ritual before every game: two cups of black coffee on an empty stomach.

(Throw a donut on top of that, and that’ll make you want to skin a troop of Boy Scouts alive for so much as breathing in your direction.)

Phil Steele is off the press. Without the structure of practices and the watchful eye of coaches, player arrests are mounting. And the low-hanging fruit which are Stewart Mandel mailbags are back on our internets. (Wait… savoring that one… Okay. Stew! Love ya babe!)

Yes, college football is on the horizon. We’re not exactly close, but we’re getting close to the time when it’s close. Fall practices will kick into gear in six weeks. Conference media days won’t be far behind. Preseason polls (for 2008) should be available for perusal any day now.

We. Are. Getting. CLOSE! (Sort of.)

Our nightmare is soon to end, college football fans. Ignore the baby on the ceiling.

Before we get too close, though, and the excitement of it all overwhelms us, Peter Bean and Orson Swindle humbly offer a set of proposals, which we pledge to follow. If you’re inspired to join the Movement and sign with us, there’s more than enough room on the train.

However, as we’re suspicious of any movement that would have us as a member, don’t join. It’s surely disreputable, will cause hives, and will ruin your credit. Fair warning.-O.

Proposed:

1. We will not participate in the Conference Wars. We won’t be shy to look closely at schedule strength in talking about our dear sport and the ranking of teams therein, but we solemnly swear to avoid the tired, generic Conference War Chest Thumping.

2. We will actively abstain from 1=1 thinking/writing. Wins are good, losses are bad. You’re smart enough to figure this out on your own. We’re here for the curly fries, please, and not the standard potatoes you can find anywhere else.

Mmm. Curly fries.

3. We will abstain from constructing an All-American team. Until our requests for film of every game played gets approved by every university, we’ll politely decline the temptation to construct such a list. Truth is, we don’t know. There are better ways to talk about the keepers.

4. We will not break down a Stewart Mandel mailbag. This was a hard one for us, but damnit, we’re drawing the line in the sand. When we fry fish in 2007, we’ll be gunning for dolphins, not minnows, dig? Plus Braves and Birds has already perfected this form, anyway.

5. When referring to a team’s ranking, we will use the BlogPoll. Two years of Beta Testing were enough to let us know that the bloggin’ types pay a lot more attention to their ballots than the jaded, overworked sportswriters. (more…)

Smarter, more agile brains than ours are busy picking apart the technical details and forecasting the potential success of the Big Ten network. In summary, though, here’s what you need to know:

1. The Big Ten is building its own television network. You know, much like the one Notre Dame has called NBC.

AIIIIIGGGGHHH!!! We hope the Big Ten gets someone more lifelike than synthflesh-covered cyborg Tom Hammond to call their games.

2. The Big Ten Network would broadcast games “carved out” of existing network agreements. So rather than the pork tenderloin of Michigan/Ohio State, you’d likely be looking at the head cheese and chitterlings of Purdue/Northwestern if you tuned in during the fall.

3. The Big Ten Network, headed by Bud Selig Charm School Graduate Jim Delany, is charging viewers more than any network besides ESPN for its services.

4. This has gotten the fledgling network into a tiff with cable giant Comcast, and their tussle has been prodigious enough to attract the attention of the three most important media outlets in the nation: MGoBlog, The New York Times, and Sunday Morning Quarterback, all of whom have spent considerable bandwidth and column space discussing it in intelligent fashion.

We here at EDSBS are of the opinion that Jim Delany is a complete and total dickface, even above and beyond the dickfacedness required in being a conference head. (more…)

South Carolina, which for all we know isn’t so much a state as it is a whole chunk of Suriname that some genius grafted onto the continental United States, gives us Cock trouble again. No, it’s not a state agriculture official running a cockfighting ring out of a state building, since that is sooooo done to death already.

This time, a good old pyramid scheme like mom used to make ‘em strikes South Carolina, proving that success in one professional field does not guarantee professional competence in another. The pyramid scheme in question is BurnLounge, a sort of network alternative to ITunes where investors were promised profits in return for sponsoring sites where music was traded. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission in this case) has accused BurnLounge of being a pyramid scheme, and investors include former Clemson coach Danny Ford, Heisman winner George Rogers, and son of current head Cock, Steve Spurrier, Jr.

Mr. Bond, I have a business proposition for you.

A less than brilliant cameo is made by Bob Stoops in the story, who flashes Kirk Kerkorian-like business acumen in this quote:

“When Bob Stoops got me, he said, ‘I’ve spoken to a lawyer about this. I’ve spoken to my agent. I’ve spoken to some people to find out if this is a legitimate thing. And everything they told me, this is a legitimate (business). Put your name on it and go do it,’” said Spurrier Jr., a member of Stoops’ Sooners staff from 1999 to 2001.

It’s dumb, but not the dumbest investment we’ve heard of someone relatively successful making. That would be congressman and former San Diego Charger Jack Kemp’s decision to invest money in Au Magnetics, a company that promised to extract gold from sand. Alchemy! It’s what’s for dinner.

The SEC will continue their investigation, but it doesn’t seem like any of the big names associated with this are guilty of being anything other than gullible. (GOLD!) That may not be the case with Todd Ellis, Gamecock football announcer and former quarterback, though-he’s identified as a primary point of contact for the scheme in Columbia in the article, and that ain’t good for him.

(HT: Marc Isenberg, who has his own take on the story.)