We’re taking the fourth quarter off for a meeting that will, like an Auburn offense, hold the ball for much of the period. As an offering, accept totally unrelated Indian dancing with bizarre subtitling. (HT: Dave.)

Now poop on them Oliver!

If the answer to the title question of this post is a resounding “HELL YES!”, then take note: you’ll need $12,000 dollars a year and, like seemingly anyone in Florida with substantial amounts of money, no remaining sanity. Remember: poor people are “dirty and crazy,” while rich people exhibiting signs of mental illness are “eccentric.”

If a Florida blogger sounds like we do, you know a booster would look like this.

Back in the Swamp I am confronted by a battle-ax-wielding man wearing a horned helmet and a fur-lined cape: “I am Hjalmar, son of John! I am a Gator Viking ready to beat Auburn!” As Hjalma Johnson breaks into a belly laugh and shakes my hand, I try to imagine him on stage accepting the presidency of the Florida Bankers Association in this very costume, as he did in 1983.

Hjalma is, of course, a very wealthy lunatic with a past in investment banking and very, very good seats to the game. The most intriguing bit about the brief profile of the cash-pissing loons who make Florida’s football money machine hum: according to many, you can trace its real beginnings as a behemoth to Charley Pell, not Steve Spurrier. Per the piece, Pell was the one who got boosters “too excited,” thus bringing in tides of money, and the requisite probation along with it.

And yes, we’re going to attempt to do shots with Hjalma next time we’re out of the game, and drink the beer chaser from the horned helmet. And then, we will unsuccessfully badger him for tickets as security removes us from his plush luxury box. Look for the man in plastic zip-cuffs and a bucket hat being thrown from the mezzanine level into the crowd.

Remember, you can’t solve a mystery on an empty stomach, something Hercule Poirot certainly believed. In fact, your mind works best after ingesting a light salad, four rolls slathered in butter, a cheese plate, some pate, a whole roasted duck, a side of braised endives, five glasses of claret, strawberries topped with creme fraiche, three cups of coffee, and two vodka tonics to finish. (For the digestion, you know.)

Now we’re ready to solve a mystery! Just, please: no chase scenes. You don’t want to see a grown man turn inside out and vomit impolitely on another gentleman’s bowler.

The mustache of the day? Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot.

Happy Mustache Wednesday, motherfuckers!

What makes the Mexican standoff that is the SEC so special? UF defensive end Duke Lemmens sheds some light on the dark, wonderful recesses that give the conference its special, um…aroma of kickass.

“I’ll be honest, practice sucks,” Lemmens said. “But Friday, getting on that plane. That’s why you work so hard. Kentucky, those fans were so pumped up.

“And LSU, full grown men mooning you. And not just mooning but spreading. I got to know that guy a little too well.”

Seeing a grown man’s spread buttocks and the tail end of his alimentary canal? Who says scholarship athletes aren’t paid? This also provides further evidence that LSU fans have taken to the spread attack brought to Baton Rouge by Gary Crowton in ways he could have never possibly imagined in his worst nightmares.

AAAHHH! RUN!!!

In the Big Ten, the shit will hit the fan on Saturday night as a classic nexus of Big Ten football, Brent Musburger, and wholesome, sausage-downing fandom meet in Happy Valley as Penn State hosts the undefeated Ohio State Buckeyes.

And if you do plan on attending the game, please note that big games at Penn State tend to have a laxative effect on fans, and that you may be hard up for a place to deposit the angry, glowing bolus of processed sausage and potato salad you’re carrying around in your bowels like five pounds of spare change.

“The number of comfort stations being provided currently is woefully inadequate from a health and safety standpoint,” Brumbaugh’s letter says. “The handful of comfort stations in the parking lots are, quite literally, full and overflowing with human waste creating untold potential health and safety problems for PSU football patrons and, ultimately, the general public.”

(We blame heavy, hearty Midwestern fare for the problem-it’s painful enough when your intestines grab the wheel, but the mandate becomes even more urgent when you’ve got a solid two pounds of brats, potatoes, and casserole blowing through the tollbooth without paying. Barbecue and chips at least stops you up until a bitter, teary fight-crap the following morning.)

The myth of overflowing styrofoam coolers at Ohio State tailgates remains that: a myth. (Albeit, one we heartily support, since it is funny, and should therefore be true. It’s rollin’!) This, however, is a documented public health and sanitation crisis, with 100,000 tailgaters relying on a paltry 339 portable toilets for relief. The recommended number for a crowd of this size is 957, meaning that refugee camps in Chad could, theoretically, have better shit logistics than Penn State on gameday.

And big games really do seem to intensify the problem: while the average gameday sees 7,000 gallons of blue-brownish cloacal goo pumped from the premises, this year’s Notre Dame game saw 18,000 gallons of shit punch taken off site. (We’ll beat you to it. Charlie Weis was not the sole reason for the jump, and don’t even try to suggest it.) We can only imagine that the combination of college football’s two fecal superpowers-one mythic, one documented-could result in a turdocaust of rogue wave proportions.

HT: Senator Blutarsky.

The Blogpoll goes wacky and unapologetic this week. Given a season with a total lack of reason, we commit ourselves to the asylum of just trying to put the best teams based on what we’ve seen-a mad idea given the nostrums of “the tyranny of the undefeated” that rules most polling, including many of our own ballots. (It’s like that damned “tyranny of the outrageously attractive and well-hung” that keeps us manning the blender at orgies instead of grunt-getting in style with our fifty year old neighbors!)

Anyway-the ballot for this week, which you already hate nearly as much as we do.

Notes, apologies, and upraised middle fingers in defense of the indefensible.

LSU’s the best team in the country, and they’re number one by margins based on what we’ve seen on the field versus quality competition. Their only defeat came in triple overtime to the best quarterback in the country. They’ve got two quarterbacks capable of wrecking defenses. Their defensive line is now so dangerous opponents have resorted to chop-blocking them, albeit in completely unintentional ways. (cough) Early Doucet has returned to the wideout corps, they’ve got a power back, a neutrino-fast speed back, and two combo running backs who can destroy games singlehandedly. The defense is vulnerable only in the sense that they’re too aggressive, and thus exploitable on the boots, screens, and quick stuff Auburn and Florida got them on, but that’s a fault you’ll take-especially in a prospective title matchup with lead-footed Todd Boeckman and Ohio State.

We can’t sell you on it if you aren’t already sold, since this seems to be an article of faith, not an evidence-based decision for most. But just imagine if, in 2007 alone, you had this bag of exploding hammers at your disposal and the call comes down to who’ll put the game on the line in the ballsiest way imaginable. We think we’ve come up with the magic bullet to describe Les Miles thus far: he’s got the tools to back up his balls at this point at LSU, and the right Dr. Weird-type in the booth (Gary Crowton) to pull it off this season if the offense needs to score to win. The will is his, and the design is Crowton’s. It’s a better match than we could have imagined.

Ohio State! Fuck you it’s Ohio State! It could be, provided they beat Penn State this weekend. To this point, though, we imagine LSU getting on the field carrying a spice rack and a turkey baster with Ohio State. The fricassee would be on like Donkey Kong.

And if this were Florida, Alabama, or Auburn in the same position, we’d do the same. See the fact we axed three SEC teams from the poll this week for sucking. Note: not for competing in “THE TOUGHEST CONFERENCE IN THE LAND” [/merrill hoge], but for s-u-c-k-i-n-g and l-o-s-i-n-g.

The remaining? Bafflement. Oregon’s an amazing football team with a stout resume. If he played in the Midwest or the South, Dennis Dixon would have children and bouncing happy babies named after him right now. Missouri is Gary Pinkel’s first team not wilting through the late season. Kansas has left the state once, and pays for it thusly. (It’s not an insult-it’s waiting for proof!) UCLA, now entering our poll again, will surely exit it with an inconsistent, strange, and eye-gouging loss this weekend. They’re the Iggy Pop of college football: rich and famous, then homeless in Haiti, then rich and famous, then homeless in Detroit, then rich and famous again.

Dropped: Auburn, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, all for being squirrelly, inconsistent, gifted and maddening. If they were people, we’d call them family! Being football teams, we just call them unranked.

Hawaii has started charging rent in the low twenties, and plans to flip it for a nicer spot in the high teens by the end of the season. You should see what they’ve done to the kitchen: butcher block countertops, recessed lighting, a huge new SubZero refrigerator. Even in this market, it’s a sure sell.