We’re extremely late on this, so we have to double up and dash out two awards at once. Andiamo!

Best SEC Blog, Runner-up: Dawg Sports. Again: the leading policy wonk and brief writer of the SEC blog world deserves all of the kudos you care to heave his way. However, he suffered a narrow defeat to the Vols, just as his team did this year.

And the winner is…. The papa….The Papa! Joel of Rocky Top Talk takes the crown in the SEC this year. No one spans a greater range of core competencies in blogging, a resume line that while worth hundreds of cents in real life is most definitely worth at least $583.92 on the blogosphere. Don’t laugh-that’s certainly worth more than this site, laughing laugher-type person laughing at that.

Joel’s quick with the stats, comprehensive but not a bludgeon with the numbers, armed with a subtle but sardonic wit, and is an absolute monster with the Flash animation. Early adopter does not begin to describe him: if it’s a widget, gadget, thingamabob, or other new wrinkle, it will appear on RTT in hours, not days. A constant tinkerer from the MNC Races to his willingness to dive in headfirst on products with bearded lunatics, he’s the most dangerous of dangerous people: the quiet one no one sees coming. For that and more, we salute you, Joel. Salut!

Double up: The MNC.

Runner-up: MGoBlog. CFB’s frostiest blogger: stats, icy wit, and the best hair beard combo to get a person interrogated at any local airport of your choosing. MGoBlog could have easily won this award, were it not for….

Sunday Morning Quarterback. We already lauded him in an earlier post, but this but be mentioned again: There is no other writer on college football who comes close. Any other praise heaped on him would make us seem a little gay, and that’s fine, because we’re a little gay for SMQ and his indispensable writing. We’ll wear sleeveless tees and call you awesome all day, man.

Your writing…it makes it work!

Head over to Joel’s house to admire his shiny trophy and hear the winner of the People’s Champ Award around 6ish.

Andrew Symonds, like most Australians, is awesome from birth and has the antivenom for seven major venomous snakes running through his veins naturally. He’s also a cricketer, meaning we should downgrade him from total badass to “merely tougher than we can possibly imagine ever being,” but alas, the evidence doesn’t lie: he may even be cooler than the average Aussie for his dispatch of a male streaker at the Aussies’ match against India.

Warning: this video contains male nudity. And by male nudity, we mean specific glimpses of the asscrack, testicles, the taint, a bit of flapping tackle and a brief and horrifying shot of the man’s actual butt-hole on the way down. (Yes, we looked.) If you don’t like male nudity, you should watch anyway, because this man gets hit harder by Symonds than anyone got hit by Florida’s secondary last season.

We love the reaction of the in-house crew to the announcement of a streaker: applause, cheers, streakers. That and the color guy suggesting that “That was the first tackle of the State of Origin match” make this at least the ninth-best thing we’ve seen in 2008 thus far.

Our extremely cursory and simple look over the options for this year’s fantasy draft in college football. Dibs!

One: Michael Crabtree, Texas Tech WR. Oh, sure, you say don’t draft him because he’s going pro, but here’s a surprise for you: HE PLAYS FOOTBALL, ASSHOLE. That’s right, and he plays it too well for even Mike Leach’s buttoned-down attack to hold his talent under wraps, friend. Crabtree’s line for last year looked like entire wide receiving corps’ numbers for theyear: 134 receptions, 1962 yards, and 22 TDs. Now let’s see if Mike Leach will trust him and stop throwing the ball only ten times a game. What is this, the Single Wing?

Two: Knowshon Moreno, UGA RB (Stands for “Rampaging Bastard”) Oh, no particular reason. FACT: This statement is a lie. If we just blew the head off your logic robot, then good: now you may free yourself from its clutches and draft Knowshon Moreno, who averaged 5.4 yards a carry last season and beat the bloody hell out of Florida in the worst Cocktail Party of my lifetime as a Florida fan. Give him the ball twice, and it’s a first down! Math is easy kids. Also, taking Knowshon allows you to take Matt Stafford, who may brilliantly audible to “run left/right/middle” when the defense does all that confusing jumpy stuff at the line.

Three: Jeremiah Johnson, Oregon RB. Could be the focal point for the Oregon offense next year, meaning he’ll get plenty of screens and zone read handoffs. Sadly, does not possess mountain man beard or pet bear, though someone could (hint hint) do something about both of these things before the season begins. We’ve always thought the bear was the next frontier for domesticated animals, especially home security bears. So cuddly!

Four: Colin Kaepernick, Nevada QB. If you have craved a gawky, discount version WAC version of Vince Young working out of the pistol, then Kaepernick’s your man.

Even if you apply the standard WAC to BCS conference conversion formula (divide roughly by 2/3, subtract five touchdowns), Kaepernick’s stats as a sophomore should improve from the 2175 yards passing and 573 yards rushing he piled up as afreshman in the eight games he started. Bonus! He works from the pistol, the formation that gets your qb disemboweled in NCAA Insert Year here but somehow chugs along nicely in real life.

5. Cam Newton, Florida QB. We’d bet a toe he’ll assume the Tim Tebow goal line battering ram role from Tim Tebow to take some of the hits off Tebow, meaning he’ll become the Mike Alstott of college football: a points vulture with an unnatural stat line skewed toward one yard TD plunges.

The Big Board for the week brings us a smashing debut from the Virginia Cavaliers, thus validating reader DevilGrad’s prediction that the arrival of former Marshall coach Bobby Pruett on the staff would put the Cavs in the running for the Cup. Your powers frighten and impress us, sir.

Corrections, apologies, and refusals to either correct or apologize follow.

Virginia somersaults into this bitch like Bill and Lance leaping into Nicaragua with the spread gun: UVA cornerback Mike Brown was arrested and charged with one count each of grand larceny, possession of stolen property with intent to sell, alteration of serial numbers and possession of marijuana. The charges were filed in connection with the theft of $3,400 worth of property from a car on the UVA campus. What college student actually has $3,400 worth of anything in their car besides various MP3 players, electronics, and weed is beyond us, but we hope the complainant in question had the good sense to report the loss of all three. The police love it when you report that someone has stolen your weed! It makes them very excited and curious about you, your problems, and when you’re available to talk about them face to face!

Three points for grand larceny, three for possession of stolen property with intent to sell, and a cautious pair of one point filings for the other two charges give UVA an eight point award in the Fulmer Cup. Charges to appear on the board as soon as Brian, who is hung like Reggie F’n Nelson, gets our email and updates. Scoring is subject to revision upward on the last two charges, so those of you with a knowledge of the Virginia criminal code, please pipe up, because you will anyway.

All others remain static. Early on, we’re still not even through the primaries here. Easter, a Christian holiday we will celebrate by gambling and drinking in Las Vegas for the first weekend of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, sends kids home for potential trouble, and we haven’t even gotten to the issue of Spring Break yet. Missouri’s lead is neither impregnable nor huge, making this anyone’s game down the stretch.

…has your morning roundup and weekend summaries from college hoops, including the sailors-meet-cargo-hold-of-sheep treatment Kansas gave Texas Tech. ARRR!!! Ruptured lower intestine, matey!

We’re set to kick off the awards for today with the nod for best writing. Fortunately, this is an easy award, since even if we were to pull a caper and name our own recipient for the award, we would end up using the actual winner. The wisdom of crowds worked to perfection here, just as it did in Rwanda, Germany and Cambodia. (Um, we’ll edit those examples on the second draft. Why didn’t we win this award again, dammit?)

Soundtrack: Paperback Writer, of course, featuring one of three times in the Beatles oeuvre where Ringo Starr got to drum like a badass.

Best Writing: Runner-up. There’s quantity and quality, and rarely the two shall meet. (College Football News, Sauron’s eye is upon you and unblinking!) One of the few to combine the two is T. Kyle King, the proprietor of Dawg Sports and a legal brief-spouting font of delicious policy wonkage nimbly soldering together human intelligence, humor, and the awkward bits of logic that makes up illogic of large orders like the NCAA’s Recruiting Rules.

A prime example of Kyle’s tasty wonkage, which is really when he’s at his best:

In a classic example of self-interested actors working to everyone’s economic advantage through the invisible hand, the C.F.A. heightened the popularity and marketability of college football, which boosted everyone’s exposure and revenue, for the have nots as well as for the haves. Anyone who doubts that proposition needs to stand in front of the mirror and ask himself this question: “Are Boise State’s, West Virginia’s, and, heck, Georgia Tech’s football programs better off or worse off because ESPN televises Thursday night games?” These W.A.C., Big East, and A.C.C. teams are not a part of the B.C.S. “Oligarchic” Super Division, but they are beneficiaries (however unintended) of the C.F.A.’s efforts. John F. Kennedy was right that a rising tide lifts all boats.

Kyle will pull no mystical shrouds of beautiful bullshit vapor over your eyes, but he will crank out lucid, pointed, and taut prose inevitably leading to some argument or another that you, pinned in an armbar of logic, cannot wriggle out of of without resorting to insult, calumny, or lies. Thankfully, in all of our disagreements with Kyle, we always have an ample supply of all of these handy.

And the winner is… (more…)

The Curious Index and the CFBA announcement for Best Prose will be along shortly, but first: WOOOOOO!!! Remember that taiiiihme you punched the teeth outta ya mouth to show them Gators how tough you were?

Squidbillies: made by Georgians who know what they’re talking about here. If that “Gator Hator” hat isn’t sitting atop the heads of some bloody-mouthed UGA fans next season looking for their teeth on the ground, we’ll be sorely, sorely disappointed in you all, sirs and madams. But you do know that in a name-calling war based on redneck cred, Georgia loses in a smoking heap to Florida, right? We’ve got so much more than just the Duck Head-wearing nouveau-riche Panic crowd and the oceans of starchy white trash that Georgia has to offer: switchblade wielding gel-freaks from Miami, bland transplanted midwesterners from Orlando, stoner surfer rednecks from Melbourne, Jacksonville tattoo guys still rocking the Durst fat pants, shot-guzzling Fiero drivers from Tampa, displaced Jerseyites who leave fake tanner residue on white couches…we’ve really got it all. The army of trash Florida can assemble is simply unparalleled.

We’re nastily diverse with it. Early’s head would be spinning.