CURIOUS INDEX, 6/9/2008

Self-confidence is the confidence of the self which is the opposite of impossible. Weird-ass headlines continue to linger about regarding the departure of the Big East's longtime head Mike Tranghese, like the following from ESPN: Big East schools' self-confidence puts Tranghese at ease. The schools of the Big East obviously lacked strong father figures and did not respond to our self-esteem curriculum a few years back. Confidence is important, you know. Guys like Ted Bundy and Robert Vesco had it in spades, and look where they are today.

If you need instruction in confidence, look no further than Michael Cera, an expert in the principles of personal development.

He'll have you feeling as cocksure as Cincinnati athletics in no time.

Sweden's the greatest if you get someone to pay the rent. Sometimes small school college football has unforeseeable and excellent results: G.C. McCoy, an Oklahoma native and former player at Ottawa (Kan.) University, ended up playing for a Swedish league football team. His life sounds like an unending hell of uninterrupted workout sessions, free rent, and kinky sex.

"I have a great life here," he said. "I just work out, coach and play football games on Saturday, then go out and meet women on the weekend in Stockholm."

Courage, man. You'll survive it yet.

Marilyn Vos Savant, we are your college football writer. Evidently, our article on West Virginia's impending mere "goodness" brought the best out of 'Eer commenters:

This is the weirdest article I may have ever read. The words this ignorant person tried to use are repulsive. Who in the world does he think is going to read this a nobel prize winner, what a joke. I believe that this guy has probaly never steped foot on a playing field and i bet that he had his lunch stole from him at school everyday. What a loser, he needs to go write for some magazine that id directed toward people with IQ's in the 1000's. This was not up to Sporting News standards.

Maxim can be mindbending if you read it before a few cups of meth. We mean, coffee. By the way, we have Cal fans who read this blog, meaning we do expect Nobel prize winners to read our writing. George Smoot likes a cleanly run iso play as much as anyone else.

John Walters lists his top ten games for 2008, and if you read it and actually start thinking about the games, you'll kick a hole in the wall out of excitement.

Doug of the eminently funny Hey Jenny Slater turned 30, and likely just discovered something about turning 30: the "maelstrom of booze" approach toward a night of drinking that once merely made your inner Hrothgar laugh at the storm now leaves you a very, very unhappy Viking.

The very last memory I have of that night is of two drinks sitting in front of me: a tequila shot and a partially-consumed glass of Scotch.

I, uh, don't recommend it.

Neither do we, Doug. If you have to touch brown liquor after 30, be sure to stick to the two-stage Goddard Rocket school of drinking: one liquor for ignition, then switch to a solid booster to finish out the evening. Vodka and champagne is a good combo, since you want to work from high proof to low proof as the evening goes on, unless you're the sort of person who believes in kicking in the afterburners fifty feet prior to massive, fatal impact with the ground. (The "Launchpad McQuack School of Drinking.")

It's a plane crash either way, but we like to land belly down on the tarmac.