Robert Parker is the dean of all wine critics, and is known for his colorful descriptions of vintages using such rococo terms as “finesse and elegance with near-beefy depth,” or “blue-tinged, almost like roasted lilacs,” or our personal favorite, “as ash-heavy and skunky as the carcass of a freshly flamethrown wildebeest.”*

Therefore, we borrow his mojo for some jarring flavor combinations of our own:

1. What type of wine is your football team? A Penfolds Grange: only madly popular after 1990 or so, ghastly screw-top aesthetics appalling the old guard, and ferocious quality despite the lack of mythos and Frenchified foofery. Also very, very good most of the time.

2. Your best vintage-year, and describe in wine-y terms. 2006: for the earthy, daring pepper of the defense, with solid fat body through the middle, a lacy tethering of high notes through the secondary holding the middle range accents of thorny brush, barbed wire, and heavy flavors of heated sledgehammer together.

3. Robert Parker reviews your arch enemy. Go. Florida State: like North Georgia muscadine wines, but with a more whorish saccharine edge; like lighter fluid devoid of it admirable flammable qualities and spunk. Aged past its prime since 2000 or so.

4. Describe yourself in wine terms. Oh, like cheap champagne: bubbly, dry, consumed best in small doses, and prone to blowing up when shaken. Works quickly and effectively, and also wears off in similar fashion.

See you tonight when you click here to listen at 9 p.m. EDT.

*Not actually true in fact, but in spirit it reads like Parker.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Commenter OC Phil attended the grown-up football fantasy camp, and two great things happened to him. First, his knee didn’t explode, and for that we say huzzah, sir.

Second, he got Pete in frame with an EDSBS shirt, and for that, we give the illustrious ONE HUNDRED COCKTAILS of his choosing to him.

We are so jacked about this.

Just having our logo with COACH Pete Carroll makes us a better person. Not “feel” like a better person; no, it actually makes us better by association, and you by reading it. Pete would love to chat, but he’s got to sign an 11 year old running back and then birth a baby in an elevator for a single mother trapped in an old building over in East L.A.

Hulk love his lawyer Murray Abramowitz of Abramowitz, Hagen, Howard, Stern and Kern. Murray always send birthday card, remember birthday. MURRAY MAKE HULK RAGE WITH HAPPINESS for good service. HULK APPROVE AND PAY PROMPTLY!

Murray do too good of job sometime. Like Hulk when he mean smash bad man with meteorite and accidentally poison city block with radiation. HULK VERY SORRY ABOUT THAT!!! Hulk direct inquiries to ACE ATTORNEY MURRAY ABRAMOWITZ. Hulk decline further comment.

Murray send Hulk pic. Hulk view with new iPhone 3G. HULK RICH! Hulk smash first two typing email before getting hang of it. HULK FINGERS BREAK PHONE! Hulk get hang of it, though.

Murray say this actionable. Hulk look.

Murray be like Hulk! Want smash fair use of image for satire. HULK LAUGH! Hulk appreciate use of image for purposes make laugh. Also like comparison between Hulk, Les Miles. Les Miles also able live through being bombarded with nuclear radiation! Hulk make Stillwater Oklahoma joke! HULK PUNCHY TODAY!

Hulk tell Murray relax and have colada. Murray say abuse of image. Hulk know value of image! HULK NOT TOLERATE OVEREXPOSURE! Hulk show Murray real worry for Hulk. Hulk see on gas pump this weekend. HULK SMASH GAS STATION AND TAQUITO ROLLER WHEN HULK SEE IT! Blame agent, not Hulk.
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No wonder defensive coaches tend to be the hollerin’ charismatic bastard types and not the monastic, pen-chewing booth types. Overthinking the calls is pointless when the mathematics of football failure are, for the most part, on your side no matter what you call on 3rd and long, or worse, 4th and short with the national title on the line.

Brilliant call to blitz there? Yes. A play likely to fail anyway? Also, yes, thanks to the joy that only sports mathematics can bring.

RockMNation’s been working on the numbers, and while this may strike you as “Man on Moon” quality stuff, we’re all behind empiricism in even its tiniest forms. (We have timed the best ways to get our gym, up to and including complex variations on how to avoid a particularly thorny set of railroad tracks. There’s flow charts and everything. No, the medication is NOT working.)

The Sabermetric-type methodology does add numerical backbone to what you had previously assumed to be true just because some man who’d spend a lot of time in Bike shorts had told you: that getting into third and long is real bad in numerically demonstrable ways, and that yards gained closer to the goal line remain far valuable than yards gained far away from your own goal line. (more…)

Teams: there are a lot of them. In our effort to bring you the finest “bullshit” coverage of college football, our Visiting Lecturer Series today welcomes the Gutty Little Bruins, who helm the appropriately titled UCLA blog Gutty Little Bruins. They provide us with your thumbnail sketch of UCLA football and, in addition, also nail the finest answer to our irony-puncturing Jimmy Buffett challenge yet.

One: what color is your season? In other words, please explain the metaphorical state of your program through the metaphor of color:

The UCLA season, and the program, is white. [*cough* --ed.] It’s a blank slate, with a new head coach, new players, and a new-HOLY-SHIT-NORM-CHOW-IS-OUR-OFFENSIVE-COORDINATOR-THANK-YOU-JESUS

Two: What historical nation and period do you resemble most right now?

Germany, in the late 1800’s after Bismarck united the country. During the entirety of the Karl Dorrell era, UCLA fans fought amongst/embarrassed themselves by either defending or attacking Dorrell. Um…I’m not going to name names, but I’m of the opinion that some people took it a little too far. It’s college football. It’s not a goddam nuclear war.

Anyways, UCLA fans are all in the same boat for the first time since…ever. (more…)