CURIOUS INDEX, 7/7/2008

Lou Holtz, you cipher, you. Lou Holtz may truly be the most interesting man alive. Consider an evening out with him: it ends at 9:30, with him tucked into his jammies already and bidding you adieu as he retires to a little bit of military history reading and some chamomile. Are you surprised? Now, consider an evening out with Lou Holtz: you end up with an arms contract to peddle black-market Chinese AK-47s to the FARC and raging drunk off eight bottles of Wild Irish Rose. Surprised?

No, you're not, and that's the point, which is why opening up the South Bend Tribune in digital form this morning and seeing this...

...shouldn't surprise you at all, because nothing should surprise you about Lou Holtz, dear reader. He dines at dawn with the priest shortly before a round of 18 with the local capo. (No word if he, too, thinks UNC stood for "University of Negroes and Communists," but if that isn't the name of a Rapture knock-off band in Chapel Hill, you young Tarheels are falling asleep at the wheel.)

Louisville's magical offseason continues. Trent Guy, a receiver with the enchanted unicorn dancing bear troupe known as the 2008 Louisville Cardinals, continues the sorcery of offseason 2008 for the team by getting shot twice at a Louisville nightclub. The shooting sprung from one person's absolute malfunction of their cost/benefit analysis gland, but that's the way it usually is; ostensibly, one decides to shoot someone after said someone--Guy, 20, who is resting comfortably--grabbed Guy's fiancee "in a disrespectful way."

More on this later. Oh, and Louisville lost another player, Jajuan Spillman, over the past week, too. All the garlic butter in the world can't beef up Louisville's ever-thinning roster at this pace.

In less humorous gun news: Former Marshall football player Donte Newsome, in a similar situation as Louisville's Guy, did not make it out alive. Newsome was gunned down outside a nightclub called "Fluid" in an altercation with someone over something that we're sure was not worth it. Police have a suspect, who too will lose his entire potential and possibility over nothing, with the notable exception that he will have the pleasure of breathing the stale air of captivity, while Newsome is still dead. To describe this all as sad is insult reality with inadequate vocabulary.

Michael Lemon, the subject of much Fulmer Cup scoring debate last week, has been charged with both felony and misdemeanor assault stemming from his beatdown of a fellow UGA student at an apartment party. Makes scoring easy enough now: we give them points for all of it now.

Perhaps it's our shameless boosterism. The SEC: industry lives here! A list of reasons to love the SEC only confirms what you know/think/love/despise about the SEC, which is either that we're more colorful and like Avis Rental car, simply care more; or that we're a bunch of gladhanding rednecks happy to stroke ourselves all day 'bout our football teams 'neath a crumblin' roof with fifteen hungry children a-plowin' in the field. Either way WE RULE WOOOOO CRUMBLIN' ROOF FOOTBALL YAY!!!