Hal Mumme may be the most annoying coach ever in the history of annoying coaches, but we would like to wish the recently fired coach of New Mexico State and former Kentucky coach well after his diagnosis of prostate cancer. It’s supposedly been caught early, and Mumme will be receiving cancer treatment in Kentucky starting tomorrow. Mumme first began to feel bad during fall camp of 2008, which should give you some idea of the lunacy driving coaches forward: at times, they coach through cancer for an entire season before getting that “thing, you know, looked at by a doctor.”

ATTENTION CITIZENS OF MINGOVIA. We have allied with the AUGUST KINGDOM of TESTICLEES, LORD OF THE BAYOU in order to promote and develop the already indomitable strength of MINGOVIA AND ITS ATTENDANT TERRITORIES ALSO BEARING THE BANNER OF BARKEVIOUS.

Apologies to those not allied with Barkevious, who will be destroyed as we dominate the SEC and beyond from the plush chairs mounted in our INDESTRUCTIBLE DIRIGIBLE SHAPED LIKE A TIGER. Your inconvenience is our pleasure.

Sincerely,

Barkevious Mingo
Linebacker, LSU Tiger, and Roustabout Lord of the Skies and Railways

From your offseason “Has Jim Tressel Lost His Ability To Swing It Like A New Jack” article of the year, please see this intriguing detail from his contract:

Tressel, 56, continually swats aside questions about how long he’ll coach. Yet his new contract—which goes through the 2012 season—has an interesting addition: If he decides to retire, the university can keep him on as a professor for up to five years.

Like Woody Hayes before him, he would be “Professor Tressel.” Oh, the possibilities.

-”Michigan Real Estate: Owning It And How To Keep It for Half-Decades At A Time.”

-”Menswear for Caucasians: Theory and Practice.”

-”Don’t Call It A Quagmire: American Victories In Vietnam”

-”Coach Tress’s Gymnastics for Late Bloomers.”

-”Handling Radioactive Materials Safely and Easily With Everyday Objects Found In Your Home and Office.”

-”Paradise Lost: Herbert Hoover’s America.”

-”Special Seminar on Pyongyang: Come for the Women, Stay for the Women”

In quasi-related news, Professor Tressel is doing swimmingly on the recruiting trail, and may bring in the number one recruiting class if Ramgod dictates that Rueben Randle goes somewhere else other than LSU. Ohio State has 16 four star recruits, with an emphasis on getting game-breakers at the edge like Duron Carter, who has speed to burn according to Scout.com!

He’s not a burner, though, and won’t make many guys miss.

Or not! To be fair, James Jackson is in there, too, though, a 4.31 guy as clocked by the obligatorily generous stopwatch guy who inhabits all recruiting boards slashing tenths off seconds. Also, Carter is a legacy, as he is the son of Cris Carter, who will now stalk the Ohio State sidelines berating Jim Tressel on-camera anytime his son is not on the field for any reason. BUT HE’S WORKING ON THE SPEED THING, CITIZENS OF UZBUCKISTAN. And that is your lesson for the day.

These are the facts: this is the visualization of why Wolverines did not work as the official mascots for Michigan football.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1920.

“Michiganders of all stripes, behold our new mascot!

(more…)

Recruit: Jacobbi McDaniel

Picture:

What his picture says about him: That though he may look like he’s observing the action on the field, he sees so much more: the meeting of strategy, disorder, and desire; the simultaneous blossoming and death of youth embodied in 22 parts, and the ineluctable transient sadness of that crystalline moment. Also, he wants to know why you don’t use him as a goal-line fullback and demonstrate his quickness and deft footwork on the offensive side of the ball, Coach Chump-pantsserson.

Position: defensive lineman, raconteur, firmly against the evil of corn subsidies, preferably sitting a wooded bower absorbing all the wisdom silence has to impart in him, wondering why his opponent began this particular game of chess with a Nimzo-Indian strategy, and wondering if the heart can truly love whilst in deep meditation in his dojo.

Ballin’? No, no, no, it’s not like that at all.

Spiritual Hometown: The world and not the world. A spirit knows no home and no foreign country simultaneously. Though if he had to choose, it would be probably be Miami, because they got some chunky asses down there for real, and even a poet-warrior hears the siren song of the flesh from time to time.

Bench: 350 pounds.

Squat: 475 if he’s at one with things, but scarcely above 225 if melancholia has crept into the tender cockles of his heart, or if he hasn’t eaten much that day.

Committed to: Florida State, the Dravidian martial arts, learning Farsi, preserving the great traditions of local musical cultures around the world, studying the arresting graphic design of Fallout 3, and preparing himself for death at any instant in order to properly live.

40 time: 4.9, but doesn’t really think of time as a real variable, but more as a human construct imposed on a timeless universe.

Things you Didn’t Know About Jacobbi McDaniel. Parents included two ‘b’’s in his name to remind him to always strive for an ‘A’…has a foolproof system for winning at roulette and would be happy to share it with you through an informative and entertaining DVD available for just $69.95…once concussed Paul Krugman in a heated dispute over the theoretical validity of the Laffer Curve…does not use wasteful food as fuel, and instead runs on frequent injections of clean-burning hydrogen…is not visible from space, but can felt in the heart from as far away as the Van Allen Belt.

Moving never ends, and having finally procured a truck to move our fifty dollars of possessions we have determined that:

-We actually own five useful things.

-We can find none of those five useful things.

-The rest is shit no one wants.

-No one will take it.

Tolstoy had the right idea. We’ll be back in force tomorrow after burning half of what we own.

Had the right idea, but bad execution.

Always pay your cabbie: they journeyed either from rehab or from the furthest reaches of the earth to take your drunk ass from one place to another, and you owe them not only the proper fare for the effort, but also a generous tip for putting up with your drunk ass. Bonus: in Atlanta they’re all Ethiopian or Eritrean, and will tell you about places like California Mart or the kickass African food stand at the airport we’ve been meaning to try for months now.

(Superb review from Yelp there: “Not really sure what I ate…but fantastic.” Honesty and bravery in one review, sir.)

Even tiny Muncie, Indiana has its share of God’s drunk-shepherds, and at least one unfortunately named Ball State football player now looking at a felony charge due to his refusal to pay his toll for disabling his driving reflexes.

Dane Cook, who was a sophomore free safety on the 2008 Ball State football team, was arrested on the preliminary charges of public intoxication and theft at about 4 a.m. Saturday at Beacon Hill Apartments, police said.

Video of the incident follows!

Apologies. That is not video of the incident, but instead is a man shooting a UFO, but the idea of putting a picture of Dane Cook on our dear website just caused us to grow whole, fishy scales across the length and breadth of our body. Cook will earn four points for the incident, and put Ball State in the lead for the Fulmer Cup, which we sorely need to update here shortly: three points for the felony (even if it is a grade D,) and one point for the public intox charge. He also wants to know why everything in a public bathroom is always wet, and man does his ass itch and why MURDERED BY SHOVEL.

There’s good places to take a nap in public. We prefer the chairs some kind retailers put out for sad husbands to hold down while wives or girlfriends browse clothing and suffer minor cycles of breakdown/affirmation. It’s a bit like going to community theatre; if it’s dark enough, you can nod off comfortably while your significant other passes through the entire dramatic cycle in ten minutes over a single pair of pants.

A bad place to fall asleep is in the drive-thru lane at McDonald’s, which is where Preston Parker of Florida State fell asleep Saturday night. (Bobby Bowden: “He diyud, he diyud…but he’s a good kid.”) Parker was arrested for “driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs,” and admitted to drinking and smoking marijuana.

This leads us to the hilarious disclosure of this delightful piece of police report verbiage:

According to police, Parker’s blood alcohol content below the state’s drunk-driving limit.

However, Parker’s urine sample was presumptive positive for marijuana.

Oh, the endless number of people we could include under the title of “presumptive positive” for marijuana: Percy Harvin, George W. Bush (why the fuck not, sir?), anyone who just shook hands with L’il Wayne, Penn Wagers, Charles Haley, Christopher Buckley…this “presumptive positive” is going to be useful phrasing, as in “Tommy Bowden’s teams at Clemson were usually a presumptive positive for bitch mentality.” Muchas gracias, Tallahassee PD. We’ll honor you by passing out at the driver’s seat in the line at Zesto’s soon.

Oh, and Preston Parker puts FSU at the head of the drive-thru line for the Fulmer Cup with this three point offense: two for the DWI/DUI/whatevs, and one style point for falling asleep while waiting for his McRib.