Taste my intensity. Blame a single bullet point in an update on the Jets offseason on the frisson of pleasure, fear, and freckled intensity that shot through Notre Dame fans yesterday. Watch me bite my lip and glower to push you to the heights of .500 football as only he can. GRRRRRRRRRuden.

GRRRRRRRRRR…wild card slot.

We can understand why Notre Dame fans get so excited over him, as he’s actually been a head coach, and is not the guy currently holding the job, who may be blamed for everything with a convenient ease. However, Charlie Weis’ buyout remains so astronomically large as to render the idea both insane (not ruling out hiring in any case, this insanity) and fiscally improbable (a much more effective choke on the idea.) It has been ruled improbable by John Walters of MSNBC and graphed by Doc Saturday, but let us say that if the variables are “Notre Dame” and “coach,” the answer is a set of mathematical brackets with the answer “all numbers real and imaginary” in between them.

He accused us of being hillbillies who eat wood! Or we thought he was funny. Mark Richt suggested to a recruit and his family that one of his coaches devoured wood in the name of good barbecue…AND THEY FOUND IT QUITE HUMOROUS.

That was all Richt needed to start teasing Ball. “He asked [Ball], ‘What do you do? Bite into each type of wood before you use it to see what type of flavors you have?’ They kept joking back and forth about it. It was so funny, everybody was laughing.”

And then Brandon Spikes tackled Richt for an eight yard loss, ate his barbecue, and gave him a pink suit to show his ass some style.

An anonymous cartel? That’s even better! Blutarsky nods in Brian Cook’s direction, and rightfully so: the only thing better than a cartel is an unaccountable, faceless cartel determining the extremely contrived national champion we comfort ourselves with at the end of the season. We’re pragmatists at this point in that we don’t want a pure playoff by name, or a continuation of the BCS, or even the paleoradical idea of going back to the old pre-BCS bowl/poll system. We’re just hoping for “less contrived” at this point, whatever that might be. We would also like a complimentary, guilt-free mistress with a clean bill of health, a Shelby Cobra we could wrap around a telephone poll guilt-free, and a guilt-free inheritance dropped on us in the next few days. We all have hopes.

You may have your wish. Bill Young, Miami’s current DC, is wobbling toward accepting a job as the defensive coordinator at Oklahoma State, thus creating a vacancy possibly filled by current Georgia DC Willie Martinez, who is quite good but occasionally makes Georgia fans’ “to be whooped” list when his defense fails to show up in spectacular fashion. (And it only seems to happen this way with Martinez: big failures, not small ones.) Also on the “to be whooped” list: FDR, Florida, Charles Darwin, Steve Spurrier, and Gravity.

That’s a slightly terrifying idea. In addition to the greatest recruiting class in the history of the known universe, Brandon LaFell will return to LSU next year to ensure that the LSU offense hangs somewhere at a steady terrifying for 2009. Subtract the charity of Jarrett Lee, who only throws touchdowns (both ways,) add in any improvement on defense at all under Number 3 Bulgarian Customs Inspector John Chavis, and include the play of qb Jordan Jefferson, and this is all looking typically fearsome for those electing to play LSU this season.

And you think I’m injured? I WILL FIGHT YOU RIGHT NOW UNDERTAKER. Tim Tebow pulled off his sling to prove he was fine at a basketball game after his recent shoulder surgery. Call him an attention whore all you like, but you’re only a successful whore if you have thousands of customers. This is what we call a “demand side” issue, and in Gainesville we’re afraid prohibition or choking off the demand is out of the question.

Myles Brand sanctioned by pancreatic cancer. A small cancer joke among friends, of course. Myles Brand, head of the NCAA, has pancreatic cancer and the long-term prognosis is “not good.” Brand, who actually once answered a question sent to him by proxy from EDSBS, will know the results of the chemotherapy he is undergoing later this month. Happy thoughts to him, even if we still aren’t sure what he does as president of the NCAA.

Your completely logical user comment of the day: Is here.

Hows that hand me down coach working out for you guys? Too bad he couldn’t pull off with your program what he pulled off with ours in 2004. Maybe he’ll turn tail on you guys like he did to us in the postseason and try to come back now that we are national champions. We won’t want him though.

Love, Utah fan. His email address was “nofrickinwayyougetmyemail@areyoukiddingme.com.” Frickin’ clever!

De-Croomification has begun. Dan Mullen has started the process by getting three four-star commitments for Mississippi State, thus doubling the number of theoretical recruiting stars Sylvester Croom ever got on the offensive side of the ball at the school. If you’d like to get excited (or alternately despondent) over your school’s prospects, we suggest you examine that Rivals summary.

Our faculty is energetic. Don’t ask why. The University of Florida: makin’ it snow, baby.

Other ways to get through the offseason. The magic message board demotivators are always good for choking an hour of the day into submission, especially when the guys from Shaggy Bevo get that MS Paint heated up and workin’.

The rest are here. If you’re an Oklahoma fan, just don’t look. It’s better that way.

Hook ‘em, I believe is what you rabble say. Further Longhorn-centric chauvinism as Peter-er….Malcolm Gladwell breaks down the post-2008 Longhorns as only the “Hey everything you know is wrong for exactly the opposite reasons you thought” guy can. Malcolm Gladwell: validating negligent behavior by semi-smart people since 1998.

If this doesn’t work out, I guess I can always go back to Harvard. Andrew Hatch will transfer back to Harvard after losing his part-time starting job (along with Jarrett Lee) to Jordan Jefferson. Look for Lil Boosie to replace Lil Wayne as “the next Dirty South rapper we can name and praise effusively” for the Slate crowd once Hatch’s roommate finds the CD and begins playing it at Cambridge parties. (You’re not elitist if you like bitches and blunts, too!) That and an NPR mention and he’s fuckin’ finished.

She’s professional, but not like that kind of professional. Larry Brown Sports interviews Gator Allie, the girl featured here on Wednesday working the pole in a celebratory dance honoring Florida’s BCS Title. She teaches pole dancing at a local studio, and is working on a lap dance class, as well.

Slappy, ho! John L. Smith may get a job from his old assistant, Bobby Petrino. Arkansas about to get 100 percent more slappy than they were prior to his arrival.