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!

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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.