The weekend’s viewing agenda.

ORSON (Columbus):
USC at Ohio State. Somebody’s getting pooped on.

HOLLY (Knoxville):
UCLA at Tennessee, live in Stabbovision, preceded by a moonshine party (really) and followed by whatever’s on after we stagger back westside, so that leaves USC’s trip to the Buckeye cesspool and a rapid collapse into slumber. Prost!

Kenny Chesney: Some beach, somewhere, being eaten alive by scorpions. C’mon, Secret, make us believers.

Your own viewing intentions, beverages, and slanderous levellings at young master Chesney below. Saddle up, ramblers.

Syracuse @ #7 Penn State
Holly: Greg Paulus IS Number 5 IN Short Circuit. No, he really, really is. Goofy-looking, endearing yet annoying, probably struck by lightning at some point. Penn State beat Akron last week, which tells us precisely ZIP. (seewhatIdidthere) Syracuse lost in overtime to Minnesota, which…tells us more about Syracuse than we think they’d be comfortable with. No disassemble, JoePa! (Whether that refers to Coach Brontosaurus’ ailing joints or the job Penn State is about to do on the wee Orange, we leave to you to decide.)

Orson: Greg Paulus IS Ed Norton IN The Score. Maybe you don’t remember this movie, but you might remember the most memorable line from its turbulent making when Marlon Brando, his cheeks stuffed with raw ground beef and Fritos, told Frank Oz “I bet you wish I was a puppet so you could stick your hand up my ass and make me do what I want.” Doug Marrone certainly wishes this were true of Paulus, who will be starting his second game after fleeing his puppeteers and going disastrously freelance with an overtime pick against Minnesota. Marrone would even forgo the sterile sleeve and just shove his hand right up the old chow-slough-for that personal touch-if it meant a risk-averse performance from Paulus/Norton, but even that and another solid performance by Syracuse’s suddenly feisty defense can’t prevent Paterno/DeNiro from using the youngster’s worst instincts to his advantage. Like the movie, the old man hoodwinks Syracuse out of a close victory. The similarities don’t end there, either, as both movie and game will suck just a little bit to watch.

Fresno State @ Wisconsin

Holly: Bret Bielema IS Ray Nicolette IN Out of Sight. This game will feature, in no particular order: Offensive ineptitude, defensive ineptitude, fratty assholes in law enforcement shirts, and probably won’t end without somebody’s ass getting locked in a trunk. Wisconsin is favored by 8.5 here, which is awfully generous for a team that had to “rally” to “beat” “Northern Illinois”. Calling the upset today: Methheads West over Methheads Midwest. The real winner? Whoever’s showing a game on a competing network.

Orson: Pat Hill IS Clive Owen IN Closer. Oh, it may be ugly. You might go flirt with someone else for a while, victory, but ultimately you’ll outfox the younger, more privileged contender for your affections and bring you back on your knees, both because you don’t care how ugly it looks as long as you win. Now touch your toes to the floor, bitch, and do it in front of 70,000 blind-drunk Wisconsin fans. (more…)

Juxtaposition is fun! Step one:

Mendenhall shared a story with reporters about how he took his wife, Holly, on a spring recruiting trip to New Orleans once and called it a “very unique experience.”

“When I came out, Holly was in the car, and kids were surrounding the car,” he said. “So we both learned our lesson. Yeah, it is a unique place. A little faster than what I am accustomed to, I would say.”

Step two!

And that’s why juxtaposition is fun! (HT: Allen)

The first matchup I need to cover this week, as it is integral to the success of all the others, is Beard +14 vs. Itch. See, after I got laid off a couple months ago I made a vow that I wasn’t going to trim my beard until I got a formal job interview, and while I had achieved a pretty cool Mountain Man/Taliban look as of this past weekend, I really couldn’t point to a single good thing that’s happened since I started growing it out (the Dawgs’ loss to Okie State and last week’s atrocious picks record being only the latest miseries). So on Tuesday I risked a week’s worth of acute itchyface by sawing it back to a nice, manageable Colin-Farrell-stumbling-out-of-some-random-chick’s-apartment-at-6-a.m. scruff, and I have yet to regret it:

Bad beard mojo, begone! Let the healing (and better picks) begin!

RISK LEVEL 1: Drinking a Starbucks venti French Roast and eating two Burrito Supremes from Taco Bell before going on a long car trip: South Carolina +7 at Georgia, 7 p.m. Saturday

Considering how extraordinarily lucky either of these teams were to have even scored seven points on opening weekend, the touchdown spread in this matchup already looks a little shady. And this series has been a defensive slugfest in even the most favorable of circumstances: Only twice in the Mark Richt era has the margin of victory in this game been more than one score, and the average outcome has been a Georgia victory by a mere 6.5 points. (more…)