I WANNA SNAP LIKE THIS FOREVER. Long snappers: they're tender people.
From Clemson's notes about preparing for the intense environment they will enter this Saturday at Auburn:
"In the game-winning situations, coach Swinney puts us kickers in, everyone is standing around you and screaming," Catanzaro said of practice. "Usually some of the defensive linemen are stroking the long-snapper's leg while he's about to snap it; in some cases they've taken off his shoe. I think coach Swinney has yelled in my ear as I'm about to kick it; they've thrown stuff across before I kick the ball.
We think you mean "Coach Swinney has whispered softly in my year as I'm about to kick it." The vision of burly defensive linemen stroking a long-snapper's leg will haunt you for the rest of your day, as will their purely hypothetical conversation:
D-lineman A: My god, he's got the skin of an angel.
D-lineman B: I hate you so much right now.
D-lineman A: But he does!
YOU DON'T EVEN WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. Arkansas was the only team we know of last year to have a player miss games due to a stroke, but Joe Adams didn't let a little thing like a blown brainpipe keep him from playing. It's okay, though, Dennis Johnson. Just because you fell on a football and had it go up your ass and into your intestine for what is being called "an injury to his bowels," it doesn't mean Joe's going to judge you or anything. People shake off strokes like bad colds all the time.
(As Adam's post notes: we don't actually have any indication as to how this really happened other than it must have hurt like hell, and no, a football did not actually go up Dennis Johnson's ass. We don't even know how that could be made possible, and will have to research it on our own later HONEY IT'S NOT GAY PORN IT'S RESEARCH HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS.)
What we do know: Johnson was very lucky, and that you can in fact tear an intestine from impact during a football game. They're rare, mind you, but they are deadly serious; a Michigan teenager actually died from a torn intestine suffered in a high school game in 2007.
THAT'S THE WAY WE USED TO DO IT IN THE SWC. The plan was to kick five more of them and walk out of there with a win, but if you don't understand football strategy, why, you probably don't understand the value of a good pair of suspenders, either.
THE PAC-10 PUNISHES REFS FOR BEING PAC-10 REFS. UVA's fake punt disallowed for a procedural penalty was in fact an error in procedure, but not by the football players. As bad as ACC officiating can be, please remember that the Pac-10 still makes a difference in their local communities by employing only the most opium-addicted rapscallion drifters to call their football contests.
IOWA HAS BIG DUDES. Arizona's 2-0 after playing no one, but we'll be happy to rank them if they manage not to get ripped to jerky by Iowa this weekend, since Iowa has "big dudes."
MINNESOTA HAS BED-CRAPPING. But you already knew that.
RICK NEUHEISEL SHOULD STOP TALKING. Right now. Immediately. For realz. Turn the mike off. Turn the Stanford band up. Pull the fire alarm. Throw a giant glass dome over him so he is encased in silence.