THIS LITTLE MAN MAKES MONSTERS. Lifting, vomiting, running, vomiting, more lifting, more vomiting: this is the routine for your poet-warriors for the next three months, and their Sherpa to the pinnacle of Pain Mountain will be the strength coach. Strength coaches are all the same. They carry the traps of someone who still does power cleans because he likes the yoke they give him. They all rise obscenely early, are never seen eating, and usually buoy their natural enthusiasm with some devilish stimulant combo. (4% of Red Bull's net value is attributable to consumption by strength coaches. 2% belongs to Dana Holgorsen.)
They are always hoarse, and always yelling anyway. Few personify the type better than Scott Cochran of Alabama, the tiny man who in his word "makes monsters."
Just record the whole thing and blast it when you lift in your backyard with the concrete weights covered by plastic. You know the ones.
IN MEMORIAM: Coach Bill Stewart is remembered best by those who knew him in the Shotgun Throwdown. As weird as his exit from WVU was, it's impossible to remember Stewart as anything else than a genuinely nice man thrown into a very weird situation called "the state of West Virginia." RIP.
FUNNY YOU CAN'T GET THAT DOG BACK ON THE LEASH EH? The ACC is not the Big East, but we're with Blutarsky is scoffing at the notion that the conference wouldn't be hurt by the Big Four effectively breaking off and writing their own checks. But yeah, dudes with suits and ties say things are okay, and they usually do.
Y U SO CHEAP, B1G? Your reminder that only seven of the Big Ten's current stadiums have lights, because night time is when the corn demons come out.
NOTRE DAME IS IMPROVING NO REALLY THERE ARE NUMBERS AND EVERYTHING. We hope Notre Dame fans are patient, and considering some of them are still working on the Julian calendar--damn you, Pope Gregory XIII!--they might be exactly three days more patient. Because Notre Dame really is improving, albeit slowly, and with the horrors of conference realignment and Red Zone Tommy Rees swirling around them.
TAKING REQUESTS. If Dan Mullen is going to play Stairway to Heaven on the piano, then Holly has requests. We will request "Brick" by Ben Folds Five, and then immediately ask him to stop with tears in our eyes. "We're sorry to get so emotional. That reminds us of the time our girlfriend got a 2011 BCS Title Game."