Rectum? Damn near killed him!
Sweet Jesus….anyone still wondering what was taking the NCAA so long to release its investigative findings and announce U.S.C.’s penance? Here’s 67 pages that may explain what made the process so tedious..it’s actually a wonder how it didn’t take an additional two weeks just to run spell-check on this Homeric gavel.
I’ll confess: I’ve had one of those Cialis-level week-long erections since the NCAA Committee released its knockdown, skewering, motherfucker of an Infractions Report on the Trojans last week, which essentially did everything but douse Mike Garrett with kerosene and set him on fire. I know, I know..the traditionalists still want us to be mad that we only got to Pete Carroll once, and were otherwise throttled by his semi-pro team for the better part of a decade. And they want to remind us that these penalties actually don’t help the Irish in the short-term, as U.S.C. has always been the biggest boost to our Strength of Schedule factor in the B.C.S. rankings, making anything that hurts their ability to be a solid program a net negative for us.
And to quote Jon Moxon, “I say fuuuuuuuck that…”
Have you actually read this thing? I mean literally sat down and gone through every scorching page of the report? It paints a truly awesome picture of a sleazy, no-rules outfit that not only violated every regulation imaginable, but further didn’t even deem it necessary to bother hiding it..I honestly half-expected to see the names “Craig James” or “Eric Dickerson” pop up in there. It’s long, but absolutely worth the perusal..we’re talking ice-cold-beer good; snorting-coke-off-a-stripper’s-tits good.
Anyone confused by the “harshness” of the penalties imposed on the football program was probably led astray by South Compton’s P.R. Spin over the last few days, thinking that all we’re dealing with here is a couple of mercenaries student-athletes who got a few benefits on the side..you know, O.J. Mayo getting a little cash and Reggie Bush’s parents getting free rent.
Nuh-uh. There’s a little more to it than that..in reading the report, you find that:
Bush and his family agreed to form a “sports agency” with Lloyd Lake and Michael Michaels, whereby the two would “sponsor” him up front in exchange for the right to represent Bush as an agency once he became a professional.
The benefits given to Bush and his family over that stretched totaled over $290,000. They included the following:
- A purchased vehicle, as Bush was apparently “embarrassed” by his previous truck, as well as cash for new rims and an audio system.
- Plane tickets for the Bush family to fly from San Diego to Miami for the Orange Bowl.
- A weekend stay at the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego to attend Marshall Faulk’s birthday party (and limo service between the hotel and party).
- A weekend stay at the Venetian in Vegas.
- Rent-free living for his parents in a $750K home (and over $10K for furniture and appliances for the home).
- $28,000 to Bush’s family to help settle pre-existing debts.
- $7,500 for the family to travel to Hawaii.
- And thousands and thousands of dollars in spending cash for Bush and his family.
While all of these goodies by themselves rendered Bush an ineligible amateur, the technicality that U.S.C. attempted to weasel themselves out of it with was that they “didn’t know.” The Poodle himself even got into the act after the punishment was handed down, stating that he “couldn’t do anything about it” due to his chronic unawareness.
Yeah, Pete. You had no clue. You had no reason to wonder how Reggie upgraded to a fully customized car from a pick-up truck. You had no reason to ponder the nature of the two agents – er, friends – that Bush was now bringing into the locker room.
And his finest defense to not bothering to monitor and maybe ask questions? That Reggie Bush somehow wasn’t a superstar yet to a degree that would’ve indicated he needed to be watched. “Reggie Bush wasn’t Reggie Bush” yet, according to Petey.
Yeah, Pete…he was only a Top-5 Heisman finalist who had just led the conference in all-purpose yards for the season. No reason to bother checking up on a guy like that while he’s got a new car, cash for trips to Vegas, and parents suddenly living around the corner in a new house they couldn’t have afforded if they lived to be a thousand.
It’s already at full-blown Lack of Institutional Control-level at this point. Ignorance doesn’t fly when it comes to your star players and monitoring. But what got U.S.C. bent over and rear-ended by the committee is the fact that there was absolutely no way they couldn’t have known. Bush registered the new car with the school’s auto information, as per school policy with students. No one in Compliance ever asked or checked…not even when Bush left the license plate line and the where-purchase line blank on the registration form.
And of course, Running Backs coach Todd McNair had direct knowledge of the situation when Lake – after being spurned by Bush in favor of marketing agent Mike Ornstein before the NFL Draft – called McNair’s office and told him of the situation, hoping that McNair would “persuade” Bush to either keep his end of the original agreement, or reimburse him for the funding he’d provided to that point (the clear threat being that Lake would be suing Bush otherwise, bringing to light the relationship and doing a Derek Vineyard job on the face of the school’s football program). Naturally, McNair never reported the conversation to the school’s Compliance Office, and also lied about the phone call’s existence or even knowing who Lloyd Lake was (though phone records, testimony, and even photographs demonstrate otherwise).
It’s all so juicy and delish, and that doesn’t even cover the section of the report about O.J. Mayo and his entourage being fully funded by agents, nor the section about U.S.C.’s recruiting violations.
Mind you, the university’s been handling the whole situation with the appropriate amount of remorse and class, claiming that their superiority is why the world’s out to get them and telling everyone who will listen that they plan to appeal the unjust sanctions. Instead, they ought to be grateful they weren’t given the full Death Penalty-esque Television Ban, an assessment the Committee stated to have strongly considered in light of the violations committed.
What I can’t believe no one is discussing is the degree of scumbags that Reggie Bush and his self-entitled parents are. It’s amazing. The guy blatantly and unabashedly accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal benefits under an equally illegal agreement to be represented in the future by two agents, then signs with a different agent prior to the draft, then refuses to re-pay any of the money given to him and his family until he was sued and the situation became public. And of course, he completely refused to cooperate with the NCAA’s request(s) for information or provide any exonerating information to corroborate his self-proclaimed “innocence.”
You were wrong if you always felt Bush was just a cocky, smug prick. He’s a self-entitled, self-absorbed, back-stabbing pile of shit in Adidas who hung his school, his ex-teammates, and ex-“business partners” out to dry.
Maybe schadenfreude is the wrong emotion on this one, but I just can’t help myself. They’ve been skirting the rules for years, merely getting caught with evidence on these situations. They allowed program access to rappers, thugs, murderers and agents in the name of upping the glam factor of the team, rather than protecting themselves from their seedy influence. And as a final “I-don’t-give-a-fuck” gesture to the NCAA and their ongoing investigation, they went and hired the greasiest, best-known rule-violator on the market to replace Carroll (who naturally claims he didn’t leave town because he knew the house was coming down, but rather because coaching the Seattle Seahawks is everyone’s dream opportunity).
In short, they didn’t pay attention to the lesson of Miami in the 90’s. So let yourself enjoy it. They earned it.
See No Weasel, Hear No Weasel…
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but some weird shit is going on, and no one with a press pass seems to care. You see, this coach down in Gainesville bid us all an emotional farewell, and then sort of not so much, and now he’s currently rolling along full-time in his office, and for some reason, the story’s being handled like some kind of posted “No Fishing” zone.
In the event you haven’t followed it, here’s the Butt-Cut’s Slimeline:
On 12/5 he was bent over and rear-ended by Saban and the Tide in front of everyone, as his famed spread shows its effectiveness at playing catch-up. The next morning, a news ticker posts a blurb about his hospital treatment for “Dehydration.” Which, of course, never made an ounce of sense. At all. This was left alone.
On 12/26, he “Resigns,” citing health, family, and faith as the critical priorities in his life. The world was further informed that God told him it was the right thing to do, and that his 18-year-old daughter was apparently huggably thrilled to have her daddy back. Depending on you cheer for, you either choked back tears or your lunch. Or, if you were a Gator recruit, you re-opened your recruitment and began evaluating other options (you know, just in case you didn’t want to play for Uber-coach Steve Addazio).
12/27 – Shockingly, after reports and statements from Florida verbals hinted that his best class yet may fall apart faster than you can say “poach,” Meyer has a press conference and explains that after being inspired by his players at practice, he now wants to go on sabbatical, but not actually “resign.” In fact, he’s reportedly told the recruits that he’ll absolutely be back by August. And now, he’s calling prospects left and right, and today informed ESPN that he plans to still have a significant role in the meantime.
This whole fucking thing reeks like a pig carcass, and for the life of me, I can’t believe that the media has decided to sit on its hands and not question some glaring issues.
Did he not like their initial replacement candidate pool? Is it possible The Chinless One’s ego couldn’t handle being out of the limelight this bowl season, and subsequently decided to star in his own self-serving Soap Opera? Or did he see that the Gators’ 2010 Recruiting Class was about to scatter like post light-switch cockroaches, and decide to put up a temporary “sabbatical” façade until after Signing Day? Frankly, I’m not sure which is more nauseating.
If it’s “A,” I hope he plans to coach until his corpse is being wheeled up and down the sidelines by Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy (The Penn State Business Model). Because even the legends don’t get to choose their successor, whether they think they made the school or not.
If it’s “B,” I’d hardly be surprised: This is the same guy whose prized pupil has always enjoyed showing the world how inspiring he is whenever there’s a nearby camera to broadcast it. Perhaps he wanted to beat off to his knee-jerk tribute montage, as well.
If it’s “C,” I’m even less shocked, yet twice as grated. I doubt you’ve forgotten how Omar Hunter’s concerns over rumors of Greg Mattison’s departure for Baltimore were poo-poo’d by Meyer as false..right up until Hunter signed his L.O.I., at which point the Pants-Load promptly inked his Ravens’ contract.
Or how Jevan Snead – who had previously been told that he would be the only Quarterback recruited that season by Florida – spotted Meyer on t.v. at one of Tim Tebow’s games, but was informed that Tebow was a “linebacker prospect.” Or any of the other sleazy recruiting tactics reported over the last few years.
What I’m itching to know is, why has no one asked him to explain himself? And instead of swallowing his idiotic, non sequitur first responses and dropping it, actually waited for the facts to be addressed? Here’s a start…..
How about tell us why it took three weeks of post-hospital deliberation, complete with doctors’ opinions and family heart-to-hearts (not to mention an apparent consultation with The Almighty Himself), yet only one happy-ass postseason practice to “change his mind?” This doesn’t have a palpable stench to anyone else? Isn’t there a potentially sleazy ethical situation that needs to either be eliminated from consideration or explored further?
And before I’m given another sanctimonious lecture about his health and family being “personal,” “private,” or a “family matter,” let me remind you that this was news he created all on his own. The circus was his doing, and I’d like to see him answer the real questions that are still lingering, because you can be damned sure that if this were Charlie Weis or Lane Kiffin, John Slanders and Mike Lupica wouldn’t be able to find a crimson pen and a microphone quickly enough. Watch how quickly reporters have let him off the hook at these Press Conferences without following up on his one-line blurbs – it’s like they’re scared of this guy or something. If Jim Gray still had his late-90’s interviewing fastball, he’d have picked this apart like a buzzard weeks ago.
Instead, though, we’re apparently going to sit back and play dumb. Maybe it’s what God wants us to do.
How the fuck…?
Sitting here this week awash in depression, shock, and utter disgust, I can’t get past the fact that we just lost at home – again – to a mediocre Naval Academy squad that likely couldn’t have taken out my high school team (Navy!!!) and followed it up by U.P.S.’ing it for Pitt.
And after drinking away most of the sorrows, you can’t help but keep asking just how the fuck we’re not better than we are. How the fuck did we load up a roster with multiple Top Ten recruiting classes and then lose to a Michigan team that’s now 1-6 in conference play? How the fuck is it possible that we have a better-than-50% chance of not scoring when we have a first down inside the 10? How the fuck was this staff able to string together two consecutive B.C.S. appearances and create arguably the best offense in school history, then backfill the roster with far better raw material, and be sitting here five years later with a very real chance of winning six games?
There’s not one answer, and there aren’t really any easy ones, but here’s The Can’s best stab at how the fuck we got here:
1 – The 2006 Recruiting Class
While this was probably most touted class the program had reeled in since Bob Davie’s earlier years (#6 in Scout’s Rankings), we’ve reached the point where we can pretty safely give this group a collective label of “bust.” Ironically, this class is quite reminiscent of some of Davie’s: Loaded with “stars,” lauded by the Tom Lemmings of the world, and filled with guys who don’t remotely seem to fit the big picture. While there have been some good players to come out of it, far more haven’t panned out, especially at critical positions.
The one position where we absolutely, positively needed a hit was at Quarterback, and to say we failed would be understating the matter galactically. Frazer and Jones were two headcase drama queens not remotely worth their press clippings, but with the added bonuses of being cancerous teammates who knocked shit from the table. Mind you, the alternative was a redneck soap opera of its own, and I’ve never wept that we bowed out of the Mitch Mustain Mama Drama. A glaring, blaring, motherfucker of failure.
Tailback was another critical miss, and much like recruiting a running quarterback who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from ten paces, I have to ask what the thought process was with our strategy. Don’t get me wrong – Aldridge was an absolute beast in high school, and I’m sure that the staff watched his highlights and envisioned a cross between Corey Dillon and Ahman Green (I sure as hell did). And while injuries have gone a long way towards keeping him from reaching his five-star potential, how useful is a 220-lb. bruiser when your plan is to run mostly one-back formations with zone-read runs that favor quicker, niftier backs? And I couldn’t even tell you where Munir Prince is these days. Missouri? SEMO? Hell with it, I’m not taking the time to look it up.
Further, failing to land a single studuseful receiver has been absolutely devastating for the team. I can’t believe more people don’t talk about this. George West and Barry Gallup are essentially M.I.A., Richard Jackson showed next to nothing and left town, and Robby Parris, while productive, is never going to be confused with Stovall or Samardzjia. Just one receiver the caliber of Tate and another in the range of Goodman or Walker would have made a huge difference in the offense to date. We weren’t close here, and it kills us to this day when we go 3, 4, and 5-wide.
And of course at the bottom of the stocking, Carufel and Reuland got yeast infections and left, Yeatman was a victim of Notre Dame’s draconian Residence Life policies, and Gaines/Gordon/Schmidt/Burkhart/Mullen/Wade arrived on campus and promptly disappeared.
The first full class a new coach recruits is generally his best – he has momentum, a new energy about the program, and the most mojo and fan support he’ll likely ever have during his tenure. And while it’s always critical from the standpoint of getting your era up and running, it was exponentially more so in Weis’ case, because as we all know by now Lionel Tyrone preceded him with the two worst classes in the school’s history (doing so consecutively before moving on to leave a heaping pile of bouncing rubble where The University of Washington’s football program used to be). We needed a home run, and we missed at the most critical positions. That’s why we’re probably still a year away on this rebuilding project, despite that fact that it’s Weis’ fifth year.
2 – Running Backs
The short of this is that we never replaced Darius Walker. We got a couple of big backs (Hughes, Aldridge), a speed back (Allen), and a guy that seems to have all the tools (Gray), and we have neverbeen remotely the same unit since #3 packed up early and headed to Rookie Free Agency (a bizarre event that was never fully explained). All are physically stronger, all but one likely have better top-end speed, but Walker’s vision and shiftiness are apparently the two most critical attributes for a back in Weis’ offense. The only one to even look close has been Allen, but the guy just hasn’t been durable or reliable enough to carry the load consistently. They each miss holes, blocks, and cutback lanes…and it’s enough to drive you insane. It’s possible that Theo Riddick, with his open-field skills and hands, is perfect for this system…but I doubt we’re going to find out.
3 – Defensive Identity Crisis
This one’s a bigger deal than anyone seems to bring up – we’ve had three totally different defensive schemes in the last four years.
We ran Minter’s 4-3/Cover 2 scheme for two seasons, which failed for a variety of reasons: Slow inside linebacker(s), complex and confusing assignment reads that slow down the pursuit, and the Travis Thomas Experiment. It wasn’t very good, but things may have gone differently with a better front seven and Walls/Gray/Blanton/McNeil at the corners.
After the Sugar Bowl blowout went down and Weis wanted to get the band back together, in came Corwin Brown and the 3-4. We recruited guys like Williams and Neal and wanted them to play Nose Tackle and 3-4 End. Opposing coaches used this as bait to steer away top interior linemen, telling them of the boredom of soaking up blockers while the Linebackers rushed the passer, made the tackles, and banged the cheerleaders…meaning adios to Trattou and Hunter (stick me in pee-hole, those were huge losses…), as well as most other elite tackle prospects.
One year later, in came Tenuta, and back to the 4-3 we go……only we’re trying to do it with the aforementioned 320-lb. Ian Williams playing a Tackle position where gap penetration is critical, and Kerry Neal at End, despite the fact that he’s a far different type of player than that position really requires. And of course, we’ve been forced to throw true frosh and sophs like K.L.M., Te’o, Fleming, and Johnson into the mix, as well.
I don’t like Tenuta’s blitz-crazy tendencies, and I do think many of his decisions have killed us this season. It’s insane to regularly rush seven defenders on 3rd and 11 (or damn near every other play, for that matter). But I also know that any defensive system looks better with players who have more than a year’s worth of experience in it and any semblance of appropriate, experienced personnel.
4 – The Offensive Philosophy
This last one pains me, because when Weis’ offense is clicking, it’s an absolute thing of beauty. Receivers get open in all areas of the field, Tight Ends get isolated in huge mismatches, and Backs are all alone for checkdowns on nearly every play. And it can be used in any number of ways, such as explosive downfield plays that quickly bury inferior teams (Navy, Air Force, Purdue, Stanford from 2005-2006), efficient two-minute drills, and even for slowed-up ball control schemes (U.S.C. 2005). It’s really a great system with the right players in place, and Weis is a very, very savvy and creative play-caller.
But what we have to admit at this point are some simple, undeniable facts:
- Weis has Mike Martz-itis. He loves his Quarterbacks, and he’ll throw 80% of the time whether we’re running effectively or not. For every 12-yard gain Armando Allen rips off, there will be 5 passes. For every two plays we line up with a standard pro set and grind out 10 yards between the tackles, we’ll then spread the field with five-wide and sling it for quarters at a time. And every time we get 2nd and 2, 3rd and 1, or anywhere inside the goalline, you’d damn well better believe we’re about to start inexplicably hurling fade passes or a play-action, instead of narrowing the splits on the offensive line and bulldozing forward. Can you even begin to guess how many times this has turned First and Goal at the 3 into 3rd and 12? It’s like once a game, right? Someone should find out.
- We don’t run-block well. At all. I don’t know if this is an issue of talent or coaching or practice. But for whatever reason, defenses have learned that they can drop seven into coverage and leave four down linemen, and there’s not much to worry about. Not only are we not going to stick with the running game, but there’s an excellent chance that five offensive linemen will lose the battle to four defenders, or that a back will miss the hole or the cutback lane, and that even if the first four are cleared, no one’s getting downfield to spring a hole in the secondary and break a long run that will force D.C.’s to keep more defenders in the box. I’ve been told that we don’t hit enough in practice, I’ve been told our Strength and Conditioning program doesn’t develop our power to the fullest, and others will tell you that a finesse style of offense is simply going to give you finesse linemen. My guess is that we spend so much time working on scheme and assignment, that we don’t have enough room to focus on lining up and drilling the piss out of the mouthy bitch lined up across from you. Which brings me to…
- The weekly gameplans are just too complicated. Or maybe “cute” is a better word. College Football allows for 20 hours of preparation a week. And invariably, we’re going to come out and show about 30 different formations and run about 30 different plays out of each. And maybe that’s why it looks like we’ve got players in pass protection who think too much. And maybe that’s why when we reach the red zone, we have about a thousand play variations that might or might not work, instead of several that almost certainly will. This just doesn’t seem to consistently work with the college game with the degree of turnover and inexperience you’ll have each season, meaning you’re probably always going to have a good 9/10/11-win season as your apex, followed by a couple of 6-8 win seasons as a baseline.
So now, we’re at a crossroads where it’s time to make a decision about where we’re headed. And unfortunately, I just don’t see how the program can afford to retain Weis any longer. As last season ended, Swarbrick made the amateurunwise decision to remain silent on our coaching situation for a week that seemed to last an eternity, lending some credence to the rumors that a change was being considered. Consequently, not only did we miss out on a few prospects to close the recruiting dash last February, but the offseason and preseason stories became all about Weis and his jumbo hot seat, a nugget not lost on opposing coaches who have been chasing the same top recruits as the Irish. We’ve lost out on several recruits because of this uncertainty over who would be their coach in a year’s time, and have several more that have yet to commit to us for precisely this reason.
We may yet close with a good class, but it won’t be an elite one. And there will be key holes at positions that will become critical to fill in a year’s time, meaning that even if you do have faith that Weis can run a top college program in the right scenario (and I do), we simply can’t afford another full year of rumors, speculation, and general media noise regarding his job security. It’ll just put us further behind the Top 10-15 programs’ rosters, and we need to stabilize the wheel now if we have any intention of competing for championships in the next five years.
And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that can happen without a change at the top.
B.C.S. Advocates Are Full of Shit
Scratch and sniff the ramblings of any supporter of the current college football postseason format and you’ll learn that the numero uno reason that the B.C.S. – or some other non-playoff scenario – remains the best option is that it preserves the sanctity of the regular season. “College football already has a playoff system! It’s called the regular season! Add a playoff at the end, and you’ll make the regular season meaningless.”
That’s why B.C.S. advocates are full of shit.
The notion that the regular season would somehow become devoid of relevance and excitement and that it already represents an in loco playoff system in and of itself is so patently and craptastically absurd that I want to slam my hand in a fucking car door.
But, as the old saying goes, never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Not only can you better appreciate his position, but you’re also a mile away from him and you’ve still got the sorry bastard’s shoes. So let’s try it on for shits and giggles…
This contention, in essence, is that your average fall Saturday won’t have the same do-or-die drama that it currently does, and the games will somehow mean less if more than two teams complete the season with a chance to play for the championship. As Exhibit A for their argument, they present the NFL, in which a team like the Arizona Cardinals can play barely-.500 football over 16 games and still come within seconds of taking home the Lombardi Trophy at the end of it all. Or similarly, we also had a mighty 8-8 San Diego Chargers squad sneak in the postseason’s back door and end up all the way in the Conference Championship last season. Detractors rightly raise the point that for eight weeks out of the regular season, the Chargers performance on the field – and those of the opponents who beat them – meant virtually nothing.
The problem with this idea is that the professional and college football have about as much in common as apples and lawn chairs.
The NFL has 32 teams – 12 of which earn the opportunity to play in the postseason in a single-elimination shot at the Super Bowl. In other words, over a full third of the league (38%!) reaches the postseason in their respective conference.
However, the college game has 119 teams at the Division 1-A level, meaning that even if a proposed 16-team playoff (my favorite idea) went into effect, roughly 13% of the nation would have a shot at the title. Drop that to 8 teams, and you’re talking about less than 7%. Do morons really believe that if you have to perform better than 93% of the country over the course of 12 games, the weekly intensity and significance would somehow disappear? This is really the argument?
One more thing: I’m going to flip this argument on its head and show that a playoff system would actually increase the aggregate relevance and excitement of college football’s regular season. By a longshot.
Even if you hold to the inherently false belief that the regular season is so exciting because it represents its own elimination-style playoff on a weekly basis (which is a load of chimp excrement – explain how 2-loss L.S.U. wasn’t “eliminated” in 2007, or how Oklahoma and Florida State previously played for titles over teams with the same record who defeated them), it’s quite simply Bizarro Math. The reality is that by adding a playoff, you’d have far more games that actually mean something throughout the entirety of the season.
In the final week of the year, we had exactly two relevant games: Oklahoma and Missouri, in which the Sooners heroically ran up the score to earn more computer points than Texas to hold on to their #2 spot (how fucking stupid does that sound?), and Florida against Alabama. U.S.C. – 11-1 and arguably the nation’s strongest team – engaged in a meaningless contest against UCLA. Boston College and Virginia Tech played a conference championship game that garnered lower ratings than the average episode of Herman’s Head.
Were Division 1-A..er, I mean the FBS..not the only level of football from pee-wee to pro scared of a playoff system, the season’s final week would’ve brought us four do-or-die, shot-at-the-title games instead of two. And instead of holding relevance for four programs (Florida, ‘Bama, Oklahoma, Texas), a whopping ten fanbases (by adding in the still-in-the-would-be-mix U.S.C., Oregon State, Missouri, Virginia Tech, B.C., Texas Tech) would have found themselves glued to the tube, as their team’s chances to play for a title all hinged on the results of that weekend (under the obvious assumption that conference champs would earn playoff bids).
For more empirical evidence, back up just one week earlier and see that five games had any relevance whatsoever to the National Championship picture: Texas vs. A & M (‘horns needed to win and have the Sooners lose), Florida vs. F.S.U. (low-rent, butt-cut-wearing, lying scumbag Urban Meyer needed to avoid a loss to remain #1), Bama vs. Auburn, U.S.C. vs. Notre Dame (Trojans needing to win and get a little help from Oklahoma or Florida or Bama), and Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State. All were do-or-die games for at least one of the participants, with five teams still reasonably vying for a chance to play for it all.
Here again, were it not for the existence of the collusive, monopolizing, Nazi-esque B.C.S., 11 games that week would have held eliminator-style relevance to the championship picture, as additionally West Virginia/Pitt, Cincy/Syracuse, Virginia Tech/Virginia, Missouri/Kansas, Texas Tech/Baylor, Oregon/Oregon State all featured teams (in bold) whose shot at a title likewise would have depended on the result of their game.
And we’re panicky over the fact that we’d have at least twice as many games each week that help determine the championship? We really don’t think more games that matter each week = a more exciting and interesting regular season? How much more fun would it be to have more than double the number of teams in do-or-die games each week than we currently see? And how much more thrilling would 3-4 weeks of a real postseason be versus the shit sandwich known as “bowl season?”
Keep this in mind next time you hear that Machiavellian dictator Jim Delaney (who, like other B.C.S. advocates, is full of shit) tell you that in the current system of college football, “every game matters.” No, they don’t. But they could.
Lane Kiffin compliments wait staff on meal, pisses off S.E.C.
AP – Goodlettsville, TN
Recently hired Tennessee football coach/massive pariah Lane Kiffin sparked controversy yet again this week while lunching at a local meat-and-three eatery in central Tennessee, referring to his shrimp salad po-boy as “an excellent sandwich.”
“Who the hell is he to come marching in here with his toot-sweet, California superiorness (sic) acting like he knows the first thing about shrimp?!” fired off Chef’s Market waitress Atta Mae Hines – a Gainesville, FL native currently residing in Nashville – who served Kiffin and staff their meals. “Everyone knows that shrimp ain’t even fresh by the time they get to my café, and to get ‘em while they’re good, you need to actually spend some time on the southern coast! ‘I enjoyed it – thank you,’ my ass, motherfucker.”
“Sounds like somebody ought to bother picking up a cookbook before shooting off his ignorant trap in front of God and everyone,” added ESPN columnist and worldly philanthropist Pat Forde.
Equally despondent was Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley.
“Seriously……has this man even set foot near the Gulf Region? Perhaps he’d like to regale us with his own personal experiences in the shrimp boat industry. SEC bylaws exist to expressly prohibit this sort of sleazy posturing, and the appropriate action right now is for Coach Kiffin, his staff, his family, and all known associates to make a public apology.”
ESPN’s Ivan Maisel – born and raised in Mobile, Alabama – decried Kiffin’s comments as “dishonestly manipulative.”
“There’s hubris and then there’s chutzpah, and Lane Kiffin seems to think that the conference code of ethics doesn’t apply to him. In three months on the job, he’s offered scholarships to high school players in both South Carolina and Georgia, openly suggested to various recruits that U.T. was the best place for their future, and now he’s pontificating about seafood from some damnable, faux-ivory tower in the mid-south. Kickoff with Western Kentucky may be in September, but his tenure’s already 0-1,” explained Maisel.
Kiffin would later enrage fans and officials at the University of Mississippi by under-handedly telling the parents of Desoto, TX prospect Adrian White that Knoxville is a “terrific place to tailgate.”
Dipshit Dr. Detroit at it again…
That smug turd Mitch Assbalm took a break from writing sappy books for old women and broken-souled, emasculated men this week, and decided to gently gripe about Notre Dame’s wasteful spending and misplaced priorities in one of his standard “Let me provide my insightful (inciteful?), critiquing wisdom to a popular subject” hatchet jobs commentaries.
Selected last in Kickball for a still-standing middle school record of 367 times between 1969 and 1971, Mitch has apparently had just about enough of the glamour and bright lights that now consume the arena of college sports recruiting and decries the “the theatricality of it all.”
High school athletes now take over an auditorium or a cafeteria — often during school hours — and play a coy little game with a bunch of hats while reporters record every pathetic minute. Will he pick the LSU hat? The USC hat? The Michigan hat?
You can just see him having flashbacks to 1976, as an unpopular, 5’4” social pariah with no friends outside of the Physics Club – fresh off the morning’s usual round of swirlies and getting stuffed into a locker by the Women’s Lacrosse team – angrily eating his pudding while some bastard athlete classmate walks around campus free of such burdens.
This vicious cycle apparently did a second number on Mitch’s flailing psyche decades later, when he inexplicably attended another of these damnable events as an adult.
It was for Robert (Tractor) Traylor, a prep basketball star in Detroit who did the TV/entourage thing, chose the University of Michigan, and later became part of a recruiting scandal that led to his coach’s firing and the school’s NCAA probation.
I lasted five minutes at his event, left, went to the school library, and found a kid going to the same university on an academic scholarship, all alone, doing homework.
Heh. Did you offer him some of your pudding, Mitch?
Of course, any Mitchie Albom column wouldn’t be worth its weight in corn-packed shit without a thinly veiled swipe at the Imperial Elitists in South Bend.
A linebacker from Hawaii named Manti Te’o made his announcement to much fanfare. He chose Notre Dame. The reason?
‘Their recruiting coordinator, Brian Polian, flew here every week from South Bend,’ T’eo told the Honolulu Advertiser, ‘and that just shows me his determination and dedication.’
Really? It shows me Notre Dame has enough money to send a man commuting to Hawaii week after week at a time when many families can’t afford to pay tuition. How about taking that airfare and giving it instead to a need-based scholarship?
Oooooohhhhhh, very slick, Mitchell……….mind you, the article finds no room to discuss the fiscal policy of a school much closer in proximity to his Detroit ivory tower office – the one just outside Ann Arbor’s finest trailer parks – and their planned Big House renovation.
Indeed, the several thousand dollars in airfare spent to recruit a highly qualified student athlete to study and play at the University of Notre Dame was a shameless, wasteful use of capital that should have been spent on soup kitchens. By contrast, the University of Michigan’s planned $226 million expansion of college football’s already-largest stadium is an economic model of progressiveness and dedication to improving the welfare of the Wolverine student.
Paraphrasing Bacchus, this anomaly is known as the ESPN Mathematical Wormhole.
And the fact that Mitch’s first profitable career foray into sports non-fiction just happened to be two books extolling the virtues of Bo Schembechler and later, The Fab Five?
Well, that’s just one happy-ass, fucking coincidence.
Mitch, I’ll presume that you’re a reasonably smart guy. Hell, you managed to dream up an utterly crap-filled, made-for-television storyline that garnered employment for Michael Imperioli and Ellen Burstyn (apparently Lindsay Wagner was booked that week). Twice!!! So I’m going to offer you a few simple facts that may help you make sense of the Greek Tragedy that you seem to feel college recruiting has become…
As has been discussed ad nauseam, major college sports are huge business. B.C.S. programs earn anywhere from $20 million on the low end (Vandy, Mississippi State) to nearly $70 million on the high end (Texas, Notre Dame) each year in aggregate revenues. That money is then used by the school to train and pay for top professors, quality educational facilities, improving the academic and research infrastructure, women’s sports (that oughta perk up the P.C. dolt in you, Mitch) and – ready for this? – need-based scholarships to deserving students all over the world.
Spending a fractional percentage of those revenues to recruit aspiring student-athletes is necessary to maintain that funding each year. It’s called a return on one’s investment. I’m confident most college grads are familiar with this concept – even those who majored in journalism.
And if that phenomenon happens to bring along with it an admittedly silly amount of fanfare – fanfare which creates thousands of jobs, millions of dollars in consumer spending, and gives national attention to the occasional small public high school that happens to have a big-time student-athlete prospect that year, well……..I guess we’re just going to have to find a way to survive in this brave new world.
Even if it means we have to bitch about it.