Equilibrium? Balance? A fan craves not these things

The introduction you do not need to read.

I am a fan of dualism. I dig mind/body, I am sweet on starkly evil vs. purest good, I liked the Jedi and the Sith. Every tattoo I’ve gotten has been in twos, neverminding that I currently have five. Like the waxing moon my hamburger’s gradual crescent shaped disintegration is heralded by the cyclical appearance and disappearance of french fries the color of the sun. I enjoy good prose, but write bad prose. I’ve read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and I maybe even understood the parts about torque.

But I also didn’t like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s not really a narrative. It’s a collection of half crazed and poorly organized philosophical ramblings that may be valid and crucial to our understanding of Western thought, but they are boring. The book’s basic message is don’t be just a scientist or artist: be both. Well, that’s nice. And boring.

You know what else is theoretically nice? College football balance. You know what’s not boring? USC football dominating everything in its path, cruelly crushing the life from all those who would recruit from the Golden State, acknowledging few, yielding to none, laughing the way any good villain ought to laugh, deep and assured and terrifying and impossible not to admire, and definitely not like the guy in the PG-13 movie everyone’s really hoping makes it happen. I want USC to be like the guy in the rated R movie. You know, the guy you’re not sure whether or not you like yet. You’re not sure where he’s coming from.

“I’ll have a scotch on the rocks, please. Any scotch will do, as long as it’s not a blend, of course. Uh, single malt. Glenlivet, Glenfiddich perhaps. Maybe a Glengow… Any Glen.”

So I will admit that as much as I enjoy dualism, harmonious balance and the universal forces of natural equilibrium, I do not want them in my city. Where am I going with this?

Where is he going with this?

UCLA recruiting has finally caught up to the fact that it takes place in Los Angeles, epicenter of one of the nation’s most fertile high school football scenes. Sometime in the past few weeks the Bruins took a look around their environs and realized, “Hey, we’re kinda in the middle of something nice. Maybe we should, like, recruit here? And competently?”

This is unacceptable. Why is this happening? Who leaked the memo? Goddamn shitfuck, Scooter Libby. This isn’t the CIA. This shit is actually important.

In which the author gets his shit together. And stops using profanity.

So in the span of a few days UCLA gathered eight verbal commitments from the Los Angeles area, with seven of them coming in one 24 hour period. At least two of those players – Datone Jones and Rahim Moore – had offers from USC. Another is E.J. Woods, who’s kind of a big deal. Moore and Woods are members of the Rivals.com 100 to Watch list (Moore is also a member of a similar list on Scout.com). I would’ve been quite happy to get any and all of the three. The rest are, to me at least, unknowns. General consensus holds that they are solid prospects but that the players whom USC was interested in are four to five star guys; in other words, out of eight commits the Bruins landed three proto-elite players.

(At this stage of recruiting there are very few high schoolers who are past the proto-elite stage. Former Moorpark and current St. Bonaventure RB Darrell Scott is one of those. More on him later.)

Now, let’s say you were a not very objective observer. You have already beaten me by several magnitudes in objectivity. Anyway, let’s just assume you were not objective but objective enough because you were… say… an alien bent on world domination. You are interested in all human matters insofar as they pertain to military defense, industrial infrastructure, atmospheric suitability, the raw number and mass of natural resources you could drain, how many valuable-as-chattel humans would survive the first harsh months of slavery, etc. You know. Normal alien thoughts.

Football recruiting is important, sure, but in terms of world domination concerns it must rank somewhere in the 12th to 13th percentile, right behind our capacity for higher thought. So what I’m saying is picture yourself as that alien. And while we’re at it toss in a friend to help balance out your green skinned objectivity.

Ready? Go.

Mistaken identity results in record breaking $1.8 trillion Sun Belt Conference, AT&T, AOL-Time Warner merger

NEW ORLEANS – Both the NYSE and NASDAQ received boosts yesterday as unexpected news ushered in a close to the day’s trading: after mistaking the Sun Belt Conference for a telecommunications company, industry giants AT&T and AOL-Time Warner followed up their error by merging with the SBC in a $1.8 trillion dollar deal, the largest in history.

Above: two teams that are probably in the Sun Belt Conference.

“We are extraordinarily excited at the possibilities of this new partnership,” SBC commissioner Wright Waters said from his Popeye’s Chicken & Biscuits-based office on Canal Street.

“The universities and programs representing the SBC are institutions of excellence. Though we have little traditional history in telecommunications or mass media, we have always excelled at meeting challenges and exceeding expectations. We expect the best of ourselves, and we now have $1.8 trillion reasons to believe our expectations.”

Waters continued: “This is awesome. So awesome. Yes.”

This deal is the first merger between multi-billion dollar corporations and a college football mid-major conference, with far reaching ramifications for both the telecommunications industry and the Bowl Championship Series. Though most experts were hesitant to predict any quarterly or fiscal year fluctuations resulting from the enormous merger, the mood was one of cautious confusion.

Minor delay

Life keeps popping up. Wah wah, says my Grecian chorus.

For the people who enjoy this blog, new stuff is coming. For the people who hate me, new stuff is coming. In the meantime…

If you are from Baton Rouge do not watch the above. Also, if you’re from Baton Rouge, ha-ha.

(Non-judgemental aside: yes, that banner on the podium says JESUS IS THE CHAMPION OF CHAMPIONS. As Kurt Warner once said, Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah JE-sus, sign that LOI for Pete Carroll!)

Fucking USC signs another goddamned top-ranked recruiting class

LOS ANGELES, CA – The USC Dickwads capped their fifth straight double digit win season under head liar Pete Carroll by signing another goddamned ridiculous top-ranked recruiting class on National Letter of Intent to Sell Your Soul to the Condoms Day.

Sources say Carroll, above, uses the same methods for both cheerleaders and blue chip recruits: charm and Rohypnol.

Though the Florida Gators were ranked number one by both Scout and Rivals – two of the biggest recruiting services in the nation – media giant ESPN proclaimed USC’s class as tops. And that means validity for the attention starved and little known Trojans.

“Scout blah blah Rivals blah blah blah. We’re ESPN. [Rivals recruiting analyst] Jeremy Crabtree can lick my sack and grab me a danish, because what we say gets heard by a million people for each of their manic-obsessive recruiting freaks,” Scouts Inc. national director of recruiting Tom Luginbill said.

Luginbill continued: “The Trojans really added firepower offensively and defensively with running backs Joe McKnight and Marc Tyler, and defensive end Everson Griffen and linebacker Chris Galippo. We’re gonna go out on a limb and say that USC is going to be really good at football for the next few years.”

“You can’t stop watching ESPNU, can you you poor fuck? Today you are at my mercy. I laugh at the piecemeal destruction of your soul,” he added.

Louisiana State recruiting website Tiger Rag’s Matt DeVille was not surprised by ESPN’s ranking of Southern Cal’s recruiting class, noting that the list of gullible blue chip recruits foolish enough to sign with Sodom and Gomorrah looked “like a death row of our best, our brightest stars. Those poor fools.”

McKnight, a Louisiana native, chose the Trojans over LSU on signing day.

According to DeVille, “Carroll can lie like a greased up weasel in a corner. I’m talking those Pixar weasels, the really talkative ones. Add that to the knobcockery going on between ‘The Worldwide Leader in Sports’ and USC and you get a top-ranked recruiting class.'”

DeVille cited USC’s running back situation as evidence that the nation’s best recruits appear to be “on fucking crack and glue and illusions made of stupidity and cotton candy, goddamn shitass, what the fuck was McKnight thinking?”, adding that Carroll’s prowess at selling his program’s infernal temptations have damned more souls than all of Hollywood.

“Just think about it,” said DeVille. “You’ve got five star running backs like Stafon Johnson, CJ Gable, Allen Bradford. Add in four stars like Emmanuel Moody and Michael Coleman. And they sign the top two rated running backs in McKnight and Tyler? And another four star guy named Broderick Green? And their starter is probably going to be redshirt senior Chauncey Washington? Is Carroll telling these kids USC gets four balls on offensive plays now? Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They’re the same face! Doesn’t anybody notice this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”

NCAA officials confirmed that USC’s recruiting day haul makes them eligible for at least three more years of juvenile malpropisms, preserving the nation’s ability to refer to the Trojans as “SUC”, “Toejams”, “Condumbs” and “stupid shithead Gucci fucks”.

A break from the regularly scheduled tastelessness

Is tastelessness a word? Too many alveolar fricatives in one semantic unit.

I’ve been growing out my facial hair since USC lost to UCLA in the beginning of December. It’s just something I do: don’t shave from game one until whenever the Trojans lose, and once they do lose immediately begin a new beard on Sunday. A mourning beard. An Asian mourning beard, so a sparse mourning beard.

If USC advances to a bowl game and wins, I don’t shave until Signing Day. BCS title game? Not until the NFL Draft. So Signing Day it was!

(Boooo.)

I’ve also been growing my hair out. The European cities I was stuck in during the summer and fall did nay believe in providing a buzz at 5 units of currency. Now: I’ve been shaving my own head since I was 14, and I’d be damned if I was going to pay 15 euros to have someone else spend ten minutes on something I could do in five minutes, so grow it out I did. It was extremely weird having hair, and I looked forward to giving myself a mohawk and dyeing it cardinal and gold in anticipation of the Fiesta Bowl.

(Boooo.)

After the UCLA debacle and the Michigan stomping I set my sights on Feb. 7: National Letter of Intent day. This was set in stone. Diverging from the chosen path would result in horror upon horror and evil too evil to be described except by using a superfluous “evil”. Don’t mess with a streak, etc. etc.

I messed with the streak last Friday. This was me before…

Fear my intense googly eyed hairy stare.

This was me between…

I look like I know what I’m doing, I know.

And this is me now.

Gravity, meet thy doom.

Normally I’d reserve this post’s spot for something about recruiting. It is, after all, National Letter of Intent day, and USC is hauling in some good ones. I was all ready to do an epic fifteen page long David Foster Wallace imitation about a week spent on the recruiting trail with Pete Carroll. I had an entire footnote prepared about the kind of creepy Triumph of the Will vibe you get when recruits are cheered by an entire stadium/arena. I had footnotes on the footnotes about belly dancers at “official visit” dinners at the Papadakis Taverna. I planned to use made up mathematical formulas named after obscure G.I. Joe characters to illustrate the essential chaos of recruiting. Instead, this post is about me shaving my beard and giving myself a mohawk before the date I’m allowed to do so, a serious transgression of arbitrary but cruelly effective boundaries the mere thought of which make me twitch my thumb towards my mouth, feet already curling into fetal position. If you’ve ever met a sports-obsessed freak (or, more likely, if you are one), then you know that screwing with a streak is the surest way to screw with whatever semblance of balance you might have.

Why did I do this? Because Friday was the last day of chemotherapy for my older brother, and why the hell not? It’s a celebration, bitches. With mohawks. Mohawk. Whatever.

“And I’m Ron Burgundy. Go fuck yourself, cancer.”

Nutt’s plan to “surge” into Mustain household with 20,000 Razorback fans met with skepticism, Senate opposition

SPRINGDALE, AR – New polls are showing an abysmal 13 percent approval rating for University of Arkansas head coach Houston Nutt’s latest plan to “surge” 20,000 Razorback supporters into the home of former quarterback Mitch Mustain in an effort to keep the embattled Springdale household from succumbing to sectarian pressures.

Nutt, center, explains the principles behind his “surge” plan.

After former Springdale High head coach Gus Malzahn was fired from his position as Arkansas offensive coordinator, Mustain asked to be released from his scholarship with the Razorbacks. The entire state was thrown into turmoil and, though school officials strongly oppose the use of the term, civil war now seems inevitable.

Barry Sanders switches commitment from NFL Hall of Fame to Meyer-led Florida

GAINESVILLE, FL – Florida head coach Urban Meyer notched another victory Saturday when legendary running back Barry Sanders decided to switch his commitment from the NFL Hall of Fame to the defending national champion Gators, marking the eighth time this season a recruit has chosen Florida after a previous agreement with another institution.

Sanders, center, accepting the MVP award at the Army All-American game in San Antonio, TX. At the time Sanders was firmly committed to the NFL Hall of Fame.

“Coach [Meyer] convinced me the University of Florida is the right place for me. I mean no disrespect to the Hall of Fame, the city of Canton, the state of Ohio or anyone else, but I had to do what was right for me. I couldn’t sleep for a week straight, but when I made my decision I felt completely at ease with myself. I talked to my family and they said that I needed to do what was best for me,” Sanders said in a press conference aired on CSTV. The 38 year old member of the NFL 1990s All-Decade Team couldn’t suppress a smile when he put on an orange and blue Florida hat.

Recruitingasm ’07: Faked it.

I tried to tell former USC offensive line recruit and current Florida commit James Wilson that communication was the foundation to any strong relationship. I really did. He shrugged it off as if my point was so obvious it didn’t even need exposition, assured me his word was as strong as oak and then proceeded to flatten my poor heart by switching to the Gators today.

Yesterday. Whatever. Point is: boo.

Wilson is a road grader and a consensus five star linemen with both Scout and Rivals. He’s also from Florida. It’s tough to lure a kid away from his momma (sources say mother Wilson wanted him close to home, and who could blame her?) and the hometown champs, but it’s even tougher when that kid is 6’5″, 305 lbs. of snarling man-sled. Because then he can beat you senseless if you tell him he’s doing the wrong thing, and what was that about strong as oak?

Apparently the cracks started appearing when Wilson was in San Antonio for the Army All-American game, where by all accounts he had a great week of practicing and playing. The place was littered with USC recruits so I know he was surrounded by sensible people. Mayhaps he might have witnessed something unsavory there that unsettled him a bit? Though I’ve no idea why Notre Dame’s crude display of knobbery would have weakened Wilson’s resolve to head west, I will take this time to nonetheless blame the Irish for all my misery.

I can’t really be all that mad at Wilson. During their contemporaneous playing days at Nease High, he blocked for fellow man-sled Tim Tebow, the quarterback/hammer set to lead Florida to wherever the hell Florida’s going. Tebow’s dad’s his pastor, apparently. And that whole want-to-be-close-to-the-family thing, I guess that’s okay. But it still stings lemony-fresh.

This marks the umpteenth time in two years that USC has struck out on sun eclipsing offensive linemen from out of state: Andre Smith (Alabama), Stephen Schilling (Washington), Sam Young (Florida), Anthony Davis (New Jersey), etc. Every single one of these kids, with the slight exception of Young, looked like very good bets to head to Los Angeles. Every single one of them left me clenching my spleen in agony.

It appears the Trojans are aiming for a home run (yes, I hate that metaphor too but I’m feeling lazy and bitter right now) whenever they venture out of state for the big uglies, and in the process they may have lost focus on some in-state gems. Case in point: Matt Summers-Gavin, who many thought would be a sure thing in cardinal and gold after fine showings during the recruiting camp circuit.

Is this going to mean that USC won’t claim its fifth consecutive recruiting title? No, the Trojans’ll do that. But the EA Sports NCAA Football fanatic in me wants them all, and anything less means my childish need for pure and utter domination goes unsated.

Clausen spermatozoa headline Rivals.com’s early look at Class of ’26 recruits

By Jeremy Crabtree, Rivals.com National Analyst and Editor

The 2007 National Letter of Intent Day is coming up soon, but Rivals.com is already looking ahead to the gridiron prep stars of the future. Our experts have broken down the situational film and the clinical data and they all have one thing to say: a Clausen will still be the king of high school football… in 2026.

In fact, because the Class of ’26 is nineteen years away the only viable candidates we’ve found so far turn out to be the 290 million spermatozoa of Jim Clausen, father of football stars Rick, Casey and Jimmy. The first two played for the Tennessee Volunteers, and Jimmy has already garnered Heisman buzz from other Clausen family members before he’s even taken a snap for the University of Notre Dame.

One of the estimated 290 million Clausen spermatozoa Rivals.com has picked to be the top recruit of 2026.

Hey Jenny Slater knows who’s who when the revolution comes

Doug’s been keeping tabs, and with five immaculately devastaing posts he says to the college football world: “You know who you are.” You may not agree with the entirety of his list of the 50 Most Loathsome People in College Football (f’rinstance, Colin Cowherd ought to be classified as more loathsome than #35, and I don’t really care about the inclusion of the nearly autistic Georgia “fanatic” BuLLdawg at #39) (also, I just linked to the top ten so click around a bit for the rest), but you have to admire the thoroughness of this compilation. It feels right, mainly because while reading it you threw up a little bit. In your mouth.

Acid… reflux… incapacitating us…

I’m a fan of Doug. He writes with the proper mixture of frustration, outrage, glee, malice, what-the-fuck-was-that, joy and utter confusion that is the birth right of every college football fan. (See #8 on his list.) As I mentioned already, Doug is one of those up for a 2006 College Football Blogger Award. Three, actually.

Did I say I’m a fan of Doug? Doug can go to Hell, that primadonna.