Well, what can I say about this past weekend except I shouldn't have watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" Friday night -- everything I needed to know about what was going to go down the following afternoon was right in there.
Except when you get right down to it, the above scene, iconic though it may be, is insufficient -- and entirely too simplistic -- to accurately portray Georgia's misery in this rivalry, particularly when there's a far more apt metaphor in the very same TV special. I mean, yeah, Charlie Brown gets the ball whipped away from him at the last second every single time, which is embarrassing enough, but you'll notice nobody is ever around to watch it; the humiliation is at least a dark secret shared only between him and Lucy. To declare that "Lucy = Florida" also doesn't work -- while Lucy and the Gators are both bitches who wear blue and aren't nearly as hot as they fancy themselves, that statement implies that Georgia's chances for success are entirely in Florida's hands, which, no matter what Bulldog Nation may be thinking in its most desperate moments, isn't true either.
No, the better metaphor is "Great Pumpkin = equal footing in the Georgia-Florida rivalry." More obscure, I know, and definitely more abstract, but sometimes to make sense of cosmic absurdity like this you gotta be willing to try and wrap your brain around something challenging. Every year, we think it's coming; every year we think that if we just believe enough, it will reveal itself to us and, out of moral obligation, reward us for our seemingly unending persecution in its name. OK, I just totally fucking freaked myself out by sussing out that the Great Pumpkin is a metaphor for the Second Coming -- seriously, Charles Schultz, way to blow a brother's mind on what is otherwise a day of perfectly festive debauchery -- but all that being said, we believe, it doesn't show, and we get publicly humiliated for our faith all over again.
I believed. Oh, boy howdy, did I believe. I believed even after Aaron Murray got picked off on the game's very first play from scrimmage, believed even when Florida's previously moribund offense started gathering steam, believed even when we went into halftime down 21-7. Because look! We roared back after halftime and went on a 17-3 run to tie things up, and then, when Florida scored a relatively rapid-fire TD that put them back on top, we went right back down the field to tie it up again and, just for good measure, held on Florida's final drive of regulation and successfully forced overtime. All the trappings of that rare amazing Georgia victory were there: More than 30 points against a very good Gator defense? Check. Great QB play? After a miserable first half, Aaron Murray settled down in the second, going 13-of-21 for 198 yards, two TDs and no turnovers, looking once again like the stunningly poised player we'd seen over the first eight games. Confident squad? By the time Georgia tied it up with four and a half minutes left in regulation, our guys were jumping all over the place. The defense couldn't wait to get out on the field and make a stop; the offense looked hungry to get out there and take a stab at getting the winning score.
But obviously we didn't. Yeah, some of it comes down to inferior play -- the turnoverpalooza in the first half, f'rinstance, without which we might have been up by two scores and simply handing the ball off to Caleb King and Washaun Ealey to see how much clock, and how much of Urban Meyer's soul, they could grind down. Some of it also comes down to inexplicable coaching -- we were lucky enough that the Mikey Henderson "One and Done" play worked the first time three years ago, so did we really think we were gonna outsmart Florida's secondary with it a second time, particularly with a QB who I'm not sure has hit a fade to the end zone all season?
Some of it, though, I'm struggling to justify with any word other than "luck." Take these four situations:
Trey Burton fumbles at the Florida 14 and Georgia picks it up.
Aaron Murray fires a pass over the middle to 6'4" TE Aron White, and it's a little high but White gets a hand on it.
John Brantley gets sacked by Darryl Gamble at the Georgia 35 and fumbles, and a Georgia player gets a hand on it.
Aaron Murray throws another one over the middle to A.J. Green, the best receiver in college football, and A.J. gets a hand on it.
Two times the ball began the play in Florida's hands, two times it started off in Georgia's; all four times Georgia gets a hand on it at some point; but all four times it belongs to Florida by the time the whistle is blown. Yeah, yeah, I know: Inferior play had a hand in some of this, too, even the blown opportunities with the fumbles -- if we just fucking fall on that first one rather than trying to pick it up and run with it, for example, we start inside the Florida red zone with three near-automatic points and a pretty good chance at seven, and we deny Florida the long TD drive that swing momentum in their favor for pretty much the rest of the first half.
Still: Four times we get a hand on the ball and we don't get any of them? Not one? If we can have a game like that less than a year removed from going -16 in turnover margin, fuck a regression to the mean. It wasn't just the turnovers, either. Late fourth quarter, game tied at 31, Florida's gotten another good KO return from Chris Rainey -- and oh, God, don't get me started on his sociopathic ass being suited up and in the game to begin with -- and they've got 2nd-and-9 just a couple yards shy of midfield. Darryl Gamble crushes Brantley eight yards behind the line, resulting in 3rd-and-17 from the 40 (on a day when we're actually covering third downs pretty well, wonder of wonders), which gives us a chance to force a punt and set ourselves up with not-horrible field position and a couple minutes and two time-outs with which to get Blair Walsh in place for the game-winning field goal. Awesome, right? Right?
Nope -- a false start by Florida, their fifth false start of the day, negates the sack. They get the first down, drive into Georgia territory, pin the Dawgs at their own 6 and it's off to overtime we go. Even when they fuck up, it turns out better for them.
I realize I'm leaving myself getting open to getting flayed here -- by fans both Florida-identified and non -- with charges of whining. Hey, you're taunting a dude who's lost the ability to feel, so you're the one who's arguably wasting more energy here. And yes, again, I realize that no small amount of what I've described above goes back to Georgia's players not having the focus or fortitude to make the optimal play in a given situation, whatever that happens to be. And not long after I got home from Atlanta this evening, as I gathered my thoughts and tried to figure out what exactly I wanted to say in this space, I'll admit I briefly entertained the thought that the loud, heavily publicized, tension-fraught atmosphere of Jacksonville might have something to do with that lack of focus, which of course led to me wondering if maybe we should move the Cocktail Party out of there after all. (I mean, we've already officially ripped the words "Cocktail" and "Party" out of it to begin with; after that, any talk of tradition, on the parts of the respective university presidents at least, is pretty ridiculous.)
But no, I'm not gonna go there. Even if you think the series would be more fun for the students as a home-and-home; even if you can make a case, in spite of Georgia's still-pretty-good road record under Mark Richt, that the Dawgs' greater travel distance is a tangible hindrance to their chances of winning in this rivalry; even if you think that the Dawgs face a "hostile environment" in a stadium that is divided directly down the middle between Dawgs and Gators, it would be wrong to move this game. Why? BECAUSE IT WOULD BE A BITCH MOVE. If we were to go to a home-and-home, then no matter how dominant a run Georgia went on immediately afterward, no matter how supposedly solid our reasoning was for moving the game, we'd be the the school that whined the Cocktail Party out of Jacksonville and one of the sport's last remaining neutral-site rivalries out of existence. I'll be damned if I'm going to have that on my conscience, or the University of Georgia's.
Unfortunately, that doesn't get us a millimeter closer to solving the critical question: What do we do? I'm sorry if you came here for answers, because I don't know. What I do know is that I won't be watching the game next year. If I'm in front of a TV, it'll be tuned to something else (maybe I'll put a "Mad Men" DVD on); if I'm in the Jacksonville area, I'll be relaxing on a sunlit beach, stuffing a lime into the neck of a Corona and thanking the good Lord that, independent of any fortune or misfortune being visited upon my football team, I'm gainfully employed, living in what remains the freest country on earth, and blessed with an inordinate number of family and friends who care about me dearly. But I can't put myself through the misery of another one of these -- not for another year or so, anyway. Believe me, I've got nothing but admiration for Linus for going out there year after year in the face of overwhelming odds and public humiliation and laying bare his trusting soul for all the world to see. But I'm not Linus; I don't have a blanket to turn to anymore; and when I dated a girl named Sally in high school, she dumped me for a dude in the band. I've had an inkling for a while now, in other words, that the Great Pumpkin ain't coming for me. So I think I've earned a year off.
Normally I hate it when someone puts up a blog post or Twitter that's basically one long (or not-even-that-long) "I don't care about X," because seriously, get over yourself. There is no International Secret Brotherhood of Coolness, and they're not going to whisk you off to their secret lair in a cave under a mountain in the Swiss Alps and initiate you into their number because you wrote 1,000 words about how the World Cup or Pixar movies or house music are completely unworthy of your attention and that's soooo awesome.
A whole hour? For what? Is Lebron gonna rap? Tell jokes? Is James Lipton going to interview him about what he was feeling while he was shooting all those Nike ads? I mean, Kobe Bryant is the poster child for everything that is rancidly selfish and ego-driven about the NBA -- which is most things about the NBA these days -- but even he didn't get an hour in prime-time to tell us he was gonna stay a Laker and not sign with the Clippers after all.
So yes, I'm breaking my cardinal rule and announcing to the world that I don't give one-tenth of a rat's ass which city will be slobbing King James' knob for the next four or five years or however long it turns out to be. The paintball episode of "Community" comes on at the exact same time -- you think I'm gonna miss that to watch Lebron's ego get even more inflated? And look, I didn't want to say it, but yes, this makes me more awesome than you. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to some really obscure band you've never heard of.
. . . Which brings me to the two truest, most brilliant, spot-on paragraphs I have seen written about American cinema in eons, courtesy of you-know-who and you-know-who's BFF:
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side LIVIA: Oh, Sandra. I really don't know what to say about this nomination. You have brought me so much joy over the years, beginning with your bizarrely compelling performance across from a never-creepier Bill Pullman in While You Were Sleeping. You are glorious, and to be honest, I love you a little. However. That does not mean I will be endorsing you for Oscar gold. If they gave out Oscars for dyeing your hair blonde and acting like a bitch at football games, three ladies on my block would be Academy voters. Color me unimpressed. NASTINCHKA: This is the only remotely relevant section in which I can point out that the Tuohy's real-life daughter is eons prettier than that tramp-stamped little minx they put in the movie. Who de-hots an Ole Miss cheerleader for filming purposes? If they were going to get one thing right about this festering delta puddle of an adaptation, that one seemed like easy money.
I'll confess right now that I somehow still have not managed to see "The Blind Side," but I did devour the book -- whose author, outrageously, didn't get mentioned once on Sunday night -- and I've seen enough clips and promos of the film adaptation to be confident I got the better end of the deal on that one.
So anyway, all I'll say about Sandra Bullock's Oscar win is this: Not having seen any of the five films to receive Best Actress nominations, I can't say where Bullock's acting job should rank among them. My beef is that she got nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role to begin with. Had they filmed Michael Lewis's book completely accurately, Bullock's character of Leigh Anne Tuohy would only have been eligible for the Best Supporting Actress category. She plays an important role in Michael Oher's awe-inspiring transformation, to be sure, but the story isn't about her; it's about Michael Oher. Flipping the script to give Bullock a shot at a bravura leading performance basically turns the whole deal into Very Very Special White Lady Saves Minority Youth, and I think that trivializes the amazing story of what both Oher and the Tuohys accomplished.
Did race play into that decision at all? Ergh, I'm not going near that can of worms. Not knowing any of the filmmakers, I'm not qualified to say whether turning "The Blind Side" into Very Special White Lady Story was a product of any racial condescension on their part. But whatever the motivation, it sure seems like it made for a less interesting movie.
And no, I can't imagine a reason why they would've had anyone but the Tuohy's actual daughter in the Collins Tuohy role. As cinematic mysteries go, that's right up there with Rosebud.
I apologize for the relative dearth of new content on this blog over the past couple weeks. I blame it on a general malaise whose cause I'll get to in just a sec, though if you wanted to just translate that as "laziness" and leave it at that, I guess I couldn't argue with you. I would've liked to have had some news to offer on the ongoing job search, but there hasn't been much, certainly nothing meaningful.
In fact, I got kind of a nasty one-two punch in the last 24 hours: First, while I was filing my weekly unemployment claim with the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations on Sunday afternoon, a note popped up that this appeared to be my last week of eligibility for standard unemployment benefits and would I like to apply for the emergency extension that's been made available by the federal stimulus bill. I can't complain too much about that one, I guess -- after all, I'm lucky to have had that available to me at all, because it's certainly better to have it than not -- but still, that was a milestone I was really, really hoping I wouldn't have to cross. Then, this morning, I got the news that an opening I had applied for at Columbus Regional Healthcare -- and one that I was kind of excited about -- had been whittled down to two finalists, and I wasn't one of them. Ordinarily this wouldn't have been quite the punch to the gut that it was, since I've kind of gotten used to rejection over the very protracted course of this job search, but the thing is, my dad works for Columbus Regional, and if I can't even lean on nepotism as a way to land myself a job, then by that measure I'm actually less employable than Lane Kiffin.
Anyway. I've now been unemployed for more than seven months, during which time I've applied for probably around 100 jobs, some of them as close by as my hometown, others as far away as L.A. and Seattle. It has been an almost uniformly spirit-crushing journey, but one that has taught me a lot that I might never have learned otherwise. For one thing, I guess you could say that I've learned what it's like to technically be in a disadvantaged minority, and of all the things that suck about being in a disadvantaged minority, one of the worst is that people talk about you like you're not real.
The unemployment rate, the number of unemployed people, the number of jobs the American economy has added or lost in a given month -- these numbers get tossed around with a frequency that rivals football scores in the fall. And just like football scores, they are frequently used for the purpose of taunting and trash-talking. And until I'd entered the longest period of involuntary unemployment of my life, I had no idea just how demoralizing and infuriating that could be.
I've been rejected for around 100 jobs and on more than one occasion have barely scraped by in terms of paying my bills for a given month. So when I see a Republican Congressman or talking head crow on TV about how this Democratic bill or that Democratic bill have failed to make a dent in the unemployment rate, it really rankles me, as if they're actively rooting against my getting a job so that they'll have something to beat the Obama administration over the head with. It may be funny to you that the unemployment rate has stayed at such-and-such percentage in spite of everyone's best efforts, but as a member of that percentage, it's not much fun for me at all. And it's kind of shocking that these folks can't even take ten seconds to take a step back and observe just how joyous they look in proclaiming the news of my continued unemployment.
But the Republicans are hardly the only ones who don't get it. I get at least three e-mails a day from Media Matters or Democracy for America or some wing of the Democratic Party trying to pump me up and make me feel awesome that something the Democrats have done have created X number of jobs. That's great, and I certainly don't begrudge any of the people who've been able to snag one of those jobs, but obviously it hasn't trickled down to me yet. I don't know how to build fighter planes or bridges, and I haven't been to medical or nursing school, so I'm still out there looking. And looking. And looking. It's not like I expect someone to just drop a job into my lap -- though if any of y'all were thinking about doing that, you're welcome to do so -- but sometimes it seems a wee bit tone-deaf to get that excited about a supposed economic recovery when nearly 15 million people are still looking for jobs. Things might be getting better overall, but for me personally, I'm still in a deep recession, and the economy hasn't turned around for me until I'm pulling down a regular paycheck again. So it would be nice if fewer people in D.C. would act like all our problems are solved.
(The other thing I love is when one of those e-mails asks me for a donation because they just can't pass meaningful legislation without my support. You know, maybe I'm being cynical, but you've got control of the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress -- if you can't pass meaningful legislation with all that, then I doubt my five bucks is going to put you over the top.)
And believe me, I don't think for one hot minute that I'm stuck in the worst of it. I've got a roof over my head and two loving parents who have been generous enough to give me a soft place to land, and other than a mountain of credit-card debt that I freely admit I built all on my own, I don't have too many huge debts or obligations that are in danger of putting me under on a regular basis. But think about the people who have families, student loans to pay off, major medical bills for themselves or their loved ones, and who no longer have an income capable of keeping up with all this stuff. When you gloat over the success or the failure of an economic plan that's been passed by Washington, these are the people you're using to make your point. These are the people whose problems you're conveniently putting out of your mind so that you can score gotcha points against someone. And that is a shitty, shitty way for one American to be acting toward another.
We don't want to be your talking point. We don't want to be in your rah-rah press release. We don't want to be your billy club for you to bash the other side with. We don't even want you to turn around and offer us your pity, because that and two bucks will get us a tall coffee at Starbucks. All we want is the opportunity to go to an office or factory or store or whatever for eight hours a day and earn enough money to feed, clothe, and house ourselves. (Think about what little that is to ask: We're only asking for the ability to go do something most of us don't even like to do, and wouldn't do if we didn't have to.)
So keep that in mind the next time you're tempted to use me, or any of the 14,799,999 Americans as of last month, to score points against someone on the opposite side of the aisle from you politically. If you're going to crow about the failure of a given job-creation plan without offering any better ideas as an alternative, or crow about the success of a given plan without offering anything other than "Stay the course, our work here is done" as a follow-up, you may be helping yourselves but you're sure as hell not helping us. All you're doing is getting us really, really pissed off.
Rant over, because it's time to hit up the job sites again. And if any of them finally come up a winner, rest assured you'll hear about it here.
A plan is circulating under the radar in the Utah State Senate to share the holiday honoring civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., shot to death in 1968, with one of the country's most famous gun makers.
The plan is to rename the holiday, which falls on the third Monday of January, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr./John M. Browning Day, adding the gun manufacturer whose birthday also falls in January.
Is this going to be the start of a trend? Will the banks get a day off in October for Columbus/Remington Day? Will Presidents Day celebrate Washington and Lincoln and Smith and Wesson? Or do only black guys have to share their birthday commemorations with gun manufacturers?
That's it, Utah -- your statehood is officially downgraded to probationary status, with full statehood only being restored once this stupid-ass piece of legislation is voted down and consigned to the Smithsonian Institution's American Museum of Bad Idea History along with the Bay of Pigs invasion, New Coke, and the BCS on Fox. And if this thing does somehow get passed, you're being knocked back to a territory again. A territory! In case you haven't guessed, this week's +5 is Five U.S. States That Should Have Their Statehood Rescinded:
Utah Seriously, I'm having trouble figuring out what purpose this state serves other than being a Mormon barrier of puritanical morality standing between us and Vegas. Rescind Utah's statehood, annex them into Nevada (which they kind of almost were to begin with), and we'll have that problem out of the way, plus we will have reduced the amount of whining about mid-major conferences not getting automatic bids to the BCS by about two-thirds. On that note, I had a dream last night that I was on the sidelines at a Utah football game, and I was yelling about the Utah players chop-blocking everybody, and their coach came all the way over to my side of the field to read me the riot act about it. Screw you, Utah, for invading my subconscious.
Texas I can concede that the Lone Star State has its good points -- Austin, cheap airfares on Southwest Airlines, the cheerleading squads of its professional sports franchises -- but good lord, people, get over yourselves already. You fight one war of independence from Mexico, and all of a sudden you think you're hot shit, all "biggest state in the lower 48" and "you know, our constitution gives us the right to secede and form our own nation" and blah blah blah. Yeah, you think just because you managed to wriggle your way out of the crushing grip of a global superpower like Mexico, you're all ready to become an independent nation? Call me when you win the fight to secede from China or Pakistan or something. It's long past time we night to knock Texas down a peg or two by splitting it right down the middle and turning it into the third- and fourth-biggest states in the continental U.S. (Oh, and even now, Texas would be only the seventh-biggest province in Canada. I didn't want to have to whip that out, Texas, but you kind of drove me to do it.)
South Carolina My favorite beach, Edisto Island, is located in South Carolina about halfway between Charleston and Hilton Head, so this smarts a bit. But jeez, South Carolina, y'all have really been bringing the crazy lately. You had the Confederate-Flag-flying-over-the-state-capitol controversy, the Miss Teen USA embarrassment, the governor telling everyone he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was really jetting down to Argentina to nail his mistress, and, of course, everything associated with Bob Jones University -- and now you've got a state legislator proposing to ban U.S. currency and only allow the use of silver and/or gold coins. Yup, when you walk into a bar to buy your little airplane bottles of liquor, you'll only be able to use doubloons or pieces of eight, evidently. I did leave my heart in Edisto, so I can't bear to kick y'all out of the United States completely, but you haven't in any way proven the maturity level necessary to be a separate Carolina, much less an independent, self-governing U.S. state. I think we need to put y'all in time-out by absorbing you back into North Carolina -- which, to be fair, is not exactly a bulwark of sanity itself -- until such time as you can prove you're sane enough to govern yourselves.
Delaware I remain highly skeptical that anyone actually lives in Delaware; really, it's just a big tax haven for the credit-card companies that somehow ended up with its own license plates. I think we've only been allowing them to live this charade because they were the first state to ratify the Constitution, but so what? Would you give unlimited, uncensored commenting abilities to the worthless, drooling jagbags who leave "FIRST!!!111!!11!!" comments on your blog? Yank statehood away from them, annex the state into Maryland where it belongs, and make MBNA pay its fair frickin' share already.
Alaska Yes, the 49th state has untold natural beauty and some of the largest oil and natural-gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere. It's also got fewer than 700,000 residents -- fewer than the number who live in the Birmingham metropolitan area, yet with a far greater proportion of them who are, quite frankly, completely insane -- knocking around in more than 1.7 million square kilometers of real estate. Just for comparison's sake, that makes it more sparsely populated than any independent nation on earth and all but two of its dependent territories; even the disputed territory of Western Sahara is several times more crowded than Alaska. Plus the state is one of the biggest leeches of tax revenue in the entire country, sucking up a buck eighty-four in federal spending for every dollar they contribute in taxes. (And these are the people who complain the loudest about how much money the government wastes.) I think we can exploit Alaska's wealth of natural resources just fine without granting them the full privileges of statehood. You got a problem with it, go bitch to your next-door neighbors in the Yukon.
By my count, this plan puts us at 47 states, so I say we go ahead and give statehood to D.C., Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, just so we don't have to change the flag. Problem solved. No, no, you don't have to thank me.
And now the Ten:
1. Röyksopp, "Tristesse Globale" 2. Dimitri from Paris, "Sacre Francais" 3. The Fugees, "The Score" 4. Orbital, "Halcyon + On + On" (live) 5. Eric B. and Rakim, "Casualties of War" 6. George Michael, "Waiting For That Day" 7. Air, "All I Need" 8. Perez Prado, "Mambo #8" 9. Happy Mondays, "The Boys Are Back in Town" 10. Yello, "Oh Yeah"
Your Random Tens and recommendations for states that need to have their statehood yanked, either temporarily or permanently, are welcome in the comments.
We've gone through #s 50-41,40-31,30-21, and 20-11, and now we're at the lowest of the low, the bottom of the barrel, the vilest people operating in college football today. Strap in, because the Top 10 begins with . . .
10. You Charges: In any given season, there are any number of coaches, players, commentators, or other participants who do their part to besmirch the greatest sport in America, but let's face it: There's only one common thread running through all of them, and it is that you won't stop fucking bitching about them. You scream "traitor" at the top of your lungs and call down the wrath of God when your coach leaves your program for a better opportunity elsewhere, then immediately start hunting for an up-and-coming program whose coach you can steal. You hype naive 18-year-old kids as Christlike saviors every January, but immediately condemn them as worthless, overrated punks the minute they sign with any program that isn't yours. (As for the ones who do sign with your team, you save the condemnation until they lose their first fumble, at which point it's time to pull their scholarship and slap their mothers for even giving birth to them.) You take time that could be used to feed the homeless or read to your children and instead spend it firing off indignant e-mails to columnists as if your team were somehow owed the title of Greatest Program In Sports History. And you hurl obscene trash-talk at opposing fans of all ages, only to go home and whine about how "classless" the other team's fan base is. Wow, you know what? Without you, this sport might be damn near perfect. Exhibit A: Go to AJC.com's sport section and check out any comment thread relating to college football. (Or anything else, really.) Sentence: The federal government takes over Division I-A and decides to determine the national championship via a written exam.
9. Joe Barton Charges: An overgrown Campbell's Soup kid who would make de Tocqueville spin in his grave, the not-all-that-distinguished gentleman from Texas's 6th congressional district is basically Orrin Hatch's House doppelgänger on football-related matters, only with half of Hatch's manners and a tenth of his intellect. Barton's Capitol Hill hearings on the legality of the BCS this past spring were a study in incoherence, with Barton comparing the BCS to "communism" in spite of the fact that it's Barton and his gang who want the government to step in and start calling the shots in a system that's currently run by the free market and pretty much nothing else. And just to make sure we were all aware of what a farce it was, Barton left his own hearing early, issuing an ominous warning that if CFB officials didn't move toward a playoff in two months, he and the rest of Congress would do it for them. That was nine months ago, and he hasn't done squat (for which we can all be very thankful). Exhibit A: This doesn't have anything to do with football, but it does give you an idea of the level of brainpower we're dealing with here: In a March hearing on climate policy, Barton warned that a large-scale shift to wind-based power might "slow the winds down" and heat up the planet. Sentence: Traded to North Korea the next time we have a prisoner we're trying to release from there.
8. Mark Mangino Charges: In a way, the disgraced Kansas Jayhawks ex-coach deserves a kind of grudging respect: As hard as it is these days to lose one's job just for being an asshole -- look at Sean Hannity, Rahm Emanuel, and Lane Kiffin -- Mangino actually pulled it off. The offense that finally got Mangino bounced out of Lawrence was a truly hair-raising series of emotionally abusive tirades against players, but the truth is that was only part of a pattern of petty rageaholism going back all the way to his single season as head coach at a high school in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, where a group of parents went to the school board and demanded he be fired for his obscene, abusive language. It would be easy to shrug one's shoulders and say that Mangino's offended players need to man up a little, but cheap shots such as "Are you going to be a lawyer or do you want to become an alcoholic like your dad?" or "If you don't shut up, I'm going to send you back to St. Louis so you can get shot with your homies" (to a player whose own brother had been shot in a gang-related incident in St. Louis) -- particularly for something as minor as a dropped pass -- are the kinds of insults no adult person should have to take off of anyone, much less this childish, hate-filled Weeble of a man. Exhibit A: After getting ticketed for repeatedly parking his big-ass SUV in loading zones and other restricted areas all over campus, Mangino tracked down the student parking-services employee who'd written him a ticket and cursed him out in public for 10 minutes. Shockingly, there is no record of Mangino ever being issued another ticket again. Sentence: Permanently shackled just out of reach of a Hardee's 2/3-pound Monster Thickburger.
7. Mark May Charges: If Webster's ever needs a visual aid to place next to their entry for "pompous," a head shot of May should do just fine. In an industry where being convinced of one's own brilliance is the rule rather than the exception, May still manages to take arrogance to another level, demonstrating a complete inability to disagree with or criticize someone without doing so in the most sarcastic, patronizing manner possible. And yet as convinced as he clearly is of his own fearless brilliance, he rarely does anything other than obediently parrot whatever meme or storyline ESPN is dead-set on pushing at the time (watch him levitate with indignation anytime someone dares to suggest USC is less than perfect, for example). Next to him, even Lou Holtz is almost watchable. Exhibit A: Rolls his eyes at his own colleagues on camera like he was Al Gore in the 2000 presidential debate. Sentence: Demoted to calling monster-truck rallies and maimed by a tire flying off a wrecked truck into the press box.
6. Jim Delany Charges: You can't exactly blame the Big 10 commissioner for doggedly safeguarding the interests of his conference, even at the expense of other leagues -- it's a business, after all -- but Delany seems to have turned that responsibility into a nationwide crusade to sap college football of every last bit of enjoyment we fans might derive from it. The man runs his conference as if the '80s, '90s, and '00s never happened, pulling the plug on late-season night games and stubbornly resisting any sort of BCS reform that might give us, you know, better matchups for the postseason's biggest games. And when these myopic, ill-advised moves result in the Big 10 losing prestige and marketability on a nationwide scale, rather than re-evaluate his own strategies, Delany shifts the blame with passive-aggressive broadsides against the SEC for being able to recruit more talented players. If college football is stuck in neutral in terms of its organization and methods, Delany is the hand holding the gearshift lever there; in the modern CFB landscape, he is the Dean Wormer. But he'll never admit to that, because he's not familiar with this word "modern" of which you speak. Exhibit A: In early 2007, with his entire conference still smarting over the vivisection Ohio State received at the hands of the Florida Gators in the inaugural plus-one BCS National Championship Game, Delany defended his league's honor basically by shitting all over the SEC -- and in as bitchy a manner as possible: "I wish we had six teams among the top 10 recruiting classes every year, but winning our way requires some discipline and restraint with the recruitment process." Pretty big talk for a guy whose conference still hasn't learned to count to 11. Sentence: Caves to pressure to expand to 12 teams but turned down by program after program; finally forced to add the University of Akron, who beats Wisconsin in the inaugural Big 10* Championship Game but loses to UAB by 28 in the Rose Bowl.
5. Ryan Pugh Charges: Bar none, the dirtiest player in college football, and I'm not the only one who thinks so: Googling "Ryan Pugh chop block" returns 8,170 results. The Auburn O-lineman closed out his freshman year by injuring Clemson defender Dorell Scott on a chop block in the Peach Bowl; ended his sophomore season with a chop-block on Alabama's Luther Davis while Davis was still trying to get off the ground; and this past year, as a junior, managed to knock both a Ball State lineman and Tennessee defensive end Wes Brown -- who'd already been battling knee problems most of his career -- out of games via cheap hits. Even Auburn fans are starting to cringe every time his name is called. Exhibit A: The videos are grainy, but that's #50 going after the backs of his opponents' knees both times:
Sentence: After shattering both tibiae and fibulae while being pancake-blocked in Auburn's 2010 opener against Arkansas State, has his shins amputated and his feet attached directly to his knees, a la Hank Hill's dad on "King of the Hill."
4. Urban Meyer Charges: We all thought Steve Spurrier was as bad as it could get in Gainesville, asshole-wise, but at least the Ol' Ballcoach had a sense of humor. Meyer combines nearly all of Spurrier's worst traits -- preening arrogance, a predilection of leaving his starting QBs in well into the waning minutes of blowouts against overmatched gimme opponents just to pad their stats -- without an ounce of wit or personality. But the top Gator achieved a new level of cravenness last December when he announced his retirement the day after Christmas, revealing that he had been admitted to a hospital with chest pains following Florida's loss in the SEC title game and saying he needed to "reevaluate [his] priorities of faith and family" -- only to walk his "retirement" back to a "leave of absence" the very next day, adding that he fully intended to return by the start of the 2010 season. Yup, just two days after his eldest daughter Nicki hugged him and said "I get my daddy back," he basically told her, "Well, no, honey, you actually don't." Some conspiracy theorists speculated that Meyer's retirement/unretirement show was a calculated attempt to fire up a team that was bummed about playing in the Sugar Bowl rather than the national-championship game, but whether it was that or merely the rash action of a man who didn't think things through well enough is academic: If these are the kinds of games he's willing to play with his own family, Meyer has moved beyond the realm of the mere "jerk" and made a beeline for "sociopath" territory. On the bright side, if that's all he cares about his own health and well-being, then apparently it's OK to make heart-attack jokes about him after all. Exhibit A: Apparently even a "leave of absence" was too much for Meyer to commit to: The University of Florida confirmed last month that he's been "actively involved in recruiting," and two weeks later Meyer said he planned on returning to full-time work by the time the Gators started spring practice. Hope those 48 hours were really special, Nicki. Sentence: Cryogenically frozen in vivo and harvested for spare parts for Joe Paterno.
3. Adam and Craig James (tie) Charges: Craig James was already loathed by CFB fans across the nation for his uncanny ability to tarnish games both big and small with his unique brand of dumb-jock smarm. Well, guess what: He reproduced. And together, Craig and his demon seed managed to take down the winningest coach in the history of Texas Tech's football program -- all because Mike Leach dared to put Adam in time-out. The dossier of bad behavior on the part of the Jameses is thicker than Leach's playbook: Adam displaying a "lazy" and "entitled" attitude, according to his own position coaches; Craig allegedly calling Texas Tech coaches repeatedly to lobby for more playing time for his son, to the point where they had to start screening their calls; Adam showing up to practice in street clothes and sunglasses, which prompted Leach's unorthodox punishment; and Craig threatening to sue TTU if they didn't launch a full investigation into Leach's behavior. As complex and bizarre as the whole situation is, two things about it are pretty simple: Adam James is a spoiled, no-talent brat, and his dad is an overbearing Little League parent who would be the dictionary definition of "ass clown" if that weren't an insult to both asses and clowns. We're still waiting to hear your explanation of what you were doing while Sherwood Blount was paying all those players at SMU, by the way. Exhibit A: Before going public with his accusations against Leach, Craig James hired Spaeth Communications -- who directed the "swift boat" PR campaign against John Kerry in 2004 -- for tips on how to proceed; Spaeth helped distribute the highly dubious cell-phone video Adam James took of the place where he'd supposedly been confined by Leach. James the Elder also retained Spaeth to handle his PR as he mulls a run for -- wait for it -- U.S. Senate. Sentence: Mauled by tigers during the first (and last) production of ESPN's "Circus of the Father-Son Gridiron Superstars."
2. Lane Kiffin Charges: It would be easy to call USC's new head coach the football version of George W. Bush -- a smug hotshot who used his last name to land a series of jobs for which he was unqualified, made an ass of himself in public, and left institution after institution in worse shape than he found it, only to continue failing upward -- but at least Dubya's trying to raise money for Haitian earthquake victims; it is damn near impossible to find a situation in which Kiffin has thought about anyone but himself. It would also be easy to write him off as a mere douchebag, but as a douchebag myself, I take offense at that. No, Kiffykins occupies his own plane of dipshittery, rolling into the University of Tennessee on a wave of recruiting gimmicks and nervy sound bites and exiting just 407 days later, leaving both his players and his fan base in a cloud of dust. It's clear now that Tennessee was just a stepping stone to the USC job all along -- he and Ed Orgeron, who'd coached together as assistants at Southern Cal, shoved as many UT team traditions out the door as they could and replaced them with warmed-over versions of the same stuff they'd done with the Trojans, and when the time came to depart for L.A., they tried to take their most prized recruits with them. Hell, Kiffin never even bothered to get a Tennessee driver's license, which we found out when he wrecked the Lexus that UT had gone to the trouble of leasing for him, nor did he even bother to tuck his shirt in at the press conference where he announced his departure from the Vols. It's abundantly clear that Kiffin has learned nothing from the whole exercise, and merely transported his little consequence-free fantasy world to Los Angeles, where he committed his first secondary violation after less than two full weeks on the job. The only remaining vestige of Kiffin's blink-and-you-missed-it tenure in Knoxville is the paperwork filed by a local attorney to name a sewage-treatment plant after him -- but sewage-treatment plants are actually a necessary and valuable part of our civil society. Can anyone say the same about Kiffykins? Exhibit A: From Kiffin's introductory press conference at USC: "The fan base and students [at Tennessee] are extremely passionate about sports. Especially about football. As I look at the reaction of what happened last night, I really thought to myself. I said, you know what, they're upset that we're leaving because of what we've been doing. If they weren't upset that we were leaving, then we weren't doing anything right. So the fact that there were a number of people upset there, because we had done so much in so little of a time." Sentence: Placed in a dunking booth over the aforementioned sewage-treatment facility as part of UT's 2010 Homecoming festivities.
1. Ed Orgeron Charges: A dumb, hulking ape of a man with less talent than Lane Kiffin, less scruples than Urban Meyer, and less self-awareness than Ron Zook, "Coach O" probably would be mopping a high-school gymnasium floor in Louisiana right now were it not for one fateful discovery he made years ago -- the realization that if you rip off your shirt and bellow "WILD BOYS" at high-school football players in a Cookie Monster voice, some of them are just dumb enough to sign with you. Since then, Orgeron's fearsome reputation as a top-notch recruiter has buoyed him to a series of inexplicably prestigious jobs, and his recruiting tactics have only gotten more ruthless and craven. Back in 2005, for example, Orgeron didn't even wait for the waterlogged bodies to be dragged out of New Orleans' Ninth Ward before he started calling Tulane players in an attempt to lure them to his own nascent disaster of a regime at Ole Miss. Fired after assembling the Rebels' worst head-coaching record in 60 years, Orgeron popped up again as Lane Kiffin's enforcer at Tennessee. And when Kiffin bolted for USC after only a year, Orgeron followed obediently behind, trying to take the Vols' prized 2010 recruiting class with him as he went -- and not only did he lie when asked about it, he had the nerve to get pissed off at UT's athletic department when they refused to give him their recruiting files. Lane Kiffin may be a human turd, but at least he's managed to bump his career winning percentage over 0.300; Orgeron is a human turd who is a terrible coach and possibly insane to boot, and it's only a matter of time before he either gets USC in even more trouble with the NCAA than they're already in or drives a bulldozer through the front of a Chick-fil-A for giving him sweet 'n' sour sauce instead of honey mustard. Basically, a worthless, repellent individual who blemishes the good name of any athletic department he joins, a man whose loathsomeness is beginning to outweigh his entertainment value. But look on the bright side, Coach O: You finally won something. Exhibit A: While Kiffin was hastily delivering his farewell speech to his team, Orgeron was calling early enrollees telling them not to go to class so they could transfer to USC -- and doing it within earshot of Kiffin's pissed-off Tennessee players. Sentence: Wrapped in bacon and fed to alligators in the Louisiana bayou.
And one more, whose loathsomeness defies numerical ranking:
John W. Lomax III Charges: Lomax, a 21-year-old from Bloomfield, Connecticut, doesn't play, coach, or write about football, but his loathsomeness transcends sports and qualifies him for inclusion on this list just the same: Lomax is the man arrested for stabbing Connecticut Huskies cornerback Jasper Howard to death outside a dance back in November. So basically, because Lomax was having a bad evening, he felt justified in taking the life of a kid who'd made it out of the poverty of Miami's "Little Haiti" neighborhood, became the first in his family to go to college, worked hard and had a shot at an NFL career. Oh, and was going to be a father. If you want to go ahead and slot Lomax in at #1 on this list, you'll get no argument from me. Exhibit A: The argument that resulted in Howard's murder allegedly stemmed from one of his teammates "disrespecting" one of Lomax's female friends. Yup. That's it. Sentence: Life in prison with a picture of Jamiya Tia Howard -- the daughter whose name Jasper Howard chose the night before he was killed -- permanently placed over his bed.
Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to nominate, read, and/or link. (Y'all get a lifetime exclusion from the "You" mentioned at #10.) Our society's loathsomeness level being what it is, I'm sure we'll be doing this again before too long.
We're plumbing the depths of the truly, irrevocably worthless now. (Previously: #s 50-41,40-31, and 30-21.)
20. Jimmy Clausen Charges: Notre Dame fans, you might think Charlie Weis was the overwhelming reason the rest of us have hated your team for the past few years, but just as much blame rests on Clausen, the smug, emu-coiffed golden boy whose every action has screamed "prick" ever since he showed up at the College Football Hall of Fame in a Hummer limo just to announce his oral commitment to the Irish. From his overwrought signing announcement to his douchebag behavior at the '06 California state high-school championship game to taunting Boston College players during pre-game warmups last season, perhaps no player in the country is more convinced of his own awesomeness with less to back it up (16-18 record as a starter, a career QB rating lower than Joe Cox's). Dishonorable mention to his dad, who's now foisted two overrated asshat QBs on Division I-A and who was reportedly the reason Tennessee didn't make a big push to recruit Jimmy in 2006. Exhibit A: While the rest of his team was busy getting embroiled in a trash-talk battle with the USC Trojans before the 2008 USC-ND game -- a game the Irish would lose 38-3 -- Jimmy went off and taunted the USC band. Sentence: Drafted by the Raiders. In the sixth round.
19. Deion Sanders Charges: After a 17-year NFL career typified by an increasingly out-of-whack sizzle-to-steak ratio, Neon Deion evidently began fancying himself a shade-tree Svengali to aspiring NFL receivers. First he helped convince the 49ers' first-round draft pick, Michael Crabtree, to become the longest rookie holdout in franchise history; just a short time later, his association with Oklahoma State receiver Dez Bryant got Bryant declared ineligible by the NCAA. This from the man who inspired the "Deion Sanders rule" after he started for FSU in the Sugar Bowl despite skipping finals. Other than former Hillary Clinton campaign "strategist" Mark Penn, nobody's had a worse track record as an advisor over the past couple years. Exhibit A: As if Sanders hadn't done enough damage to OSU's prospects, he hung out with Ole Miss players during their Cotton Bowl practices and was spotted chatting with Rebel WR Dexter McCluster. (Fortunately, McCluster was a senior with no eligibility left to lose.) Sentence: Banished to a remote island in the Arctic Ocean with no video cameras.
18. Bill Hancock/Ari Fleischer (tie) Charges: The BCS already had developed a nationwide reputation as a closed, impenetrable system reeking of good-ole-boy-networkism and complete contempt toward the average fan. So executive director Hancock, just to make sure there were no bones about his organization's arrogance and total lack of concern for how it is perceived in the public eye, hired former Bush Administration mouthpiece Ari Fleischer's consulting group to help manage its image. Not that the BCS's past propagandists have been anything special, but Fleischer's mushmouthed defenses of the BCS system are so farcical as to make one wonder whether former Iraqi information minister Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf really retired after all. Exhibit A: The "insidethebcs" Twitter feed, featuring such brilliant arguments as this declaration patting the BCS for "enhancing" the bowl season. Right, because everyone was wondering when we'd finally get to see USC whack Illinois by 32 points in the Rose Bowl. Sentence: Strapped to fireworks and launched right after the singing of the national anthem at next year's national-title game.
16. Bobby Petrino Charges: Petrino has managed to stay out of trouble, for the most part, since arriving in Fayetteville, Arkansas, two years ago. It was the way he got there that was truly loathsome -- accepting 30 pieces of silver from Jerry Jones and abandoning the Atlanta Falcons after only 13 (mostly embarrassing) games with nearly a whole month left in the 2007 regular season. And he went to Atlanta just six months after having signed a 10-year contract with Louisville, where he got embroiled in a shitstorm after just one season by attending the legendary secret meeting with Auburn megabooster/warlock Bobby Lowder about potentially replacing Tommy Tuberville. You all saw how awkward Petrino looked doing "Woo pig sooey" during his introduction to the Razorback faithful -- does anybody seriously think he's gonna be within 500 miles of Fayetteville three years from now? Exhibit A: Didn't even bother to tell his Falcon players in person that he was leaving -- just left a one-paragraph letter in their lockers. His own players called him a "coward" and a "cancer" in the wake of his departure. Sentence: After a five-TD Papajohns.com Bowl beatdown from Tuberville's Texas Tech Red Raiders, assassinated by a hitman hired by Jerry Jones.
15. Kent Hance Charges: ESPN analyst and all-world helicopter parent Craig James would be hard-pressed to outwit your average telephone pole, yet he still had the bare minimum of cunning it took to intimidate Texas Tech chancellor Hance into firing Mike Leach, the winningest coach in school history, over little more than foggy accusations that Leach harmed "the health and well-being of an injured student-athlete" (i.e. James's ne'er-do-well son). Just to really twist the knife in, Hance fired Leach the day before the coach would've been owed a "contract completion bonus" of $800,000. This at the university that hired Bobby Knight, who'd actually choked a kid at his previous job at Indiana. Exhibit A: Hance also oversaw the hiring of disgraced attorney general Alberto Gonzales as a visiting professor in the political-science department teaching a "special topics" course on the executive branch. Sentence: Waterboarded by Leach, who will, of course, be wearing a pirate outfit the entire time.
14. Tim Brando Charges: On TV, Brando plays the role of the goofy, affable, football-lovin' uncle to the hilt. Off camera, though, he is a snide elitist straight out of the Buzz Bissinger school of entitlement, an insular jackhole who loves dropping the names of the folks his job allows him to hang out with but who has nothing but contempt for the average fan. Particularly if that fan dares to run a blog, because then he's a hate-filled rumormonger contributing to the coarsening of dialogue in American journalism. That's a pretty high horse for a guy who will happily tell callers to "shut the hell up" when he's making his frequent guest appearances on buddy Paul Finebaum's radio show (and for a guy who seems to think referring to teams as "the Fightin' [insert coach name here]s" is the absolute pinnacle of comedy). Exhibit A: Fans and bloggers aren't the only ones expected to bow down at the altar of Brando: Last spring, he joined in with a Finebaum whinefest about how coaches like Nick Saban weren't consistently giving them the "access" they were owed. Sentence: Right index finger chopped off, and loses an additional finger/toe for every time he makes one of his "a little Dabo'll do ya" joke in reference to Dabo Swinney.
13. Paul Finebaum Charges: The poster child for little-man syndrome, "F-bomb" combines Colin Cowherd's withering contempt for his audience with an indomitable bandwagoneering streak. For hours each day, Finebaum exhibits little but sneering derision toward the thousands of listeners he's Stockholm Syndromed into hanging on his every dubiously informed word, yet for all his boasts about being the most dangerous man in sports radio, his allegiances and values are just as malleable as those of his dumbest and most gullible fans. When a team's doing well or is currently "hot" in the media, he loves 'em; when they're weathering a slump or controversy, they're worthless bottom-feeders and so are their fans. Right up until they hit a hot streak again, when they return to "awesome" status and everyone else becomes fools for doubting them. Finebaum is famous for being famous, the Paris Hilton of sports talk: His name is on everyone's lips as one of the top guys in his industry, yet it's impossible to pick out a single bit of value he adds to the sports experience, either in Alabama or anywhere else. Exhibit A: A year ago, Chizik roundly heckled Auburn's hiring of Gene Chizik along with everyone else. By October, with Auburn 5-0 and ranked in the top 25, Chizik was steering the Tigers "down the right path." But just three weeks later, with Auburn riding a three-game losing streak, Finebaum decided Chizik and his coaching staff were "lousy," "clueless" and "naive." Sentence: Suffocated between Terrence Cody's moobs.
12. Tim Tebow Charges: First, let's get one thing straight -- Tebow isn't on here because he's a good player or because he's bitchmade Georgia two years in a row. Nor is he on here because he's a devout Christian. And his presence on the list is not intended to cast aspersions on his considerable talent. If anything, it's the opposite: It takes a lot for a player that good to still qualify as "overexposed." Yet that's precisely what Tebow is, to the point where even some Gator fans I know are starting to tire of the spectacle. For nearly four years now, we've been subjected to round-the-clock replays of his teary motivational speeches; the kind of marionette-on-crack touchdown celebrations that would get (and frequently have gotten) other SEC players pegged for 15 yards; and verbal fellations by everyone from Thom Brennaman to Gary Danielson to Sarah Palin. Now, Tebow isn't a programming director, and he obviously doesn't bear sole personal responsibility for this oversaturation, but instead of taking a break from the limelight and quietly prepping himself for the NFL draft, he's insinuating himself into our lives once again by taking a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl to tell us how we should feel about abortion. Tim, I don't pretend to speak for every college-football fan out there, but I'm pretty sure I speak for a lot of them when I say: Shut the fucking fuck up already. And God bless. Exhibit A: The Web site of Tebow's father's ministry, the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association, claims that three quarters of the people in the Philippines "have never once heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Gee, that just happens to be almost the same proportion of people in that country who are Roman Catholic. But I'm sure that's just one of those crazy coincidences! Sentence: Signed as an undrafted free agent by the Raiders, and beaten out for the starting job by Jimmy Clausen.
11. Brian Butler Charges: If there's one man in North America less qualified to offer advice to young football players than Deion Sanders, it might by former T-Mobile call center manager Butler, who has added a fresh coat of slime to the already-skeezy recruiting business by inventing the position of "recruiting manager." Supposedly this is a sort of gatekeeper/publicist/advisor to blue-chip recruits, but in actual practice he just serves as another middleman trying to profit off of naive teenagers. In order to raise the market value of linebacker Huldon Tharp, for example, Butler encouraged Tharp to spread word that he'd been offered a scholarship by the Miami Hurricanes; Miami had made no such offer, and Butler's mere association with five-star tailback Bryce Brown soon led the 'Canes to back off their attempts to sign him. But that didn't stop Butler from selling "recruiting updates" of Brown on his Web site for $9.99 a month (or $59 a year -- such a deal!). If Vegas isn't taking bets on the first time Butler or one of his colleagues sets a major NCAA investigation into motion, they're missing a golden opportunity. Exhibit A: Brown's own high-school coach, Brian Byers, said Brown's attitude began deteriorating markedly almost the minute he hooked up with Butler, skipping a summer football camp and refusing to even stretch with his teammates during his junior season, "It's always been him and then everybody else," Byers told The New York Times. "Our team chemistry was nonexistent." Sentence: One night of unbridled passion with Tom Lemming.
30. Thom Brennaman Charges: When people breathe audible sighs of relief upon hearing that Fox's BCS contract expired following the 2009 bowl season, their primary reason for doing so is Brennaman, who has come to symbolize everything that is lame and tone-deaf about Fox's college-football coverage. Brennaman's almost willful ignorance of the CFB landscape is off-putting enough, but he's now besmirched two straight bowl seasons with a cloying adulation for Tim Tebow that borders on the homoerotic. Over the course of his sportscasting career, he's arguably spent more time intimately acquainting his tongue with the intricacies of Tebow's perineum (go look it up) than keeping tabs on which down it is. When Brian Billick dared to cast doubt on Tebow's NFL prospects during this past season's Sugar Bowl, the audible indignation in Brennaman's voice would've been deemed overwrought and unprofessional even by most of the 14-year-old girls you've come across. Exhibit A: "If you're fortunate enough to spend five minutes or 20 minutes around Tim Tebow, your life is better for it." Sentence: Circumcised with a rusty corkscrew in the worst hospital in Manila.
29. PlayoffPAC Charges: Stipulated: The BCS sucks. Selecting the national-title-game participants through an impenetrable stew of computer formulas and decimal points makes about as much sense as electing a president via a punt, pass and kick contest. But setting up a PAC with the express purpose of getting the government involved takes things to a whole new level. Seriously, you want this gang of one-car-funeral-fucker-uppers having a say in how crystal footballs are handed out? Seriously? Given the degree to which federal response to pressing issues is infarcted by the mouth-breathers in Congress, what we'll end up with is a setup whereby at least one team from every state has to receive at least partial credit for having earned a national title, and that'll get blown up once a Congressman from one of the larger red states determines that based on population and total federal grants to public universities, his state actually deserves two. If you can't pick this out as a clear-cut gridiron version of Animal Farm waiting to happen, you need to put down the channel-changer and trade in your football fandom for something a little less challenging, like Candy Land. Exhibit A: I'm getting e-mail spam from them despite never even having visited their Web site. Sentence: Time-warped back to 1860 and ordered to come up with a solution to the free state/slave state conundrum on penalty of death by firing squad.
28. Orrin Hatch Charges: PlayoffPAC may be a horrendously ill-conceived waste of time, but at least it's just a bunch of private citizens with nothing better to do. Hatch, however, is a United States senator, which means we pay him nearly two hundred thousand dollars a year to have something better to do -- yet in spite of a lingering recession, unemployment level bumping up against 10 percent, and ongoing major military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, he still saw fit to spend Congress's time last summer on hearings concerning the "legality" of the BCS. (The fact that all three DI-A programs in his state are from mid-major conferences? Oh, just one of those crazy coincidences, I'm sure.) From there, it's really not that big a leap to foresee Hatch demanding a special prosecutor to find out whether his next-door neighbor has been allowing his shar-pei to poop in Hatch's rose garden. Exhibit A: Just 15 days after his BCS hearings began, Hatch pulled out of negotiations over the health-care reform bill. Wasn't worth his time, I guess. Sentence: Flayed alive at halftime at the 2011 Fiesta Bowl, with his skin being turned into a tent for still-homeless Haitian earthquake victims.
27. Steve Spurrier Charges: It's always hard to see a legend fall -- except when the legend is Steve Spurrier, who spent the entirety of the 1990s getting his jollies via the gratuitous humiliation of opponents but has since been left to stew at South Carolina, a program that couldn't win an SEC championship if you spotted them Alabama's roster and Ole Miss's schedule. Despite not having achieved anything more notable in Columbia than eight wins and a Liberty Bowl title, Spur Dog continues to cling to Uncle Rico-like delusions that he can cap off his career with a stunning resurrection story, but every year he continues to hold the Gamecocks in thrall to his fading legacy is another year they miss out on hiring an innovative Muschampesque up-and-comer whose game plan dares to venture beyond "Fuck the offensive line, we'll just throw it 40 times a game and everything will work itself out." Would clearly rather be hitting the links at Augusta National on Saturdays, which if that's the case he should just quit now and stop dragging down the SEC's bowl record. Exhibit A: After getting beaten by two touchdowns, by the fourth-place team in the Big East, in the Papajohns.com Bowl, Spurrier said, "We've got to somehow learn how to practice a month before the game better." Sentence: Forced to serve as the live donor for Urban Meyer's inevitable heart transplant.
26. Nu'Keese Richardson Charges: As the focal point of one of the biggest brouhahas of last year's signing day -- Richardson was the recruit Lane Kiffin insisted Urban Meyer had "cheated" in contacting and still hadn't been able to land -- one could be forgiven for assuming Richardson might perceive an extra incentive to keep his nose clean in Knoxville. Evidently he did not. On the morning of November 12, Richardson and two other Tennessee football players were arrested for robbing someone at a Pilot convenience store near campus. With what turned out to be a pellet gun. "Nuke" was promptly booted off the team, his Vol career totaling all of 160 yards from scrimmage (the vast majority of which were earned against Western Kentucky and Memphis). Last seen attempting to resurrect his stillborn career at Hampton University, which with any luck offers a course in remedial common sense. Exhibit A: After finding that their intended victim didn't have any cash on him, Richardson and his co-conspirators fled -- in a Prius -- but were stopped on their way home. Right outside the UT athletic dorm. Sentence: The same as whatever he'd get in Tennessee for armed robbery, only it has to be served in the Michael Vick suite at Leavenworth.
25. Gregg Doyel Charges: A pencil-necked, Mencken-wannabe misanthrope who ratchets up the cranky, constantly disgusted negativity of John Feinstein while stripping out any of Feinstein's maturity or sense of propriety, Doyel's every written word drips with bilious contempt. Not once has the CBSsports.com columnist ever offered any shred of evidence that there's anything about college football he actually likes; instead, his every utterance is a caustic diatribe against a coach, team, player, or entire fan base that has failed to live up to his arbitrary standards of awesomeness. Doyel steadfastly refuses to demonstrate any tactical insight or statistical mastery, nor a desire to inform or even show a modicum of empathy with the fans for whom he's supposedly writing. It's just all acid, all the time, as if his regular column existed solely for him to demonstrate how cleverly he can piss people off in print. And there's just no place in the blogosphere for showoffs like that. Exhibit A: His column lambasting Tim Tebow for his anti-abortion Super Bowl ad was so acerbic that the pro-choice football fans I know felt bad for agreeing with him. Sentence: Signed to a buddy-cop movie with Colin Cowherd, directed by the "Date Movie"/"Epic Movie"/"Disaster Movie" duo of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.
24. Bill Simmons Charges: Thankfully, "The Sports Guy" rarely deigns to write about college football these days, presumably because there are no college teams named the Patriots, Red Sox, or Celtics. But when he does, the result is every bit as embarrassing as you'd think it would be coming from a man who appears openly proud of never having traveled south of I-495 unless forced to. Worse yet, Simmons has gone from being the voice of the enthusiastic, pop-culture-literate everyfan to a self-satisfied starfucker more concerned with dropping the names of all the awesome people ESPN has given him the opportunity to hang out with. At this point, he's the sportswriting equivalent of 5 1/2" floppy disks or leaded gasoline: useful for a while, quaint in their own way, but the world has moved on. Exhibit A: In an April 2009 segment on his radio show, Simmons for some reason gave the equally cloying Rick Reilly free reign to dredge up a year-and-a-half-old pseudo-incident in which EDSBS passed along a story that Reilly had brought a stripper into the press box for the Florida-LSU game, then said, "It just seems like society's gotten a little bit meaner. Which I'm surprised by, because -- I really thought after 9/11, it was gonna be like some sort of wake-up call for everybody, you know?" This from the guy who threw together four thousand words gloating over Pete Carroll's inability to three-peat in the '06 Rose Bowl. Sentence: The Patriots trade Tom Brady and Wes Welker away to the Bills and stumble through a decade of five- or six-win seasons before finally being sold and moved off to Los Angeles.
23. Mike Hamilton Charges: Take the migraine-inducingly bad decision-making exhibited by Mike Hamrick at #44, boil off whatever loyalty or respect for tradition that might be motivating him in his current position at his alma mater, and you've got Tennessee's Hamilton, an athletic director who evidently graduated from the same slash-and-burn/get-distracted-by-the-first-shiny-thing-someone-dangles-in-front-of-your-face school of management that worked such wonders for GM and Lehman Brothers. Hamilton's first step in submarining the UT football program was to unload lifelong Big Urnge loyalist Phil Fulmer; the second and more important step was hiring budding dipshit Lane Kiffin, who could only be troubled to smirk his way through one season in Knoxville before busting tracks for USC without so much as leaving some bills on the nightstand. Thanks in part to the ridiculous contracts Hamilton had OK'd for Kiffykins' assistants, one prospective replacement after another turned the Vols down until they finally settled on a three-year WAC coach with a 17-20 record. If Hamilton still has a job in Knoxville as of this time next year, it should be taken as a sign that Tennessee is firmly committed to becoming a basketball school. Exhibit A: In an interview earlier this month, Hamilton told ESPN, "Unless people get amnesia, that [Kiffin] was the coach everyone wanted." Which can basically be translated as "Because everyone else is as dumb as I am, it's not technically my fault." Sentence: Serving as human anchor for the Volunteer Navy.
22. Lou Holtz Charges: I'm going to try to tread somewhat lightly here, because my family has had its share of people who struggled with dementia just like everyone else's. But we've all watched Sweet Lou with our own eyes, and it has become clear over the last couple seasons that the former Notre Dame coach barely has the mental acuity to successfully procure cash from an ATM. Still, his mush-mouthed voice continues to fire spittle at us from the "College Gameday" set several times a week, mangling players' names and cravenly hyping any team he's ever coached -- or that his son has coached, for that matter, since Holtz apparently saw no reason to recuse himself from the broadcast booth of an East Carolina game last season despite the fact that his son Skip was on the sideline. The only reason he's not higher on this list is that ESPN is just as responsible, if not more so, for enabling him. Exhibit A: Compared Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez to Hitler, something even the craziest, couch-burnin'est West Virginia fan would think was in poor taste. Sentence: Locked in a sealed room that begins filling with water and won't stop until Notre Dame wins a national championship.
21. SEC referees Charges: Seems like every year a different conference's officiating crew manages to assemble its own lowlight reel of blown calls, egregiously thrown flags, and assorted fuckuppery that sets the nationwide standard for ruinous interference. This past year, that crew was Rogers Redding's platoon of Keystone Kops from the SEC, who embarrassed themselves so thoroughly at one point in the season that commissioner Mike Slive had to issue a leaguewide gag order banning coaches from disparaging them in public. It was bad enough that Marc Curles's curiously one-sided calls prompted conspiracy theories about the league trying to engineer a matchup of undefeated Alabama and Florida teams in the conference title game to ensure a shot at the national championship, worse still that those theories started looking entirely believable. Exhibit A:
Sentence: Torn limb from limb by a pack of British soccer hooligans, who then excessively celebrate their achievement.
We're fixing to delve into the depth of the truly, significantly, irredeemably loathsome -- #s 20 through 11 are on their way tomorrow. Or whenever I get around to it.
