The Old School Plus One tackles 2009.

Last spring I tossed out my own solution to the BCS/playoff dilemma with an idea I called the "old-school plus one," which dispensed with both the arbitrariness and obscurantism of the current BCS system and the cumbersome dead weight of an overly extensive playoff setup. Basically, it'd work like this: The elite-level bowls, after sending out their automatic invites to the various conference champions, get to invite whichever other teams they want. Rather than the ridiculously arcane selection process mandated by present BCS rules, the bowls could invite whichever teams they thought would sell the most tickets and/or create the most exciting matchup; it'd basically be the same free-for-all we had before the Bowl Coalition got started in the mid-'90s, with some teams potentially being sought after by multiple bowls and getting to pick the invite they preferred. After all the bowl games were played, the teams would be re-ranked -- simply going by the AP poll, no coaches trying to game the system or computer rankings needlessly complicating matters -- and the top two teams face off in a national-championship game.

For the most part, I think this system would've worked well in sorting out some of the thornier controversies of the BCS era, but I thought I'd try applying it to the 2009 season -- in which we still have five undefeated teams as of mid-December, but only two of them getting to play for BCS title honors -- to see if we could get better matchups and a more definitive path to the championship.



THE PRE-BOWL SITUATION
1. Alabama (13-0) -- SEC champion
2. Texas (13-0) -- Big XII champion
3. Texas Christian (12-0) -- Mountain West champion
4. Cincinnati (12-0) -- Big East champion
5. Florida (12-1)
6. Boise State (13-0) -- WAC champion
7. Oregon (10-2) -- Pac-10 champion
8. Ohio State (10-2) -- Big 10 champion
9. Georgia Tech (11-2) -- ACC champion
10. Iowa (10-2)

THE BOWL MATCHUPS
Rose: #7 Oregon (10-2) vs. #8 Ohio State (10-2)
The Rose Bowl goes with its traditional matchup of Big 10 and Pac-10 champions -- and completely removes itself from the national-title picture in the process. But that's never stopped them before.

Sugar: #1 Alabama (13-0) vs. #3 Texas Christian (12-0)
Alabama goes to New Orleans as the SEC champion, and the Sugar jumps on undefeated TCU rather than taking a more geographically distant Boise State team or setting up a Bama-Florida rematch.

Fiesta: #2 Texas (13-0) vs. #6 Boise State (13-0)
This one's tricky, because the Fiesta probably would be very interested in the prospect of a Lone Star State showdown between undefeated Texas and TCU teams. But Boise State's fan base has been very good to the Fiesta Bowl in the past (not to mention this year -- more than 80 percent of BSU's ticket allotment for the 2010 Fiesta had been snapped up within four days of Selection Sunday), and the bowl would still get an undefeated team even if the Sugar Bowl snapped up TCU first. Plus, given what happened the last time an undefeated Boise team met up with a Big XII champion in Glendale, this matchup would almost certainly generate a ton of media buzz.

Orange: #4 Cincinnati (12-0) vs. #5 Florida (12-1)
The Orange Bowl has the option of picking either the Big East champ or the ACC champ for its automatic tie-in, and I think they'd go with the higher-ranked, undefeated Bearcats over Georgia Tech, given how loath ACC fans have been to even travel as far as Jacksonville or Tampa for a conference-title game (and how Cincy fans snapped up a much greater percentage of their ticket allotment than Virginia Tech fans did for last year's bowl).

WHAT (I THINK) HAPPENS: Oregon dispenses with Ohio State in an ultimately irrelevant game. In the shocker of the postseason, an Alabama team whose defensive coordinator signed a contract to become Georgia's DC two weeks prior feels a strong sense of deja vu as they walk into the Superdome, take another undefeated Mountain West squad for granted, and get upset by TCU, 24-20. Texas also does one of their usual early-game sleepwalks but manages to survive their mid-major opponent in a shootout. And Florida's defense powers them to a win over Cincinnati. (Subplot: Would Brian Kelly stick around to coach the Bearcats through the postseason, regardless of his intentions to take the Notre Dame job, if he thought UC still had a glimmer of hope for a national title?)

After the bowl games shake up the rankings, Texas is #1, followed by TCU, Alabama, Florida, and Oregon. The two Texas teams thus get sent to Pasadena (hey, the in-state battle ended up happening after all), where the Horned Frogs score the potential tying touchdown in the final 90 seconds of the national-title game, then eschew the extra-point kick for a shot at a two-point conversion and the win -- and make it, winning 29-28 and bringing home the national-championship trophy.



Now, all this is conjecture, and do I really think TCU would upset Alabama or Texas? I don't know; depends on what day you ask me. And you'll also notice that only two of the matchups are actually different from what we've ended up with in 2009 -- Alabama and Texas each have to face a mid-major before getting a shot at the national title, rather than just shunting TCU and Boise State to face each other at the BCS's "kids' table." But I threw the TCU upsets into my hypothetical situation to shed light on a couple of larger points -- first, with four of the five undefeated teams paired up against each other in bowl games, you'd really have to work hard to come up with a way to explain why the "plus-one" winner shouldn't be crowned the national champion. Second, with the mid-major "BCS busters" having an actual shot at the national title, rather than just being set off to the side to play a glorified exhibition game, you'd silence the Orrin Hatches of the world who, accurately or inaccurately, think their states' teams are being unfairly excluded from the process.

The only real possibility for a monkeywrench to get thrown into the works here is if Cincinnati upsets Florida, meaning that there'd still be one 13-0 BCS-conference team (which, like Alabama, had knocked off the Gators) still "on the outside looking in" with respect to the national-championship game. But I think my larger purpose still has been served: If the top bowls were freed from the strictures of computer rankings, automatic qualifiers, and the BCS's ridiculously convoluted rules for which bowls get to pick teams in which order, we'd not only get better, more meaningful games, but we'd also get an even more definitive national champion.

Your comments and suggestions, as always, are welcome in the comments, and that goes for any differences of opinion you might have on the bowl matchups themselves.

The Friday Random Ten+5 gets its Kart on.

There's been a silver lining to getting laid off, and it is that I've had more time to devote to the things that I love -- writing, Georgia football, taking my dogs to the park, and, of course, Mario Kart. I don't like to brag, but I've gotten pretty good at it, enough that I'm starting to hunt for a way I can mention that particular skill on my résumé. And whenever they come out with a Mario Kart II or Super Mario Kart or whatever -- which I will almost certainly buy -- I've got some ideas for some new characters they could add. This week's +5 is Five New Characters That Would Be Awesome For Mario Kart, and I'm even offering them to Nintendo free of charge:



Baby Wario
I don't know why none of the evil characters have baby analogues. Lord knows I run across enough bratty-ass kids in Target or at the airport or whatever that there are models aplenty for such a character. Baby Wario's backstory is that after Wario captured Mario's castle and took all his coins in Super Mario Land, he went off to Vegas to celebrate and nailed a cocktail waitress at the Hard Rock Casino. Nine months later, she brought his bastard son to his door and said she refused to raise him. So Wario took his baby boy in and taught Baby Wario to be just as big a dick as he was. Now Baby Wario can throw things and throw tantrums in restaurants and never get in trouble, because, well, that appears to be how people are raising their kids these days.



Faggy Kong
The misfit cousin of Funky Kong (above) and Donkey Kong, who never quite fit in with the rest of the Kongs and went up to New York right after graduating from high school; currently working in a high-end hair salon in the Village. The funny thing is, with his cutoff shorts and wife-beater, Funky himself actually looks like a lot of the gay dudes you see rollerblading around Piedmont Park.



Wapeach
None of the female characters have "evil" versions like Wario or Waluigi. And Wapeach could be awesome -- you could basically take Princess Peach, dye her hair black (because in the world of cartoons or video games, any female who isn't blond is evil), give her a black leather biker/dominatrix outfit, stick a cigarette in her mouth, and there you go. And before long she's getting Mario to paint her apartment and make her car payments while she's getting with Wario on the side.



Bows-her
This was also Holly's brainchild: a female version of Bowser who nags him incessantly about his breath, his cleanliness, and his driving. I'd thinking she would be kind of like Ndnd, the wife of the emperor of Omicron Persei 8 on "Futurama." Well, maybe Ndnd crossed with Estelle Costanza.



Mouser
Mouser was an actual character from Super Mario Bros. 2, a giant mouse who threw cherry bombs at Mario, who would have to throw them right back. Pretty easy to beat and kind of a little bitch, but whatever.

If anyone can come up with character PhotoShops that are better than the random pictures I've thrown up here, by all means, send 'em along.

And the Ten:

1. Pet Shop Boys, "Sail Away"
2. KRS-One, "2nd Quarter -- Free Throws"
3. Radio 4, "The Movies"
4. The Beastie Boys, "Intergalactic"
5. R.E.M., "Parakeet"
6. Underworld, "Shout Twice"
7. Billy Idol, "Dancing With Myself"
8. Groove Armada, "Your Song"
9. Orbital, "Style" (single version)
10. U2, "Love Is Blindness"

Your own Mario character ideas and Random Tens are, as always, welcome in the comments.

The Friday Not-So-Random Ten+5 begins planning for its future.

As I'm pretty sure all of you know by now, I got laid off a couple weeks ago, and after a back surgery, a few days' recovery, and a visit from some out-of-town guests for SEC Media Days, it's probably about time for me to start hunting for the next place at which I will (hopefully) be gainfully employed. There's just one thing, though: I don't like working. I realize that doesn't exactly make me anyone's unique little flower, but there are very few things I like enough to be jazzed about the prospect of doing them for a mandatory eight hours each day. Even some things I like when I'm just doing them on my own become dreary and unappealing when I think about having to spend five days a week in a cubicle doing them so that I'll get to eat that month.

What do I like to do? That's a question a lot of people have asked me over the past couple weeks, in an attempt to begin honing in on something I might like to seek out for my next job, and I can actually think of a few things. The +5 below is where I reckon I'll be starting my job search: My Five Ideal Jobs. Following that is a Not-So-Random Ten that will basically constitute the bulk of my job-searching, future-planning soundtrack over the next few weeks, but let's get to the jobs first, just in case any of you helpful readers might know of some openings for any of these:



Freelance Lego sculptor
I would hope that my Lego design/construction chops have already been well established on this site. "Freelance Lego sculptor" is actually the alter ego I use for myself when I'm in a new and unfamiliar city and roaming bars to pick up chicks. Sure, it probably sounds dorky at first blush, but there's a lot you can do with it. For instance, I tell girls I just got back from spending a month in Switzerland, where I earned $15,000 for building a 2:1-scale version of the Peugeot 5008 for a display at the Geneva Auto Show. Laugh all you want, but that story earned me a night of passion with Katherine Heigl last month. OK, not Katherine Heigl, but her personal assistant, which is practically the same thing.



Rick Neuheisel's sweater-vest coordinator
My fandom of Rick Neuheisel is also well established at this point. After maybe Jim Tressel, Neuheisel is also one of the sharpest-dressed coaches in Division I-A, with a wide variety of wondrous sweater vests at his disposal for any given game. As something of a sweater-vest aficionado myself, I feel I would be highly qualified to select the most appropriate vest for each situation, helping to ensure that Neu's reputation as one of the slickest ladykillers in college football remains intact.



Lucy Pinder's personal hand bra
Being an internationally famous, 32G-equipped glamour model means you spend a lot of time with your hands posed coyly in front of your boobs. Only problem is, that doesn't leave you with any free hands to do things like play video games, shift a manual transmission, cook flapjacks, or what have you. I would be happy to offer my services as someone who could handle the boob-covering while she tends to those other important activities, and I think she'd find that she was now able to handle her daily chores more quickly and efficiently than ever before.



Proprietor of the world's first human petting zoo
I don't see how someone hasn't come up with this idea already. A hygienic, safely monitored place where people can pet the kind of beautiful women or men they might never get to come into contact with otherwise? Way better than a lap dance, and way better than some regular old petting zoo with farm animals. Which would you rather pet, a supermodel or a billy goat? You shouldn't have to think too hard about your answer to that question.



James Bond supervillain
Living in the lap of luxury in a concealed mega-hideout, extorting billions from the world's governments -- heck, I could do that. Only I'd have two advantages over the supervillains Bond faced in movies like "You Only Live Twice" or "On Her Majesty's Secret Service": One, I wouldn't actually have to tangle with anyone as clever or capable as James Bond, since he's a fictional character. Two, I'd have the advantage of watching all the mistakes those villains made and knowing better than to repeat them. As satisfying as it might be to trap an enemy spy in an elaborate, slow, excruciatingly torturous (but theoretically escapable) trap, I would resist the temptation to leave him in something like that; as Bond has proven time and time again, you're really better off just shooting him right away and getting it over with. So I think I've demonstrated that I have the cunning and foresight to be quite a nefarious villain -- all I need now is a hefty infusion of venture capital so that I can build my secret lair and city-destroying laser and what have you. Anybody looking around for sound investments in a troubled economy? Let me show you my prospectus.

And now the Ten, which, as explained, is Not-So-Random this week:

1. Mo' Horizons, "Hit the Road Jack"
2. The Farm, "Hard Times"
3. The Beatmasters, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
4. Underworld, "Two Months Off"
5. Beck, "Deadweight"
6. Miles Davis, "Freddie Freeloader"
7. Public Enemy, "Brother's Gonna Work It Out"
8. Pet Shop Boys, "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)"
9. The Smiths, "Stretch Out and Wait"
10. Avenue Q cast, "I Wish I Could Go Back to College"

Your turn, folks. Help me out! Let me hear your job suggestions, and/or random or not-so-random tens, in the comments.

Makes a great gift.

I'm sure you've seen these decals, right? They're wildly popular around the Birmingham suburbs -- they've got them for baseball, cheerleading, gymnastics, football, all kinds of things.

Anyway, here's what I want: A decal like the one above, only the silhouette is of a woman dancing on a pole (something like this would do fine). And the name below it is like "Shawnii #24" or something like that.

Can anyone hook that up for me?

Solving the playoff predicament:The Old School Plus One.

I know y'all may be tired of the college-football playoff debate, and I'm sure that at some point in the recent past I promised I wasn't going to hash it out anymore -- but a few weeks ago, shortly after the major-conference commissioners gave the thumbs-down to the idea of a four-team playoff, Tony Barnhart floated the idea of a simple plus-one system that would place 10 teams in five elite-level bowl games (the current Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta BCS bowls, plus a newcomer) and then, after those five games have been played and the rankings have re-sorted themselves, take the #1 and #2 teams in the BCS rankings and pit them against each other in an "official" national-title game. Barnhart readily admits this isn't a new idea -- he says Vince Dooley was talking about it way back in the Bowl Coalition days -- and honestly, when the BCS first announced the implementation of a fifth game starting with the 2006 season, I thought this is what it was going to entail (rather than just being an extra game to squeeze in two more teams).

Barnhart's off to a nice start here, but I've still got a big problem with it -- namely, that the BCS formula, with its tidal wave of decimal points and obscure computer rankings, is apparently still involved. I've made no bones about my distaste for this system, to the point where I'd be perfectly happy if we just went back to the old days when bowls could invite whomever the hell they wanted, no computer rankings, decimal points, selection orders, automatic berths for any team ranked at a certain level or higher, or any of that. However, I think there's a way to have something that traditional and still throw a bone to the folks who think, and not without reason, that some kind of playoff is the only gentlemanly and proper way to pick a single national champion.

I call it the "Old School Plus One." Once all the regular-season and conference-championship games have been played, the bowls get to make the same mad dash for teams that they did in the pre-Coalition days. They can maintain any conference tie-ins they find desirable, but beyond that it's every bowl for itself. And with the BCS system obliterated, no bowl is forced to take any team -- from either a major conference or one of the "mid-majors" -- just because it's achieved a certain ranking. And nobody has to take turns as far as inviting "at-large" teams, either. This means that two bowls could conceivably offer invites to the same team, so it'd be up to that team to decide which one it wanted to go to.


Sometimes a difficult decision like that isn't such a bad situation to be in.

Then, after all the bowls have been played, the top two teams in the country, as ranked by the AP, face off in the national-title game. That game would be administered by a body independent of any of the existing bowls, so it could be held anywhere in the country; theoretically, the NCAA could handle it like the Super Bowl, with cities, as opposed to bowl organizations, bidding on "hosting rights" years in advance.

There are tons of advantages to this system, and doing away with the infuriating BCS formula is just one of them. Bowls would be freed up to arrange the best and most lucrative matchups, instead of being locked into the BCS's arcane selection process. The bowls could make more money by bidding out their TV rights individually rather than as a "package." And teams that don't win their respective conference championships can still have a shot at the national title -- but they first have to earn that shot by beating someone who did win their conference. The downside -- if you choose to look at it that way -- is that high-ranked "mid-majors" wouldn't get the automatic berths they enjoy today, but the way for them to solve that problem is the same as it is for any other team: play a formidable out-of-conference schedule, win every game you can, and line up a bunch of people to buy tickets. Some of the people who read this site probably have me pegged as a borderline communist, but with the Old School Plus One, I'm lettin' the free market rule, baby.

Over the next couple weeks, I'll be showing how this system would've worked in each of the past 10 years since the BCS was implemented in 1998. For the purposes of these simulations, I'll assume that the four bowls that comprise the BCS in real life would retain their conference tie-ins -- i.e. the Rose gets the Big 10 and Pac-10 champions every year, the Fiesta gets the Big 12 champion, and the Sugar takes the champion of the SEC -- but beyond that, anything goes. I'll plot out which teams I think would've gone to which bowls and project who would've won each game; in some cases the games will feature the same matchups that they did in real life, which will make predicting the outcome pretty simple, but other times, when the matchups are purely hypothetical, I'll simply be making my own guesses. From there I'll settle on which teams would've ended up #1 and #2 and therefore ended up in the national-title game -- and you'll have the opportunity to vote on whether you think that outcome is better or worse than what actually transpired that year (and, of course, give more detailed opinions in the comments threads).

Everybody up to speed? Then let's start with 1998, the inaugural year of the BCS system.


Here I'm just throwing a bone to Holly, 'cause she probably isn't gonna like what's coming next.

THE PRE-BOWL SITUATION
1. Tennessee (12-0) -- SEC champion
2. Florida State (11-1) -- ACC champion
3. Ohio State (10-1) -- Big 10 co-champion
4. Kansas State (11-1)
5. Arizona (11-1)
6. UCLA (10-1) -- Pac-10 champion
7. Florida (9-2)
8. Texas A&M (11-2) -- Big 12 champion
9. Wisconsin (10-1) -- Big 10 co-champion
10. Tulane (11-0) -- Conference USA champion
16. Air Force (11-1) -- WAC champion
18. Syracuse (8-3) -- Big East champion

Going into the last week of the regular season, there are three undefeated teams (Tennessee, Kansas State, and UCLA), and the big question is who's going to be left out of the national-title game. But then all hell breaks loose (UCLA gets stunned by unranked Miami in a game postponed from the very beginning of the season; K-State loses the Big 12 title to Texas A&M in double-OT), and the question becomes which of seven one-loss teams will be matched up against still-undefeated Tennessee.

BOWL MATCHUPS
Rose: #6 UCLA (10-1) vs. #9 Wisconsin (10-1)
Same as the actual 1998 game; Ohio State, Michigan, and Wisconsin all finished 7-1 in conference play, and Ohio State and Wisconsin didn't play each other, so the Big Ten invokes its rule that in case of a tie for league champion, the Rose Bowl berth will go to the team that last got invited to Pasadena the longest time ago.

Orange: #2 Florida State (11-1) vs. #18 Syracuse (8-4)
I don’t know whether the Orange would’ve actually taken Syracuse in this scenario, but I think they would’ve taken an actual conference champion (even if the Big East was a subpar conference that year) over Kansas State or a Florida-FSU rematch.

Sugar: #1 Tennessee (12-0) vs. #3 Ohio State (10-1)
Grabs a Buckeye squad that brought a ton of fans to see FSU-OSU at the Superdome the previous year.

Fiesta: #8 Texas A&M (11-2) vs. #5 Arizona (11-1)
Has a tough choice between Arizona and tOSU; opts for Arizona because they're closer.

WHAT (I THINK) HAPPENS: Wisconsin beats UCLA 38-31, and then all hell breaks loose a second time as the top two teams fall on consecutive days — first the Chris Weinke-less Seminoles fall in a shootout to the Donovan McNabb-ful Orangemen, and then Tennessee’s extraordinary and well-documented luck runs out as the Buckeyes, more specifically their defense, boot the Vols from their perch as the nation's last unbeaten team. After that, Arizona’s victory over an offense-challenged TAMU squad in front of what effectively amounts to a home crowd seems almost anticlimactic.

With #4 Kansas State getting embarrassed by Purdue in the Alamo Bowl, Ohio State and Arizona advance to #1 and #2, respectively. And the Buckeyes beat the Wildcats in the title game, 31-20.

ANALYSIS: I don’t think a lot of people would’ve quibbled with Syracuse getting a spot in one of the major bowls, nor with fourth-ranked Kansas State being left out of the party (particularly given that they didn’t end up making much of a case for themselves against Purdue). Probably the biggest thing people are likely to argue with here is the predicted outcomes for these games, but I think the upset projections are valid. Remember, Syracuse came within a point of knocking off the eventual national-champion Vols that year; they beat Michigan by 10 in the Big House; and they absolutely destroyed a 7-2 Miami team 66-13, so I think Donovan McNabb could’ve led them to an upset of the hobbled Seminoles. Meanwhile, Tennessee struggled to outscore that same hobbled FSU team in the actual Fiesta Bowl, so I think a case can be made that Ohio State — who really hadn’t even been played close all year, save for the stunning upset to Michigan State near season’s end — would’ve finally handed them a loss.

And again, this wouldn’t be a case of the national title getting "stolen" by a team that didn’t win its conference, since Ohio State was a Big 10 champion that year.

So I know the Tennessee fans out there are going to hate this outcome, but . . . how about the rest of you?

more at twiigs.com...

Once again, feel free to leave any suggestions, dissents, criticisms, or whatever in the comments thread; I'm looking forward to seeing how this system plays itself out over the next few seasons.

Playoff argumentation the second: the "Because I Said So" part.

OK, I thought I had left the playoff debate behind for good, but the whole thing left a sort of "earworm" in my head (one that, on the bright side, replaced Bananarama's "Cruel Summer") and, upon the further reflection that that inspired, I realized there was an anti-playoff argument in addition to the rational, somewhat objective argument presented the other day: the reasoning-free, purely subjective "'cause I don't wanna" argument.


College football is like Kate Hudson in "Almost Famous": Explanation coming in 3, 2 . . .

Here's the deal: The current CFB postseason, with its weird-ass bowl sponsors and its clusterfuck of a title-selection process, makes college football kind of like that hot mess you dated back in college. She was a total trainwreck, and you wondered how she maintained enough mental stability to so much as put one foot in front of the other sometimes, but she was stupidly, blazingly hot, all kinds of fun in the 50-to-75 percent of the time she wasn't collapsing into a blubbering mess, and perhaps most importantly, actually enjoyed hanging out with your dirty, unpleasant-smelling ass. Yes, college football's postseason system is a Romper Room of dysfunction on an annual basis, but . . . doesn't that kind of make it unique? Do you really want it to straighten itself out with the cold, ruthless corporate efficiency of the NFL?

I don't, and I'm one of the biggest NFL fans around -- my Georgia fandom didn't shift into overdrive until I was actually at UGA, but I've been a Washington Redskins fan since my dad got the green light to decorate my three-year-old self with a #81 Art Monk T-shirt. Yet even as I've maintained joint Bulldogs/Redskins rooting interests over the past couple decades or so, I've liked the NFL and college football for reasons that are actually really different. They aren't interchangeable, and I don't want one to turn into the other.


Before I continue, a moment of silence, please, for the Quiet Man.

The NFL has but 32 teams, all of whom are relatively even in talent, so an "upset" really only means that some actually-pretty-decent team managed to overcome a point spread nobody would touch in the college game. It's only logical that measures should be taken to single out one superior team that rises above the rest; yes, every team except for one has to end their season with some kind of disappointment, but they're all big boys, and it's not like they aren't getting paid enough, so I have no problem telling the other 31 teams tough shit, try again next year.

But college is different. There are 120 teams covering a dramatically huge spectrum of ability from "dynasty" to "hopeless bottom-feeder," so if someone manages to pull an upset and somehow manages to pull out, say, an 8-4 season after years of failure, maybe I don't want to subject them to a system where they might have to end their season on a down note. Lest you think that makes me a bleeding-heart softie, I want the same thing for the perennial powerhouses. Think of it this way: I was kind of psyched that, after a trying 2006 season in which the Bulldogs had to right the ship after a 1-4 slump, they still got the chance to end the campaign with a blaze of glory by upsetting the Hokies in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. At the same time, I'm really grateful that the Dawgs got to end the 2007 season as Warrior-eviscerating Sugar Bowl champions rather than a future trivia question ("Which SEC team missed the 2007 plus-one playoff field by thaaaaat much?"). Yes, a single, indisputable national champion is an admirable goal, but is it one I'd trade the above simple pleasures for? Not if the only proposed methods of achieving that goal are as vulnerable to abuse and whoring-out as today's playoff proposals are. Honestly, maybe not at all.


Oh, yeah, you remember this.

I don't know -- maybe it's just because my continuing development as a sports blogger has shown me that there are far worse things in the world than something to be endlessly argued and bantered over, but I no longer think a split national title is nearly the affront to God, country, and the memory of Pop Warner that I used to. And I know you may be out there grumbling, "You'll change your tune if it's Georgia that ends up 'sharing' the title with Southern Cal this year," but you know what? If one poll ends up putting Georgia at the top at the end of the season and another poll puts someone else there, I'm still going to be thrilled with my team and the season they played. I'm still going to cry like a little girl with a skinned knee when they hoist that "National Champions" flag over Sanford Stadium before the 2009 home opener. And I'm still going to shove it in the faces of any and every Georgia Tech fan I come across.

Now, I still think the BCS is still someone's sad idea of a science project and has no business being anywhere near college football, but that doesn't mean a playoff is the answer. Again, I'd be perfectly happy to just kick it old school and go back to the status quo ante Coalition that existed back in the days of gigantic shoulder pads and Dick Enberg. Yup, this commie pinko liberal, who's in favor of gay marriage and marijuana legalization, will still defend tradition to the death when it comes to college football. If it was good enough for the 1980 Dawgs -- and boy, was it ever good -- why can't it be good for us?

Playoffs?! OK, you can talk about playoffs.

With a plus-one playoff proposal recently having been shot down by the conference commissioners of D-IA, the already heated (and seemingly endless) debate over a playoff in IA football has ramped up yet further in the blogosphere. Most of the CFB blogs I read on the regular, surprisingly, are against playoffs -- even more surprisingly, this goes double for the Georgia blogs, as Senator Blutarsky, Paul Westerdawg, and Kyle King (among others) have all come out against such a system despite the fact that it might've given last year's 11-2 Bulldogs the shot at the Big 'Un that many felt they were unfairly denied. At the other end of the spectrum, you've got (among others) Sunday Morning Quarterback, who has not only made eloquent pro-playoff arguments in the past but has gone so far as to call one more or less inevitable.

It's prompted me to do a little wondering of my own about what my true opinion is on this, and the closest thing I can come up with is I don't actually care. I know that's one of the most annoying things a blogger can do, to write a long-ass post that basically amounts to "Hey everybody, my opinion is that I have no opinion," so let me modify that somewhat: Whatever opinion I have on this matter has far, far less to do with me wanting a playoff than it does with not wanting -- with extreme prejudice -- the system we've got now, i.e. the BCS.



In theory, I'm attracted to the idea of a plus-one playoff; looking back over the first 10 seasons of the BCS and what it would've looked like had a plus-one been in effect, it's hard to say for all but one or two of those groupings that any of the teams involved wouldn't have made a fine and respectable national champion had they ended up winning it all. However, my interest in a plus-one has two major caveats, and the first one is the potential for a four-team playoff to grow wildly into something much bigger and more diluted -- or, as Blutarsky calls it, mission creep. The textbook example of this is the NCAA basketball tournament, which started out with only eight teams in 1939 and has more than octupled in size since then; and even if you dismiss that by delineating all the reasons that college hoops aren't analogous to college football, there may be an even better example of "mission creep" in the college bowl system. In 1939 there were five bowl games -- Rose, Cotton, Orange, Sugar, and Sun, all of which have remained respectable institutions with generally high (though varying) levels of prestige -- but this coming season we're going to have 34. If you'd asked Cotton Bowl founder J. Curtis Sanford back in 1937 whether his financing of a new bowl would one day lead to an annual game in Shreveport between the number-seven teams in the SEC and Big 12, I'm sure he would've told you "Don't be silly," too (though that would've been partly because he wouldn't have even known what the Big 12 was). And if you'd asked him about a bowl matching the third-place team in the Big East with the fifth-place team in Conference USA that was named after not even a pizza restaurant but said pizza restaurant's Web site, I'm sure he would've at least given thought to burning you for witchcraft.

If there's one thing we should have learned about the country's conference commissioners by now, it's that they're some greedy mofos. I realize that's because they have to be; their top priority isn't college football writ large, it's their own conferences first, the sanctity of college football second. Looking again at that what-if post about a plus-one on Blutarsky's site, you'll note that no Big East teams would've been invited to the plus-one party for the last five seasons, and only one ACC team would've gotten the call in the seven seasons since FSU last played for the title -- think Mike Tranghese or John Swofford wouldn't have raised a stink about that at some point? Given that more playoff games would equal more money, it would be completely implausible if they weren’t eventually able to drum up enough support to crack open the playoff field a little more and expand it to include four more teams and a pair of more-or-less-automatic berths for their conference champions.


He up and swiped Miami, VaTech, and Boston College right out from under the Big East's nose -- what makes you think he won't f$#! with your playoff?

So if a plus-one playoff ever does get implemented, there has to be a Doomsday Device built into it that says the very minute someone even suggests expanding the field beyond four teams, the whole thing blows up and we go back to the circa-1991, pre-Coalition, every-bowl-for-itself system, split titles and all. Clap to this: How is our current situation really all that different? There’s still just as much disagreement over national titles on a regular basis, and still the danger of a split title, as 2003 proved; only now we can’t even figure out who’s going to be in the national-title game without a calculator and a college-level expertise in statistics, which is stupid. Any average math-averse Joe like myself should be able to sit down with the sports section on a Monday morning and, after less than 60 seconds’ worth of perusing the poll results and conference standings, figure out who’s going to be playing for the title, whether those teams are going to be matched up in one game or spread out over two or even three. But I can’t do that now because we’ve just arbitrarily thrown algorithms and something called the Colley Matrix into the mix. I think part of our current distaste for the BCS stems from mistrust, because we’re basically throwing the poll results into a Cuisinart along with some computer rankings whose formulas or methodology are known only to a tiny group of people who may not even be football fans in the first place and expecting everyone to just accept on faith whatever comes out. And I’m sorry, but this isn’t a faith-based business.

Have a playoff or don’t have a playoff already, but whichever you end up deciding, let’s get rid of the BCS. An old-school, unstructured Wild-West bowl system might not be preferable to a playoff, but in practical terms it’s certainly no worse than letting math geeks have this much say in who gets to play for the title. Basically, after ten years of the BCS, I think I've come to the conclusion that a split title, while certainly not the ideal situation, wouldn't exactly be the end of the world; it's when we have to slog through the aggravation of an arcane jumble of decimal points, and still arrive at a split title anyway, that I really start to feel like the sanctity of my favorite sport is being arbitrarily and pointlessly messed with. And that's when I get pissed.

Sorry if that disappoints both the playoff proponents and the BCS folks, but what can I say? Even a commie pinko like me can be a traditionalist about some things.


And honestly, if the chaos of the old bowl system could give us moments like this, was it really that bad?

Get ready, because the Friday Random Ten+5 is really gonna blow your skirt up.

Not to toot my own horn here, but I like to think I'm a pretty creative individual, someone who's good at coming up with ideas for stuff. The problem is that I also have the attention span of a mosquito, so often times I'll only focus on one idea for a little while before leaping onto another one. Case in point: I've had this idea for a feature film for like twelve years now, and I've been trying to write it, but between rewrites and plot tweaks and getting sidetracked by other stuff, it's been more than a decade and I'm still only a little bit more than halfway through the thing. One of my New Year's resolutions was to devote myself a little more thoroughly to my outside writing projects, so I'm quite optimistic that it won't take me another twelve years to do the second half, but I still frequently find myself muttering "Focus!" at random intervals.

Fortunately, though, completely separate from my ability (or lack of same) to actually get these things down on paper, my ideas are pretty sweet. If I could just get my foot in the door of a TV network or movie studio, I could probably make them some serious bank. For this week's +5, I'm going to give you a delicious taste of what I'm talking about by pitching Five Can't-Miss Movie/TV Ideas. And yes, if I see any of these pop up on a screen of any size and I haven't gotten a check, I'm suing you bastards, every last mother's son.



"Every Day Should Be Saturday" (A college-football version of "Friday Night Lights" -- written by Aaron Sorkin)
OK, Orson Swindle might be pissed at me for co-opting his blog name, but he'll get the royalties that are coming to him -- and the concept comes pre-approved with a glowing endorsement from Holly, whom I'm sure is not alone in being able to appreciate football AND drama AND the rapid-fire wit of the guy behind "Sports Night" and "The West Wing." First casting decision is to bring back John Spencer, a/k/a Leo McGarry from "West Wing," as the cranky but lovable head coach who . . . what? He's dead? OK, Brian Dennehy, then.



"Studio TC1 on Wood Lane"
Now, you may be asking: Why didn't I mention "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" in Aaron Sorkin's list of greatest hits? Because . . . well, because it kind of sucked after the first few episodes, quite frankly. But having already assigned blame for this, I'm not going to rehash all the reasons why it wasn't an engaging show; instead, I'm going to tell you how to make it better. How many British TV shows have we seen get completely lost in translation when they were Americanized for U.S. networks? "Coupling" springs immediately to mind, but "Weakest Link" had kind of a rough ride, too, and even "The Office" needed a season or two to find its way (and had to pretty much abandon any connection to its British counterpart in the process). Is it possible, then, that taking an American TV series and moving it to England might make it better? I mean, with "Studio 60" you had a great foundation, clever writing, and a few interesting characters to start with; maybe all it needs to get over the hump is to exchange the American TV sensibility for a British one, and the overly clever repartee for some traditionally understated Limey irony. I'm thinking Eddie Izzard and Simon Pegg in the Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry roles, respectively; Saffron Burrows in the Amanda Peet role; Ray Winstone as the asshole network chairman; and Martine McCutcheon, who was so adorable in "Love Actually," as Pegg's goody-goody love interest. What do you think, sirs?



"George Orwell's Animal Farm," presented by Pixar Studios
After 13 Oscar nominations and six wins (including three for Best Animated Feature), Pixar is like the Bill Belichick of computer-animated films: They've so completely dominated the field that there's really nothing left for them to prove. "Monsters Inc." and "The Incredibles" are two of the greatest films I've ever seen, period, never mind that they're kid flicks. There's just one thing Pixar has yet to do: a computer-animated film for adults. Take Brad Bird, who directed "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille," and put him behind the wheel of a new adaptation of George Orwell's justifiably iconic (and distressingly accurate) novel with an all-star cast of voice talent. I'm thinking the headliner should be Alec Baldwin as Napoleon the pig, and if that character doesn't ring a bell with you, you need to go read the book, numbnuts.



"Bond 23" featuring Sean Connery as the villain
The next James Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace," has already been cast and commenced filming. But I've got an idea for the casting for the 23rd film in the series, which is already scheduled for 2010: Bring back Sean Connery as the bad guy. The dude may be 77 years old, but he's still got it. Supposedly he's retired from filmmaking, but I bet they could bring him back if they dumped enough money in his lap. I don't care what kind of villain Connery plays or what diabolical acts his fiendish plot entails; all I ask is that he refer to James Bond as a "beef-witted applejohn" at some point during the movie.



"Justify Your Existence"
Western culture seems to be reaching critical mass in terms of utterly useless celebrities -- the pundits and "experts" shoved in front of our faces just to go off on rants about things they don't know anything about, the people who get famous for doing stupid shit, the people who get famous for doing nothing at all besides promoting themselves relentlessly. The game-slash-reality show "Justify Your Existence" would force these people to put their meager talents, to the extent they actually have any, where their mouths are. Each episode would pit a given pseudo-celebrity against some random person yanked off the street to compete in that given celebrity's milieu of choice to determine whether they actually have any business being on TV all the time. You could have Ann Coulter facing off against a random man on the street in an "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?"-style quiz on the U.S. Constitution; the always-annoying Heidi Montag, who apparently fancies herself a pop star, facing an average Josephine in an "American Idol" sing-off; or maybe Paris Hilton competing with some unknown housewife in a fashion-design competition ultimately judged by Heidi Klum and the crew from "Project Runway." With any luck, this show would give us a weekly dose of pure, uncut Colombian schadenfreude as our nation's most worthless celebrities get shown up by the unwashed masses in the areas in which they themselves have decided to become famous.

And if that doesn't pan out, we'll just replace it with "The Throw Heavy Objects At Pete Doherty Hour." Good? Yes?

Anyway, while you ponder those, here's the Ten:

1. Johnny Cash, "Delia's Gone"
2. The Cardigans, "My Favourite Game"
3. 3rd Bass, "Oval Office"
4. Dr. Octagon, "3000"
5. The Fixx, "One Thing Leads To Another"
6. A Tribe Called Quest, "Against the World"
7. The Pharcyde, "Hard Times"
8. Thievery Corporation, "Focus On Sight"
9. Radiohead, "Backdrifts (Honeymoon Is Over)"
10. Public Enemy, "Contract On the World Love Jam"

All righty, readers, time for your own killer ideas and/or Random Tens in the comments. Or if you just want to praise the sweet Lord that the weekend's almost here, you can do that too.

An open letter to Ashley Alexandra "Kristen" Dupre.

Dear Ashley Alexandra/Kristen/whatever,

I understand. I know you're kind of overwhelmed right now. Probably more than a little embarrassed. And part of me sympathizes with you a little bit, but the other part of me -- a larger part -- would like to remind you of three things:

1. You were engaging in illegal activity.

2. In the course of that illegal activity, you had dealings with the governor of New York.

3. By "dealings" I of course mean "you blew him."

Based on those three things, all of which I think you would have to concede are facts at this point, it's probably time for you to have a nice tall glass of Shut The F$#@ Up.

You're 22 years old now, which means you were 12 or 13 when Bill Clinton got busted for getting his knob polished by Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. I think that's probably old enough to have been paying attention. You saw what happened when that whole story blew up -- Monica Lewinsky became a household name. It may not have been for the "right" reasons, but it happened. You thus had empirical evidence that one possible result of blowing a powerful (and married) politician would be getting thrust "into the 'public glare' without [your] consent."

(And on a side note, almost nobody puts up pictures of themselves in a bikini on their MySpace page hoping they won't be seen. The ones that do set their shit to "private," which you probably could've done in about five seconds.)

So yes, your life is probably pretty hectic right now, a lot more hectic than you'd like it to be. Your mom now knows that you're on intimate terms with the governor's wang, and unless she's one of those just-make-sure-they-spell-my-name-right Dina Lohan types, she's probably not real proud of that.

But unlike a lot of people in the news right now, you had a choice. The people in Atlanta who had their apartments and condos all torn up by a tornado? They didn't have a choice in the matter. The UNC class president who got murdered a few weeks ago? She didn't get a choice either. But while you were sitting there, waiting on Eliot Spitzer to unzip New York's First Trousers and unleash the First Balls -- hell, perhaps even when you were filling out that application to the Emperors Club and getting diamond-rated -- you had a choice of whether you were going to welcome those balls into your personal space. That point was probably the point at which you should've been thinking, "You know, if I blow the governor of the third most populous state in the country, it might pop up in the news one of these days." Now, unfortunately, is a bit late.

So accept that you've made your choice, the die has been cast, and the hole has been dug. Ride it out. Accentuate the positive and figure out how you're going to use all these offers from Penthouse et al. to further your nascent modeling career. Monica Lewinsky, after all, got a gig hosting a reality show; you, at the very least, have a contestant spot ready and waiting for you. (I, for one, think Tucker Carlson would welcome the chance to do the mambo with you -- the vertical one, mind -- on "Dancing with the Stars.")

But it's time to drop the victim act -- not to mention the "I'm just an innocent little girl who never wanted to become famous" act. In the words of one of my favorite blogs: Sack up, ho.

Sincerely,
Doug Gillett

An open letter to Daniel Snyder.

Dear Daniel,

So Joe Gibbs has decided to ride his NASCAR Camry off into the sunset. There's a certain suddenness to the whole thing, but paradoxically I guess we could all kind of see it coming. The NFL is a different place from the one Joe dominated back in the '80s, and while I think Joe could've taken the 'Skins back to the Super Bowl under the right circumstances, I don't blame a 67-year-old guy for wondering if he really had the time and energy at this stage of his life to make it happen. This isn't Steve Spurrier throwing up his hands and quitting just because his master plan to assemble a fantasy team of ex-Gators and plug them back into the Fun 'n' Gun was a colossal flop in the NFL (a flop that was only predicted by a few people, by which I mean, oh, fucking everybody); this was a living legend taking stock of his life and deciding that maybe there were other people who could run his beloved team better than he was currently capable of running it. I'm not happy that he's leaving, but I can recognize the possibility that it might be for the best.

But anyway, this isn't really about Joe. Guy's already a Hall of Famer; even if he'd walked out after a 1-15 swan song rather than a 9-7 season that led to the playoffs, he'd still stand astride the NFL like a colossus. This is about what you're going to do in the wake of his departure.

I'm going to put this as gently as I can, Danny: In nearly nine years of ownership of the Washington Redskins, your ass-from-a-hole-in-the-ground differentiation abilities have been found -- what's the word? -- lacking. You've done a whole lot of embarrassing shit that hasn't been balanced out by a lot of the good stuff. And I'm not even talking about wins and losses, which I realize are not under your sole control, but -- Deion Sanders? Jeff George? Forgive me for bringing this up again, but Steve Fucking Spurrier? The whole trade-draft-picks-for-geriatric-has-beens personnel strategy, which has worked exactly never? I don't think it's a coincidence that the 'Skins' only two playoff runs of your tenure happened after you finally hired a coach to whom you were willing to hand over personnel control. For that reason I think Priority #1 in the new-coach search is finding someone who will keep you the piss hell away from the war room on Draft Day.



Here's what you're going to do, Dan: You're going to go down to Raleigh, North Carolina, and dump $6 million on Bill Cowher's desk to get him to become the Redskins' next coach. You paid $5 million for Spurrier's half-assed effort, you can spend six on Cowher's whole ass. If he balks, bump it up to seven; when in doubt, groveling is never a bad thing. The thing is, Cowher's kind of a badass. He's not going to position himself behind your hiney and pucker up just because you're offering to give him an NFL paycheck again; the Falcons came calling after Petrino bolted a few weeks back and he said no. And while you may think that you're in a better position because you've run your franchise way better over the past few years than the Falcons have theirs, there are millions of Redskins fans out there who, at the very least, would like to see that question put up for debate.

Cowher's not going to chuck it all over the field the way Spurrier claimed to want to do. He's going to run the ball a lot. If he does, you will sit there and fucking like it, because he's won a lot of games that way. The Chin is the absolute best coach available right now; you know it, I know it, and Hog Nation knows it. You will call him first, you will offer him that trunkload of money, and if his initial answer is "no" then you will grow a pair and ask him at least two more times. You've got to be persistent.

What you will not do is hire some fucking retread like Billick or Mariucci. Not even Gregg Williams or Al Saunders, who are fine coordinators but have shown no particular aptitude for being a head coach. And if you hire Mike Martz, so help me, I will drop everything and drive up to Landover non-stop, and by the time I hit the on-ramp to I-66 to drive home, they won't even be able to identify you with dental records.

And as long as I'm making demands here, Danny, for the love of God, stop hanging out with Cruise. It's not 1996 anymore.

Now go forth and do good.

Hail to the Redskins,
Doug Gillett

I wanna be anarchy.

Get pissed, DESTROYYYYY!

I'm not going to bother getting into the vagaries of all the different BCS permutations and who deserves what as a result of beating whom, since there are any number of blogs and/or commentators already doing just that. Instead, as a Georgia fan, I'll merely say this.

Poll voters: You want to blow up the BCS? Then vote Dawgs.

"Georgia '07: Because somebody's got to run the asylum."

UPDATE: Ohio State #1, LSU #2 in both the AP and coaches' polls. The Harris Poll and some of the computer rankings have yet to be released, of course, but nevertheless, I'm betting right now that if Georgia goes to New Orleans, it won't be for the Big One.

Fanifesto addenda: A farewell to sour grapes.

A few weeks ago Every Day Should Be Saturday put up a pretty nifty manifesto outlining a code of conduct every amateur football blogger/pundit should strive for -- stuff like focusing on what is interesting and fun as opposed to the designated MSM Big Game storyline (#10) and not giving a rip about individual postseason awards (#16). Good recommendations all, though I'd like to add one more to that list if I may, and I invite all of y'all to join with me:

We will not stoop to engaging in discussions of which school's fans exhibit the worst behavior, nor will we act like criticisms of a given school's fans somehow amount to substantive football commentary.

You know what I'm talking about: The insinuation that because a fan of Team X flipped you off when you were just trying to ask directions to the stadium, or because a large group of Team X fans were raising hell at your hotel while you were trying to get some goddamn sleep, or because an inebriated Team X booster followed you all the way back to your tailgate screaming his school's fight song at you, this somehow makes Team X's school a festering pit of depravity about which nothing kind or complimentary can ever be said ever, with every person who has ever graduated from or been employed by said school being guilty by association. You may think you are doing the rest of us a service, Team Y fan, by publicly shaming these alleged Neanderthals and warning the rest of us of their obnoxiousness, but really all you're doing is making yourself look like -- how do I put this gently? -- a big whiny-ass titty baby. Just as patriotism, in the words of Samuel Johnson, is the last refuge of a scoundrel, so is complaining about other teams' fan behavior the last refuge of a loser.


Apparently someone managed to transport himself forward in time and snap a picture of my firstborn son, little Champ Gillett, at his first Georgia football game.

That's what it really boils down to, isn't it? Ninety-nine percent of the time, people complain about the supposed obnoxiousness of an opposing team's fans because said opposing team just beat their ass lopsided. If your team has just waxed its opponent, you're probably too busy celebrating (and/or gloating) to give a rat's ass about how the other team's fans are acting in defeat; on the other hand, if you've just been thumped, your self-esteem is at low ebb, you're looking for anything you can hold over the heads of the victors -- and since you don't have the scoreboard to back you up, you go ad hominem and slag off the other team's fans as boorish troglodytes. There's a certain banal logic to all this, but it's still pretty pathetic.

Now, as the rabid devotee of a team that both 1) wins a lot and 2) has a bit of a reputation for rowdy fans, it may look like I have an agenda here -- but it's an agenda supported by years of experience. Take our bitter in-state rivals, for instance. We have now beaten Georgia Tech six years in a row, each year in a fashion more soul-crushing than the last, and as you might guess, the Techies are getting a little tired of this. But they can't seriously say their team is superior to ours, so instead they comfort themselves with fanciful tales of how obnoxious we Bulldogs are and how, no matter how many times we punk them on the actual field of play, they're still glad they're not us. They attempt to reinforce this by regaling each other with sordid tales of how they saw drunk Georgia fans peeing off the upper deck at Sanford Stadium, children getting screamed at and having objects knocked out of their hands, and much, much worse. (In fairness, they're not alone, as this hysterical South Carolina fan forum graphically demonstrates.)


Above, an overzealous UGA fan viciously attacks an unsuspecting Techie at last year's UGA-GT game just for saying Calvin Johnson was "awesome." True story.

These stories are all appalling; they are also utter horseshit, every bit as spurious as the stories of cracked-out Katrina refugees raping fetuses in the Superdome. And that's another reason that opposing-fan-behavior kvetching should be stricken from the repertoire of any CFB blogger or pundit who wishes to be taken even remotely seriously -- it lends itself to the most absurd fish stories imaginable. Not only does the opposing team's supposed obnoxiousness get exaggerated with every step further down the grapevine, until the stadium in question has become a veritable Thunderdome of fan-on-fan mayhem, but there is the equal and opposite reaction of turning one's fellow fans into beings so ridiculously pure and noble, not to mention superhumanly strong, you almost have to wonder what the hell they were doing wasting time at a football game when they could've been ending worldwide hunger or bringing al-Qaeda to its knees with their bare hands. In that South Carolina fan forum I linked above, for instance, there are dozens of stories of drunk, brutish UGA starting fights for no reason whatsoever, yet somehow every one of those stories ends with a brave Gamecock fan rising up and Buford Pussering the Bulldog into oblivion. (Based on this sample, I can only conclude that the average male student at SC is over eight feet tall and weighs around 900 pounds.) And on a slightly less violent note, you've also got stuff like this:



Uh-huh, sure, you betcha. Readers, if any of you believe that the words "You're from Florida? Nice to meet ya! We just want to say welcome, and that color of blue looks really good on you!" have ever left a Tennessee fan's lips, then please contact me as soon as possible; I have a pristine, collector's-item 2000 Volkswagen Jetta that I would be willing to part with for the fire-sale price of only $49,999.00, and I'd also like to tell you the story of the time I nailed Jessica Simpson in the back seat of P.Diddy's Escalade. (On the other hand, this video lets you play a fun little mini-version of that NBC game show hosted by Penn Jillette: Which one is the girl who only gives blowjobs because she thinks it "doesn't count" as sex? Which one is the girl who told everyone her appendix burst when the real reason she disappeared from campus for a month is because her dad put her in rehab after she wrapped his 5-series around a lamppost? It's time to play . . . Identity!)

I mean, for crying out loud. You're really going to complain about other fans yelling "You suck" and "We're gonna kick your ass"? I'm going to let you in on a nasty little secret, ladies, and it is that college football fans occasionally say some very unkind things to their opponents. Guard that secret with care, because it is a dark and powerful truth, known only to those brave souls who have ever attended an SEC football game anyplace in the world ever.

Folks, we live in a country where the vice president, the statesman tasked with presiding over the Senate, once told a sitting senator to "go fuck [him]self" on the floor of that very legislating body. After that, if you're surprised that someone who likes a football team different from yours would ever tell you that you "suck," then perhaps you should just stay inside your house and never venture outside your front door on the off chance that some random person might disagree with you and hurt your feelings.


FSU Cowgirl Jenn Sterger recoils at the sight of a zealous Miami fan. They're normally such a quiet, subdued bunch.

If you still insist on attending college football games, you are advised to sack up and not allow your sense of self-worth to vaporize every time an opposing fan informs you that your team's ass is about to be kicked. Ignore that fan, hit him with a stinging comeback, inform him that the jerk store called and they're out of him -- just don't bitch and moan about it. Sitting around whining about how those fans are "foul, foul, foul" might earn you a couple extra gold stars on the Emily Post Fan Club message board, but it means fuck-all to anyone who actually knows or cares anything about football.

I make this solemn vow today: If we lose to Alabama on September 22, then Tide fans, you may shout "Hey Dawgs, we just beat the hell out of you!" as loud as your vocal chords are capable, or as local noise ordinances allow. If we lose to Tennessee up in Knoxville two weeks later, then Big Orange fans, you can play "Rocky Top" until your 8-track players start shooting sparks. If we lose to Georgia Tech to close out the regular season, then guess what, Techies -- you have carte-blanche to brag by any means necessary about how Georgia's reign is over and there's a new sheriff in the state. Do all of those things, and you won't see me complain about your bad manners on this site, because we will have gotten beat fair and square. On the other hand, though, if we beat you, I'm going to brag about it until I'm blue in the face, explaining in exhaustive detail exactly why and how your team, campus, and city suck massive amounts of ass -- using charts and diagrams, if necessary. And if you then have the nerve to whine about this treatment, I will then explain in equally detailed fashion why you're a pussy, and may also suggest a brand of diapers for you to purchase.


And if you're a 'tard, I'm going to call you a 'tard.

That's how it works in big-time college football. That's how it should work. Winners get the glory and the right of first refusal on any trash-talking; losers get to suck it up and hope to get 'em back next year. Attempting to usurp this hierarchy by bringing the class level or etiquette of the other team into the discussion will make you look like a big whiny douche, but it won't change the numbers on the scoreboard.

That's my new rule. Go in peace, you inbred redneck jean-shorts-wearing assbags. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

An immodest proposal, and a very special Wednesday Semi-Random Ten.

First of all, Josh, I don't know what movie you were watching, but "Transformers" fucking rocked. Seriously, I about teared up a little watching it.



Now then. Today we celebrate 231 years of this grand experiment we call the United States of America -- in cosmic terms that may just be a drop in the bucket, but it's a pretty long time for a democratic nation, certainly long enough for us to be getting the senior citizens' discount at the UN surf 'n' turf buffet. It's been a wild ride, we've had a few laughs, even inspired a few other countries to follow in our footsteps.

But man, we've really starting screwing this thing up.

Our president seems to be more concerned with protecting stem cells and disgraced former vice-presidential chiefs of staff than his own living citizens. His puppetmaster second-in-command is, by all appearances, attempting to construct some kind of shadow government from his office in D.C.; he's singlehandedly created a fourth branch of government none of the rest of us knew about. The Republicans in Congress want to continue with a war that has been a virtually unmitigated clusterfuck for more than four years now, and the Democrats are apparently too nutless to bring it to a halt even when they have a majority. And so on and so forth.

D'you think maybe it's time we apologized to Great Britain and got back with them again?


Liz is not amused with all this "independence" bollocks.

I know what you're going to say: "But Doug, they're a monarchy!" Yes, but they're a constitutional monarchy -- and that's a lot more constitution-focused than anyone in our executive branch has been for the last few years. It gives me no pleasure to admit that in terms of democracy, we're getting our asses handed to us by the very same country whose yoke of monarchical oppression we had to work our way out from under just a few centuries ago, but facts are facts: Their elections are going off without a hitch, they've got free health care, and their new prime minister, Gordon Brown, seems to be a stand-up guy. And with the exception of Prince Harry's Cartman impression from a couple years back, even the royal family has been refreshingly embarrassment-free of late. They're certainly no worse than the Bushes at this point.

And that's even before you get into the cultural aspects -- cooler accents, stronger beer, and getting to drop what you're doing every afternoon and have tea, for starters. (It's like an Anglicized, stuffier version of a siesta, but with refreshments.) And just think about all that could've been if we'd stuck with the UK instead of getting all high and mighty and independence-happy. We could be taking credit for James Bond, the Jaguar XJ8, and Lucy Pinder right now; instead we got stuck with Steven Seagal, the Hummer H2, and Paris Hilton.

That's karmic punishment for our arrogance right there, folks, and like Liz Lemon seeing the writing on the wall (at least for one or two episodes) and getting back together with her boyfriend on "30 Rock," maybe it's time we "settled" -- time that we realized the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side of the Atlantic and reconciled with our smaller, less charismatic, but ultimately smarter and more stable ex. There will be some things we'll have to work out -- being able to keep American football as, at the very least, a supplement to "footie" is a deal-breaker as far as I'm concerned -- but ultimately I'm confident this will be for the best.

Or, if that doesn't work, maybe we could cut a deal with our next-door neighbor and become Southern Canada. I'm just planting seeds here.


For reals, you could have it so much worse than being a Canuck.

At any rate, while I go off and make myself an eggy in the basket and ponder what might have been, I leave you with this all-UK, all-the-time Semi-Random Ten as a peace offering to our former limey overlords. Seriously, guys, TJ was just kidding with that whole "necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands" shit. We're sorry, and if you ever want to, you know, give us a call or something, we'll be here.

The Ten:

1. New Order, "Krafty" (DJ Dan dub remix)
2. Radiohead, "Where I End and You Begin (The Sky Is Falling In)"
3. Groove Armada, "Suntoucher"
4. Underworld, "Rowla"
5. Pet Shop Boys, "Overture to Performance"
6. Phil Collins, "Something Happened on the Way to Heaven"
7. Prodigy, "Firestarter"
8. The Clash, "Spanish Bombs"
9. The Pretenders, "Stop Your Sobbing"
10. Zero 7, "Destiny"

Do me a favor -- no, I'm sorry, a favour -- and throw your own Random or Semi-Random Tens in the comments, whether they're British, Canadian, or anything else. Cheerio, schmucks.