Friday Random Ten.

First Random Ten of the new year. My family always used to tell me that whatever you're doing on New Year's will set the tone for the rest of the year; if that holds true for this, I can only hope that there isn't any Britney Spears or Pussycat Dolls popping up in here, because I don't want to get stuck listening to that crap for the rest of 2007.

Uh, not that I would, because I don't have any of that. Seriously.

1. The Isley Brothers, "It's Your Thing"
2. Johnny Cash, "One"
3. U.N.K.L.E., "Logan's Run"
4. Pet Shop Boys, "New York City Boy" (Superchumbo uptown mix)
5. Fatboy Slim, "Give the Po' Man a Break"
6. Joe Jackson, "Stepping Out"
7. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, "You & Me & the Bottle Makes 3 Tonight (Baby)"
8. U.N.K.L.E., "Glow"
9. New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle"
10. Radiohead, "Everything in Its Right Place"

Not all that shameful, all things considered. As is always the case, your own Tens are welcome in the comments.

The 50 Most Loathsome People in College Football: 50-41.

As promised, we now begin the inaugural 50 Most Loathsome People in College Football list, spotlighting the people who have cast shame upon the sport, acted to the detriment of its participants, and/or just basically served to lessen the enjoyment of us, the viewers. We commence today with Nos. 50 through 41, and will continue with another 10 every day from now through January 8, when the season officially concludes with the national-championship game.

Disclaimers: This is in no way related to the "Most Loathsome People in Sports" list started by MGoBlog's Brian Cook earlier in the year (though I did consult with Brian before starting this thing). It is, however, a blatant co-opting of the "50 Most Loathsome People in America" list put out every year by The Beast, an alternative weekly mag in Buffalo, New York. I can't promise that this list will be any funnier than The Beast's; I can only promise it will be way more unoriginal. But I've taken your nominations, stirred them in with some of my own, and put together a true rogue's gallery of unctuousness and annoyance I hope everyone will (mostly, sort of) be able to agree on.

Also, as tempting as it would be to put Maurice "Psychopants McBulletproofvest" Clarett and Marcus "If There's Grass On The Field" Vick on this list, they've been out of NCAA ball long enough that we can't really call them college players anymore (thankfully). But for going above and beyond the call in vividly accelerating the stereotype of the college athlete as above-the-law thug past anyone's wildest expectations, we hereby award them both the Hey Jenny Slater 50 Most Loathsome People In College Football Lifetime Achievement Award. Congratulations, and please don't ever breed.


They would've both come down to Birmingham to accept their awards personally, but they're not exactly allowed to leave their respective states at the moment.

Some of this, of course, is tongue-in-cheek. Some of it isn't. Perceptions are like snowflakes; each one is different, and you pack enough different ones together you can start a pretty good fight. So enjoy.

50. Bill "The Sports Guy" Simmons
Charges: In keeping with his apparent belief that the Boston Red Sox, Boston Celtics, and New England Patriots are the only three sports franchises in existence in the entire world, proclaims his willful ignorance of college football, yet that proud ignorance doesn't stop him from writing (condescendingly) about it. Paved the way for a whole generation of sports columnists who think assembling cute catchphrases and a mastery of already-on-the-downside-of-the-bell-curve-of-popularity pop-culture references are more important than actually being able to describe what went on in a given sporting event.
Exhibit A: Actually wrote a column about the 2006 Rose Bowl, yet spent the whole thing discussing how much Pete Carroll sucked when he was the coach of the Patriots.
Sentence: Dressed in one of LenDale White's old uniforms and thrown off the top of a building by Carroll.

49. Matthew McConaughey
Charges: Upped the ante in the Hollywoodization of college football by being a near-inescapable presence on the Texas sidelines throughout the latter half of the 2005 season and well into 2006. With ABC/ESPN/Disney/GlobalDominationCorp's generous enabling, his hammy Johnny-Knoxville-meets-Robin-Williams antics succeeded in diverting TV cameras even from Vince Young. And as if that weren't enough, parlayed his starring appearance in "We Are . . . Marshall" into an equally overdone presence on Marshall's sideline for the Marshall-UCF game earlier this year. The movie's evident rockage is the only reason he isn't a lot higher on this list.
Exhibit A:

Sentence: Has to appear in a gay-porn version of "Varsity Blues" as the dude who accosts the lead character wearing nothing but whipped cream; the TV in his trailer will feature the 2003 UT-OU game on an endless video loop.

48. David Boren
Charges: The supposed president of the University of Oklahoma lowered himself to the level of the most deluded, priority-challenged fan in the wake of the Sooners' controversial loss to Oregon early in the season by writing a letter to the Big XII commissioner about it. Nothing wrong with being pissed about the referees' ham-handedness, of course, but Boren went so far as to call for the game be wiped from the books entirely, basically using the power of his office to make the same demand that cheesed-off superfans have been making for eons in vain.
Exhibit A: "On behalf of the University of Oklahoma, I ask that you as Big 12 Commissioner take the following actions . . . the Big 12 should request that the game should not go into the record books as a win or loss by either team in light of the level of officiating mistakes."
Sentence: Six months fending for himself in Darfur.

47. Pam Ward
Charges: Everybody's least favorite ESPN announcer has discomfited many a CFB fan with her fingernails-on-a-blackboard-delivery, characterized by a disconcertingly deep bark that can most charitably be described as "husky." Probably took five years off poor Chris Spielman's life last season alone.
Exhibit A: Perpetually remanded to mid-level Big 10 games on the Deuce at 11 a.m., which is precisely when her speech is most jarring to football viewers likely still recovering from hangovers induced the previous night.
Sentence: Relegated to doing play-by-play for minor-league Japanese cricket.

46. George O'Leary
Charges: Compiled a not-exactly-scorching 56-33 record in just over seven seasons at Georgia Tech, yet somehow got the impression that he was a coaching colossus. Costco-sized ego led him to boast reflexively even about his ref-aided overtime victory in the '99 UGA-GT game, in which he tried to paint himself as a brilliant innovator for attempting a field goal on third down in OT -- after having viewed Jim Donnan's fateful decision to run Jasper Sanks one last time at the goal line. Presided over a nascent player-ineligibility scandal, nearly put an offensive tackle in the hospital by siccing four DLs on him as punishment for missing a block, and was relieved of the head-coaching job at Notre Dame after five days for making shit up on his resume -- yet still has Tech Nation fooled into thinking he was a mighty pillar of integrity.
Exhibit A: Lost 5 out of 8 to Georgia, 7 out of 7 to Florida State, and won only one ACC title, a distinction fatuously "shared" with the Seminole squad that had pasted them 34-7 that season -- and needed ineligible players even to accomplish that.
Sentence: Pounded into a pulp by the Vikings' D-line, then skinned and turned into a winter jacket for Charlie Weis.

45. Ed Orgeron
Charges: The human(oid) mainfestation of the MacBeth quote "sound and fury, signifying nothing." It's not his fault that Ole Miss administrators made the monolithically stupid decision to fire David Cutcliffe, but it is his fault that he's apparently elected to use incoherent macho babbling and Chuck Amato-style chest augmentation as a substitute for actual coaching. Despite plenty of reasons not to, apparently turns to Ron Zook for yelling, screaming, vending-machine-punching coaching inspiration. Terrorizes his neighbors' kids over juvenile trampoline-related minutia. It's a good thing his asshattery is at least entertaining, or he'd be a lot further down on this list. That and the fact that he'd probably come to my house and kill me with his bare hands.
Exhibit A: Didn't even wait for the water to drain out of the Ninth Ward before he started calling around to Tulane players asking them to transfer.
Sentence: Roasted on a spit at the Grove.

44. Bobby Petrino
Charges: The kind of guy who spends entire conversations looking over your shoulder to see if there's somebody more important in the room he should be talking to. After going 9-3 in the 2003 regular season, he had a secret meeting with Auburn's athletic director to discuss the possibility of becoming the coach there; the idea was nixed only after the "secret" meeting was exposed in the press.
Exhibit A: In only four years since he started coaching at Louisville, he's been caught pursuing jobs at Auburn and Ole Miss and LSU. When he is reported expressing interest in the head-coaching jobs at all 12 SEC schools, he apparently gets a free sub. The fact that he didn't end up with the Alabama job is a continuing source of mystery.
Sentence: Flown aboard Bobby Lowder's private jet to one of the CIA's "black sites" in Eastern Europe, where he will learn the wages of disloyalty.

43. Phil Knight
Charges: Though not as meddlesome as some boosters, the Nike CEO's mountains of cash can and frequently do give his Oregon Ducks an unfair advantage over other teams, such as when Nike gave Oregon players special cooling vests to wear for a 2003 game at Mississippi State and didn't make the same offer to the Bulldogs until they asked about it. (Not that anything could've helped MSU that year, but still.) Then there is the unfair advantage he gives his team over things like good taste and decency, accomplished via a never-ending series of uniforms redesigns that have succeeded only in making the Ducks' togs more and more visually unbearable with each passing season. The latest "innovations": Atari 2800-style numerals and faux machined-steel plating on the shoulder and knee pads that's supposed to approximate the running boards on an 18-wheeler (I guess?) but looks more like accessory padding for a gay roller-derby league.
Exhibit A:

Sentence: Stripped naked, dipped in highlighter fluid, and abused both physically and verbally by the little kid in the Under Armour commercial.

42. Craig James
Charges: A cross between the high-school class clown and the douchebag uncle who embarrasses you at family gatherings and then chides you for not having a sense of humor, the former tailback trivializes games with his mere presence. Greedily sucks the gravitas out of even the most important games by veering off into barely relevant tangents and stories of his days at SMU; God forbid he gets assigned a lesser-conference game, which he'll probably just ignore entirely so that he can turn the whole thing into his own personal open-mic night at the Improv. Played for SMU during what would've been the height of the booster scandal that later earned the Mustangs the NCAA death penalty, yet somehow nobody ever asks him about this.
Exhibit A: Made even hulking man-child Aaron Taylor look like the pinnacle of wisdom and conscientiousness when they were paired up in ABC's studio last season.
Sentence: Knocked back to a newly formed Lincoln Financial "B" team alongside play-by-play announcer Chuck Amato and sideline reporter Star Jones.

41. Hal Mumme
Charges: Cringingly, made what appears to be a conscious decision to paddle along in the Ol' Ballcoach's wake, devising a throw-it-all-over-the-field-and-fuck-everything-else "strategy" at Kentucky that he thought would make him the poor man's Steve Spurrier. However, he turned out to be more like the homeless man's Steve Spurrier, pile-driving the Kentucky program into two-win irrelevence (and NCAA purgatory) almost the minute that the real brains of the outfit, offensive coordinator Mike Leach, left for Oklahoma and then Texas Tech. Ridden out of Lexington on a rail, he ended up at Southeastern Louisiana and then New Mexico State, where his first season featured an 0-12 record and accusations that he booted certain players off the team because they were Muslim.
Exhibit A: With Leach, Mumme went 12-11 at Kentucky and averaged 38.2 points a game; post-Leach, he went 8-15, 25.3 a game.
Sentence: Smothered by being buried at the bottom of a pile of every
sweat-soaked towel he's ever draped around his neck during a game.

Tomorrow: #40-#31! Catch the fever!

Wednesday mystery meat.

Sex Panthers CB Champ Bailey returns an interception 70 yards for a score in this year's BAFL championship game.

· Lot of news in football lately -- Nick Saban taking the Alabama job, an absolute classic of a Fiesta Bowl -- but there was a bigger story to open the new year, and it was this: My fantasy team, the Sex Panthers, won the 2006 Big Ass Football League championship. The Panthers got a total of five TDs from the "Grits 'n' Gravy" RB combo of Larry Johnson and Willie Parker, and a sixth from Champ Bailey's interception of Ben Roethlisberger; it marked the eighth time in eight seasons that a Gillett-coached team made the playoffs, and made me the only coach in BAFL history to win two titles.

I know a lot of rumors have been going around that I'm mulling retirement from fantasy football. I'm not going to comment on those rumors right now; I'm just going to enjoy this big victory, spend some quality time with my family, and then ponder what the future holds. I will say that while I was approached by the University of Alabama about their head-coaching position, and they did make an attractive offer, I decided that's not where I need to be right now. But I thank them for their interest and wish them the best in their coaching search.

· Oh wait . . . their coaching search is over. Well, that's great, and good for them. But I have two questions for the Tide faithful currently going ga-ga over this, and they are as follows: 1) Do you honestly think Saban is going to stick around long enough to create that Bear Bryant dynasty that is apparently a mandatory requirement over there in Tuscaloosa? 2) Do you honestly think you couldn't have gotten someone just as good for a lot less money? Saban's record at LSU was 48-16 (0.750), which is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but neither is Mark Richt's (61-17, 0.782), Urban Meyer's (21-4, 0.840), or Tommy Tuberville's (72-29, 0.713, including a 3-2 mark against Saban).

Here's the problem with paying someone $4 million and change a year. Alabama's 2007 schedule includes home dates with Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and LSU, any one of which the Tide could lose even with Saban at the helm -- and that's even before we get to Auburn, who will be returning a ton of talent on both sides of the ball. What happens when Bama loses their first game, even if -- or, hell, especially if -- it's Auburn for the sixth year in a row? I'll tell you what happens: A "WE'RE NOT PAYING YOU $4,000,000 A YEAR TO LOSE!!!!" shitstorm from Alabama's notoriously not-all-that-sweet-and-understanding fan base that continues indefinitely. And maybe that all ends with Saban's first SEC championship, but it starts up all over again the second Saban loses his next game.

And yes, as a UAB fan I will freely cop to being fist-through-the-wall livid that Paul Bryant Jr. deemed $600,000 too much for the Blazers to be paying Jimbo Fisher, but thought it was perfectly fine for Alabama to drop the monetary equivalent of a Boeing 737 in Nick Saban's lap. I do, however, hope everyone sees the irony in the fact that for all the meddling Alabama people did in UAB's coaching search over the past month, Alabama ended up hiring the guy on the losing end of the greatest victory in UAB football history. Thanks, Nick!


That's right, Saban! Whenever you want to sack up and play the Blazers again, Neil Callaway's waitin' here with his whuppin' stick!

· Here's something much more interesting than Nick Saban: courtesy of the M Zone, a USC Song Girl showing her booty.


That's just swell.

Now, upon Zapruder-like examination of the HD version, it was ascertained (to the great disappointment of the M Zone) that she was, in fact, wearing underpants. I've dated a few cheerleaders in my time, and from that experience I learned that cheerleader undergarments are regulated like Canadian firearms; I can say with the utmost certainty that there is no way any cheerleader, much less a Song Girl, would be allowed out onto the field of the Rose Bowl with anything other than the squad-approved spankies under her skirt. So, sorry to disappoint you -- that's not a naughty Song Girl doing her most authentic Britney Spears impression, or even a thong, just a code-red wedgie. But it's still awesome.

· I know what you're thinking: "Well, that was an interesting way of bringing together football and gloriously sculpted female rear ends in one post. But I bet you can't do it again." In fact, you are horribly, embarrassingly wrong. Here's Jessica Alba playing football in a bikini.

· While I was trying to be mesmerized by Jessica Alba's tushy just now, I kept getting interrupted by that impossible-to-find-the-"close"-button pop-up ad for the first season of "Two-a-Days" on DVD, which has literally popped up on every fucking Web site I've logged on to for the past week. Enough! Just by virtue of living in the Birmingham area I get as much of Rush Propst's relentless self-promotion as I can possibly handle; I'm not itching to subject myself to more. And when I want to see Jessica Alba in a bikini, then dammit, I don't want to see Rush Propst yelling at me, I want to see Jessica Alba in a bikini! So cut it the fuck out!

· Tomorrow the 50 Most Loathsome People in College Football begins its inexorable march from #50 to number one. Be there!


Will this picklewipe make the list? And now that you mention it, is this Michael Moore or Dennis Erickson? You won't know unless you tune in!

Happy New Year!

And Happy Independence Day to Slovakia, celebrating 14 years of glorious, sexy autonomy on this, the anniversary of the "Velvet Divorce" in 1993.


Jozef Murgas, inventor of the wireless telegraph.


Andy Warhol, the son of immigrants from the village of Mikova.


Supermodel Adriana Karembeu.


Eugene Cernan, the last man to set foot on the moon.


Ján Bahýl', inventor of the motor-driven helicopter.


Tom Selleck, hall of fame badass. (Yes, his family ancestry is Slovak.)


Ivan Reitman, director of "Stripes" and the "Ghostbusters" films as well as producer of movies such as "Road Trip" and "Old School."


Hockey legends Stan Mikita and Miroslav Satan.


Tennis player Daniela Hantuchová.

Was it worth it? Yes.

Martrez Milner does the Hokie Pokie and he turns those muthas out -- THAT'S what it's all about.

As many of y'all know, I'm from Virginia originally -- born in Roanoke, spent five glorious formative years in nearby Radford, just a quick jaunt down Peppers Ferry Road from the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg. My parents are both UVA grads, but I've got a ton of relatives who are either Virginia Tech graduates or consider themselves VT fans due to some kind of familial connection. So this was one of those games I was kind of looking forward to and dreading at the same time: On the one hand, this would be a reason for my relatives to pay attention to the Bulldogs for some reason other than me yakking their ears off about the Dawgs at every single family gathering. But on the other hand, if Georgia loses, I'm gonna be hearing about this for the rest of my worthless life. (Y'all know who you are. I know some of you read this.)

Halftime, Georgia is down 21-3 after giving up a 53-yard TD on an Antwaan-Randle-El-ish trick WR option play and after having gained all of three net yards on 13 offensive plays following their opening-drive FG. (Yes, 13 offensive plays. If you're going to assume there couldn't have been many third-down conversions if we ran only 13 offensive plays, you would be correct.) And I can just picture in my head the stack of subject lines in my GMail inbox after Georgia loses 42-6 or however many they were going to lose by. But then a funny thing happened: Brandon Coutu kicked a 51-yard field goal (God, was I glad to have him back), then Mark Richt dropped his pants to reveal a titanium-plated pair of balls and called an on-side kick that the Dawgs recovered with about six minutes left in the third, and all of a sudden all the pain that VaTech had been inflicting upon Georgia in the first half was turned back on them and then some. A flurry of VT turnovers, 28 straight points by the Dawgs, and a 31-24 UGA win, game over.

(Side note: Nothing against VT quarterback Sean Glennon, and I'll apologize to him for writing this if I ever meet him in person, but I was really glad it was not him and not Matt Stafford who was throwing picks all over the place last night. In the "College Gameday" discussions of the Peach Bowl, Official Bane of Hey Jenny Slater's Existence Mark May had taken to repeating "SIX TOUCHDOWNS! TWELVE INTERCEPTIONS!" as his own personal mantra, in a tone that implied Matt Stafford was a functional retard who should be toting Gatorade rather than playing football at the D-IA level; not that this will change May's apparently fossilized impression of anything Georgia-related, but I was gratified to see someone else be the goat in that regard.)


Tony Taylor sez: im in yuor base int3rcepting yuor d00ds.

But anyway, I digress. Something really struck me as Georgia was mounting its hellacious comeback in the third quarter (and no, it wasn't a Hokie fan's empty beer bottle); it was when ESPN put up their graphic about how many times Georgia has been behind at halftime this season, and how they'd come back to win three of those four (and make a valiant comeback effort in the one loss). There's a flipside to that coin, though, and it is this: In Georgia's last nine games of the regular season, they were only 2-3 when holding a halftime lead. Tossing out the three blowout victories with which Georgia started the season -- which still look like an aberration to me in hindsight -- here's how Georgia's season went from week 4 on, for those who need the recap:

September 23 vs. Colorado: Down 10-0 at halftime to one of the worst teams in the country, Georgia storms back to win 14-13 with two fourth-quarter TD passes from Joe Cox.

September 30 at Ole Miss: Down 3-0 at the half to another one of the worst teams in the country, Georgia gets it in gear in the second half; while nothing from this game will ever make it onto the Sanford Stadium Jumbotron "Baba O'Reilly" pregame highlight reel, the Dawgs still win 14-9.

October 7 vs. Tennessee: Up 24-14 on Tennessee at the half and presumably rolling, the Dawgs have their legs kicked out from under them by a combination of turnovers, blocked punts and shitty pass coverage, give up more points in the second half than they'd given up the entire season before that game and lose 51-33.

October 14 vs. Vanderbilt: Up 13-7 at the half, the Dawgs turn it over on their first drive of the second half for the second week in a row (and their third time in four games) and go on to lose to Freaking Vanderbilt, 24-22.

October 21 vs. Mississippi State: Up 21-7 at the half, the Dawgs get outscored 10-0 in the third quarter for the second straight week and have to hang on to beat the SEC's worst team 27-24.

October 28 vs. Florida: The Dawgs are down 14-0 at the half and give up an Auburn-sociology-degree easy nine-yard scoop-'n'-score on the first play of the second half, but battle back to within a TD and have a chance to win right down to the last few minutes.

November 4 at Kentucky: Up 14-10 at halftime, the Dawgs fall asleep on defense for two late Kentucky drives and lose 24-20.

November 11 at Auburn: Georgia is up 30-7 at halftime and continues to whup Auburn's ass for the entirety of the game. OK, this is the exception that proves the rule.


And yes, it deserves a picture.

November 25 vs. Georgia Tech: After losing a fumble at their own 13 and thus handing the Yellow Jackets a field goal in a stylish Bloomingdales gift bag, the Dawgs fight back in the second half and, thanks to shrewd play-calling by His Royal Awesomeness Mike Bobo and the usual ass-wittedness from Reggie Ball, win 15-12.

So you see the pattern there? Trailing at the half, we're 3-1 (with even the -1 being a valiant sort of loss); ahead at the half, we're 2-3 (with one of the 2- being a lucky escape from an inconceivable defeat). During that stomach-churning 1-4 midseason stretch, everyone was all over Willie Martinez's ass for being a lousy halftime adjuster, and not without cause, but the above evidence indicates to me that he wasn't that bad when we were behind; homes was adjusting like a motherfucker against Florida, Colorado, Virginia Tech, etc. etc. It was when we had a lead that we were apparently substituting red wine and Lunesta for the motivational halftime speech. I don't know what portends for next season; hopefully nothing, but it is something I'd like the coaching staff to work on over the next few months.

But it's hard for me to get too discombobulated about that at the moment, because I've just witnessed Georgia bounce back from probably its most humiliating stretch of the Mark Richt era to whack three ranked teams in a row, one of them on the road, another in a neutral-site game (which has been a pitfall for the Dawgs under Richt even when the "neutral site" isn't Jacksonville). I wasn't sure I wanted to believe it myself, but Mayor Kyle was right: It really is 1973 all over again (with the obvious caveat that I'd prefer we not follow this up with a 6-6 campaign next year).

After the Kentucky disaster, I said I was at the point where I was just going to be very happy and relieved when the season was over. Now I'm at a point where I can't wait for the next season to begin. We've got a team that has fought through adversity to show what they're really made of (which, FYI, is pretty good stuff); a young QB who is growing into the superstar we've all hoped he would be; a defense that wandered in the wilderness but has found its way back to being the killers we wanted them to be; a proper offensive play-calling hierarchy keyed by a Bulldog hero who's slowly building legend status; and a coaching staff that, as a whole, I would not trade for more than one or two others in the nation. I've ripped on them on more than one occasion this year, but every team is going to have a shitty game or a subpar stretch at some point; the $64,000 question when it comes to coaches is whether they can lead the team out of it. And this group of coaches did. The losses were bitter, but the wins have been much sweeter.


Undaunted by the December 19 attempt on his life, Hairy Dawg bounces back to represent with the rest of the team.

As baby sis and I were driving back into Birmingham after Thanksgiving, the jubilation of a sixth straight win over Georgia Tech still tingling in our synapses, we had a conversation about Georgia's wins and losses over the course of the season. I posed a hypothetical question to her then, and now, with a stirring bowl win to add to it, I pose it to you Dawg fans out there.

Before the season began, there was hope that we might break out and win 10 games (or more), but also a realization on the part of many fans that maybe we were headed for an 8-4 kind of season. Had God sent an angel down to Bulldog Nation and told us that yes, we were destined for a four-loss year, most of us would've probably assumed that those losses would've been Tennessee, Florida, Auburn and, I don't know, Georgia Tech; instead, it turned out to be Tennessee, Florida, and the two humiliating upsets to Vandy and Kentucky. Now, I know most of us would give up quite a lot for the chance to go back in time and erase those two losses, but my question is: Would you give up the wins over Auburn and GT?

I wouldn't. As much as I wanted to crawl in a hole and die after the Vanderbilt and Kentucky games, a season that includes those losses can still be considered successful if you come back to beat Auburn and Tech (and then a respectable bowl opponent). Think about it this way: If we beat Vandy and UK but not Auburn and Tech, we'd beaten everybody we were supposed to beat but hadn't scored any notable upsets, and we'd gone 0-4 against our four biggest rivals -- in other words, a Jim Donnan kind of season. We don't come out of that season mumbling, "How the fuck did we lose to Vandy and Kentucky," but we don't come out of it holding our heads high due to any particularly memorable victories, either. The season we actually had contained a couple of stinkers, yes -- well, more than a couple, we just managed to win a few of those others -- but it also contained maybe the most impressive three-game stretch of the Richt era, it contained an unholy beatdown of a top-five Auburn team, and oh yeah, we don't have to deal with the Techies crowing about anything for the next 300-something days.

Yeah, this season was rocky, and we didn't need to suffer those losses to Vandy and UK. But it's like my sister said at halftime of the Peach Bowl: "If you can only play one half, play the second." We played the second, we finished the drill, and at this point anyone who's focusing more on the 1-4 stretch at midseason than the 3-0 rampage that followed it should probably look for some therapy.

Congrats to the Dawgs, and thanks for some incredibly exciting wins. I'm counting down the days to Oklahoma State.

And Go Dawgs!


I'm comfortable enough in my sexuality to say it: I love this man.

All the small things:

· I don't want to see any of my Georgia brethren going out of their way to shit-talk Hokie Nation today, because again, I happen to be related to some of those folks and they're pretty nice. Two of 'em were kind enough to meet my sister and me in Atlanta for the game, accept my failure to procure tickets to the game itself (after wandering around in the cold and drizzle for a couple hours, no less), and buy us dinner at Jocks 'n' Jills at the CNN Center where we ended up watching the action. In fact, the vast majority of the Hokie fans we ran into were very nice. There was the one kind of douchey guy at Jocks 'n' Jills who made a habit of sarcastically crooning "Georgia On My Mind" after every UGA screwup of the first half (which, I'll admit, were numerous), but there was also the guy at the table next to ours who it turned out was born at the same hospital as me in Roanoke, and there was also the girl on the subway who gave me one of the little stuffed Chick-fil-A cows she was taking home from the stadium. (I have fond memories of those cows from the '98 Peach Bowl, when beanie-baby cows rained down from the third tier of the Dome like a Biblical plague after every score; it got to the point where I was wondering if someone was manufacturing more of those things somewhere in the upper deck.)

Anyway, good show, guys. Obviously I wasn't rooting for a Virginia Tech win, but I wasn't hoping for a complete Hokie collapse either; what I thought would happen was that it'd be a close-fought, back-and-forth game right down to the last second and that neither team would have to suffer through a particularly embarrassing stretch. In the end, both teams did, Georgia was just fortunate enough to have theirs early enough to pull out of it. Thanks for a good game; y'all have nothing to be ashamed of. If we end up meeting again in Miami, New Orleans, or Pasadena sometime soon, that's just fine with me.

· I'm not one of those people who takes bowl results to be the be-all end-all indicators of a given conference's strength, but there are plenty of people out there who apparently do, so let's take a look: Big 10, 0-3 with four games remaining; SEC, 3-1 with the one loss coming on a last-second field goal. Again, I'm not going to throw my hands in the air and declare OMG Big 10 suxx0rz because of this, but I'll hear no more of this nonsense about how the SEC really wasn't all that good this year.

· Quick NFL digression: Obviously the NFC stinks this year, and as of this past week there were still about a half-dozen mediocre NFC teams that still had a chance at the playoffs. So why is it the only one we heard anything about was the Giants? Why was their struggle so much more newsworthy than, say, the Rams' or the Falcons'? Yeah, the Giants stink (other than Tiki Barber, who is awesome), what else is new? (On a related note, can we now officially declare that I was right right right when I said back during the 2005 draft that Ben Roethlisberger would turn out to be the best of the four QBs drafted in the first round, and that no way was Eli Manning worth all the picks New York handed over to get him instead of Philip Rivers? If I'm Marty Schottenheimer, I'm eagerly awaiting the day I get to run into Archie Manning in the green room at CBS Sports.)


I know Peyton. I've seen Peyton. Peyton has stepped on my heart and crushed it many times. You, sir, are no Peyton.

· Finally, as this was my first year of producing actual sportswriting-like product and participating in stuff like the Blogpoll, I wanted to thank some of the other bloggers out there who have helped me along, linked to me, given me opportunities to do more writing and pontificating, and basically been encouraging examples as I plow blindly ahead with this blogging thing. Thanks first and foremost to Paul Westerdawg and Mayor T. Kyle King for their links and frequent kind words, but also for being admirable ambassadors of Bulldog Nation; I've heard many bloggers marvel at how well-represented Georgia is in the blogosphere, and those guys, along with folks like Realist, Kanu and the Gunslingers, are the reason why. Thanks to Blogpoll founder Brian Cook at MGoBlog and, indeed, all of the Blogpoll voters for giving me the opportunity to participate in something that was not only fun but also introduced me to a vast network of tremendously talented writers. Thanks, of course, to Josh, DAve, Pasqua and Stanicek, and the rest of the Tent City crew for running a tailgating clinic week in and week out, whether it was an awesome win over Georgia Tech or a let's-forget-that-ever-happened loss to the Commodores. Like I said, I'll be in Athens for Oklahoma State. And yes, I'm bringing the dog.

And finally, thanks to both all of you, my readers, for giving me a reason to do this. You've been faithful and spirited commenters, you've given me encouragement and criticism, you've looked the other way when I do stuff like cursing a blue streak or flake out on an extended blog hiatus or throw a toaster. We know you have many options when planning your blog-reading, and we're glad you chose Hey Jenny Slater. Thanks for making me feel special and pretty; have a happy new year, and rest easy tonight knowing that this site will continue to suck well into 2007 and beyond. Mazel!

Booty!

No, not that kind of booty -- we covered that in the last post. I'm talking about stuff, loot, swag, presents, the stuff we all say isn't the most important part of Christmas but pretty much is.

I'm just kidding, Jesus. Happy birthday. Please tell Your dad not to smite me.

Anyway, here's some of what I got.


An authentic Red Air Force flask that will be filled with potato vodka at the first opportunity.


A Redskins hat with the gold cursive "R" just like the kind Joe Gibbs wears.


The first season of "Magnum, P.I." on DVD.


And in the least shocking development of all, a new toaster oven. (Thanks, baby sis.)

And then there were the gifts that have become family traditions, like the Gap gift card so that I can do the annual updating of my decrepit wardrobe, and the Playboy in the Christmas stocking. Let me back up on that last one, because there's a story behind it: Supposedly when my dad was 16 he made the mistake of telling his parents he wanted a Playboy for Christmas, and I'm sure they told him they would get him no such thing, but when Christmas Day finally rolled around, there was a Playboy right there in his stocking. And instead of enjoying it like any 16-year-old boy in his situation would, Pops immediately turned beet-red, ran off and hid the magazine under his mattress or something.

So now there's a Playboy in my stocking every December 25th, but the best part every year is hearing the story of how my mom got it. She's only 5'3" or something like that, and of course the lads' magazines are always up in the back of the rack at the bookstore where the children and ne'er-do-wells can't get to them, so most of the time Mom has to ask for help. One year it was from a Ranger who happened to be browsing the magazines at Joe Muggs while she was there; another year it was a couple of college students. According to Mom, this is the conversation that ensued:

Mom: Excuse me, can I get you to grab me one of the Playboys up there in the back?

College student #1: (a bit perplexed at being asked for a Playboy by a middle-aged woman) Uh . . . sure. (gets the magazine) So, like, what are you getting a Playboy for?

Mom: Oh, it's for Christmas, for my son.

College student #1: That . . . is . . . AWESOME!!

College student #2: I wish my mom would get me Playboy.

What's funny is that my dad is probably going to be a lot more embarrassed that I'm divulging all this than my mom is going to be.

But anyway, feel free to leave your own Christmas hauls in the comments thread, because I'm curious to see what everybody got, even if it was just a stocking full of reindeer poop. And I know at least a couple of you out there got that.

Friday Random Ten, and an annual tribute.

My apologies for being a horribly lazy blogger lately; work, Christmas stuff, holiday guests, blah blah no excuse. I'm not dead, just constantly preoccupied. But not too preoccupied to skip Hey Jenny Slater's annual salute to the Sexy Santa costume, one of the most underrated costumes out there.


The Tennessee Titans' cheerleading squad knows what time it is . . .


. . . as does Alessandra Ambrosio.

Let's all tip our fuzzy Santa caps and give thanks.

Now, the Ten:

1. The Who, "I Can't Explain"
2. A Tribe Called Quest, "Butter"
3. Röyksopp, "Röyksopp's Night Out"
4. The Roots, "Dynamite!"
5. Henry Mancini, "Lujon"
6. House of Pain, "Top o' the Mornin' To Ya"
7. Gorillaz, "M1 A1"
8. Pet Shop Boys, "Drama in the Harbour"
9. Patton Oswalt, "Robert Evans"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "Searching for the Face of Jesus"

And just in case anyone was wondering what was on my Christmas list: a plasma-screen TV (27"-30" is fine, thx), all eight seasons of "Magnum, P.I." on DVD, a new catalytic converter for a 2000 Volkswagen Jetta, a DVD of the original "Fletch," and a Bentley Continental GT.

Fine, if you want to be cheap with that last one, you can get me the 1/18 scale version instead of the 1/1.

Feel free to throw your own Random Tens, Christmas lists, travel horror stories, suggestions for the Alabama coaching search, and anything else in the comments. (Oh, and loathsome college-football personalities -- still taking nominations until the 30th.)

Merry Christmas, suckers!

Get your loathing on.

The 2006 football season is almost over, as is, you know, the year 2006 itself, and not so long ago I decided it was time to start looking for a way to mark this occasion -- and by "mark this occasion" I of course mean "look back with the usual bile, resentment, and vituperation." The answer: The 50 Most Loathsome People in College Football.

Yes, this idea is blatantly cribbed from Philadelphia altie paper The Beast, who does an out-of-the-park job with their "50 Most Loathsome People in America" feature about this time every year. But mine's restricted to college football, and to bring you, the reader, into the process, I'm taking nominations.





I'm looking for people who coached, directed the operations of, commented on, played, or otherwise had some kind of notable effect on college football (in a loathsome way, of course). I'd like to try and restrict it to people who were involved in the game sometime during the 2006-07 season, or at least during the 2006 calendar year; however, actions taken before 2006 may be submitted as evidence of their loathsomeness. And what the hell, for people who are no longer in college football per se, but whose loathsome actions continue to reverberate, we'll make an exception there too. (We'll call it the Marcus Vick Rule.)

And the "evidence" part is important: I don't want you to just throw a bunch of names at me, you have to tell me why they're loathsome (even if you're nominating someone like Phil Fulmer whose loathsomeness seems self-evident). And I don't want stuff like "Brady Quinn 'cuz he shouldn'ta won the Maxwell Award" or "West Virginia 'cause they're totally overrated." Maybe Quinn shouldn't have won the award, and maybe WVU is overrated, but if you think that's the case, then your beef is with the people who give the awards or make the ratings. I don't want this becoming nothing more than a venue for die-hard fans to grind the same old traditional-rivalry axes, so no Texas fans nominating Oklahoma because "Sooners are OMG SUXXORZ," or Alabama nominating Auburn, or Ohio State nominating Michigan, or anything like that.

In short, I'm looking for people who have made college football in general less enjoyable for the country at large than it should have been. I can't promise your nomination will make the final list, of course, and to be honest I could probably come up with 50 all by myself right now if I had to. But I'm interested in hearing what you have to say. Or I can at least do a pretty convincing job of pretending to be interested, in any case.


Leave your nominations and whatever evidence you can dig up against them in the comments thread, or e-mail them directly to me at paris_1968 (at) hotmail (dot) com. Get them to me no later than Saturday, December 30 -- I've got, like, shit to do between now and New Year's -- and the final list will be posted in installments over the week leading up to the national-championship game on January 8.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Friday Random Ten: Think globally, act locally, propose modestly.

OK, so the government decided not to explore my proposal to give Zacarias Moussaoui a sex change, Georgia hasn't called Rick Neuheisel up to offer him a job as offensive coordinator, and I have yet to see Joe Tereshinski III line up at tight end for the Dawgs. Not exactly batting 1.000 on my previous modest proposals, but I think Modest Proposal IV: A New Hope is gonna be a winner. It concerns the University of Alabama and their coaching search, which doesn't exactly appear to be going gangbusters at the moment.

Rich Rodriguez and Steve Spurrier have both said no. Nick Saban is saying no, but Alabama continues to pursue, like a drunk frat guy desperate for some tail. Everybody has suggested somebody, with varying degrees of seriousness -- Todd at RollBamaRoll.com is interested in Tulsa's Steve Kragthorpe; Newspaper Hack, even as he wiped tears from RichRod's rejection letter, put forth Navy's Paul Johnson as a possibility; The M Zone said they should just dig Bear Bryant up; Mayor Kyle King, not at all surprisingly, thought Kristin Davis of TV's "Sex and the City" would be a good choice; and then there was Todd's other suggestion, Jessica Alba.

I actually think Kyle and Todd are closest to the bullseye, and not just because I think Jessica Alba is hotter than jalapeños flambé. With that in mind, I'd like to make a new suggestion.



A number of people have asked me, here and at other sites, who these comely young ladies are. Their names are Ashley and Maegen Bailey -- good luck figuring out which one is which -- they're originally from Oneonta, they're each 5'10" (hello), and they have become minor celebrties in these parts for showing up at Alabama football games in the ensemble you see above. So they're kind of like Alabama's version of Jenn Sterger and the FSU cowgirls, only with more houndstooth and (I'm just making an educated guess here) less silicone. I'm proposing their names, collectively, for consideration as Alabama's next head football coach(es).

Straight out of left field? Not necessarily. RollBamaRoll's Chalkdust has said straightaway that Bama may have "evolved past the point of needing a head coach"; if they must have some kind of figurehead, Ashley and Maegen might fill the bill. They're young, they're enthusiastic, they possess the devotion to Bama football heritage that's clearly one of the school's biggest criteria for the job. They'd be a can't-miss prospect on the recruiting trail, as any of my male readers who have ever been 18 years old will attest. I'm not sure whether they have any in-depth knowledge of actual scheme or strategy when it comes to football, but, well, you could ask the same question about Mike Shula, and he somehow managed to win a fricking Cotton Bowl.

But the most important thing in Ashley and Maegen's favor is this: It would be damn near impossible to fire them. Alabama's biggest problem almost ever since the Bear retired has been an almost pathological addiction to coach-firing; they'll dump a coach just for poops and giggles, it sometimes seems, and that has kept the program in a near-constant state of turmoil, with very little continuity or stability at any point in the last quarter-century. But the Houndstooth Twins will be in it for the long haul pretty much by default. If you were Alabama's AD, would you fire them? Could you look the two of them in the eye(s) and tell them the Crimson Tide doesn't have a place for them anymore? Would you want to be the person who goes down in history as the guy who told two adorable blond Bama fans to take a hike? Of course you wouldn't, and neither would anyone else. Sheer softheartedness would keep the Baileys in the front office long enough to at least win an SEC title, one way or another, and get the program back onto some kind of solid footing.


Not only could Alabama do much worse than this, they probably already have.

(Side note: They're both currently students at UAB. So anybody who wants to make fun of my employer is cordially invited to suck it.)

There it is, Alabama. I've tried to help you every way I know how. I'm pointing you toward the Houndstooth Twins, and I got nothin' left. If at long last you don't take that advice, I can't help you.

Anyway, that's all I have on that subject. The Ten:

1. The Beatles, "All You Need is Love"
2. Gorillaz, "Last Living Souls"
3. The Clash, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"
4. The Beatles, "Happiness is a Warm Gun"
5. The Beastie Boys, "Hey Fuck You"
6. Johnny Cash, "One"
7. R.E.M., "Suspicion"
8. Orbital, "Tunnel Vision"
9. Dimitri from Paris, "Attente Musicale"
10. Stereolab, "Brakhage"

Your own Random Tens and coaching suggestions in the comments. ¡Apocalypto!

Happy berfday, baby sis.

On this day in 1980, my little sister entered this world unaware of the task that awaited her -- trying to make her way in the cold, unforgiving shadow of her older brother, a man other men wanted to be and women wanted to be with, a man who stood astride the worlds of journalism, arts and letters, popular culture, and probably a bunch of other things like a veritable colossus. Not a task you'd wish upon anyone, much less an innocent apple-cheeked young girl, but that was what she was stuck with.

Fast-forward 26 years later, and she is the organized, together, thoughtful, mature, capable-of-maintaining-a-long-term-relationship one in the family, while her older brother is the flaky, scatterbrained slob whose personal best in relationships is three months and who still laughs uproariously at poop jokes. (Heh, I said "poop.") Oh well! Life's crazy like that sometimes.

Anyway, this is my way of saying happy berfday, baby sis, you've done pretty well for yourself in your first 26 years. Now let's see how you handle the next 26. Just so you know, I'll be damned if I'm gonna let you get a book published before I do.

Oh, and I seriously considered posting the picture Mom took of you fast asleep on your training potty when you were two years old, but I didn't. You're welcome.

(Leave your berfday wishes for Ann in the comments below, or at her blog Practically Harmless, or you're dead to me.)

The spoiled child, spared the Rod.

So, yeah, the whole Rich-Rodriguez-to-Alabama thing, not really happening after all. Thanks, local media, for making me look like a douchebag.

Really, you have to live here to understand how the local newspapers, TV people, and radio stations get geeked into the stratosphere at the merest hint that something might be happening with the Crimson Tide. Every TV station except Fox 6 was all over the place last night reporting that Rich Rodriguez was coming; the ginormous 64-point headline on the front page of the Birmingham News was "Rodriguez ready to roll at Bama" or some such nonsense. So much for objectivity and a healthy skepticism. But anyway, no, Rodriguez isn't coming, there is no Santa Claus, and the check really isn't in the mail.

I called into JOX 690, the local sports-talk station, Friday afternoon as Dunaway and Brown were chatting excitedly about the prospect of Rodriguez coming to Tuscaloosa. I offered my respectful opinion that no way would he take the Alabama job, because he's revered as a demigod and winning Sugar Bowls in Morgantown, and why would he pass that up to take a flier on a job where he can count on getting axed after three or four years if he doesn't recreate the Bear Bryant dynasty? I was surprised at the response I got from Dunaway and Brown -- they normally come across as pretty level-headed and properly hype-suspicious of most things sports-related in Alabama, but they were acting like Rodriguez would be kissing Mal Moore's ring and offering him his firstborn child for a shot at the Alabama job. Better conference, more pay, more TV time, yada yada. Well, apparently that's not enough when the fanbase can be counted on to levitate with rage and talk replacements the minute you lose to Auburn.

I hope for Bama's sake that this drills into their skulls once and for all the fact that their coaching job is not what it used to be, for the simple fact that -- and I know I'm repeating myself here -- every time Alabama whacks a head coach, they make the job that much less attractive to any potential replacement. I've already used the hot-girl-who's-a-total-bitch metaphor to describe the Alabama job, so here's another one: Alabama in the 2000s is like Jaguar was in the 1980s. Remember how Jaguars used to be -- absolutely gorgeous machines, so swank and luxurious they even smelled better than other cars, but with quality levels that wouldn't have passed muster at Hyundai? The classified ads were chock full of Jags whose owners were dumping them after only one or two years because they couldn't stand to rebuild the transmission or completely replace the wiring one more time, and sales dropped into the pooper; it took a buyout by Ford to turn things around. Well, that's where Alabama is: It's a beautiful, storied program that nobody wants to coach because they have no confidence it's not going to leave them stranded on the side of the road after a few years. It's sad, but it is what it is.


Alabama : 1980s Jaguar :: Auburn : electrical system, I guess.

So I don't know what the fuck Alabama does now, but if I were them I'd focus less on hiring a new coach and more on hiring a new athletic director, because Mal Moore certainly doesn't seem capable of finding his ass with both hands and a map. First you fire a guy without having his replacement already lined up, then you not only offer a guy a job not knowing whether he'll take it, but you announce the offer to the media without even knowing if he has taken it? Smooth move, Ex-Lax. It's habitual for new ADs to want to choose their own coaches anyway, so dump Moore, which is a virtual inevitability at this point, find his replacement ASAP, and then let that presumably more competent replacement choose his own guy.

My suggestion: Steve Kragthorpe, who brought Tulsa back from the dead. And don't act like you deserve any better.