I know I’m absurdly late on this, but I wanted to mention that I really liked something Steve Spurrier said after South Carolina’s near-loss to Auburn. The Cock fans were applauding the team as they left the field.

“Please don’t clap when we come close. I don’t know if any coach has told our fans, ‘Please don’t clap if we get beat.”

Well, someone had to be the first, and I think it’s a worthwhile message. Drilling a winning mentality into a team is not easy. If a team gets comfortable with losing… it can be nearly impossible to change the attitude surrounding the team. Ask Temple. And if Steve Spurrier feels like his fans are tolerating an atmosphere of losing by applauding a loss, then he should say so. I think he’s absolutely right. The message is, “Do not be content with being a fucking loser, and don’t you people let them feel like it is okay.” Or maybe the message was, “Lou Holtz was a fucking pussy. I am not.” I think it was one of those two.

I bet Spurrier was actually legitimately confused by the fans reaction when he heard it. Think about it… when’s the last time someone applauded him when he lost? It didn’t happen at Florida, and it damn sure didn’t happen with the Redskins. In fact, I don’t think anyone applauded him for anything he did when he was in Washington. He probably started looking around the field for a streaker or a fistfight or something that might be drawing some applause.

Over at The Fanhouse, I attempted to guess which NFL personality will be the next to attempt suicide. I’ve got the odds-on favorite as Ben Roethlisberger.

I also address the cops who demand an apology from Terrell Owens, and insist that they’re superior people.

Oh, and if you know anything at all about Ed Orgeron, the head coach at Ole Miss… you’ll enjoy this (many thanks for the heads-up here). If you’re not familiar, let me catch you up a little bit before you click that link.

Ed Orgeron is a crazy motherfucker. He was an assistant coach at Miami in the early ’90s. In 1991, a woman got a restraining order against him, and he was ordered into a domestic violence counseling program. In 1992, he was arrested in a bar fight and brought up on felony battery chargers. They were eventually dropped, but Orgeron was accused of head-butting a bouncer. And shortly after he took over at Ole Miss, he… well, I’ll just quote from Every Day Should Be Saturday.

Ed Orgeron appears to be settling in just fine at Ole Miss by allegedly calling players with earrings “fucking pussy girls” (is that a Chinese translation for lesbian?), labeling the Cotton Bowl “bullshit,” and taking off his shirt and challenging every “motherfucker” in the room to a fight…all in the course of a single team meeting.

And one more thing, before you follow that link, there’s one more necessary step… enjoy this Ed Orgeron Hummer ad and get a feel for his voice.

NOW you’re prepared to enjoy this little work of genius.

I understand that Bob Stoops wants to vent, and he should be entitled to do that. And he has vented, and he’s continued to do so, and I hope someone shows him the Wrap-It-Up box soon. Regardless of what happened, if you’re the best team in the Big 12, then you’ll win the Big 12 and still go to a major bowl game. You’ve still got a chance to do that. That offer remains on the table.

I do wish, though, that the rest of Oklahoma would just shut the fuck up about it. They’re now talking about pulling out of their 2008 game against Washington if the Pac-10 doesn’t change their policy that requires that Pac 10 officials be used at home games for non-conference teams.

Absurd. Oklahoma knew the policy when they entered into the contract, and they didn’t say a word about it then. If they felt the policy was unfair, they should’ve never signed the deal. Now, they get a bad call, and all the sudden, they can’t be consorting with the lowlives in the Pac 10.

It was a bad call. Nothing more, nothing less. There was not some vast conspiracy against Oklahoma in that game, it was simply a very very poor replay process, a rushed, poor judgment by a replay official, and a couple of on-field officials that missed some things they should have seen, too. It’s unfortunate, but it happened. You’ve complained for a couple of days, and that’s fine, but now it’s time to suck it up and move on.

I’m think Washington should step up and cancel the series first. The Washington AD should call a press conference tomorrow and say something like, “We’re really not comfortable playing a game against a group of twelve-year-old girls. We understand that the Oklahoma people are afraid that the referees will be mean to them again, and we don’t want anyone’s feelings to get hurt. We’re not playing them, but we do wish them the best of luck in the future, and in securing a berth in the Tampax Gentle Glide Bowl.”

I feel terrible for this poor bastard. Gordon Riese, the instant replay official who missed the call at the end of the Oregon/Oklahoma game, is not doing well. He can’t eat, he can’t sleep, his blood pressure is through the roof, and some jackass Oklahoma fans are threatening his life, as well as his wife and children. He doesn’t know if he wants to return this season, or ever.

“I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, my blood pressure is skyrocketing,” Riese said, looking haggard and worn as he sat on the front porch of his house.

“They not only threatened me, they threatened my wife and kids,” Riese said.

“I don’t know how to deal with it,” he said. “I guess it’s just one of those things.”

That is entirely sickening, and clearly, the people responsible for the threats are mentally imbalanced and belong in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

I don’t know what else to say, except I feel terrible for the guy. He made a mistake. A mistake, even, that wasn’t entirely his fault. For some reason, he only had one replay angle of it, and it wasn’t the replay that everyone saw on TV. He didn’t have a lot of time to review it, he couldn’t freeze the frame, and was being pressured by television and the official on the field to make a call.

Making things worse was OU’s president acting like a total jackass, asking that the loss be overturned and all of the officials suspended for the year. Why would the president of the university even care? He doesn’t have other things to worry about, like, oh, I dunno… academics? Or making sure Rhett Bomar is comfortable financially? Act like a university president, dickhead, and not a scorned fan.

Just a sad and ugly situation.

The hot story at the moment is the Yahoo! news report about Reggie Bush taking over $100,000 in improper benefits while at USC. Here’s a link to the ESPN article about the Yahoo! article, and I love how they put the byline as “ESPN.com news services” when they pretty much just read the Yahoo! report and then repeated it. That’s kind of what bloggers do, only we don’t bother with fancy bylines.

Anyway… I can’t possibly tell you how little I care about this. In fact, if it drags on, I’ll start to view this story much like I view any and all news reports about Barbaro. I don’t think anyone did anything particularly immoral here, and while it may go against the “spirit” of the NCAA, well… I long ago stopped looking at the NCAA as an organization on the up-and-up. This happens, and I accept that.

The only way I’m going to care is if the NCAA comes down on USC, and puts them on probation or something. Reggie Bush losing the Heisman… I could give a fuck. The NCAA erasing USC’s wins/championships from the record books… again, a fuck will not be given. I saw those things, I know they happened. The actual physical location of Reggie Bush’s Heisman trophy, unless it somehow ends up on my mantle, concerns me not a hitch. Nor do any record books, which, if they even exist, I’ll never see.

If Reggie Bush was still at USC, then I might care. But he’s moved on, and they can’t hurt his NFL career, and to me, that’s all that matters. To Reggie Bush, that’s probably all that matters. If his parents were able to get $100,000 out of some agent, then hey, it worked out really well for everyone involved. A spokesperson for the Saints summed it up nicely.

“It doesn’t involve the Saints.”

Bingo. I’m far more interested in what he’s going to do to the Green Bay defense this weekend.

I hadn’t heard about this, but a guy who left threatening voice mails for Ty Willingham when he was the head coach at Notre Dame was fined $2,000 and put on probation for a year.

French has said he was drunk, under peer pressure and not using good judgment when he made the 3 a.m. call and left a message for Willingham.

He said that he said “terrible things” during that call, including using racially charged terms about Willingham and threatening to burn a cross in the coach’s yard.

I’m thinking jail time is appropriate here. A phone call like that… that’s something can honestly make a man and his family afraid for their safety. A fine and probation isn’t enough for that. What he did had to have caused caused serious harm. I’m sorry, but jail time isn’t unreasonable for that.

Now, in this article, I should point out… the guy who made the call sounds genuinely remorseful. He seems aware of just how messed up it is to make a phone call like that, and he seems to have learned from the situation. I don’t know, though… you could make the argument that anyone capable of making such a phone call in the first place is not a stable person, and I couldn’t disagree with you.

I just hope he’s sincere about his remorse.

Oklahoma running back Adrian Peterson racked up 139 yards and scored two touchdowns againt UAB in Oklahoma 24-17 win this weekend. Offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson said it wasn’t good enough.

“I said, ‘Hey, that ain’t close to what you need to play,’” Wilson said Tuesday. “He goes, ‘I know.’”

“I told him after the game, ‘If you’re a man, you need to go in and tell those guys you didn’t play your best.’ He was dancing too much early, he’s looking for big plays instead of sticking it, being decisive and making great cuts,” Wilson said.

Instead of that, here’s an idea: have an offense that’s prepared to produce, even if your corrupt program loses it’s star quarterback because he was taking money he didn’t earn. As an offensive coordinator, maybe, if he’s a man, he’ll go in front of his team and say, “Well, without Bomar, we’re only good enough to score 24 points against UAB, and that’s only if Adrian Peterson bails us out with two second-half touchdowns, and that’s because I didn’t coach my best.”

I understand him getting on Adrian Peterson. Sometimes, you get on your stars and leaders more than anyone else, but keep that private. Peterson’s a good player, and a smart player, he knows what he can improve. You can tell him about it, but I don’t know why want to make him hear about it on ESPN, too. Why say this to the media?

And why does Peterson have to go in front of the team and apologize for his performance? Is anyone apologizing to him?

Alright, what the hell’s going on here? A day after Miami suspends four players for the Florida State game, Oklahoma points QB Rhett Bomar in the direction of the exit door because he took some money that he didn’t earn. Just bizarre. Dave Wannstedt isn’t earning his paycheck, either, but no one’s getting mad at him.

I just thought this sort of thing happened, and everyone knew about it, and that’s just the way things were. I’m not even opposed to it. Rhett Bomar was probably shocked to learn that he was committing an NCAA violation. What the hell’s going on when our college athletes can’t take a little money under the table now and then? Especially at a car dealership. Is there a car dealership in America that’s run honestly?

And isn’t this something that Oklahoma can just sweep under the rug? It’s not like Rhett Bomar killed someone here (even though he’d be completely justified in killing whichever parent wanted to name him Rhett). I mean, I knew that something like this violated NCAA rules, but much like statutory rape is the jaywalking of sex crimes, I thought this one was the jaywalking of NCAA violations.

This is a team that’s preseason Top-5, and they’re kicking their starting QB off the team, just weeks before the season starts. It’s either an honest attempt to run a clean program, or there’s something else going on at Oklahoma that’s so dirty and so shady that they’re willing to lose their starting QB, just to cover it up.

I’ll be honest, I’m bothered by the events of the last two days. Everything I thought I knew about college football is getting twisted. If some of the top programs in the country are actually doing things by the book, I’m going to have to shift my entire mental paradigm when it comes to college football.

Clean programs. I am baffled.

Against my better judgement, we’re going to get a little “political” today. And I put political in the quotes there, because I don’t really feel like this is a political issue; I think it’s a moral issue. It may be a small part of that issue, it’s a part nonetheless. The NCAA has, since 2001, banned predetermined postseason events from taking place in South Carolina because of their insistence on flying the confederate flag on Statehouse grounds. They are now considering expanding that ban to all postseason football and baseball games, and I hope they do it.

I realize that’s not going to be popular with the “Heritage, Not Hate” crowd, but hey… you win some, you lose some, and I don’t mind losing that one. I don’t even know what the hell that means. If you have to come up with a slogan to attach to your flag that tries to convince people that it’s not a symbol of hate… then yeah, it’s probably best that you just leave your flag in the closet. Just put it down. It hurts people… that’s the beginning and the end of it. It hurts a large group of people, so put your flag down. That’s it.

This is not a free speech issue. I’m not suggesting that they pass a law that would make it illegal for anyone to own or celebrate a confederate flag; I just think the NCAA is making the right call here if they go through with this. It’s not about banning the flag, it’s about politely asking the government to stop endorsing a symbol that stands for racism and slavery, and then the NCAA making their own decisions about things if that government won’t comply. Good for them.

You can celebrate your heritage on your own time. If you want to put up a confederate flag on your front lawn, drink a mint julep, wear a bolo tie, lose a war, grow big puffy sideburns, order an Elvis figurine off of TV, and wash your pick-up truck after taking out an ad in the paper for indentured servants, then hey, have at it. I’d just rather it not be done on government property. Why would anyone need a confederate flag placed on Statehouse grounds to celebrate their heritage? A private listening to a Toby Keith CD should be plenty.

And just to be clear, I’m not saying that all people who fly confederate flags are necessarily bad people. I’m just saying that they’re all doing, knowingly or otherwise, a racist thing. Like it or not, that flag is permanently tied to racism and slavery. And I’m sure there are people out there who look at the flag and somehow, someway, feel some sense of honest pride, but that doesn’t erase the other meaning. Whatever idea that confederate-flag-waver has in his own head does not supercede the fact that it’s a symbol that’s hurtful to a lot of people. So just put it down. All I’m really asking is that you not be an inconsiderate asshole.

So, um… oh yeah, the NCAA. I urge them to go through with it. For all the college athletes in the country, it’s the right thing to do.

Head coach Larry Coker has suspended four Miami Hurricanes for the season opener against in-state rival Florida State. It might be the biggest game on Miami’s schedule, and since this is Miami, where guys get shot, and then pull the gat out of their pants and return fire, these guys must have done something absolutely fucking insane.

I’m thinking… oh, I dunno, something like a nationwide killing spree. Perhaps a series of bank and/or train robberies, a few barnyard rapes thrown in there, the sexual propositioning of two different Mrs. Cokers (the wife, and the mother) as well as the afore-mentioned ethnic cleansing. Maybe they stole a bunch of those scooters pictured above… and then used them to run over a group of senior citizens. I mean, this is the Florida State game. Guys just don’t get suspended for the Florida State game. Whatever happened must have been seriously fucked-up.

Coker declined to say what prompted the punishment.

“It’s all the same incident,” he said. “The message is pretty clear: We have high standards here. We’re a program of quality kids. And these kids are good kids. They’re not bad kids. But we’ve got to get this message across.”

It’s for this exact reason that Miami should open up their season against a team like the Des Moines Polytechnical Institute. Because you know that someone’s going to shoot someone in the offseason. And every now and then, you’ve got to get tough and take a stand, and it’s just much more convenient to take that stand against a team you’ll beat 63-0 anyway.

The New York Times is reporting that some Auburn football players, and you’re not going to believe this, had some really easy classes. I know! Shocking, right? To think that there are colleges and universities out there who tolerate this sort of thing is absolutely chilling. If they don’t step in and stop this, soon you’re going to have players who just outright skip class. We just can’t stand for it.

Here’s the gist of the story, which the New York Times broke. Some high-ranking professor at Auburn gave out grades to football players, while very little classroom work was required of them. I’m sure the requirements were different in various cases, though former Auburn DE Doug Lengenfeld told the Times that he took a class that required him to read one book and write one 10-page paper.

Which, to me, suggests that if the professor’s goal was to give a really easy grade, he wasn’t that good at it. I expected something more along the lines of, “Read this excerpt from Penthouse Letters, and tell me how it made you feel,” or “Spell your name right, and you get an A. Spell it wrong, and I’ll give you a B, as long as you manage to make some sort of mark on the paper with your pencil.”

Perhaps I’m jaded, but… this doesn’t seem like much of a story to me. I would be shocked to learn that this sort of thing doesn’t go on nearly everywhere, and in most cases, things much worse than this. I’m not sure why this qualifies as a story, actually. It’s like someone wrote an article criticizing Rae Carruth for smoking unfiltered cigarettes. Yeah, maybe it’s bad, but… it probably wouldn’t be hard to find something much worse.

I don’t know what the hell’s going on in Oregon, but… this has to stop at some point, doesn’t it? It’s not going to be long before the Ducks call a press conference and say, “Hey, you know what? We’re just wearing teflon this year. That’s right, teflon. Coated in mylar. We’ll be the shiniest fucking team you’ve ever seen. We’re going to have to issue special sunglasses to fans when they enter the stadium, because our uniforms will scar your goddamn retinas if you look directly at them. And if you try to watch us on TV, our uniforms are going to burn your screen. Do you hear me? Your television will spontaneously fucking combust. God damn, we look good.”

I suppose in part because they lost Monday Night Football, ABC is now going to have regular primetime college football games on Saturday nights. Seems a little weird, since Saturday night football is also a staple of ABC’s kid sister, ESPN, does it not? I dunno. It’s a little too early to start thinking about football, but hey, the more football that’s on, the better.

One little quibble with ABC, though… does the color guy have to be Bob Davie? Never in my life have I been watching a game called by Bob Davie, and thought to myself, “Wow, Bob Davie’s doing a really good job.” Never have I heard anyone else say that, or anything remotely similar to it. “Man, I’d like to whack Bob Davie in the groin with a 9-iron,” however, is something I’ve heard at least three dozen times.

I don’t really have much of a problem with Brent Musburger… yes, he’ll probably be drunk for most of these games. And yes, he doesn’t actually provide a lot of information about the games or players, other than, “Let me tell you somethin’, folks, this guy is big.” But hey… he’s Brent Musburger. He’s like your alcoholic uncle that just shows up around holidays, says some weird stuff, and makes himself the center of attention. He’s not going to make your life better in any way, but you’re never unhappy to see him, either. When he’s around, at least you know it’s an occasion.

They kick it off on September 2nd with Notre Dame/Georgia Tech. Ohio State/Texas is the next week, followed by Nebraska/USC.

Pat Forde writes sort of a preseason puff piece on the West Virginia football team. This one’s about head coach Rich Rodriguez and his straightforward, down-home lifestyle. I just wanted to point out this little note about Rich Rodrigeuz not having been to see a movie in 14 years.

Rodriguez last went to the theater 14 years ago — hoping to see Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” but talked into “The Crying Game” by [wife] Rita.

Well… that explains it. If I had seen The Crying Game in the theater, I’d probably never feel like going back, either. Now, I have no idea how good that movie is… I never finished watching it. I know that I saw the film as an impressionable youth, and… well… that girl had a dick. I’m all for sophisticated, artistic films that are a little bit off the beaten path, but I mean… she had a dick. I was not prepared for that, and in many ways, I’ve never recovered.

Unforgiven, on the other hand… it’s a classic poingnant tale about a drunken, former, assassin who wants to kill the bad-ass sheriff, Gene Hackman. Outstanding movie. You can’t go wrong there. A wife talking a husband into seeing The Crying Game instead of Unforgiven… that’s grounds for divorce. I have no idea why Rich and Rita Rodrigeuz are still together.

SI.com’s On Campus section is reporting that Matt Leinart was recently spotted hanging and “canoodling” with Paris Hilton. I’m not sure what “canoodling” means, but if you do it with Paris Hilton, you should probably take a trip to the free clinic afterwards.

Now, who knows how much of this is true, or what Leinart and Paris were actually doing… but if he’s romantically involved with her at all, that’s not good news. His agent has to step in here… there’s a reason Brian Urlacher got rid of her so quickly. By the way, do they check for STDs at the combine?

I wouldn’t care if Vince Young got a negative 7 on the Wonderlic, needed a golf cart to finish his 40-yard dash, and hired Ryan Leaf as his career advisor, I’d still take him over anyone dating Paris Hilton. You just don’t want a quarterback with gonorrhea.

And if you’re Matt Leinart, why bother? There are few women aren’t earth who wouldn’t make their ass readily available to Matt Leinart if he so desired. You don’t need this. You can choose from plenty of women out there who have not made a career out of sucking cock for night-vision cameras. That seems like the better option.