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We've made it a little tradition around here to gather photographs from the BCS Coaches' Trophy's annual superstore tour of Alabama. (See last year's delightful gallery of Auburn fans at Walmart.) This year's a little different. Sadly, Walmart is out, but two supermarkets and a sporting goods store are in. More »
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It's time for the final installment of Deadspin's college football rankings. As always, the teams are ranked according to the logic and values of college football, no matter how bizarre or contradictory they may be. More »
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Lee Corso trolled the shit out of the Alabama student body. Kirk Herbstreit styled on set with the Bear Bryant hat. Brian Wilson...exists in this world to annoy everyone. More »
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Tim is collecting the best moments of Every Synthetic Puffer's Nightmare's coverage of the lead up to The Big Game and screen capping them all for you. Come, inside and check them out. No, no. Thank you. More »
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Marquis Maze goes back and forth across the field slalom-style en route to an 83-yard punt return for a touchdown. Alabama currently leads Arkansas 31-14. More »
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It's the first big college-football Saturday of the season. Yay. No. 18 Ohio State, which lost its The in a haze of Tresselmanic scandal, plays Akron at noon (ESPN). Also at noon on the WWL, No. 23 Auburn hosts Utah State (2) and Northwestern visits Boston College (U). More »
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The Lee County Sheriff's Office in Opelika, Ala. took a creative approach to rounding up a few parents who'd fallen way behind in their child support payments: they told them they'd won free tickets to the annual Iron Bowl, and then they arrested them when they came to collect on the prize. It's like To Catch A Predator, but with more malice, because these people just wanted to watch a football game. More »
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Rare is the basketball game a team wins when its leading scorer goes 1-of-21 from the field. This helps explain why Sand Rock High School failed to advance to the Alabama state high-school finals last night. The Gadsden Times worked the phrase "horrendous shooting" into the first two words of its game story. They probably didn't go far enough. More »
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The university announced that the part-time employee was fired for playing "unauthorized" music at Bryant-Denny Stadium. The unauthorized music also happened to be directed at Auburn quarterback Cam Newton. More »
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Meet Young Boozer III, future state treasurer of Alabama. His dad, Young Boozer Jr., played football for the Crimson Tide and was Bear Bryant's roommate. Alabama continues to be awesome. More »
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Because no one reads the newspaper, and SportsCenter's anchors are too perky for this early in the morning, Deadspin combs the best of the broadsheets and the blogosphere to bring you everything you need to know to start your day More »
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So last weekend I went with @girlfriend to the teensie tiny town of Wetumpka, Alabama, which meant I had the chance to see the Iron Bowl in its natural habitat. More »
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A head coach and a referee died in two separate incidents during the opening night of high school football in Alabama on Friday. More »
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Venezuela's national basketball team flew all the way to Alabama to participate in an international tournament, only to discover they were the only international team there. Also, the "tournament" was just one game. You've done it again, Birmingham, Alabama. More »
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John Daly's Magic Bus continues to roll around the country, but it's running a little bit lower than usual after he knocked off the top going through a low-clearance tunnel. More »
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Chad Floyd Jeter is wanted by police after allegedly robbing a bank in Alabama, while wearing a New England PatriotsBlue Jays cap misidentified by Alabama police as a Patriots hat. (Who did you think I was talking about?) He is considered armed and dangerously clutch. [Wicked Good Sports] More »
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This is going to be a very laid back, no- hassle day spent perusing the internet for sports-related ephemera until the NFL games start. Right now, I'm in NYC at a coffee shop at 13th and B. Please stop by and say hello if you're in the area. More »
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Apparently, some readers took issue with my recent characterization of Birmingham, Alabama, as a decrepit backwater devoid of all culture and sophistication. Wait, did I not say that? Because I should have. More »
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Leave it to Las Vegas to sate all our needs. Even those we didn't know we had before. (I'm looking at you midget escort service.) Everyone knows that the idea of a playoff is so awfully complicated that it would require a Manhattan Project-level commitment before anything could happen. Or, you know, a sports book could just seed the top 8 teams based on the final BCS standings and run the odds for each of those match-ups. Like the guys at BetOnline.com did. The result is a USC victory. But what would the odds look like on your Oklahoma-Penn State game? Or your Florida-Texas Tech game? Click on for the colorful bracket. Then wipe away the drool from your computer keyboards. More »
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Of all the ridiculous aspects of the BCS system, the conference championship game pisses me off more than any other because it points out the flagrant hypocrisy of the college presidents. In the same time period when they've fought a college football playoff because of the time it would add to the season, they've added conference championship games and a 12th game to the regular season. But that's not the only reason. I think conference championship games are ludicrous because in an era when every team is fighting to get to the BCS, only half of the BCS leagues actually require their teams to play them. So the Big 12, SEC, and ACC teams have to run the gauntlet of their regular season schedule and then slug out yet another game while the three other conference champs cool their heels and wait to advance. That's such a joke. Anyway, on to the preview...in a moment. I'm just getting warmed up. More »
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Oklahoma beat Oklahoma State late Saturday night 61-41. This score was enough to vault the Sooners ahead of Texas in the BCS Standings and, as a result, send them into the Big 12 Title Game against Missouri courtesy of the fifth tiebreak. (The sixth tiebreak was, in a nice nod to BCS totalitariianism, "Who does Kim Jong-Il think is better?") In raising Oklahoma the BCS computers managed to solve the quandary that left human pollsters uncertain: which of three tied teams deserves the opportunity to compete for a national championship? Of course this only mattered because Texas Tech stormed back to defeat Baylor before Oklahoma even kicked off. If Tech lost that game, then the Oklahoma game wouldn't even have mattered. and Texas is playing for the title. This all makes an awful lot of sense, right? More »
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Now that everyone knows exactly what's going to happen with the rest of the college football season, this is when something inevitably blows up. Because if there's one thing we know about the convoluted BCS system, it's this: nothing is certain with three weekends to go. Alabama still has to get past Mississippi State and then beat a desperate Auburn team for the first time since 2001. Florida has to get past the Ole Ball Coach and then go on the road to play Florida State. Meanwhile Texas goes to Kansas and tries to avoid getting Mangino'd (the possibilities of exactly what this would entail are endless.) Without further ado, here are the 11 most intriguing games of the weekend. Do dive in. More »
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Wright Thompson of ESPN hung out with some LSU fans two weeks ago for the Georgia-LSU game. Not surprisingly LSU fans were focused less on Georgia and more on their hate for Nick Saban. The result is a rollicking story of what happens when you get dumped for a hated rival and then your former coach rips Cajuns by making fun of coonasses. "As the drinks start to flow, so does the level of anger. There are jokes, both innocuous and disturbing (like Ragoo opining about what some of his less-civilized brethren might do with a 12-gauge should they spy Saban in the Bayou). "If I were him I'd be very discreet," Ragoo cracks. "He might not make it back." Just a healthy rivalry. I'm sure Alabama quarterback John Parker Wilson knows all about how beloved he is in Baton Rouge after the phone calls he got this week. So cute and funny, those death threats. More »
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Alabama's John Parker Wilson is the latest SEC player attempting to overcome the LSU fans snagging his cell phone number and listing it everywhere on the internets. Confounding Cajuns. You'll recall that earlier this season Knowshon Moreno and A.J. Green were the victims. They joined Tim Tebow from last year. Imagine what people in Louisiana would be capable of if they focused as much energy on literacy. Anyway, for the record, John Parker Wilson's old cell phone number was 205-910-2876. It's already been disconnected, so it's too late for you to call and make fun of his 'Bama Bangs. How pissed would you be if LSU fans put your cell phone number on the internet and you had to switch to another number? Especially if you were a starting quarterback in the SEC and didn't even remember the names of most of your regular, ahem, post midnight lady calls. Yeah, thought so. Nick Saban should thank his lucky stars that his number didn't get out there. Anyway, here are 9 interesting games worth noting. More »
]]> http://deadspin.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5079545&view=rss&microfeed=true This is what it has come to: an erudite Alabama fan self-nicknamed "Cowboy" is Phil Fulmer's greatest defender. And Cowboy thinks that Nick Saban might be watching his analysis. Which, given that Saban is all-knowing and all-powerful, He probably is. Find a better mustache than this, I dare you. More »
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Just a tip, don’t ever try and take a baby into Neyland Stadium. No matter how old the kid (ours is less than nine months old and was sleeping in a baby bjorn on his mom’s chest). Babies have to have tickets to Neyland too. I have no idea why the University of Tennessee would have this policy. Especially since two of the most money grubbing entities on earth, the airlines and the NFL allow infants to accompany their parents without tickets. But not the Vols. I understand the need for an age limit, but if a kid can't walk, he's probably not sitting in his own seat. Just so stupid. Anyway like five of the strongest Scotty Hopson shots in succession (a sweet concoction of Kentucky bourbon and orange juice to honor the Vols top basketball recruit from Kentucky),Eric Berry helped to erase the pain of my son's first trip to Neyland. On to 12 observations from Saturday’s games. More »
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The most shocking image of the college football weekend occurred in the second half of Missouri-Nebraska. And it had nothing to do with the fact that Missouri hung 52 on Nebraska before the third quarter ended. It was finding out that Missouri’s chubby and short quarterback who will win the Heisman Trophy is boyz with Warren Buffett, the sage of Omaha. As if that weren’t enough, they posed for photos with one another. Well, of course they did. And of course the two regularly exchange email messages as well. Does Warren Buffett use emoticons? I swear to god if he does, I’m going to be crushed. You wouldn’t expect anything less though after seeing them pose back-to-back with a smug, “I just bought See’s Candy, bitch,” look on their faces. More »
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The eyes of the college football world shift to Nashville, Tennessee this weekend where the mighty Vanderbilt Commodores will be hosting Auburn. This is a huge game for Vandy. The last time they beat Auburn was 1955, the same year that Rosa Parks instituted her bus boycott in Montgomery. Yep, black people couldn't ride in the front of buses the last time Vanderbilt won in this "rivalry." But the theme of this weekend is undefeated Big 12 teams go on the road to face tests against decent conference foes that they should beat but could slip up against. Texas Tech is traveling to Kansas State, Texas is headed to Colorado, and Missouri will be at Nebraska. All three of these games will be broken down below as soon as I recover from my hangover brought about by playing Sarah Palin cliches during last night's vice presidential debate. (I'd like to take this opportunity to give a shoutout to Ravenwood High School in Brentwood, Tennessee. You get extra credit for reading this.) By the way, another top ten team already gone via Thursday night football? Congrats to Pitt fans (Wannstedt is safe for another few weeks!) and wave goodbye once more to South Florida. On to the breakdowns of the 10 most interesting games. More »
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Each week more signs appear behind the stage at ESPN's College Gameday. Some are original and funny (Knowshon Crossing sign with his leaping outline), some are entirely inside jokes (let's make a sign with our friend's name on it and hold it up for three hours early in the morning), and some are deemed offensive and are destroyed by ESPN heavies. Which brings us to the sign posted above, "Lou Holtz Spits, Mark May Swallows." It comes to me via reader Pete and he says, " By 10:05 AM ESPN had already confiscated it and broken it apart, but it did set off quite a commotion the few minutes it was up." So now you know if you're interested in trying to sneak your sign past the heavies at ESPN, you're out of luck. Unless that sign says, "Lee Corso is a penis", then you may survive for a little while. I've always thought that Gameday doesn't take advantage of this signage enough. For instance, what if they actually made Desmond Howard do something, anything worthwhile on the show, and put him to work selecting the five best signs of the day and bringing them on set for the final segment? Or the top three signs? Actually, given his sense of humor Howard might not be the best choice. But wouldn't this be a great idea? To acknowledge all the fans who show up early in the morning and scream and yell and make the show such a success. Granted "Lou Holtz spits, Mark May Swallows" is not going to make the cut, but for original signs with good humor, wouldn't it be cool to encourage the creativity? Instead of, you know, taking a college kid's sign and breaking it up after deeming it offensive. (Offensive is a stretch here anyway, Lou Holtz does spit and Mark May does swallow...sometimes, or he would die.) Could Pete have gotten away with, "Lou Holtz Expectorates and Mark May Ingests." I think so. I want to know which ESPN guru is in charge of deciding whether a sign is offensive or not. I'm picturing this bespectacled guy sitting in front of a large HD screen on the Gameday bus, television images reflected off his glasses, laptop in lap, and googling sign phrases with laser-like focus. Then he has like fifteen guys dressed entirely in black (the ESPN shockforce), snaps his fingers, and Gino Torretta goes outside and wreaks havoc. Either that or they borrow David Pollack from CBS and send him out to say, "Golly gee, y'all should have known better," and Pollack throws the signs down and then skips from one side of the sign to another, smiling at you all the while, as he destroys your sign. Anyway, if you've ever wondered whether ESPN brings the muscle to break down offensive signs, now you know. On to 8 other things I noted from this week's games. 1. Someone finally stopped Tim Tebow on a 4th and 1 shotgun sneak. That team was Ole Miss. Prior to this stop, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Ole Miss had all been victimized by the Tebow fourth down sneak leading to victories. It was believed by many, much like the four minute mile, that this play simply couldn't be bested. And then Ole Miss stopped it. A Houston Nutt coached team stopped it. Wow. When this final score was announced at UT-Auburn, there was a roar throughout the stadium. A roar so loud that the Florida guys with their sleevless t-shirts and the Florida girls with their bingo wings, felt a sudden chill of air on the backs of their exposed arms. Here's the play. Note how Ole Miss sends every single player storming into the center of the line. There isn't a single player more than two yards from the line of scrimmage. If Florida goes play action here, they win. Or even with the Tim Tebow jump pass. New theory: Florida can't handle the rural SEC schools. Ole Miss has won two in a row in the Swamp, Miss. State sent the Zooker packing, and Auburn's owning of the Gators is well-chronicled. There's something about cows that spells Gator disaster. Otherwise how to explain the incongruous site of Ole Miss fans mocking the Gator Chomp with a derogatory chop of their own in Gainesville. 2. Wisconsin blows a 19-0 lead at Michigan and loses. As if that weren't bad enough this was the biggest second-half comeback in Michigan stadium history. That's 500 games. This is one of those losses where if you're a Wisconsin fan you find yourself sitting outside in the fading light staring off into the coming darkness thinking, "No matter what happens, Michigan is always going to be better than we are at football. Always." Michigan had 5 turnovers and only 21 yards of offense in the first half. And they won. Wisconsin had an undefeated team, was favored, and choked away the second half. How painful was it? Wisconsin scored on a two-point conversion to tie the game but was penalized and failed on the second attempt. 3. Tennessee quarterback Jonathan Crompton is the worst quarterback in my life at UT. He was 8-23 for 67 yards against Auburn. To say that this game was an atrocious display of football is insulting to the word atrocious. From UT giving Auburn a defensive touchdown by failing to execute the always complicated handoff, to Auburn's quarterback, Chris Todd, having the arm strength of a girl's power puff quarterback, this thing was epically bad on every level. How bad? Auburn's fans booed their team while they were leading in the fourth quarter. How bad part two? Jonathan Crompton's entire quarterbacking skill seems to consist of throwing the ball really hard. He didn't complete a pass for the final 20 minutes of the game. At one point, though, he did manage to throw a three-yard slant pattern 400 miles an hour. No one on earth could have caught this thing. Yep, he's Ricky Vaughn. My book is going to be awesome. It might just end up being an itemized roster of how much money Jonathan Crompton has cost me. There was no joy in either fan base aw we left the stadium. Everyone looked like they'd just witnessed an execution. 4. Duke beats UVa 31-3. Meaning that Duke, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt are a combined 12-1 this season. The only loss among the three? Northwestern beat Duke. All three are likely to go bowling. As if that weren't enough ESPN's College Gameday just announced yesterday that they're coming to Vanderbilt for the game against Auburn this weekend. Seriously, Vanderbilt is hosting College Gameday. Any Tennessee fan who said that losing offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe wouldn't hurt was a fool. Duke is probably 1-3 without him, UT is 3-1 with him. Anyway, the big news here is that Vanderbilt becomes the smartest school since Williams-Amherst to get College Gameday. I'm expecting signs that are so insulting, biting, and smart that ESPN isn't smart enough to note their sublime subterfuge. Don't disappoint me Vandy, don't disappoint me. 5. Alabama eviscerates Georgia. Much to the chagrin of Georgia fans, I've been one of those people who has been saying all along that Georgia was overvalued relative to the other teams in the SEC. But even I was shocked by this outcome. 31-0 at the half? Imagine how bad it would have been if Georgia hadn't blacked out the stadium. What's the only thing worse than watching your team lose 14-12? Having to drive back across the whole state of Alabama and listen to Crimson Tide radio announcer Eli Gold have 48 orgasms on the radio. Here's Eli, pictured above. By the way, can Alabama fans back me up on this, is Eli the only radio announcer on the Crimson Tide broadcast capable of speaking in sentences? Everyone else he had on-air with him just spoke occasional words and then uttered sounds after. How did they select these guys? Worse, who did they beat out? Eli Gold sounds like a Shakepearean actor and his co-workers sound like stand-ins for the missing link. 6. Oklahoma is your new number 1 team after the dust setlles on Saturday's results. The Sooners dispatched TCU 35-10. Four of the top ten lose. Alabama slides in at number 2 after their pasting of Georgia. Three teams from the Big 12 join two from the SEC. Anyone who tells you they have any idea what the hell is going to happen for the rest of the season is a damn fool. Survival is the operative word. Are we headed towards another two-loss national champion? Perhaps. 7. Don't look now but BYU is going to cause some major BCS headaches. They moved up to number 8 and only play one top 25 opponent for the remainder of the season (at home against Utah on the final week of their regular season) With all the attrition up top could BYU end up in the title game? Yeah, they really could. 8. UConn took down Louisville to go to 5-0 and reach the top 25 at 24 with fellow top ten crasher South Florida from the Big East. Which brings us to a second crazy thought, could BYU and South Florida end up in the national championship game? Looking at both of their schedules they'll be favored to be undefeated come season's end (with the possible exception for USF's season finale on December 6th at West Virginia). Fans would demand a playoff then, right? Right? More »
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If you stayed up past midnight on the east coast last night to watch USC-Oregon State right now you're blearily wiping your eyes and cursing the decision as lunch nears and all you want to do is crawl under your desk and sleep. If you're like me you might also be questioning why you let Birmingham, Alabama's finest talk radio show host, Ian Fitzsimmons of JOX radio, convince you to do shots in celebration of Mark Sanchez's fourth quarter interception. Shots only a few minutes before you have to stumble across the street to your hotel and lay in bed realizing that the most shocking game of the college football season is already complete. And it's still September. Which means that suddenly, amazingly, the national title game has no one's name written in. Hell, we don't even know who deserves to be number one. More »
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Somewhere the ghost of Bear Bryant is crying. And not just because Alabama outsourced the giant houndstooth hat to a Connecticut based company. But because, you know, this seems like something that should exist just outside the Tampa Bay Bucs pirate ship. The goal is to spruce up the concession stands at Bryant-Denny stadium. In addition to the Bear's Den (get it, get it), there will be Ezell's Fish Camp (looks like a fish camp) and Crimson Fried (looks like everything that everyone is already eating). How big is the houndstooth hat? Try 550 pounds. More »
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And by "suggests", I mean "said." At least the top recruits do. What could bring on this rumination? Perhaps the upcoming neutral site game between Clemson and Alabama. As part of his job for the big game Clemson's defensive guru, Vic Koenning, is charged with stopping Alabama's newest starting receiver Julio Jones— a 6'4 220 pound true freshman. Both men are from South Alabama which led to this exchange. More »
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Of course the legal strategy was pay a retarded man to take the blame for a fight you started. The fight happened at the 2005 Iron Bowl when an Alabama fan, Joey Barrett, Jr., yelled, "Roll Tide!" at an Auburn fraternity house. Oh, and the Alabama fan happened to be a cage fighter armed with a knife. In the ensuing brawl one of the Phi Kappa Tau brothers was stabbed and sent to the hospital with a collapsed lung. To try and escape punishment, Barrett offered a retarded man, Louie Holtz, a car to say he'd beaten and stabbed the fraternity brothers. This offer led to a mistrial in the first case. So a cage-fighting Alabama fan doesn't know right from wrong? Shocking. More »
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