And that's a glorious feeling, isn't it? Other sports are well and good, but few — with the exception of major golf tournaments, which barely count as it is — are as regimented and, thus, as convenient as football. Wake up, eat breakfast, watch football. All Saturday, all Sunday. There are interludes, of course, but there is always football to be watched on the weekend, and, moreover, there is always good football to be watched on the weekend.

With football come the fringe benefits — tailgates and Tailgates, depending on where you're from; frat boys in Oxfords and sorority girls in summer dresses, depending on your preference; Lou Holtz and Joe Theismann, depending on your taste in sadism — but the autumn and early winter are paced by football itself, the sport at its bone-shaking and helmet-thudding purest. None of these slices of Americana exist without football, the biggest piece of all, the one that seems strangely missing in the spring and summer and every day that's not Saturday or Sunday.

"If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead," Erma Bombeck once mistakenly quipped, forgetting or just not knowing that sometimes, those afternoons-turned-into-nights can make anyone feel as alive as ever. Meanwhile, I'm going to go play some wiffleball, or something, knowing that next week, at this time, I'll be busy and booked straight through February.

Two years ago, Greg Paulus was posterized (sorta) during a game against Virginia Tech. Since Paulus plays for Duke and everyone on the planet hates him with the white hot fire of 1,000 suns, it was decided that this moment must be memorialized forever. So the school built a $21 million basketball practice facility just so they could have a place to literally hang a poster in honor of their favorite villain.

And there it hangs. This gigantic photo will remain in Blacksburg for all eternity, as an everlasting reminder to Hokie fans from around the globe that Greg Paulus was kind of annoying. The name of the young fella providing the facing escapes me, but I'm sure he did some other nice things too.

Hoops programs set to move into new practice facility [Hokie Sports]

* * * * *

Here's comes Monday. Up and at them!

Meet Ben Cohen. He is Deadspin's summer intern. Yes, he's a Dukie. He penned a quick farewell to Paulus to introduce himself to you angry people. Give him your usual warm welcome.

Most people remember Greg Paulus as the Duke point guard who, like other Duke guards, is white and has a penchant for falling like a sniper's target and, unlike other Duke guards, was teabagged too much for anyone's comfort. A lot of people, none of whom have met him, hate Greg Paulus, or at least use him as a convenient medium to hate Duke. It didn't help that Paulus flopped and handchecked and floorslapped. His trash-talking (or scrappiness, depending on your perspective) afforded him no pity when he caught a rogue elbow or ate an opponent's shorts.

But when I think of Syracuse's new quarterback, it's a memory off the court, with him looking painfully ordinary — like a regular student, far from the villain he was made out to be. (I also think about the time his junior year when he turned around on a fast break and passed the ball to a teammate who didn't exist, all because a classmate in the front row yelled "Trailer!" That nugget isn't wistful or nostalgic enough for today. But look! I included it anyway.)

On March 2, the day before he played his final game in Cameron Indoor Stadium, a pinny-clad Paulus met with a small group of reporters. Someone asked Paulus about his future, and he said he was still bent on finding a place to play next year.

"What, football?" joked a reporter as Paulus started to walk out of the media room.

He stopped, looked back and laughed, acknowledging but trying to dismiss the idea. Still, there was something about that moment that made it easy for most reporters to remember it a month later, when we reconvened in the same room with Greg, who had called a press conference to confirm the ambition he had tried to shake.

I had seen Paulus the night before, right after I finished writing a story about his trip to visit Rich Rodriguez at Michigan. He drove by in his SUV with New York plates and dueling Duke and UNC decals, and before I could think about running down his car, he was rolling down the window to wave as he sped away. His willingness to greet a reporter surprised me. Paulus fit into the Krzyzewskian mold of media relations — say as little as possible as infrequently as possible — but unlike his head coach, Paulus was more friendly than condescending. He never seemed particularly jazzed about answering questions — when he came into the media room to talk about football and saw a throng of reporters, he muttered "Oh jeez," — but to his credit, he always looked reporters in the eye and responded.

It was always difficult to get a grasp on Paulus' psyche, especially later in the career, because he refused to call attention to himself or to speak candidly, without the crutch of cliches. On numerous occasions I heard him say that his favorite food was steak, and he went on to dub himself as a meat-and-potatoes type of guy. The description, trite as it was, captured him better than any reporter ever could.

As a Duke student, not a reporter trying to profile him, I saw a different side of Paulus. I saw him stop for everyone on the quad and pose for photographs with people he had never met. I saw him shoulder the burden of a graduating class' identity, slumping when that weight became too much and hugging Duke administrators on graduation, when he was one of a handful of soon-to-be alumni selected to represent the class on stage. I saw him pay attention and take notes in class, and I saw him slog through a senior year when he was benched, unbenched and benched again. I even felt bad for him when he lost the title of team villain because he no longer played enough to merit the chorus of jeers. (Plus, he had to live with Josh McRoberts for a year and, worse, pretend to like him for two.)

A few days after the curtains opened on the Greg Paulus World Tour, long before he announced Syracuse would be his last stop, I ran into the quarterback-to-be outside Cameron, where he was just arriving for that night's team banquet. He approached me to tell me he enjoyed a column I had written for the school newspaper, and I made a joke about his wearing a Green Bay Packers T-shirt. I asked him what he planned to do next, and, like any other graduating senior without a job offer, he seemed genuinely uncertain, as he was when he hit the same confused notes with Kornheiser and Wilbon. We talked for a couple minutes before he had to run inside. It was 2:56 p.m., and he couldn't be late for one last team meeting. I shook his hand and, with the promise that marks most goodbyes, I told him I would see him soon, knowing full well that such a meeting would probably never happen.

Ben Cohen just finished his one-year term as sports editor of The Chronicle, Duke's student newspaper. He owns a Greg Paulus basketball jersey but wears Grant Hill's No. 33 to games, and he likes the Cameron Crazies as much as you do. Feel free to hate him anyway.

An insomniac Deadspin reader was flipping through the channels in his south Texas abode early Saturday morning (or late Friday night, if you prefer) when this not-unpleasing-to-the-eye image gave him pause. Thankfully, for the good of humanity, he had a camera handy. Either Time Warner Cable is having trouble keeping the porn out of their non-porn feeds or an ESPNU employee was making a strong statement about Duke basketball.

Interestingly, the same thing happened last Sunday in Waco, where Time Warner Cable customers watching a PBS telethon were surprised by a 5-second switch from PBS to pubis. It was probably the most action those viewers had gotten in years. Between that and the infamous Super Bowl Porn incident earlier this year, we're looking at a possible porno pandemic. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

This seems like it would be mired in NCAA transfer waiver hell, public relations snafus, but apparently it is entirely feasible. And the slight possibility of Paulus actually suiting up as their number one quarterback for one magical year has made the '09 Wolverines much more interesting. But what makes the possibility even more intriguing is the writers who saw Paulus quarterback for Christian Brothers Academy in 2004 swear he's one of the greatest high school football players ever to put on pads. He's Jesus Chitwood of the gridiron.

Selected apocrypha:

Bud Poloquin:

As I've never seen, in person, a high-school quarterback as good as Paulus and as he was widely hailed as the finest high-school quarterback in the nation back in the fall of 2004, I'd forever wondered why Greg chose the basketball path — not, certainly, that there's a whole lot wrong with four years at Duke University, where Mike Krzyzewski's program is awesome along with the academics, weather and student scenery (if you get my drift).

So, Greg Paulus hardly erred in signing on with the Blue Devils, where he was long considered the best quarterback in the ACC even though he never played quarterback in the ACC. But I always believed — as did his father, by the way — that if he did have a playing future beyond college, it would be in football. And now, who knows? On that front, there might still be some there there.

Nick Friedell:

I played high school football in Florida and have followed the recruiting game for years, and I can honestly tell you that Paulus was one of the most impressive high school quarterbacks I've ever seen. Seriously. The kid could throw the ball 60 to 70 yards down the field with just a flick of the wrist. He was sneaky fast and eluded tacklers all over the field. He made plays that you wouldn't believe.

Others of note: Greg Paulus once threw the ball 85 yards with three men hanging all over him and a rabid badger gnawing on his foot! Greg Paulus once ran for 457 yards, threw for 1,500, and bedded three cheerleaders in the bleachers in one quarter! Greg Paulus once pancake blocked a 400-lb All-American defensive lineman with his pinky finger!

Nevertheless, I'm insanely curious and hopeful that this will actually happen.

Greg Paulus to play football at Michigan? It's a possibility according to report [MLive.com]

The best part is not that the referees keep falling for Paulus' "my god, look what these horrible opponents keep doing to me!" act; it's that good ole Jay Bilas is there to have his school's back to the very end. Admit it: It's nice having Duke really good again, isn't it? It's always more fun to hate someone that's good.

Greg Paulus Should Try Out For The Italian Soccer Team [Awful Announcing]