This series will run on MONDAYS this year. Again, consult the initial post if you'd like to help us out with this.

ONE: No, This Man Was Not Put Down With An Elephant Gun

Since I saw a post about about the Harvard-Yale game at Yale, I wanted to provide a little photo exposé I did back in 2004 in Cambridge. I have no idea who these guys were, but they provided a glorious living lesson of the effects of alcohol on coordination, motor control and equilibrium, and why it is important to have lots of friends who care about you if you are going to consume handles of vodka, gin and a case of beer by yourself. I think my photos capture drunkenness and friendship at its best.

It started with a Cambridge police officer confiscating a funnel and giving me the stink eye as he was likely concerned I was the same guy that did the Rodney King video. Note that Stripe Shirt's leg positions which are impossible to mimic sober. I guess Stripe Shirt's friend convinced the officer that he was okay, and they both proceed to rejoice at averting an arrest or forcible hospitalization like obnoxious jerkoffs.

The rejoicing doesn't last for long as Stripe Shirt starts to keel over

, but fortunately Friend One is there to catch him.

Friend Two enters the situation and is a little less gentle with Stripe Shirt, holding him up by his face.

He keels over anyway.

Stripe Shirt's luck does not run out because nearby there is a lawn chair awaiting his fat drunk ass.

Note the grass stains on his knees, while Pea Coat (it is Yale after all) comes in to wish him well, exalt him for being a "model tailgater" and offer him some hard liquor. Stripe Shirt's friends were nice enough to put sunglasses on him so that he could keep his coolness factor as his liver completely shuts down.

It is nice to know that the group of jolly Ivy League fraternity alums who don't know their limit is still active, and very distinguished.

TWO:The Big Sexy Italian Shit Show Haunts Mizzou

My friend Dominic is a short, stocky, proud Italian with a short temper. One might say he has a case of small-man syndrome (hates everyone because they are taller than him). Dominic also has the inability to control his drunk. This story happens the weekend of last years Mizzou-Illinois game in St. Louis. Right before we leave Columbia he proudly announces that he doesn't plan on drinking that much...which we all knew was a lie. We reach St. Louis and meet up with my other friend Mark's family at their hotel near the Edward Jones Dome. After pregaming in the hotel and all of us taking our fair share of shots we were ready to head to the tailgate. At this point Dominic was already in a great mood, yelling at any and every Illinois fan in sight, no women or children were spared. To one Illinois mother and child he bellowed "You were born into the wrong fucking family baby!" To an elderly Illinois man, in his best Macho Man Randy Savage voice he yells "Illinois is going DOWN!!, THE WHOLE FUCKING STATE". By the time we got to the tailgate the pregaming had kicked in (for everyone else anyway) and everyone was in full throttle drinking mode including parents and family friends. Shotgunning beers, Petron shots and boxing with MMA fighters in the gravel parking lot. After seeing Dominic posted up casually on the side of a truck, shitfaced, taking in the scenery with his penis hanging out of the crotch of his pants I knew it would be an eventful day.
It was time to go into the game and Dominic cannot walk. Luckily an ex-Mizzou alum Dominic had made friends with earlier (he was also Italian and Italians love talking about being Italian) was kind enough to throw him over his shoulder and slump his lifeless body to the stadium for us. After being refused at multiple gates, it was time for Plan B because we obviously weren't getting into the game. So we flagged a cab and threw Dominic in and took him back to Mark's car we left in a parking garage a few blocks away. There wasn't much life left in Dominic but he put up quite the fight and was determined get to the game that we had voluntarily abandoned for him already. We put him in the back of Mark's car hoping he would just pass out but to no avail. None of us wanted to babysit Dominic so we did the rational thing and stuck him in the back with the child locks on. Thinking that we had this problem taken care of we headed into the game. How naive we were.
Around half time our friend Bones(nick name from HS) gets a phone call, who else could it be but two Jamaican security guards, "Bones? Bones? Tis dis Bones? We found your friend Big Sexy, we have Big Sexy" (Dominic has a tattoo on his ass that says "Big Sexy" in the Italian colors of green, white, and red...I told you he is a very proud man). Bones leaves the game to go see what the hell was going on. He finds Dominic puking outside the parking garage with the two security guards. It turns out that Dominic had been found face down on the concrete in the middle of the parking garage (a floor down from the car at that), pants (and boxers) around his ankles, dick on the pavement, and had shat himself. Quite the mess. But Dominic still had one more trick up his sleeve. We walked back to the car and Mark erupts into anger "What the fuck?! What the fuck!!" There was glass all over the ground near Mark's car because his back seat window had been knocked out. Mark takes the empty plastic liquor handle he was holding and slings it directly into Dominic's forehead then slams him to the ground. Dominic was so fucked up he thought he had gone into the game with everyone else and took a lot of convincing before he finally believed us. Dominic was pissed off about being in the car and not being able to get out so he kicked out the side window, fell out of the car, crawled to his feet, wandered down a level only to fall down pass out face first in the middle of the garage driveway with his dick out and his pants covered in shit. We still aren't sure why his dick was out. Now that, is a true fan.

THREE: Please Don't Startle The Children

Here's my tale:

New Year's Day, 2007: Wisconsin is playing Arkansas in the Outback Bowl in Orlando, FL. About 15 guys from my fraternity at and me make the trip down for a long weekend of general debauchery and to watch the Badgers.

Whoever holds a bowl game on New Year's Day should realize what they're asking for. My friends and I woke up in the single hotel room we were all sharing still hammered from New Year's Eve the night before in order to prep for the noon kickoff. A few just powered through the whole night and didn't go to bed, amazingly. Before we left our hotel, we attempted to spell out some sort of message across our chests in paint (I believe we were going for "On Wisconsin" but the whole day is hazy). However, some were too drunk to properly write letters, so the whole idea was scrapped and a few of us headed out with big red blotches on their bodies and faces. We looked like a retarded version of one of the clans from Braveheart.

Having never been to Orlando before, we weren't sure where the best place to tailgate would be. The least-drunk among us took charge and commandeered a few taxis with the instructions to a) find the nearest liquor store so we could stock up and then b) drop us off by the stadium. Once we secured booze, we arrived at the Citrus Bowl and started looking for a good place to set up shop. Again, we were all still hammered from the night before, so instead of doing the sensible thing and joining up with other Badger fans, we spotted a children's playground directly across from the stadium. The swings and jungle gym and slides seemed like the ideal spot to set up a base. The best part about the location was that it was right in the middle of the path that everyone going to the game had to take in order to walk into the stadium. I will never forget the looks on some of the moms' and dads' faces as they walked by us: 15 young men who failed at body painting, swinging around on a children's playground while chugging openly from plastic handles of Fleischmann's vodka.

I believe the attached picture sums up the day nicely. Notice the confused/terrified expressions on the kids faces.

Let's go ahead and keep this anonymous if you run it.

FOUR: You're Never Too Old To Get Thrown Out Of The Rose Bowl

Let me preface this story by saying that all involved in "the incident" are over the age of 35. 4 of the six are PARENTS. The other two are pushing 40 and should have known better!

Cut to a lovely Saturday in October where the six friends thought it would be a good idea to catch a UCLA game at the Rose Bowl. Good weather, great friends, a few cocktails - what could be better?

Cut to the six proceeding to get drunk as skunks on vodka and sodas. There was food present, but seemed to have no effect on diminishing the incredible drunk we all were on.

Heading to the game (continuing to drink, of course) - one of the principals thought it would be fun to sneak a beer into the game. (no drinking inside - as this is a college game, of course). The girls proceeded to bum cigarettes from college kids and smoked like $10 hookers while heading to our seats.

Once seated - about 2 minutes into the game, no kidding - we see Security personnel headed to our section. Thinking that a fight had broken out, we laughed and hooted, awaiting the show to begin. Big mistake, as security headed DIRECTLY to us and proceeded to bust the married father of one who bootlegged the beer inside and kicked him out of the game!

Not to be undone, another friend decided that it would be a good idea at this time to instigate a fight. He tapped a USC-tee shirt wearing dude on the back with his foot (this wasn't even the UCLA-USC game!! Just some dumb jerk who thought it was funny to wear an SC shirt to a UCLA game). As you can imagine - USC man didn't appreciate this when Drunk #2 did it AGAIN, and the fighting words and postures began.

When we were finally able to drag drunk #2 out of our section. People actually cheered. Drunk #2's wife proceeded to get hysterical and cried the whole way home.

We didn't even see one minute of the game. Needless to say, we're rethinking our vodka in the a.m. strategy for this year's adventure.

FIVE: This is What Happens When You Get Too Drunk At Giants Stadium

So, I managed to get tickets to the divisional round of the playoffs last year, to the giants-eagles game. I decide to go instead of selling them (first mistake). I bring three of my friends who are huge boozebags (second mistake). I offer to drive instead of making the tickets conditional on one of them being the DD (third, and largest mistake). So, we go, we had a few other friends from college who had tickets through their own sources, so we were back and forth between two large family tailgates.

Obviously, there are copious amounts of shots for those who weren't driving, and all of my friends get wasted. One of them, however, gets far drunker than the rest somehow. Normally, this kid can hold his liquor, but for whatever reason, he's shitfaced. And, the worst part was that it hit him fairly late. Not to say that he was sober throughout, but he was under control until we started walking towards the actual stadium. That's when the last however many shots hit him, and he goes from walking on his own, but not straight, to walking while leaning on me, to pretty much being carried by me, to being carried by two of us, to being complete dead weight such that he can't be moved at all. In the mean time, we're obviously being heckled by people, and being told we're embarrassing the giants (which actually pissed me off, as much as he was a mess, fuck those people; maybe they were embarassing the giants by being sober). We finally decide to try to get him back to the car, but that doesn't even work, he starts using the 2% of his consciousness he has to fight against it, so we finally have to flag down a cop, who calls over an ambulance. One of my other friends tries unsuccessfully to guilt me into getting into the ambulance with him, and I say fuck that, so my friend goes instead.

The ambulance brings him into the medical center in the stadium (which, by the way, requires scanning his ticket for him to get to), where they tell us "he's reacting in a way that it can't just be alcohol." To which we assure them that, it really has just been booze. I think they were just trying to scare us into saying he did something he didn't, but whatever. They hold him for like half an hour, he still doesn't come to, they'd take him to the local hospital. My friend leaves the medical center at that point, and goes to his seats, they call him half an hour later, saying they're taking him to the hospital. We obviously wait until the game gets out of hand (because, fuck him, it wasn't our fault he got that drunk), then go over to the hospital. He's still passed the fuck out, the nurses laugh at us for awhile, and tell us he can't be released until his BAC is "below toxic levels." We all need to get back into the city, and couldn't wait the 5
additional hours that they estimated it would take for his BAC to drop sufficiently, so we ended up having to call his brother to come out to Jersey from Long Island to pick him up, and waiting for him to get there. We have some pictures from him in the hospital, so enjoy this one.

Attention tailgaters. It's a long season so please help us with this project and send along any and all shady stories, ridiculous videos, and photos from your tailgating experiences from this season. Or last season. Or 1952. Just make it funny/sad/gross/shocking. Email to tips@deadspin.com. Subject: FAILgate

You can find it here. Forcier offers a brief CV and a link to what appears to be a family web site, which I suppose is normal enough. But then comes the "Statement of Facts," which is full of the sort of arbitrary capitalization and punctuation and general air of persecution that you usually find only in prison letters and the columns of Stephen A. Smith.

Fact: I was a National Recruit out of High School including multiple Pac-10 offers.

Fact: I was a scout.com (4) Star QB labeled as a dual-threat. I learned a complicated offense that calls for a pocket passing QB.

Fact: I'm a life long UCLA Fan. I love UCLA Football. Most Bruin fans have been very supportive/good people.

Fact: I've always worked hard in the classroom as a student athlete where I've been recognized as a UCLA Honor Roll student.

Fact: I've competed hard in games and on the practice field, in film and meetings where I've always come prepared, attentive, always taking notes.

Fact: I believe my UCLA teammates respect me, especially the defense since my freshman year including past D-Coordinator Coach Walker.

Fact: I was practice player of the week as a freshman multiple times.

Fact: New QB Coach Norm Chow and New Head Coach Rick Neuheisel have brought in and played since day (1) their own guys (Quarterbacks)
i.e. Kevin Craft.

Fact: In late February New QB Coach Norm Chow told me that the younger guys would get most of the QB reps in Spring Ball.

Fact: This is a pattern nationally. When New Coaches come in, they recruit their own guys, especially at the quarterback position. It's just like the corporate world, New Owners bring in New Management. With that being said, I do not fault them.

Fact: In early March 2009, after seeing the writing on the wall, I reluctantly requested a meeting with Coach Neuheisel. In our meeting, I respectfully requested a "Permission to Contact Letter" NCCA bylaws 13.1.1.3 Personal request attached, not to be confused with a 'Release" as it was inaccurately reported by Brian Dohn of Inside UCLA, the Bruin Report and a few others.

Fact: My heart is at the Quarterback position. I have several solid options around the country to play. My quandary is and always has been that I also love UCLA.

Fact: I've always been a "team player" and have done what has been asked of me. Including but not limited to practicing WR in this years spring ball. Not to be confused with moving permanently to the position as it was again inaccurately reported.

Fact: In 2007, I was (1) of the top (7) Quarterbacks in the country. However, none of that matters unless there is true opportunity to compete afforded.

Fact: I have reached my decision "Furman University" Greenville, South Carolina.

Fact: I like and believe in Head Coach Bobby Lamb's system and style. I am looking forward to the challenges at Furman University.

Fact: I would like to wear #7 as I did in High School at Saint Augustine in San Diego, California.

Fact: I want to be part of the "Greatness of Fuhman University" academic's.

Clearly, the boy has let his emotions get the better of him here, so I hesitate to make too much sport of this. (The "'Greatness of Fuhman University' academic's"? Oh, man.) But I'll be damned if I've ever seen a document quite like this. That, as they say, is a fact.

Forcier's press release [Inside UCLA]

Immediately after this speech, UCLA set off fireworks for twenty minutes, it was so dark around the Rose Bowl that we couldn't figure out how to walk back to the hotel, and I contemplated throwing myself off the Colorado Street bridge. Next door to the 9th Circuit court building. Other than that my past four days in California have been awesome.

At least I've managed to hit the email perfect storm. SEC fans are emailing because they hate UT for losing to a Pac-10 team and Pac-10 fans are emailing because they hate Tennessee. Tennessee fans aren't emailing at all. They're too busy drinking themselves into blessed oblivion. Me, I'm drinking all the way back across the country. By the time you're reading this I'll be airborne. Maybe by then I'll understand how Kevin Craft threw four interceptions in the first half but turned into Joe Montana in the second half. But probably not.

Between writing the UT book, the close games, and being a diehard fan, there's a decent chance I'm not going to live through the season. Anyway, congrats to UCLA's cheerleaders. You helped to ease the pain with your hotness that knows no bounds. I think they should have used the UCLA cheerleaders instead of Neuheisel in the L.A. Times newspaper ad . They could have called out USC's song girls. Unlike tonight's game, everyone would win in that contest.

UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel talks about the victory over Tennessee [LA Times]
Craft steers unranked UCLA to overtime victory over No. 18 Vols [CBS]

Immediately after this advertisement was published, UCLA also announced that despite the monopoly being over, they still had plenty of seats available for UT-UCLA on Labor Day night. Which is convenient since I'll be there and don't have tickets yet.

UCLA Football, It's On [Gutty Little Bruins]

Following the debacle against Stanford Thursday and now yesterday's flap over Josh Shipp's over-the-backboard shot to beat Cal, a lot of folks are making a hue and cry about UCLA being quite the officiating darlings of late.

KC Cal at The Play in California wonders if the Pac-10 is trying to inflate the resume of its top team going into the dance.

This is no knock to UCLA. They made the right plays when handed the chance to make them, but the point is that they never should have been handed those moments in the first place. That leads to the question that everyone is asking: What Pac-10 officials are UCLA blowing in order for things to go so swimmingly for them? First they call a foul when they shouldn't have, then they don't all one when they should! And the better question is who are they going to blow when the NCAA tournament comes around? Hmm....

Perhaps my animosity to UCLA is indeed misguided. They are not the enemy, they're just a pawn in the grand scheme of things. There's always the age old conspiracy that lurks around when any favorite gets calls thrown there way. One has to wonder if the Pac-10 is just trying to pump up UCLA's resume as they head into the tournament. After all, a UCLA upset before the big dance would certainly give the Pac-10 nothing to win. We do, after all, want to look like the best of the best comes from the Pac-10, and a number 2 seed sure doesn't look very noteworthy.

The Sports Lounge sees less invidious forces at play: that ol' hand of fate.

That missed call only served as the appetizer for what would transpire over the final moments. Inbounding the ball from under their basket, Shipp received the ball and drove toward the hole, but was forced to shoot the ball over the backboard, a shot that remarkably went in. According to NCAA Rule 7, Section 1, Article, "The ball shall be out of bounds when it passes over the backboard from any direction." Clearly, Shipp's shot fit that description to a tee, but again the refs botched the call and it changed the outcome of the game in UCLA's favor for the second time in three nights. No matter how you interpret the events of the last two games, it's clear that sometihing special is surrounding the Bruins. A Team of Destiny? You decide.

Whatever forces are at work, they're clearly siding with UCLA.

A foul, Mr. Official? Seriously? This call is the 2000 Florida election results of college basketball.

Collison, the conference's leading free-throw shooter, said, "We were fortunate to get a foul on that call. I heard it was a makeup. Nah, they hit some tough shots down the stretch, and we were real fortunate to get that call. Regardless of what call it was, the fact is we played hard and showed no quit."

This makes the last four minutes of the Patriots-Ravens game seem completely fair.

Stanford's Title Hopes End In OT At UCLA [San Jose Mercury]