The coach is dead

I was a 20-year-old student journalist at LSU, covering the latest outrage against the long-suffering student body of that august institution.

The athletic department had announced it would begin searching, at the gates of Tiger Stadium, football fans' purses and backpacks for Demon Rum.

And Demon Bourbon.

And Demon Vodka.

And Demon Beer.

The goal was to sober up the student body -- and everybody else -- a little bit in hopes of improving Tiger fans' demeanor at games.

MY JOB was to interview the athletic director, LSU coaching legend Paul Dietzel, about the new policy and come up with a front-page story for The Daily Reveille. As a newspaper reporter, my aim was to get a good story.

As a student, my opinion was that this smacked of an egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment.

As someone who was most appreciative when somebody passed the flask down the aisle so we could put a little zip in our ballgame Coca-Colas, I already was feeling a little dry. Remember, this is Louisiana we're talking about -- not Utah. God Almighty, not Utah.

On the one hand, I was going to have the lead story in the paper. On the other, I was going to meet the Tiger coaching legend, the man who had delivered the school (at that time) its only national championship of the modern era with the undefeated 1958 football team -- the man behind the iconic Go team, White team and the mighty Chinese Bandits defense specialists -- who also happened to be, in this instance, The Enemy.

The Man.

The second coming of Carrie Nation.

SO I GO in there for the interview, I shake the legendary Enemy's hand, sit down on the other side of the desk and we start to talk. It was the best kind of interview . . . a real conversation. Coach Dietzel treated this wet-behind-the-ears reporter with the utmost respect, to the point where it was like solving all the problems of the world with your favorite uncle.

He explained the policy, the reasoning behind it, and then he started asking me questions -- questions about what students were thinking 20-odd years after he had engraved his name onto Tiger fans' souls, forever and ever, amen.

Dietzel was gracious, down to earth and funny. He was a true gentleman. Humble, even. And he allowed that his favorite student-section cheer was the one reserved for hated Alabama -- "Around the bowl and down the hole! Roll, Tide, roll!"

That one really cracked him up.

If I've ever had a more enjoyable interview with someone, I can't remember when, or with whom, it was. I don't know that Coach changed my mind about the Tiger Stadium War on Fun . . . er, Booze, but he did win my respect, and he taught me something about honorable people and honest differences of opinion.

THOUSANDS upon thousands of words will be written in Tigerland -- and across the sports universe -- about Paul Dietzel on the sad occasion of his death today. The vast majority will be about his tenure as coach, and later, AD, and his magical team that conquered all of college football 55 years ago. Some will be reserved for how he became an accomplished watercolor artist later in life. A few might touch on his World War II days as a B-29 crewman in the Pacific theater.

But Coach's greatest accomplishments -- gentleman, husband of 69 years, father, good man -- get short shrift. Those are the ones I'm thinking about right now. Those accomplishments and the graciousness and good humor he showed this young-punk reporter back in 1981.

Godspeed and God bless, Coach. You will be missed tremendously.

A September Saturday in Lincoln

FU2, Bo. Now, with the pleasantries all done. . . .

I can't get too mad at Nebraska's football coach and undisputed-champion F-bomb dropper, "Mad Man" Bo Pelini.

Yes, after a big comeback against Ohio State in 2011, the coach had some choice words about Husker fans and a couple of Omaha World-Herald sports columnists, as reported (and illustrated) by the website Deadspin. Then again, what the hell do you think I was saying about him Saturday afternoon?

Nebraska's second-half performance against UCLA would have been enough to make the pope drop a few choice expletives. I wonder how you say "stupid #@!*#+% a-hole" in Spanish? Or Italian or Latin . . . whichever.

Pelini's real problem is that his teams keep having UCLA-game meltdowns. Or is that Wisconsin-game meltdowns? Ohio State-game meltdowns? Maybe Texas A&M- or South Carolina-game or Georgia-game meltdowns.

You get the gist, I presume.

 Audio is exceptionally NSFW

ONE HAS to wonder whether Coach Bo's infamous id too often mucks about with his coaching superego. Whatever the reason, though, it looks like we have a foundational failure in the Nebraska football program, which follows on the heels of the somewhat more spectacular foundational failure that was Bill Callahan's Reign of Error down there in Lincoln.

That's no way to keep the fans streaming into Memorial Stadium, and no way to keep the Huskers' legendary home-sellout streak alive through Year 51 and into Year 52. Mess that up and you've just screwed up the one thing Callahan's benighted tenure as Nebraska coach couldn't.

That. Would. Be. Bad.

When you couple meltdowns on the gridiron like Saturday's with behavioral meltdowns like Pelini occasionally has both in public and in private (or in private that goes public), you're flirting with both Public Relations Armageddon and Sellout Streak Apocalypse. Especially when you insult the very fan base that's stuck with the Huskers through a lot more thin than thick for the past decade.

BARRING a drastic turnaround -- and a drastic change in the on-field character of his Nebraska football squads -- I think Coach Bo is gone. Involuntarily, despite his threat to walk on the leaked 2011 audio.

Pelini's foundational problem, to put it in LSU terms, where he was defensive coordinator before heading to Lincoln as the head man, is that he seems to be Gerry DiNardo following the abject disaster of Curley Hallman -- an improvement, but definitely not the guy.

I think this is as good as it gets under Pelini, and that's not where NU needs to be . . . and certainly not where Nebraska football has the potential to be.

The big question here is who's out there to get the Huskers where they need to be without sacrificing all the values that make Nebraska football special and keep the program's nose clean with the NCAA. Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst has some hard thinking to do as this season, like most of the rest under Pelini, remains mired in the muck of mediocrity.

Expect a rousing victory this week against South Dakota State. Whee!

No, son, they're not calling you a whale

 

You have your freshman mistakes, and then you have your freshman mistakes that you can't wait to share with the world.

World, meet Ishmail Jackson, Nebraska football walk-on. He was set on being a Husker, and damn if he didn't make the team. The upside to that is obvious enough.

I imagine he's just about to experience the downside -- Coach Bo Pelini's survey course on the cold, hard facts of life. One of those is that Husker football players, even the walk-ons, are public figures. And public figures, if they know what's good for them, do not go on Twitter to disparage Nebraska womanhood.

For example, "98% of the black girls at this school are just disgustingly ugly."

For another example, "Yall [sic] thought florida [sic] had ugly girls? omg lol"

I THINK more than half the University of Nebraska-Lincoln population will be calling young Mr. Jackson something, but it won't be Ishmael. It looks like Uncle Matt -- as in Damon, of movie fame -- never got around to explaining public relations, how it works and why it's important. Or the whole public-figure thing.

Now that talk will come from Coach Bo, who sometimes could be mistaken for Mount Vesuvius. He won't be nearly so smooth as Uncle Matt.

Let's just hope that Jackson, post eruption, isn't mistaken for Pompeii. Which, actually, wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to him.

After all, being an 18-year-old male, he might do something even stupider than scorning half the population, with a soupçon of racial je ne sais quoi for bad measure: He might actually ask a coed for a date. That probably wouldn't end well.

Because he's good people

I'll bet Rusty Domingue is sooooo pissed off right now.

All the Louisiana State linebacker did back in 1976 was stab a dude in the chest -- just once -- and he got six months in the pen and never played for the Tigers again. Present Tiger running back Jeremy Hill forced a 14-year-old girl to perform a sex act on him then, while on probation for that, sucker punched a guy at a bar.

The outcome? He got a "stern warning" from the judge and reinstated to the team by LSU Coach Les Miles. Because Hill's such a good guy.

“He’s not a guy that has had constant bad behavior,” Miles said of Hill. “Obviously he’s had a lack of judgment and bad behavior in these two instances. But the reality is we all see him around here as a good person.”

YEAH, and John Wilkes Booth was a mensch except for that one instance of bad behavior and lack of judgment. If Hill had just blocked a field goal attempt by No. 1 Nebraska to preserve a 6-6 tie just like the star-crossed Domingue, the judge may have sentenced the Tiger sophomore to 60 minutes with an underage girl.

Miles’ decision to reinstate the sophomore running back came early Monday evening and ends a three-month exile for Hill, who was suspended from the team after he punched a fellow student outside a Tigerland bar in April. He pleaded guilty to simple battery last month but faced up to six months in jail for violating probation in a 2012 case in which he pleaded guilty as a high school senior to carnal knowledge of a minor.

Hill returned to practice Monday afternoon, the first day of preseason workouts for the Tigers. Miles said there will be “further punishment” for Hill but did not give specifics.

Miles also would not say whether Hill will be suspended from any of LSU’s games in the upcoming season.

“I’m going to kind of review, and make a quality call as best I can,” Miles said.

Earlier in the day, State District Judge Bonnie Jackson lectured Hill and not only added a special condition — 40 hours of community service at the Bishop Ott Center — to the two years of probation she gave him in January 2012, but also issued a stern warning.

“You are to refrain from all other criminal conduct,” the judge told Hill, who wore a dark suit and purple tie as he stood next to his attorney, Marci Blaize.

TRUST ME, telling someone in Louisiana "to refrain from all other criminal conduct" is stern, indeed. Probably cruel and unusual punishment.

Maybe Les could get another of the Tigers to lift a book from the LSU law library to check on that.

The communion of Cornhusker saints

Nebraska spring game, April 6.

I was fooling around with our little idiot-proof digital camera, trying to de-idiot-proof it enough to take time-exposure shots around Memorial Stadium.

This is what happened when I put it on the "Fireworks" setting and plopped the thing atop an ice machine. When I saw the ghostly images of the passing crowd, it reminded me of what I see in my mind's eye whenever I find myself in an old church -- the generations upon generations of the faithful who sat in those pews, most of them now departed.

It's much the same thing with college football, isn't it?

As far as I'm concerned, those ghostly images of today's fans just as well could be the spirits of all the fans who have packed into Memorial Stadium for nigh on 90 years, cheering on the Huskers come Bill Jennings or Bill Callahan. (Or better, come Bob Devaney or Tom Osborne.)

And the choir eternal sang "There is no place like Ne-braaass-kaaa, dear old Nebraska U. . . ."

Keep Lincoln weird

Sometimes, when you go to a ballgame, the least interesting thing is the ballgame -- am I right?

Never is this more true than a spring football game. One, you know your team is gonna win. Two, you're not gonna see much of the playbook.

Think of it this way: You go to Baskin-Robbins, only to find the 31 flavors have been reduced to chocolate, vanilla and strawberry . . . but you can get strawberry for only the first 30 seconds after you walk in the door.

That's your typical college spring scrimmage.

Saturday at Nebraska's spring game, you had little Jack Hoffman's touchdown run for the ages, and then. . . . Exactly.

So I was thanking God that at least He showed us the tender mercy of putting our state university in Lincoln, because them people there just ain't right. And when people just ain't right, things are about to get interesting.

Take the picture above, for example. Every coffee shop in the world has a wall o' fliers. Many people overlook walls o' fliers like this one at the Scooters in downtown Lincoln.

But this is Lincoln, and that would be a mistake.

I MEAN, the Kicker Country Stampede in Manhattan, Kan., or the Widespread Panic concert at the Pinewood Bowl might not be everybody's cup o' joe. People in Lincoln, a progressive and diverse state capital and college town, understand this. That's why Christopher H. Merritt of our fair capital city invites you to drop by his April 24 arraignment in Lancaster County District Court.

If we're lucky, there will be a little contempt-of-court action. If we're really lucky, maybe somebody'll get tazed, bro.

Let's just hope Mr. Merritt doesn't decide to play it like George Jones and not show up at all. Alternatively, though, let's do hope he plays it like George Jones and putts into the courtroom on a lawn tractor.

OK, I JUST as well confess that I'm all about the Husker-striped overalls.  I want me some scarlet-and-cream striped overalls.

But you can overdo it . . . or underdo it, as the case may be. I only wish that the kid had a really stupid tattoo on his chest or, at a minimum, a little hair. Maybe he should drink a little of my coffee -- that would help.

YOU WANT PROOF that this country is is dire need of a dictatorship of the proletariat, or at least a little Fabian socialism? Dude's probably only making minimum wage to wear a giant weenie on his head.

The running-dog bourgeois establishment clearly has gone too far this time.

Power to the people now! And let it begin in Memorial Stadium.

ON THE other hand, sometimes the people are freakin' idiots. Giving them too much power might not be the best idea.

I'm not sure what's worse here, the sentiment behind "I'd Rather Have A Lesbian Sister Then Be A Hawkeye Fan" or the violence done to the king's English. I am assuming that the dude is linguistically challenged and thinks that having a lesbian sister is a fate worse than death -- but better than being an Iowa fan.

Of course, it is possible that the shirt means what it says, and Joe Football really, really wants a lesbian sister and swings both ways when it comes to college athletics. After all, this is Lincoln, where all things not only are possible but, indeed, probable.

FINALLY, after the spring game, we headed to the outskirts of town and Pioneers Park. Saw a herd of buffalo . . . and this.

Luke A. Heritage hearts Jennifer. That's very sweet, and I'm sure Jenny is a lucky gal.

Now let's hope some of her luck rubs off on the lovestruck Luke. Otherwise, he's totally going to get his identity stolen. But at least he won't be able to blame me.

Because being from Omaha has its advantages.

There is no place like Nebraska

 
When the missus and I headed to Nebraska's spring game Saturday afternoon, little did we know that we'd end up seeing the best thing we'd ever witnessed in a football stadium.

College kids don't always put their best feet forward. That goes double for too many college athletes. But just when cynicism threatens to overcome one's jaded self, you see a bunch of college kids and their coaches do something extraordinary for a 7-year-old cancer patient -- one who had been befriended by former Husker running back Rex Burkhead when he was 5 and undergoing brain surgery. That led Burkhead to enlist his coaches and teammates into a Team Jack campaign, and now a larger effort to fight pediatric brain cancer.

But on Saturday, what this all meant was giving a little boy who has known much suffering a moment of great joy as 60,174 people in red went wild. I was yelling; my wife was crying.

It was wonderful.

Whether little Jack Hoffman lives to age 10 or -- may God will it -- to age 100, he will be a Husker fan for life. So will we lucky people who got to witness this moment of grace at Memorial Stadium.

Go Team Jack! Go Big Red!

Brent Musberger: Dirty old man

All that needs to be said about Brent Musberger's dirty-old-man faux pas during ESPN's coverage of the Alabama-Notre Dame game last night was said by a friend on Facebook this afternoon:

So THIS is what it took for ESPN to finally apologize for Brent Musburger?

Musberger is just silly and superficial, not to mention ignorant. Gals who look like A.J. McCarron's Miss Alabama girlfriend are a dime a dozen in the SEC. And I'm assuming you don't have to be a national-championship college quarterback to snare one.

If that's what you go for.

Me, I think tons of women are stunningly attractive. Much of that comes from the inside, not from a beauty spa or something. Not that that's dawned on Brett and Kirk Herbstreit, who are idiots. Did I mention that?

I'd trust their judgment a little bit more if they had made their pronouncement after talking to Katherine Webb for 20 minutes. Is what I'm saying.

Rammer jammer, y'all!

As a loyal Tiger, I normally don't use this sort of language on this here blog, but there's an exception to every rule.

The exception is that Alabama is kind of like the brother you can't stand, but you're gonna back him up anyhow, 'cause he's family. Especially against Notre Dame. I hate Notre Dame.

And you know what else? "Touchdown Jesus" isn't signaling a touchdown -- he's motioning for those sanctimonious, insufferable Irish to put a frickin' lid on it!

So, for those and more good reasons that I'll come up with later, here goes:

Rammer Jammer, Yellowhammer, give 'em hell, Alabama!

 ***

UPDATE: Alabama 42, Lucky Charms 14.

Hey, Irish! Hey, Irish! Hey, Irish! 'Bama just beat the hell out of you! Rammer Jammer, Yellowhammer, give 'em hell, Alabama!

That is all.

The Saban hate resumes tomorrow. The Irish hate continues 24/7 on this Revolution 21 station.

Cheap grace: The football edition

You ever notice how football coaches are quick to say, after a big loss, "It's all on me. I'm responsible." 

You ever notice, likewise, how snippy and defensive football coaches get when a sportswriter has the temerity to suggest that what happened just might be due to some shortcoming of theirs?

In other words, "It's all my fault; how DARE you suggest this is my fault?! Now where's my raise."

You ever notice how Nebraska's Bo Pelini pulls this cheap grace act over and over again after his Huskers lay egg after egg in a Really Big Game? Here's Pelini doing it yet again, getting snippy with a favored target for his wrath, Omaha World-Herald sportswriter Dirk Chatelain. 


70-31.
 
The Huskers fell to a five-loss Wisconsin team 70-31 in the Big Ten championship game. You know what a team that loses to a five-loss Wisconsin team in the Big Ten championship would be called if it played in the Southeastern Conference, as opposed to one of the weaker major conferences? 

Kentucky.

This year, the Wildcats went 0-8 in the SEC, and head coach Joker Phillips was forced to take real responsibility for his team's poor performance. He got fired.

LISTEN, I don't know whether Pelini ought to be canned. or even how you could explain getting rid of a coach who won 10 games, even in a notoriously weak conference. But I do know a pattern when I see one -- this particular one being meltdowns in big games against beatable opponents.

I also suspect that another pattern's emerging -- that this is as good as it gets for Nebraska football now, that this is the new normal. Tom Osborne's gone, and he's not coming back. 

Go Big Red! But make a trip to the liquor store before the next big game -- we're all going to need a drink.

So, an impressionist goes to a football game. . . .

You know, the university powers that be won't let you bring cameras with "detachable, professional lenses" into Memorial Stadium. So, you're pretty much stuck with your average, "idiot-proof" point-and-shoot camera when you go to a Nebraska football game.

I guess that's enough to turn anyone into an impressionist.

Or something like that.

Thus, the view from the stands when Minnesota came to town to do battle with Our Cornhuskers on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

Yay, team!

Dear LSU: Never fire this man

How f***in' easy it was for me to largely stay away from the Internets on Sunday.

How f***in' easy it would have been for me to miss the most f***in' epic of all Les Miles' f***in' epic press conferences as LSU's head football coach.

Excuse my language.

But, WOW! What a press conference!

I don't give a flying expletive deleted what stupid-ass Tiger fans think about Les. Don't care how badly they want him fired for losing two games this season, or for shooting craps on the sideline and sometimes rolling snake eyes. I know a little about LSU fans, being one, and I know that if brains were dynamite, 48.92 percent of them wouldn't have enough to blow their nose.

And I know that a lot of them get even stupider -- not to mention meaner -- after they've been drinking Bud Light all day and night. So any noise they make about removing this great man as the Tigers' coach should be regarded as the drunken ravings of a bunch of dumbasses.

FOR ONE THING, if LSU ever fired Les -- particularly so long as he keeps winning more games than he loses -- it never would find any decent coach insane enough to take that job. Only one decent coach today is insane enough to put up with such a dumbass fan base . . . and his name is Les Miles.

Like, you did watch the video, right?

And for another thing, Les is one of the few coaches out there just as certifiable as Louisiana itself. The Mad Hatter is the personification of the Gret Stet when it's at its bat-s*** crazy best, yet he somehow manages to avoid being like Louisiana when it's at its bat-s*** crazy worst.

LSU -- and Louisiana -- cannot lose this singular individual who, in fact, is the only person in the state to have successfully pulled that off. Les Miles not only should never be fired, but the Ole War Skule instead needs -- and I'm talking right now -- to commence an all-out research program dedicated to cloning the coach and disseminating his gene pool widely throughout the state.

And if there's a university geneticist who can do this great service for Louisiana, you need to grab him and give him a big kiss on the mouth. If you're a girl.

OR A GUY, but only if she's a girl. Because on this here blog, "heteronormative" is not a dirty word.

Have a great day.

'In the deed, the glory'

I wish I were 30-odd years younger and had talent.

That's because I want to play high-school football for Coach Victor Nazario at Beach Channel, which now stands amid the ruin on the storm-swept Rockaway Peninsula of Queens. I would kick ass, take names, clean clocks and run through a brick wall for a guy who can put it all in perspective before a state playoff game like this:

"Sandy took a lot of shit from us -- a lot. It did not take our courage; it did not take our will. It did not take our courage; it did not take our will, because your will is what got you here today. So let's finish this job, gentlemen. Let's just go out there and go out in style."

Beach Channel suffered the same fate as many of its students: equipment room flooded out, pads, jerseys -- you name it -- swept away by Hurricane Sandy's storm surge. No power. No practice field. Before Saturday's state playoff game, Nazario had salvaged what equipment he could and borrowed those things he couldn't.

THE BIG QUESTION, though, was whether he could field a team from a student body hunkered down in darkened, cold homes or evacuated to God-knows-where. From a New York Times feature story:

Breland Archbold woke up hungry at his grandmother’s house on the Saturday morning of his last high school football game. Typically, Archbold, the quarterback and captain of the Beach Channel Dolphins, spends the night before game day at a teammate’s house in Far Rockaway, eats chicken fingers and macaroni, and then in the morning tackles mounds of eggs and turkey bacon. 

This time, Archbold, his 6-foot, 200-pound frame straining at the contours of a strange bed, awoke wondering whether he would eat at all before the game. It had been like that for two weeks, ever since Hurricane Sandy had flooded and disfigured his Rockaways neighborhood.

Still, there was a football game to play, and no ordinary one. Beach Channel was set to play at Port Richmond on Staten Island this past Saturday in the first round of the Public Schools Athletic League playoffs. Archbold, 17, who still dreamed of a scholarship offer, maybe from the University at Buffalo, was nervous, and grateful, too.

“This was the last time to make everything count, and in the middle of a crazy time,” he said.

Archbold’s father, Dexter, drove him to the team bus pickup spot, and the route, as it had been for days, remained otherworldly. Instead of stoplights, there were police officers dressed in fluorescent green directing traffic, and on the sides of sandblasted streets stood shells of homes and businesses, little more than piles of rubble.

Archbold’s own uniform bore the taint of the storm. His shoulder pads reeked of bleach, used to kill mildew; his rib guard was gone altogether, washed away after Beach Channel’s locker room flooded. Port Richmond, in one of a number of acts of kindness, had lent Beach Channel what gear it could. Beach Channel, in the nearly two weeks since the storm, had practiced only twice, on a dark and borrowed field at Far Rockaway High School.

 (snip)

Breland Archbold moped for a week after the hurricane. He thought his senior football season would be left incomplete. He was in his father’s car in a line for gasoline on Long Island when his coach called him. The playoff game was on, but could the Dolphins play?

Nazario salvaged what equipment he could from the flooded school, and Port Richmond Coach Lou Vesce would lend the rest. But it was Archbold’s job as team captain to find out if the Dolphins could field a squad. He called teammates he had not seen since before the storm.

“Are you serious? I’m in,” Fatukasi said.

The Red Raiders scored again after halftime. Then again. A scuffle broke out after Archbold, also playing safety, tackled the opposing quarterback, Victor Pratt, as he ran out of bounds. The Red Raiders’ captain, Compton Richmond, bumped Archbold with his chest, and Fatukasi rushed over to protect his friend. Referees threw flags. The score was 30-6 and the frustration was palpable among the dozen or so Beach Channel fans.

Dexter Archbold had used his youth league football connections to secure the Dolphins practice time at the powerless Far Rockaway football field Thursday and Friday. About 15 players showed up Thursday, but the scrimmage was little more than a head count. On Friday, four more players showed, and the team did its best in the twilight. A few parents tried to battle back the darkness by shining their headlights on the field, burning precious gas, but it was little use. Some would miss the game the next day because they did not have the gas to get to Staten Island.

If this were Hollywood, the Dolphins would have rallied. But this was Staten Island. They lost, 38-6. After the game, the team huddled on the field. Some boys wept. Fatukasi called his teammates family and told them that despite “all that adversity, we’re leaving this field with respect.”

HALF A CONTINENT away from the Rockaways, in Lincoln, Neb., there's an inscription on Memorial Stadium, where another football team plays: "Not the victory but the action; Not the goal but the game; In the deed the glory."

University of Nebraska philosophy professor Hartley Burr Alexander wrote that. Through the veil separating the world that is seen and that which we cannot -- across the boundaries of time and space -- I'd like to think the good professor was able to see those words of his, carved into stone in 1923, transform themselves. On a cold Saturday in Staten Island, an abstraction suddenly wasn't.

"Not the victory but the action." A high-school coach and a couple dozen teenagers.

"Not the goal but the game." A remnant in borrowed gear, huddled in a cafeteria-turned-locker room, ready to step onto a field and stare down the winds of fate.

"In the deed the glory."


HAT TIP:  Rod Dreher. 

Why do you think we call 'em Gumps?

"Role, Tide," indeed.

Heh.

Les Miles rides all the wrong trains

I think everybody in the Western world knows this song.

Except LSU's football coach, Les Miles.

It would have been fun if CBS could have gotten a mic on Alabama coach Nick Saban -- who used to be the Tigers' coach --when he was shaking his head after every unexplainable Miles decision and saying "What a dumbass."

Which is what I was saying after that bizarre, doomed fake field goal in the second quarter of LSU's last-minute loss to the Crimson Tide.

Les just lost my protest vote for president. Maybe I'll write in Saban -- I doubt he'd have any problem at all telling Bibi Netanyahu to go ∫#¢& himself.

Vote for Pedro Mike

Listen, we're royally hosed no matter who wins between Romney and Obama. The only distinction is in the particulars of the civic molestation.

Ipso facto, your vote doesn't matter. We are screwed regardless.

Mike, back in the day

On the other hand, here is an election that matters -- best college mascot. And there's only one mascot out there who can bust a move like Napoleon Dynamite. That would be Mike the Tiger of Louisiana State University.

Mike's opponent, Truman the Tiger from Missouri, just looks like a cereal-box reject. And he's from MizzouRAH. Eww.

I mean, with the reception Missouri's football team is getting in its first season of SEC competition, the poor thing probably can't even bear to look. Maybe Truman's special talent is rolling bandages, I dunno.

Anyway, do your patriotic duty. Vote for Mike -- it's important.

Yep, this is Bo's team, all right

You know how a football team ostensibly takes on the personality of the head coach?

Well, I think this little moment at Saturday night's 63-38 Husker implosion at Ohio State explains a lot -- about both the personality thing and why Nebraska's big-game meltdowns just keep coming and never get fixed. Long story short, this is Bo Pelini's team, and Bo's boys are just as clueless as their coach.

Who, for pity's sake, goes out on the field to warm up while the marching band is still playing . . . and marching? 

Who in the world takes the field to practice field goals when the Buckeye marching band is doing the sacred "Script Ohio" to close its halftime performance?

Who, for the love of Johnny Rodgers, is that clueless? Or maybe arrogant? Or, most likely, arrogantly and willfully clueless?

Bo's boys.

WHAT'S a little interfering with your opponent's most revered tradition on its home field when your coach can say this about the hiring of Nebraska's new athletic director: "You know, I've been concentrating on Ohio State. I don't know anything about that."

No, why should Bo know anything about that after serving on the chancellor's AD-search advisory committee? More importantly, though, what kind of clueless idiot fails to even fake some sincere enthusiasm for the guy who will have the power to fire his underperforming self?

That would be Bo Pelini. I'm a little surprised it took the Omaha World-Herald's Lee Barfknecht until this morning to put in print what Husker fans have been saying since Clueless Bo stepped in it Thursday afternoon.



I SWEAR, letting that man in front of a live microphone is like handing Barney Fife a loaded gun. Or letting Bo's boys on the field for a big game on national TV. Or, for that matter, letting 'em anywhere near Ohio Stadium when the Buckeye band is practicing its scarlet-and-gray penmanship.

"Look, Daddy! Teacher says every time a gunshot's fired, one of Bo's boys needs a new pair of shoes."

What if. . . ?

What if a local TV station locked out its real meteorologist and brought in a "replacement weatherguy" to tell us what it's going to be like out there?

And what if the word out there is that the weatherscab producing your "Pinpoint VIPIR AccuNow forecast" was let go by the Lingerie Weather Channel because he, well, sucked?

 As NBC26 in heartsick Green Bay, Wis., showed us Tuesday, it'd go something like this:

The Green Bay Packers became the latest NFL team to lose on a highly questionable call by the league’s replacement referees last night. WGBA, Green Bay’s NBC affiliate, poked fun at the situation this morning, bringing in a “replacement weather guy” to handle the forecast.

“It’s pretty bad out there people,” the replacement weather guy said (video above). “200 degrees below we’re looking at, and it’s really going to heat up. It’s going to be like 346 degrees by noon.”

WOW! If it's going to get up to 346, the station probably ought to let all the female anchors and reporters go on the air in just their lingerie. It would be just too darn hot to wear anything else.

Yeah, that's the (replacement) ticket!

And it would make the adjustment from the replacement weatherguy's previous gig a bit less daunting.

Shine + meth = this

Back when I was a little bitty boy down on the bayou, my daddy gave me some advice I've always tried to live by, lo, these many years.

"Son," he says to me -- that's what he always called me, "Son" -- "now don't you go mixin' no corn liquor with no crystal meth." And I remember asking "How come, Daddy?" You know how 4-year-olds are . . . a bottomless font of questions.

Right then, though, Daddy backhanded me right across the chops.

"Because mixin' corn liquor and crystal meth is bad sh*t, that's why!" 

Message received. 

A lot of folks in Kentucky never got that message, I'm sad to have to tell you. I mean, look at this YouTube video by some poor soul with chemically induced Swiss cheese for brains.

APPARENTLY, he's calling himself the Blue Nation Clown, and given a certain resemblance as noted on the Dr. Saturday blog, if I were he, I'd avoid midnight movies for fear of nervous types with concealed-carry permits. Or, this being the South, steel magnolias who don't need no stinkin' concealed-carry permits to keep "jes' the cutest little .22" in their purses. 

But back to the video . . . ewwwwww. Can you imagine anyone getting into such a state over Kentucky football? Geez, if Kentucky basketball ever starts to stink up Rupp Arena, this guy will be legion.  

And the Dynamic Duo will have their work cut out for them.

Because, son, mixin' corn liquor and crystal meth is bad s***.