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☛ Manti Te'o's Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax - Deadspin
Several itemized thoughts:
- You mean to tell me a series of press outlets didn’t even bother to call Stanford to see if Lennay Kekua existed, just for the sake of verification? That’s basic Journalism 101 shit.
- Well done to both Tim Burke and Jack Dickey — the latter being a senior in college. What were you doing when you were about to start your last semester? Shit.
- Seeing the notification “Manti Te’O’s Girlfriend Did Not Exist” from ESPN on my iPad is beyond surreal.
- SERIOUSLY, HOW DO YOU NOT FUCKING CALL THE STANFORD REGISTRAR TO VERIFY?
- Te’o is either very, very gullible or very, very closeted — and NFL teams who delve into his background for the combine will find out which one it is.
- This is the only story that could have blown Chip Kelly to the Eagles aside. All it needs is murder and you have a situation tailor-made for Lennie Briscoe, Mike Logan, and Jack McCoy. (Miss u, Law & Order.)
- No one will remember that Alabama won the BCS title unless you’re a Bama fan, because this will now be the subtext for the entire season.
- A rape scandal, a student cameraman dying, and a star linebacker quite possibly putting one over on the national media. This is not a good trend for Notre Dame.
- It is endlessly amusing to see writers for ESPN, SI, and the NYT wonder how the hell they didn’t do any sort of diligence and were made to look like lazy fools.
- John Skipper once said to a college class that Deadspin didn’t break news. I guess having to watch his anchors on SportsCenter cite Deadspin the whole time on this is the perfect crow for him to consume.
- The press conference with ND’s AD at 8 pm EST is now must-watch television.
- But really, you should read the article.
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University of Wyoming head coach Dave Christensen lost his bearings a bit and unleashed a nice, pleasant, F-bomb filled tirade toward Air Force head coach Troy Calhoun post-game. I wish I were more mature to not laugh when he screams “LOOK AT ME, MISTER FUCKIN’ HOWDY DOODY!” at Calhoun, but I’ve already watched this clip at least seven times today.
Irony involved: Air Force was in town for Military Appreciation Night and Calhoun, being an Air Force grad himself, served several years as an airman.
Wyoming Coach Military Appreciation Night (by John Smith)
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I think John L. Smith has lost Fayetteville http://i.imgur.com/ev38c.jpg (via @redditcfb)
Oh, that’s definitely gotta fall in the “bad signs” category.
Post from @BobbyBigWheel on Twitter (via Scope) -
☛ Mike Leach Struggling At WSU, Hindering Pac-12 Coaching Turnaround Movement - Pacific Takes
It’s fine to say that talent usually matters more than schemes in college football, but that kind of glosses over why Leach was hired: given time to build recruiting classes, he gets overlooked guys that perform in his Air Raid system. Let’s remember he’s still working with Paul Wulff’s guys right now and they’re learning his offense. You don’t pick up the concepts overnight.
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chillest bulldog ever, wearing goggles on a treadmill.
This is the coolest GIF of the past month.
(via bubbaprog and his mocksession site, which you really, really ought to follow and bookmark. He also does screencaps of TV shows and political conventions, and much of his sports-related stuff ends up on Deadspin.)
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Unholy. Barring injury, USC cannot be stopped in the passing game unless you have two lockdown corners and at least one defensive lineman bent on murdering Matt Barkley. No one in the entire nation has this, much less anyone in the Pac-12, so the best you might hope for is a weird road game, a team known for wearing a chip on its shoulder well, and a pesky offense capable of holding the ball that gets the kind of oddball breaks that happen in home games played against road favorites. That still sounds like Utah, and that still makes this the most interesting game on USC’s schedule NOT involving a team named after waterfowl.
Verily. Let it be known, though: USC’s offense reeks of brimstone, rocket fuel, and perdition, a Luciferian collection of isolation plays for wideouts, jerk routes, and run plays all run with Lane Kiffin’s special touch of extra-skillful dickery. If you are not playing them, it is a mean joy to watch, especially if it is Kiffin carving up former rival coach and co-worker Norm Chow across the field.
Oh, but Lane Kiffin’s nice now. Shut the hell up. No he’s not, and will never be nice. He is just quiet, and plays in a town that doesn’t care enough about other teams to publish inflammatory quotes to rile up other fanbases. You know what Lane Kiffin gets to do? Coach the next three years against Jim Mora. He has no reason to be nice, lenient, or intimidated by anything in his vicinity.
Watch him call plays. There is nothing nice whatsoever about it and will not be for the foreseeable future.
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No words really, other than Puddles is probably the best non-live-animal mascot ever.
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Dave “Softy” Mahler is a sports radio talk host in Seattle, for the uninitiated.
As much as I love college football, it’s not the greatest sport in the world because it is dependent on the unfairly compensated labor of athletes. Considering the profits college athletic departments, conferences, and bowls reaped, the old athletic scholarship alone is drastically underpaying the players. The value isn’t equal, not by a long shot.
Unless you correct that imbalance to make it somewhat more equitable, it can’t be the world’s greatest — and it may never be, since correcting that imbalance could mean the end of the sport as we know it.
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My favorite Bear story was I sitting in his office one day in Tuscaloosa, and he said, ‘You see that helmet over there? That’s Lee Roy Jordan’s helmet. He was the greatest hitter I ever had. You look at that helmet real close, you’ll see the color of every team we played on there.’
There was a little orange for Tennessee, a little maroon for Mississippi State.
I said, ‘Who’s your artist, Bear? I know you all polish the helmets after every game. C’mon.’
He said, ‘Goddamn sportswriters. It works on recruits.’”
Sportswriter and author Dan Jenkins on Alabama’s legendary coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, via EDSBS. -
☛ A history of college football and Justin Smith Morrill - Grantland
Without land grant schools, college football as we know it doesn’t exist. And while I’m sure Justin Smith Morrill would be, at the very least, highly confused by college football and what it has become, he is its unsung hero because of his belief that higher education should be available to all, not just the elite. Charlie Pierce does us a public service for writing about him repeatedly, this time in Grantland.
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I…I…oh, Notre Dame fans, even you don’t deserve this kind of uniform FAIL. Just bring the kelly green back and everything will be okay.
(It gets worse when you look at the entire gallery of the uniforms for the Irish’s game against the Miami Hurricanes. When it comes to uniform design, Adidas is basically trying to rip off Nike and doing it very, very poorly.)
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http://losangeles.sbnation.com/usc-trojans/2011/10/23/2507941/animated-dayne-crist-fumble-notre-dame-vs-usc-jawanza-starling
favorite new Tumblr of the month.
WE WILL BREAK YOU, NOTRE DAME.
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☛ Why the NCAA's Sanctions on Penn State Are Just Dead Wrong | The Nation
Dave Zirin makes a compelling case. I’m not entirely sold on the premise that a non-profit intervened into what is still ostensibly a public institution and should be a matter for our criminal and civil court system (many of our “public” universities are becoming more and more privatized by the year as budget cuts kick in), but it’s worth your time to read, as well as Jennifer Doyle’s addendum and notes on Zirin’s piece at From a Left Wing.
Regardless of whether you think the NCAA should have intervened at all, the effect of the NCAA betraying its own bylaws and establishing Mark Emmert as Roger Goodell-lite is more than a little disturbing. And I write that thinking that Penn State’s football program got exactly what was coming to it.
The punishment seems appropriate for the program, but it shouldn’t be the end — and not just because the institution acting as judge, jury, and executioner is corrupt and self-serving. A lot of people need to be criminally charged or held liable in civil court, from the administrators to the Board of Trustees, and even the current governor, if there is proof he ignored this as attorney general.
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lulz.
(via deadspin)
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☛ College football to debut four-team playoff championship.
meh. we’ll be back arguing about 8 and 16-team varieties because this is a bad system. someone’s going to be left out and pissed.
I’m still unsure why Division I-A football can’t just bring in the same system that I-AA has. (I refuse to call them the FBS and FCS divisions; that’s so dumb.)
