Seriously, dude?   You actually got up on gameday and said to yourself, “Think I’ll wear the East F*#kin’ Lansing sweatshirt, that thing rocks.  GO SPARTY!”

This is the type of douchebag who’ll show up for the MMA pay-per-view at your place without a case of beer in his hand, then he’ll conveniently forget to chip in at the end of the night.   And the guy in the beat up Impala who cut over in front of you because he didn’t want to miss the turn into the liquor store?  Yup, he’s this type of douchebag.

◊ I heart Philly sports fans

Think Philly sports fans are a little edgy over the Phils being down 2-1 to the Giants in the NLCS?   Get with the program, they were beyond edgy when their guys were just down 1-0.  Here’s what was going down in the Twittersphere over the weekend:

The fucktard in question ended up throwing for 326 yards in leading the Eagles to a 31-17 win over the Falcons.   And didn’t the NHL season just start?  You’d think it would be too early to start bellyaching over hockey, but apparently it’s never too early in Philly. But there’s more:

Wow, check out that bitterness, this Philly fan Tweep even takes time to give a massive F-you to the Mets in a season when the Mets sucked ass.  How epic is that?  I LOVE Philly sports fans, because not only are they quick to anger, they’re also more than willing to share that anger with the whole, wide world.  BLESSED.

◊ I celebrate the Pops Mensah-Bonsu catalog

I was scanning some NBA preseason game recaps yesterday and I gotta admit I was pretty damn pleased to see some big numbers put up by Pops Mensah-Bonsu. You’re forgiven if you don’t recall him, he was one of the lynchpins of that glorious George Washington hoops team from 2005-06. That season, the Colonials finished 27-3 and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament before falling to Duke.

But that GW team might have advanced further if the insanely athletic Mensah-Bonsu hadn’t suffered a late season knee injury.   His bad wheel prevented him from being drafted, and since then he’s bounced around the D-League and multiple European teams.   Last season he saw limited time with the Rockets and Raptors but didn’t see a lot of minutes.

So I’m glad to see that he’s making a strong case to win a roster spot with the Hornets.   The other night against the Grizzlies, the box score revealed that he went for 19 points, 10 boards and 4 steals.  Hell, not a half bad effort at all.   I’ve always thought the guy could catch on in the right system, where his athleticism and hustle on the defensive end would be great assets.  Maybe that place will be New Orleans.

◊ Georgia’s not dead yet

Two weeks ago, Mark Richt was the subject of some serious hot seat talk. Fast forward to today and his Georgia team suddenly has an outside chance at winning the SEC East. Granted, that’s mostly because no other team in the division seemed interested in running away and hiding from everyone else, but hey, Richt would gladly take the crown in the East under ANY circumstances.

But let’s give the Bulldogs a little bit of credit here.  Since that ugly road loss to Colorado, Richt and company did what they’re supposed to do: beat up on SEC teams that currently possess inferior talent.   The last two Saturdays, they lit up Tennessee and Vanderbilt by a combined 84-14 count.

Georgia fans had us all believing that the team’s fortunes would completely turn around when wide receiver A.J. Green returned from suspension.  Now that hasn’t totally been the case, but the numbers have indeed improved.   The Bulldogs have scored 111 points in the three games since Green returned, compared to 42 in their three preceding games.  However, think about the kind of statement that makes about a Richt-coached team in 2010.   The loss of one wide receiver can torpedo a supposedly talent-laden team?

While Green’s presence makes the Georgia offense better, it’s been the other side of the ball that’s surprised me a little.   Here’s an interesting stat you may have missed: the Bulldogs are currently 14th nationally in total defense.   So while this team has had its fair share of problems, first-year defensive coordinator Todd Grantham hasn’t been one of them.

Coming down the stretch, pay close attention to Georgia’s road tilt with Auburn on November 13.  The Tigers could be working on a very special season and be looking ahead a little bit to a November 26 date with Alabama.   So in a series as evenly matched as Auburn-Georgia, where the road team almost always seems to play well, don’t count out the Bulldogs in that one.

Is Nick Saban playing fast and loose with medical scholarship rules?

Hmmmmm, all that greyshirtin’ and medical scholarshipin’ stuff at Alabama has started to raise some eyebrows. Hannah Karp and Darren Everson of the Wall Street Journal shed some light on the methods Nick Saban uses to rapidly turn his roster over:

Former Alabama football players say the school’s No. 1-ranked football program has tried to gain a competitive edge by encouraging some underperforming players to quit the team for medical reasons, even in cases where the players are still healthy enough to play.

At least 12 times since coach Nick Saban took over the program in 2007, Alabama has offered players a “medical” scholarship, according to public statements made by the team. These scholarships, which are allowed under NCAA rules, are intended to make sure scholarship athletes who are too injured to play don’t lose their financial aid. A player who receives one of these scholarships is finished playing with that team.

Three Alabama players who’ve taken these exemptions say they believe the team uses the practice as a way to clear spots for better players by cutting players it no longer wants. These players said they believe Mr. Saban and his staff pressure some players to take these scholarships even though their injuries aren’t serious enough to warrant keeping them off the field. (Wall Street Journal)

What the story barely touches on is how Saban keeps oversigning recruits when it’s clear the current roster can’t absorb that many new kids, even when accounting for academic flame outs and thugs like Jimmy Johns. It’s amazing how he can do that, almost like he can see into the future…

While Karp and Everson glazed over that, they also failed to mention another important factor in all this: athletic scholarships are one-year awards.

That means that after the academic year is done, a coach can use ANY reason to not renew an award. For example, if Steve Spurrier came to believe at the end of last season that Stephen Garcia sucked just that bad, then the program wasn’t obligated to provide the same award or offer any scholarship at all to Garcia for this academic year.

But how often do you hear of a program cutting loose a perfectly healthy student-athlete with decent grades? Not often, because it’s not as publicized as when a player loses a scholarship for stalking an ex-girlfriend or some knuckleheadedness like that.

In the cases of non-renewal due to being buried on the depth chart, it’s most common for a coach to get rid of the kid via transfer. Besides the medical schollies, this has been another means for Saban to clear out what he perceived as the program’s dead weight. Refer to the cases of Jermaine Preyear, Charlie Higgenbotham, Corey Smith, Jennings Hester, Chris Jackson….

Finding a kid a spot on some other school’s roster is obviously the preferred method, because simply non-renewing a kid and leaving it at that looks BAD. If you do that too many times, opposing coaches will pounce on you on the recruiting trail. “Hey Mrs. Williams, I know Coach Saban says he’ll take care of Jake Jr. here, but did you realize he just yanks away scholarships from perfectly deserving kids? You didn’t? Well, let me find this list here…”

The aforementioned Spurrier discovered just how much hot water a coach can get into when he starts waving around the non-renewal sword. Back in 2005, Ol’ Ball Coach was trying to clear out some of the players from the Holtz regime and slapped a non-renew on defensive back Trent Usher.

But it just so happened that Usher’s dad was former Central Pageland coach Al Usher, who had lettered in football at South Carolina in the early 70’s. The elder Usher got in contact with his buddies at the South Carolina High School Coaches Association and it mushroomed from there. The SCHSCA’s Executive Board actually issued a statement calling the OBC “unethical” because he had revoked scholarships.

Hmmmm, I wonder why South Carolina’s taken a minute or two to get itself right under Spurrier. Could it be that it’s taken years for him to mend fences with Palmetto State high school coaches over that fiasco? And while he did absolutely nothing wrong within the confines of NCAA rules, you can see how non-renewals played in the court of public opinion.

So it’s obvious why Saban avoids non-renewals like the plague. Hell, with all things considered, you can make the argument that in theory, Saban is actually doing the medical scholarship kids a favor since the alternative is to bounce them out of Tuscaloosa altogether.

Yeah, that’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that Saban is not really honoring the spirit of the medical scholarship rule and using it as a means of playing fast and loose with his roster numbers.

I’m sure Bama fans have no problem with anything that Saban is doing.  Hell, they’re absolutely thrilled.  It just goes to show you how a subject like this can bring the homerism out in any college fanbase.  If Tennessee or Auburn were winning titles and using the same tactics, Bama fans would be screaming to the heavens about the unfairness of it all.

It’s okay if we do it and not right if you do it.  Ahhhh, college football, you gotta love it.

Great resemblances in sports history: Nick Saban’s office

After seeing Nick Saban’s office in the glorified Alabama recruiting video, uh, I mean ESPN show “Training Days: Rolling with the Alabama Crimson Tide,” it reminded me of an office I’d seen before. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

I picture Chip Kelly’s desk in his office in the Oregon football complex being some sleek, ultra modern thing paid for with Phil Knight’s money. But Saban looks like he’s sitting at the exact same type of desk as Bear Bryant did. And I can almost guarantee that’s by design.

All that old fashioned wood furnishing sort of gave me a Daniel Plainview vibe, you know, when he was telling poor, deaf H.W. that he was a “bastard from a basket.” Jesus, the last ten minutes of that movie rocked…

But Daniel’s office is a little too dark and menacing in comparison to Saban’s, it’s more of a lair than a place to conduct business. What about the dude Stephen Root played in “No Country For Old Men,” you know, the guy who hires everyone to track down the money, but then gets blasted in his own office by Anton Chigurh:

Nope, it’s another miss, way too bright and airy and significantly less cluttered than Saban’s. Damn thing looks like it was furnished from the J.R. Ewing collection. Well then, what about Dean Wormer’s office, could that have been the resemblance I was thinking of?:

Eh, a little closer, but not quite it. But now that I bring it up, I could definitely see Saban telling a player that fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.

Then it suddenly dawned on me what I was thinking of…Nick Saban’s office looks a lot like Scrooge McDuck’s:

Granted, Saban’s desk doesn’t have bags of gold coins on it, but it might as well.

Great resemblances in sports history: Robert Green’s Goalie Glove
Great resemblances in sports history: Sidney Lowe
Great resemblances in sports history: George Foster