FanHouse Lolmsm

Coaching searches are crazy and a lot of crazy stuff gets said during them, but come the heck on here:

Another rumor making the rounds is that the Huskies might be interested in LSU coach Les Miles, who interviewed at UW in 2004 when Willingham was hired.

That's right, kids: the Seattle Times is speculating that a guy coming off a national championship at a powerhouse SEC program and getting paid one dollar more than Nick Saban who turned down his alma mater last year will leave for Washington. Which is 0-12. And has no particular connection to Les Miles whatsoever. And is still 0-12.

So I ask you, commenters of FanHouse: has anything dumber ever been suggested? Did a newspaper ever claim that the corpse of Bear Bryant would be reanimated and take over at Auburn? Because that's all I got as far as more outlandish scenarios.

Wide receiver Josh Jarboe has been relieved of his scholarship by Bob Stoops and Oklahoma after a video of him that middle-aged sportswriters invariably refer to as "violent" and "expletive-filled" showed up on the youtubes. It does indeed have some expletives, so keep it away from children and those constitutionally prone to fainting spells:



This would be the most insane player dismissal ever if Jarboe hadn't gotten expelled from his high school and charged with a felony for bringing a gun to school. Still, the Wizard of Odds notes that Bob Stoops was of one mind Thursday...

"Kick a guy off the team for what he says?" Stoops said. The whole Internet culture frustrates Stoops. "We're starting to talk about everything kids say and do," Stoops said. "Now we're in people's homes, in their private spaces."

...before he was of the opposite mind a couple days later. What happened?

Not the most expensive seat on the planet.

Another in our "mathematics, journalists who don't know what that word means, and you" series: there is an article in an Alabama newspaper detailing skyrocketing ticket prices in the SEC. It contains this shocking paragraph:

For instance, Florida charges only $224 for season tickets because purchasing them requires a $4,200 minimum donation. That means Florida fans are paying at least $632 per game, tops in the SEC and a 183 percent increase from 1998.

632 dollars for a game against Lousiana-Monroe? Great googly moogly!

Except, of course, this is total bunk. Please note this WSJ article that states UF's total revenue for 2007 as $82.4 million dollars. Capacity at the Swamp is around 88,000. Set aside 30% of the tickets for students and visiting fans, pretend those tickets are totally free, and multiply "at least $632" by seven home games and 62,000 fans and you get...

272 million dollars.

So, no. Florida is not raking in 600 bucks a ticket. A brief interrogation of Orson Swindle reveals that the 4k you shell out entitles you to purchase up to four season tickets, and a quick calculation that guesses Florida is taking in 60 million from the football stadium comes up with an average ticket price of $95.23.

It's pricey. It is not sell-your-grandma pricey.

(Original link via Get The Picture)

Cleveland Browns receiver and Michigan alumnus Braylon Edwards caused a minor internet meltdown in Michigan-land recently when he said he was mad at new Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez for giving the #1 jersey to an incoming freshman defensive back. Edwards had endowed a scholarship for the jersey, traditionally given to god-like wide receivers, that specifically prohibited any freshman from wearing the #1.

Every newspaper in West Virginia has three guys working the Rich Rodriguez beat; Bob Hertzel is one of them. And Bob Hertzel is very confused:

[The number #1] has belonged exclusively to a wide receiver since 1979, dating back to Chris Carter.

There is something wrong with this sentence: it's "Cris Carter." Oh, and here's a picture of the Wolverine legend donning the precious #1:



Oops.

Annoying 'Bama-bot Ray Melick:

The brick wall blocking a playoff will still be standing Wednesday afternoon.

But maybe - just maybe - the blockheads of the Big Ten and Pac-10 will begin to see the cracks.

SI's Austin Murphy:

Springing to the defense of his Pac-10 counterpart is Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who together with Hansen forms a kind of Axis of Obstruction.

Matt Hayes:

Please, everyone. No more questions about who runs college sports. We give you Jim Delany, commissioner of the Big Ten.

Dick Harmon, man who does not watch college football:

A true college football championship is being held up by two conferences - the Pac-10 and Big Ten.

ESPN's Mark Schablach:


In the immortal words of Buzz Bissinger: sorry, various media members, but you're full of s---. Why after the jump.

College football season is a brief thing that flutters for a few months in the fall. Afterwards, the increasingly frenetic run-up to Signing Day provides another month or two of interesting stories. But March? March is for men who bounce basketballs and major internet sites are reduced to this:



HOLY CRAP TIM BREWSTER IS A RECRUITING NINJA FEAR FEAR FEAR F--

Wait a second. Minnesota picked up a walk-on? This is news? I hate March.

As the world knows by now, Jimmy Clausen got a citation for going on a (slightly) underage beer run in South Bend. As far as news goes, "college freshman buys beer" ranks right up there with "air breathable" and "Charlie Weis treats reporters like four-year-olds" amongst things that are not actual news, even if the freshman in question is going to be the greatest emu in college football history.

But, in an irritating example of Notre Dame fans not being entirely wrong when they claim the university has a bullseye on it, a couple of people have completely flipped their wig over this. The South Bend Tribune's Jeff Carroll put out a ridiculous column titled "Clausen drama creates doubts" that's a classic example of a local sportswriter trying to get attention by being dumb:

when it's one drama after another, and when it all surrounds an athlete who has been protected well beyond the bounds of good judgment, you can't help but start to wonder whether it's worth the aggravation, whether Clausen will really play four years at Notre Dame. And you start to wonder if he should. If, for all his prodigious talent, he's worth the distraction.

Note that one of the Clausen-manufactured "dramas" is his arm surgery, which is a particularly perverse thing to blame a kid for. Hey, you with the bone spurs! Stop causing drama and be healthy!

Wow. Andrew Quarless, a sophomore tight end coming off an impressive freshman season, and reserve defensive back Willie Harriot were cited for underage drinking a few days ago. Piddly stuff, especially for a guy with no priors. Its only meaning should come in the Fulmer Cup, in which Penn State now narrowly leads Illinois. I mean, surely this is a few stairs, maybe a ceremonial suspension against Southern Eastern Texas A&T--

According to a post published on the Scout.com website FightOnState.com, Penn State tight end Andrew Quarless and reserve defensive back Willie Harriott have been removed from the team.

Great galloping Jebus! How bizarre. Let me count the ways:

1. various newspapers (here's another one) citing the newfangled interwebs as a legitimate source,
2. various newspapers taking premium, subscription-only info and spreading it willy-nilly, and
3. various newspapers kind of getting it wrong.

Not that 3 is a surprise or necessarily their fault, as Mark Brennan, the proprietor of FOS, first posted about the emptying of Quarless and Harriot's lockers and made dark noises about the extreme improbability of their return before clarifying with a less harsh assessment of their chances based on a projected JoePa softening. Which is good, because jettisoning kids for underage drinking whilst simultaneously punishing the organizers of a posse not at all is completely bats. And I like my JoePa only mostly bats.

New Miami head coach has made few friends in the media with his universally dull answers to questions put to him. This isn't a shock. But he must be giving really spectacularly unresponsive answers to get this sort of response:

Asked about the quarterbacks, Shannon claimed he wasn't looking at their play. After a couple of additional nonanswers, CSS' Allison Williams seemed fed up. ''So what are you looking at?'' Williams asked in exasperation. ``You're not looking up in the stands!''

Killer professionalism there. The media needs to get over itself, of course. It's frustrating to sit there and get nonanswers from a coach, but Shannon isn't saying appreciably less than coaches who blather platitudes, he's just being more direct about it. Ironic that the media often accuse bloggers of being derivative, then freak out whenever they have to fill copy with something other than wildly interesting press conference quotes.

Side note: it's kind of odd to watch Shannon develop into a southern version of Lloyd Carr at Miami. I mean... it's Miami! They're supposed to be the opposite of Michigan, fire Larry Coker for being Lloyd Carr, basically, and then hire... Lloyd Carr. (Almost to a T: Carr was also a not-widely-heralded defensive coordinator who kind of backed his way into the job.) Go figure.

Previously On The Fanhouse:
Randy Shannon Gets Tough On Crime
Apparently FIU Does Just Come Into The O.B.
Good God, Miami Used To Be Terrifying