Daily Delany Pile On ... He's a Steamroller, baby

Just try and tell me JD and JT weren't separated at birth. Or at least don't see the same hair stylist.

"Not going to sing for us, are you Sammy?" Okay, a total non sequitur, I know, but man, this is just such a funny picture. So emasculating and unflattering. And I've seen it scattered all over the net.

CNNSI Photo editor: "Hey, I need a stock shot of that tool Jim Delany. Get that one where he looks really pale, meek and remorseful, like he's coming clean Jim Bakker style ... yeah, that's it ... that's the one!"

If the Big 12 is Richard Nixon, then I'm John Dean

No conference loyalty here, my friend. I (and most everyone I know) hope Nebraska and Oklahoma lose every time they take the field. I was crushed when the Maine Blackbears' upset bid fell short in Lincoln. I don't believe in this trickle-down theory that the mediocre and sorry teams in the conference are somehow lifted up by the success of the conference powers, or that because the mediocre team from "my" conference beat the mediocre team from "their" conference, that tells you something about the conferences. So Tennessee blew out Cal in Knoxville? Big deal. Georgia is behind all day, at home, and needs a touchdown with less than a minute to go to beat the worst Colorado team in 20 years? Eh. These events don't mean much. The athletes in the BCS conferences are all at about the same level (don't start!), and the coaches are equally competent. I stand by the old way, the way that says "My favorite team is [favorite team] and whoever is playing [rival] that week." The fact that a 'Bama fan will shelve that when Auburn is playing "a bunch of surfers" in a non-conference game is pathetic. I mean really, if you're a Florida fan, do you really want to see Georgia go 12-1 (with a loss to Florida), and win a BCS bowl game over a non-conference opponent every year? I want my rivals to have crappy seasons, so their recruiting gets crappy, hopefully making them vulnerable to losses admistered by my favorite team. If non-conference opponents assist in achieving that goal, then by all means. Raul is right about the hype around the UM-OSU game, though.

Why is Nick Saban getting along with Tommy Tubberville?

I don't where this phenomenom started but I know its more prevelant among SEC and Big Ten fans. You'll never see NC State fans high-fiving each other because Maryland's RB just outran a West Virginia's CB to the endzone. "WUU-WEE, LOOK AT THAT MID-ATLANTIC SPEED." I'm as guilty of this as anyone, but the more I think about the phenomenom, the more disturing it gets. I don't want a Mississippi State or OLE MISS fratter taking joy in a Florida victory over Ohio State .
"OHH MAN, CLINT, DID YOU SEE THAT FAST GATOR OFFENSIVE LINEMAN RUN DOWN THAT SLOW OHIO STATE DB."

"I SURE DID, WYATT, THEM BIG TEN BOYS CAN'T HANG WITH US SOUTHERN BOYS"

No, you're both wrong Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin and Penn State would beat the Sh*t out of your respective schools.

Anyways, this whole conference loyalty phenom has really taken off the last 10 years. It was getting to the point where SEC schools resented their rivals to the point they would rather play a Big Ten schedule. For example, Georgia and Tennessee fans became so bitter about Florida consistently derailing their NC hopes that they begged for Ohio State's or Michigan's schedule . Yet, SEC fans weren't the only ones guilty of conference loyalty. Ohio State in the 90's is a prime example

"IF WE GOT TO PLAY OLE MISS, ARKANSAS and KENTUCKY EVERY YEAR, WE WOULD HAVE WON 6 NATIONAL TITLES IN THE 90's"

Up until this past season, the whole conference fan phenomenom could be described as follows: having a claim to playing in tough conference was a good way to rationalize a mediocre season. Then came the season that brought a whole new element to the conference loyalty phenomenom. You guys know what I'm getting at: ESPN, KIRK HERBSTREIT and the OHIO STATE-MICHIGAN fiasco. ESPN started running the clock on tOSU-UM seven weeks before kickoff. They told us no one could play with those two. They ingored their weaknesses but focused on everyone else's.

"MICHIGAN STRUGGLED WITH NORTHWESTERN and BALL STATE BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T TRYING. FLORIDA, ON THE OTHER HAND, WAS GIVING IT ALL THEY HAD AGAINST VANDY and SOUTH CAROLINA."

Beyond boosting the BIG TEN ego, the clock running fiasco pissed off every college football fan, coach and player outside the Rust Belt. As a result, ESPN/ABC brought together non-Big Ten conference rivals because ESPN ignored them for two months. (Did you guys even realize that CAL-USC and BAMA-AUBURN also played on Nov. 18). Then, the Southern Press sided with Florida, Mitch Album and Lloyd Carr attacked Urban Meyer's integrity, Lloyd Carr then took it a step further, even after the loss to USC, by attacking Florida's integrity as an academic institution. Finally, Jim "the racist" Delaney told the nation what Big Ten university presidents believed but never told the media--SEC Universities are at a competitive advantage in football because their "loose" admissions standards are friendlier to black athletes than the strigent standards of the BIG TEN.

So, if you're wondering why conference rivals are getting along, you have no one to blame but ESPN for the chain events they set off.

The Conference Fan: How did this odd creature crawl out of the primordial soup?

Can anyone pinpoint the moment when The Conference Fan evolved? Is it me, or did they lose their gills, slink out of the oceans with their newly developed peds, and crawl out into the open when the rest of us had our backs turned?

Reason I ask is that they seem to make up a fairly decent chunk of CFB fans now. At least those from the BCS conferences. So advanced is their development that they've even harnessed the power of the internet. Many I suspect are good souls who, in an era obviously expired, saved their fiercest insults, Bronx cheers, and cheap seat-launched loogies for their traditional rivals (or Kirk Herbstreit). Think Auburn vs. Alabama, Notre Dame vs. USC, Michigan vs. Ohio St., Texas vs. Oklahoma, et la.

How easily they lay down those hatreds now and actually root for those same rival-villians if they happen to be playing an opponent from another BCS opponent.

"Daddy, last week you were cussin' at the Aggies like you wanted them drug behind the pick-up. Why do you like them this week?"

"Well that's simple, son. Because they're playing Oregon. Friggin' Oregon. You know. From the Pac 10. They don't know football from nothin' up there. Now run and get your daddy another Lonestar. Go on, boy, git!"

V.O.: This Regional Stereotype has been brought to you by Lonestar Beer. "Lonestar Beer, the National Beer of Texas."

Sweet Home No More

In the words of Neil Young: "Southern man better keep your head." Shame on you, Alabama! That dress code is un-American. To use a Con Law phrase, banning all jerseys except those made by Nike is not rationally related to the legitimate goal of reducing unpleasant incidents in the stadium (unless it can be proven that Nike Tide jerseys are more 'decent' than other brands; judging from Oregon's Nike jerseys, they are far more extreme and outrageous than anything Brittney and her sorority sisters cook up). "Daddy, you can't wear the jersey that the Bear gave you in 1974, becuase it was made by Spaulding!" Daddy: "Aw shucks! Guess we got to go to Sports Authority and drop $200 on an approved one!" And no cut off jeans and halter tops?! I guess Daisy Duke's puttin' her tix on Craig's List. What kind of gnarled, repressed freaks don't want to see coeds in shorts and halter tops?! Did they get Phil Knight and James Dobson to draft the code? I think we might have to get Bush to send some National Guard troops down there to restore civil liberties to hot chicks. Wouldn't be the first time such intervention was necessary. Thank God CU still believes in letting the gals wear micro-mini skirts, cowboy boots, and halter tops (with out of state tuition as it is, it's the least the institution can do). The Big 10, Big 12, and Pac 10 have just gotten a leg (bare from the flip-flops to the Daisy Duke's) up on the SEC on this alone.

Bama takes a step in the right direction

http://piedmontgazette.com/game_day_changes.html

By taking the kind of action you would only find in an obscure CON LAW hypo, the University of Alabama's athletic department has taken a giant step toward eliminating the white-trash element at Byant-Denny Stadium. Still, I don't think they realize the effect of such action-- complete alienation of 98% of their fanbase. Good luck finding 85,000 gentile southern boys who own gameday blazers and pink pants with embroidered elephants. Frankly, I'm quite surprised Big 11 commish Jim Delaney didn't think this one up first. I'm sure he was quite embarassed at the site of a 150,000 buckeyes in Glendale, Arizona donning Ohio business casual attire- Jean shorts with a complentary grey sweater vest over an XL jersey. Then again, an all out jean-short (or jorts) ban in the Big 11 might force the Ohio State's football program into the MAC where it can be reunited with its academics.

Questions about the SEC-Big Ten Challenge...

While I would agree that this concept has merit, there are some lingering questions about the match ups and corporate sponsorships that clearly need to be addressed before anything of this magnitude could be attempted.

1. Is there going to be any kind of farm equipment company or poultry sponsorship involved? If so, can we eliminate the John Mellancamp "This is Our Country" advertising campaign from the commercial spots by way of double jeopardy?

2. Is it true that mathematicians at Vanderbilt are able to compute formulas faster than those at Northwestern due to their membership in the SEC? Does this mean we should use all-SEC statisticians for viewer convenience?

3. If Michigan opts not to take part in their scheduled match up, can this just be assigned as their annual September loss and will a free pass be granted for the Notre Dame game so Michigan can get on with their goal of winning a Big Ten title?

4. Will anyone be at the Indiana-Kentucky game? Or should it just be televised at Rupp Arena via closed circuit television so as to generate excitement for students and fans alike?

5. Is sending Purdue to Alabama just an experiment to see if Joe Tiller's head will explode on prime time TV?

6. Is there anyway we can get Musburger to get "preoccupied" on Bourbon Street so we can avoid his commentary on the OSU-LSU match up? Seriously, you know the lineup for that press box looks to be Musburger, Herbstreit, Jack Buck, Clark Kellogg, and a cardboard cutout of Woody Hayes

Time for the SEC-BIG TEN Challenge

Lets face it, the SEC and BIG TEN don't like each other. It's only a matter of time before the conferences money-savy commissioners cash in on the animosity. In the mean time, I will propose the SEC-BIG TEN challenge:
1. All games will take place on Labor Day weekend
2. Schedule will go as follows(All times central):
Indiana at Kentucky 7pm ESPN(Thurs)
Vandy at NW 7 pm Espn (Friday)
Auburn vs. Iowa (Solider Field) 11 am ABC
Arkansas at Mich St. 11am ESPN2
So Car at Illinois 11am EPSN
Wisco at UT 12pm CBS
UGA at Penn State 2:30 ABC
Michigan at Florida 3:30 CBS
Purdue at Bama 6:45 ESPN
OSU vs LSU (New Orleans) 8:00 ABC

Looks like we would have some interesting intersectional matchups. Accordingly, the networks would jump all over my proposal. I'm leaving it up to O'Shea to draw up the ACC-BIG 12 Challenge.

2007: Greatest year ever to be a Husky fan, if only they could field that '91 Team

Here's a new one for the SAT:

Woodward and Bernstein are to the Nixon Administration as Yahoo Sports is to ... that's right, Trojan Football.

While Yahoo Sports may not be popular among the 'SC faithful right now, YS does rank the Trojans' schedule 8th toughest coming into the season. Bully for USC. But what the hell is Washington thinking?

at Syracuse
Boise State
Ohio State
at UCLA
Southern Cal
at Arizona State
Oregon
Arizona
at Stanford
at Oregon State
California
Washington State
at Hawaii

Six of the 12 teams UW played during their '91 run were sub-.500. Steve Emtman, if I recall, took October off to surf and drink mescal in Puerto Escondido. The Husky's devastating schedule that year included a 1-win Oregon State team, a fearsome 3-win USC team, Oregon with a plucky three wins, a menacing 4-win Arizona team, and a take-no-prisoners 5-win squad from Toledo. No wonder Billy Joe Hobert threw for some yards. If the Husky's sweep this year's schedule, we will all indeed be uncles of monkeys. More likely scenario, however, is AD Todd Turner will have the Sun Belt on speed dial (if they can get past all the SEC teams lined up in the Sun Belt queue) or better yet, the Great West or Mid-Eastern Atlantic leagues of I-AA, trying to work out a couple of games for the '08 campaign. Godspeed, Ty Willingham.

Way to bring reason to the argument, Jim D.

At times, it's difficult to tell what comes first in the South: God, Family, or SEC football. SEC fans have high opinions of their conference, the genetic gifts of their athletes, and the brand and traditions of their football. And rightly so. The conference, especially recently, has been deep. 2007 looks to be no different. If your a fan of college football, it's difficult to dismiss the passion of the SEC fan base even when it's easy to dismiss the silliness of some of their bolder superiority claims.

However, if you're a fan of a team that happens to play in the Big Ten, or worse yet, if you're a fan of the Big Ten, you have a bigger problem than SEC hyperbole: a conference commissioner doing you no PR favors.

Dan Wetzel's skewering of the Commish needs no further comment (though the reference to this kind of non-sense typically coming out of South Bend is a smiler.) But Delany is reasonably educated man, which is puzzling, for one would think he might have come across these numbers at some point:

Years humans have inhabited the planet: a few thousand.
Times self-righteousness has been an effective tool of persuasion: 0

Irish in giving spirit. Someone call the Hallmark Channel.

You dig them or despise them. Typically there's no in between with Notre Dame. I cast my lot with the latter early on.
Yet I let my defenses down through much of the Faust, Davie and Willingham eras. Lean times for Dame when it was almost easy to feel sorry for them. They were like that big, powerful, terrorizing menace in Beyond Thunderdome who'd finally met his match in the cage. Once the helmet had been knocked off and all dignity stripped away, you saw the vulnerable simpleton underneath. "Ah naw, Mad Max. You can't kill him. He's just a baby, really. He doesn't even know what he's doing. He can't hurt us now. Oh and his little person friend really cares about him. See, they're like a family. Look at him smile, will ya. Jeez, he's kinda cute even. We'll call him Mongo."

Thankfully Charlie Weiss has restored world order, NBC is breathing a sigh of relief, and the Irish are feeling good about themselves again, developing new advancements at the School of Self-contratulatory Sciences in South Bend:

From Tim Prister at IrishIllustrated.com

After hearing it yet another time, Mike Brey finally became annoyed. He didn't want to hear it anymore. It didn't apply to life at Notre Dame. So save the comments.Kyle McAlarney, his sophomore point guard, had been caught with marijuana in his car. Not only would he be suspended from the team for the balance of the season, but he also was dismissed from school, forcing him to return home for the semester.

At a state school, McAlarney likely would have received a slap on the wrist. At Notre Dame, it was just short of the death penalty.

"I got frustrated the two weeks after Kyle left us with (people saying), 'Well, at school X, it would be a (one) game (suspension).'"I said, 'Wait a minute. The kids who are here and I myself that came to coach here, we know what we signed up for. We completely get it, and that's not the deal here.'"

You can't get caught smoking pot at Notre Dame and get away with a slap on the wrist. Call that archaic, outdated, or overly strict if you wish. But that's Notre Dame. You know that—or at least you should know that—when you choose to come to Notre Dame.

Does that hurt Notre Dame's ability to recruit?

"It endorses who we are for the clientele that's interested in us anyways," Brey said. "It underlines that." There is a certain young man out there that is going to be a fit for us, and I think it just endorses to him and to his family the standards here. (That's) one of the reasons you come here."

By today's standards, a kid smoking a joint isn't that big of a deal. Since Jan. 8, the Florida football team has had seven players encounter legal problems, including a wide receiver who fired a gun with two teammates present, a tailback who was caught purchasing eight grams of marijuana, an offensive guard charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor following an incident with a gun, a safety with felony charges following a theft, a couple other marijuana possession charges, a public brawl, a probation violation, and a complaint filed after a player tossed a man onto the hood of a car.

Defensive tackle Marcus Thomas, an NFL-level performer, failed three drug tests before he was dismissed from the team last fall. Other than that, the Gators have diligently been pursuing their studies at Gainesville.

"We're had a few guys who've made small mistakes and a
guy or two who've made some big ones," said head coach Urban Meyer, who said that the recent crime wave within the Florida football program "isn't an epidemic."

Oh, coach, you are wrong. It most certainly is an epidemic, and winning national titles does that to athletic programs. Victory at the highest level creates the feeling of entitlement and invincibility off the field as well as on the field. The Gators are experiencing that right now. Pete Carroll and the USC Trojans have had to deal with it. Lou Holtz had to deal with it to a lesser extent from 1988 through 1993 when the Irish were averaging 11 victories per year.

After McAlarney was arrested last December, the University let him dangle in the wind for several weeks before he was removed from school for the rest of the semester.McAlarney wasn't happy, his mother wasn't happy, and both expressed their displeasure with Notre Dame for their harsh reaction.

I believe the McAlarneys said something about being
ashamed of and embarrassed by Notre Dame. They didn't believe the punishment fit the crime. Despite their displeasure with the University, McAlarney sucked it
up, took his punishment, and began preparations for his return this summer. The second summer session began Tuesday and McAlarney was back in school. A great deal of discipline was required for McAlarney to get to this point. He could have bagged Notre Dame, transferred, and been eligible for the second semester of the 2007-08 season somewhere else. He didn't do that, and McAlarney is a better man for it, even if the punishment was harsher than the crime itself, which it wasn't.

Not all will agree with that. Some will rant about Notre Dame's draconian mindset. Everyone's entitled to his opinion, as is Notre Dame. In matters such as these,
Notre Dame rules on the side of strictness.If Florida had ruled as harshly, perhaps defensive tackle Marcus Thomas wouldn't have failed three drug tests, and perhaps the current crime spree in Gainesville wouldn't be quite so rampant. Notre Dame's rules serve many purposes, including that of a deterrent. Call it overly harsh if you will. McAlarney understands it now.

Compromising one's principles is one of those things that aren't worth it. Kyle McAlarney has much to be thankful for, including a school that held him to a higher standard than many other Division 1-A programs would have. In the long run, that's not punishment. That's a gift from a school that McAlarney will one day be able to proudly call
his alma mater.

Stories like this mean just one thing: it's open season on Mongo.

If only he was a good as his name ...

You know the one's we're talking about. The kind of names that Faulkner or Melville or Pynchon would have given their characters if they'd devoted their novels to college football rather than Yoknapatawpha, or Nantucket whaling, or V-2 Rockets. A little heroic, a lot adult film-ish.

Our Favorites

• Mercury Hayes
• Grant Irons
• Glen Steele

Suggestions from the field:

• TJ Slaughter
• Michael Stonebreaker