If this looks like a terrible picture to have accompanying a college football piece … turn away and run. Fast.

Muffed Punts: Welcome edition

By Bart Doan
On Twitter @TheCoachBart

College football Internet is filled with sites awash with in-depth research, hot takes from every angle, all the recruiting information one could want, breaking news as it happens, and fodder for the stats geek to last 1,000 lifetimes.

This section is not one of them. If substance is what you’re looking for, you’ve stopped off the highway at the wrong hotel room. Get on the CB and find another friend. Just not Rusty Nail.

Hopefully it won’t be hacky like Jerry in The Butter Shave episode, but at any rate, “who’s ready to read!?!?”

As much as I’d love this first episode to be awash with college football wit, there’s nothing going on. You can say how much you love college football and how it’s always a good time to talk it, but overall in sports … let alone college football … the middle of July is like walking into the bar at 2:50 a.m. If you find anything at all, you’re desperate, and so is it.

SEC media days start this week, which … I suppose you’re excited about if you’re media. Media days are rapidly becoming “a thing” the way political platforms do that media wants you to know about. Basically, media enjoys hanging out with one another, having the interviews in a confined place, being wined and dined, and not really working all that hard.

On a more positive note, I did NOT stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I DID stay at one years ago that had a water slide and a 6 foot bottle of vodka with Jolly Ranchers marinating in it that had a tap at the bottom and let me tell you, it was worth the price of admission.

Texas won’t be selling beer and wine at games this year, which is sad. The Eyes of Texas being blurry with Beer Goggles would have made for a lot of terrible puns.

Tough position for Gus Malzahn on Nick Marshall. Whether or not you think it’s killing a mosquito with an AK 47, busting him for pot residue or not, the lines are clear: don’t do this, because if you do, you’ll get in trouble whether you agree with policy or not.
Malzahn missed the SEC memo that you’re supposed to schedule Directional School of the South of the FCS rather than a conference game right off the bat, so if Marshall sits, it will be for an SEC game. On the upside, it’s just Arkansas.

Onto a former college football player named Johnny Manziel. I love watching the guy. I don’t care what he does. If you or I were 21 with millions and the following he has, you’d be doing the same damn thing. Don’t act sanctimonious. But dude … you HAVE to find friends that don’t say, “snorting booger sugar off a public bathroom sink in Vegas … no way anything goes wrong here.”

Also on Manziel, he’s in a win-lose situation. No matter what he does, the same people will love him. No matter what he does, the same people will hate him. My advice? Do the Derek Jeter treatment and have people start checking their cell phones at the door if they’re going to hang out with you.

Best coach that needs to be hired by someone big soon but you don’t know it? Pete Lembo at Ball State.

Just a PSA, but if you’re one of those people who sees a yellow light and immediately jams on their breaks, you’re a really rotten human being. You don’t want to be mean, but you’re sort of boxed into a corner here.

As for the World Cup, congrats to Germany. They make good beer, so I suppose it was a fait accompli.

Also, nice to see the American social media machine in full swing trying to push the wussification of our idea of sports onto the rest of the world. The Twitter machine freaked out on FIFA for not basically bringing the world to a halt over a potential concussion. Look, for anyone that’s actually played sports, you go into it knowing that if you plan on doing it long term, the cost will be parts of your body. You play basketball long term, it means 1,000s of hours in the gym, 1,000s of hours on black top. You know your ankles and knees or both will be shot by middle age. You play golf, it’s often your back. Football? Ramming heads with people your size for 20 years probably will have an adverse affect. Pitch? Probably gonna have a few arm injuries. Be nice if people would sort of even pretend to understand that. As the venerable Dan Dakich says … “sack up.”

The Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl was renamed as the Cactus Bowl, which basically, since it actually sounds like a decent, normal bowl name means this: it’s essentially the We Couldn’t Find A Sponsor … Yet Bowl.

Also in useless bowl sponsorship news, Tostitos is out on the Fiesta Bowl. It’ll be odd in the sense that as opposed to most of these bowl games, Tostitos really carved out an “expectation niche” with the Fiesta Bowl. You just sort of associated that with them, sort of the way you associate really frigging terrible music with Daughtry. I’ll miss you, Tostitos, but luckily, you have your lime chips so forgiveness will be easy.

As for good music, if you haven’t checked out “Dirt” by Florida Georgia Line … you haven’t lived. Best live act in music. Hands down. Or up. Or swaying. Or arm around someone. Or double fisting it. Really though, that song is thee jam.

Pro tip of the week:

Remember the old “car door lock” trick to see if a woman you’re dating is worth keeping around … the one where you get the door for her (and you damn well should every time after that, too) and then walk around the car to see if she unlocks it? Power locks have neutered that. So here’s what you do to find out she’s a keeper …
… after y’all get your orders at the restaurant, make a comment that something, anything on your meal was under-given … I need more ranch, the salad dressing is barely on there, I wish they’d have brought me horseradish because it said on the menu it came with it … and then go to the John for a minute. Wait staff always comes back to check to make sure the meal was brought out right, even if they won’t come back for another 20 minutes. So go to the can, and when the wait staff comes by and it’s just her, he/she will ask if everything is okay with the meal. At that point, the girl, if she’s a keeper, will point out that you need more of (insert item X). If she doesn’t, questions will remain.

Also, the heck with you, power locks. See y’all next week.

Beer of the Week (if you like such things):
Mad Hatter IPA

(Suggestions for Beer of the Week are always welcome. Use the Twitter machine to suggest if the need is felt.)

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