Someone better do this touchdown dance

Would college football touchdown celebrations get out of hand if they were like this?

Lose the game; win the SEC Media Days

Send the buffet-grazing, WiFi-crashing media horde home from Hoover, the winner of the SEC Media Days has been found — Vanderbilt's interim head coach Robbie Caldwell.

Pat Forde of ESPN declared it the best press conference in SEC history. And, as we all know, if it's the best in the SEC then it's the best in the ENTIRE NATION!

With a thick Southern drawl, he spoke about ...

• On his anonymity: "I can still walk in places and nobody knows me. Last night I was opening the door for people and they gave me a tip. I thought, hey, that's great. How can you get it any better than that?"

• On his anonymity, even among his peers: "I got to see Coach Spurrier today, Coach Richt. They have no idea who I am."

• On continuing Johnson's ban on cussin': "You know, I'm no angel, that's for certain. ... But, you know, it's just a sign of limited vocabulary sometimes. I know y'all can't tell it, but I do have an education."

• On growing up in a small town: "My first hourly paying job was on the turkey farm. I don't know if I could tell you what my job was, but I was on the inseminating crew. That's a fact. I worked my way to the top. That's a fact, man. If you don't believe it, call Nicolas. Of course, I think they're defunct now. Best job I ever had, got paid by the hour for the first time. That was about '68, '69. That's what we did every afternoon."

Highlights

Full transcript

UCA: Finally a real Division I program!

Because, honestly, you can't be a serious football school without some controversy.

Clint Conque admits "inappropriate relationship"

Best of the LeBron nWo videos

Someone really needs to play the nWo theme when Cleveland comes out for the shoot around, whether it is home or away...

Capturing the greatness of college football

First nationally...



Then for the South...

Fun with Feedjit

Intrepid readers of Poolsville have likely noticed the snooping tool ... err, analytics software ... that displays the hometowns of visitors to this blog. It also tracks how people got to the site like this ...

Burnaby, British Columbia arrived from google.ca on "Poolsville: Brey Cook, LeBron James and the silly season" by searching for how big is lebron james cock.

Burnaby, British Columbia, population 216,336 ... saaaaaaalute!



And remember "Barnaby, British Columbia" spelled backwards is "Geez, you're a pervert ain't ya?"

HDN meets Elvis

http://wp.me/pLWDA-35D

Brey Cook, LeBron James and the silly season

Last night, Brey Cook, a highly-touted offensive lineman from Springdale, announced his decision to play football for Arkansas beginning in the fall of 2011. Well, kind of. He issued an oral commitment which is completely non-binding. He could change his mind between now and Signing Day in February. He could change his mind a dozen times and orally commit to every Division I school in America.

Yet at least two of the three NWA TV stations decided to carry this momentous occasion live during the 6 p.m. news. But not during sports. Instead, during the first segment known as the "A block" among TV types. The TV producers didn't have the stones to tell a high schooler "No, if you want to do this live our sports segment starts at 6:20. We can do it then."

As I've said before, oral commitments are like engagements, Signing Day is the wedding ceremony. Sure, you might have an engagement party, but the wedding is usually a much more lavish affair. Yes, you get your engagement announcement in the paper, but I don't remember the last time the DG devoted an entire page to a society engagement the way they do society weddings.

I'm beginning to think the wedding analogy is fitting in another way. These high-school athletes are turning into Bridezillas. In fact, as long as they're turning this announcements into ceremonies, they should do it up right.



Perhaps inspired by such foolishness, LeBron James is working out a deal to announce his selection of an NBA team during a live one-hour ESPN special on Thursday night. At least James will actually be signing some paperwork at his media appearance and not just announcing he plays to play for Team X ... but with the understanding he might change his mind between now and the start of the season.

Hopefully James will have various NBA caps on a table in front of him and do the idiotic reach-for-this-cap-stop-reach-for-that-one-stop-grab-the-third-one-and-put-it-on-his-head move.

Oh well, at least Cook gave the in-state talk shows something to discuss. They can take a break from doing a week-by-week prediction of which games CBS will take or whether ESPN GameDay will be in Fayetteville (not Little Rock, Matt) or debating Heisman contenders a full five months before the award is given or discussing whether Hazen will repeat as 2A-6 champions.

Best guess for the coming season

If it is summer, it must be time for college basketball!

Okay, okay, I realize that probably only applies to me and the 21 sports information directors I’m currently harassing for Lindy’s College Basketball.

(Soon to be on newsstands in like months, so buy a copy and revel in my brilliance.)

Anyway, between that and the current mafia story* I’m covering for my real job, my mind drifts to college football in times like these and I’ve been thinking about Arkansas’s role in the world of college football.

Despite having lived in Arkansas for roughly 26 of my 40 years, I missed the Razorbacks kool-aid that was served at mighty Elgin B. Milton Elementary in Ozark.

So, somehow, I never became much of a fan of the Piggies. Then the downward spiral, at least to some, continued as I began to openly mock The Program. But it sure was fun flinging those FCA lollipops at TCU’s horny frog back in the day.

Life progressed, college football became a livelihood and the idea of being a fan, of any sports team, became repugnant to me.

With that out of the way, let’s examine Arkansas’s role in college football’s terra firma.

And without question, it isn’t where the Razorbacks fans think it is. Arkansas is, at best, a second-tier school, that to challenge in the conference, a team in the SEC West needs to be on probation and ineligible for the title.

The scenario for a national title usually involves something like 23 steps and lots of luck with better teams losing both early and late.

Here’s the thing, on the former, no team in the West is on probation (yet) for this season, and on the latter, even if Arkansas somehow runs the table and goes undefeated, the Razorbacks still won’t play for a national title.

Book it.

If Ohio State and Boise State go undefeated, a realistic possibility for both, they’ll play for the national championship.

Both are preseason top five schools and won’t have to climb the polls.

If Arkansas is ranked, and that’s a giant guess, it will be 18th to 25th. The cupcake con-conference schedule, really Tennessee Tech, won’t win them any points from pollsters.

So there you go. Too long a road and too many good teams to play in the conference.

Arkansas won’t go undefeated. Bobby Petrino has yet to win a road game in the SEC during his tenure, and that September game at Athens looks, well, it looks like Petrino’s streak will continue.

But it isn’t just that, Arkansas has to get some defense, and lots of it. Plus, a reliable place kicker to win the occasional close game.

At last report the kicker and the defense still haven’t reported to campus.

For next time: A look at the conference expansion and contraction and why Arkansas really isn’t in the South, but not really anywhere else either.

* Many thanks to regular Poolsville reader and D*G columnist Linda Calliouet (maybe, I can’t remember how to spell it but Word suggests "Calliope") for printing in her paper verbatim, and without any attribution, passages from my Arkansas mafia coverage.