The NCAA Rules Committee has recommended ejection for targeting defenseless players above the shoulders, and in theory that's fine. D.J. Swearinger is a very good football player who is probably a decent human being. He should also never, ever be allowed to do this on a football field.

The proposed change makes targeting an ejectable offense, but also makes targeting a reviewable one.

The committee has also decided, in an effort to address concerns when one of these plays is erroneously called, to make the ejection portion of the penalty reviewable through video replay. The replay official must have conclusive evidence that a player should not be ejected to overturn the call on the field. Additionally, a post-game conference review remains part of the rule and conferences always have the ability to add to a sanction.

Be prepared for every ejection to be reviewed, because Will Muschamp has already appealed one and we do not play football for another eight months. Be prepared for us to note that this goes against the NCAA's promise of a leaner rulebook for football, something you should have anticipated since the NCAA is making this up as they go. Be prepared for referees from each major conference to make a total disaster of this in their own way.

• SEC: Referee ejects concussed and unresponsive Western Carolina receiver after Alabama safety leaves feet to annihilate said receiver.
• ACC: Ron Cherry flags defender for "car theft ring," sentences him to 6 years in state prison
• Big 12: Only calls it against Oklahoma State, even in games where Oklahoma State isn't playing and what the hell ref they're on bye week this is BULLSHIT.
• PAC 12: Glasses ref calls it on a punt, ejects Steve Sarkisian for arguing call even though Steve Sarkisian is coaching in a game 580 miles away, cites "Butterfly Effect" and awards a rouge to Oregon State.
• Big Ten: Is actually only used in appropriate circumstances but Jim Delany requires referees to refer to the penalty as "Ungentlemanly Honorfailing."
• MAC: Like this ever even comes up in a MAC game. You might as well add a rule incorporating the Third Amendment.

There is also an additional proposed rule change allowing only one person on a team to wear a number. When you say Lane Kiffin hasn't made his mark in college football, just remember this and nod confidently. Ooh! And a ten second runoff for injuries at the end of the half that might incentivize injuries!

What says love like a big ol' keg, girl? Nothing, that's what.

THE COVER IMAGE IS LOVE. ROLL IN IT TODAY.

THIS IS WHY OLE MISS IS TURNING ITSELF AROUND. Because they believe the right things, obviously.

Heavy Squats make you a better person #Strong

— Paul Jackson (@CoachPJackson) February 14, 2013

As they say in Oxford: hell yes.

ALL COWBELLS ARE REAL AND FUNCTIONAL. Miss State's new football facility was just rafters and aluminum when we toured it last year, but it's all nailed down and purty and all photographed in convenient slide show form. You will notice that the lights in the lobby are giant cowbells, but in event of an earthquake over 5.0 on the Richter Scale they will ring just like real cowbells. We made this up, but you would believe it because Starkville is a strange place, and Dan Mullen likes form AND function. (P.S. this is why Chris Relf works as one of the heavy sandbags in the weight room.)

SMOKEY IS STILL IN CHARGE. Tennessee gets in trouble for having an intern do some coaching, and if this was on the defensive side of the ball last year no one in the world would blame him for it. In other Tennessee news, Cordarrelle Patterson is getting the reviews you thought he might from scouts.

PLEASE SUPPORT SCIENCE. Dinosaur football was immense fun to make, mostly because we asked Joe Sertich to do it, and he responded like someone who'd been thinking about this for a decade. (Which he probably has.)

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY (A YEAR FROM NOW, SWEETIE.) The Auburner's cards are always a delight, but especially so when you work in a quality grayshirt joke. The Key Play's Paul Johnson card is also a keeper.

CHICAGO NEEDS MORE POWERFUL PEOPLE. Because really, reaaaaaally?

ETC: "And that's how I ended up in a ditch in Belgium." You're at fault here, Japan, and are part of the problem. IMPORTANT DINKLAGE NEWS. Never, ever lie when there's a computer record of your lies unless you want to claim you drove a hacked car.

A night of love means a night of love's verse.

Todd Graham, acrostic:

Forever

Our

Romance

Holds

Immovably

Resolute

ExceptIfTheyOfferMeTheMiamiJob

Bret Bielema, haiku

I love you so much

But right now my hands are tied

The card says "anal."

Dana Holgorsen, elegy:

How mournful is a winter's night,

When fall seems such a distant sight,

The only thing that brings me calm,

Is knowing this: I fucked your mom.

Jimbo Fisher, quatrain:

When your image fills my head

I recall what Harrison said

When he was so wracked with pain

"Gary Oldman, get off my plane."

Urban Meyer, haiku

I'd give you my heart

But there is a problem, love.

It came from an ape.

Frank Beamer (haiku)

This truck, so rusty

it's spitting bolts and smoking

Just like your cooter

Gus Malzahn (limerick)

Gus Malzahn likes to play fast

His lovin' wants to score last

He doesn't have time

For a limerick's lines--

Will Muschamp, free verse

"This is just to say"

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

your icebox

that wasn't

your ice box

shit

what the

hell did

i just eat

not plums

you say

I'm gonna

go sleep

in the

film room

Nick Saban, sonnet

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

The sun is a burning ball of gas. Eyes are eyes.

Miss Terry's eyes aren't fire.

Poetry's fucking stupid.

Bill Snyder, epic poem

Iram pande mihi Pelidae, Diua, superbi

Tristia quae miseris iniecit funera Grais

Atque animas fortes heroum tradidit Orco

Latrantumque dedit rostris uolucrumque trahendos

Illorum exsangues, inhumatis ossibus, artus.

Confiebat enim summi sententia regis,

protulerant ex quo discordia pectora pugnas,

Sceptriger Atrides et bello clarus Achilles.

- Bill Snyder, age 17

Brady Hoke, doggerel

Pizza in the morning,

Pizza in the evening,

Pizza at suppertime.

When pizza is on a bagel,

You can eat pizza

Anytime

Lane Kiffin, couplet entitled "Boobs."

Got a waterbed in my room that'll make you shout

Bounce twice on it and your boobs fall out.

[signs poem as "Fart")

Randy Edsall

[just submitted the lyrics to "The Reason" by Hoobastank and is disqualified]

WOO PISS SOOOOIE. You know, there is something symbolic about Arkansas fans being left adrift, forced to live in their own shit, and then emerging on the other side smiling and yelling WPS to no one in particular. You are never sane, Arkansas fans, but the lack of sanity makes optimism easier no matter the situation. (Via)

AUBURN STUDENT PAPER: NOT PLAYING. The student newspaper will probably get a very nasty response from an editorial not only demanding the resignation of AD Jay Jacobs, but also calling him the "sick pope" of Auburn athletics. On an unrelated note, "Sick Pope" would be a fantastic EDM DJ name. But hey,Cam's invited to a social, y'all!

LET'S NOT RISK INJURY LIKE THAT. And telling Jadeveon Clowney what to do is just a terrible idea if you value your own hide, even if the idea of him jumping to the NFL makes sense if only for safety reasons. But if anyone could have pulled a one-and-done and made it work in the NFL, it would be Clowney, because next year he will turn people into ashy silhouettes where people used to be. (Follow Florida's lead: just don't try to do anything on offense, wait for SC to implode on special teams, and you'll be fine, and possibly leave with an intact quarterback.)

ANTHONY MIDGET. Anthony Midget.

SINGLE BACK SEEMS PRODUCTIVE. If you wondered why the single-back clinic has become a kind of offseason mecca for offseason minds, well, it's numbers. (Though the point of big run plays coming out of the three back set should please anyone who wants someone to just ball out and run the wishbone for a whole game.)

ETC: THAT is how you break down a hockey fight. LSU baseball has way better food than you do.

We don't really know how this came up the first time, but it was probably Jonathan Franzen, and the thought of making something, anything happy out of Jonathan Franzen, ever. The first thought that came to mind was that Corona ad where the guy walks in, smirks, and announces to his friends at a bar table: CRUSHED IT.

And we thought of Franzen, miserable-ass Midwestern Jonathan Franzen, walking in and defusing the whole commercial, just rambling on to his aghast colleagues about failure, and the nature of failure, and then maybe a long digression about a talking turd. Then Franzen concludes by saying life is misery, and we should just get it over with, and that's really the only solution.

[dissolve]

[FIND YOUR BEACH, AND KILL YOURSELF ON IT AND LET THE BIRDS PICK YOUR PASTY FLESH APART ON IT appears on screen]

So that's how we started to talk about which authors should shill for booze.

Henry Miller Time is the most obvious landing space, but it fits beyond the name. Henry gets to pal around all day, delivering beer and maybe having a few hot, frustrating dalliances with select store clerks along the way. Maybe lose a truck or two, explain to the boss he's been shanghai'd by some canny highwaymen before going back home, catching his old lady screwing Keith Stone, and going to get shithammered under a bridge with some of the finest people in the world. The night ends in a brothel, but it usually does when you live the High Life.

What makes Jonathan Franzen happy? Nothing. But the taste of Jose Cuervo Especial helps, especially on those long nights when complaining about the internet and the kids not caring about fiction isn't enough to keep him warm.

"My mother is a fish. My jacket is toast. And my beer is Carlton Dry." To know the tragedy of Faulkner is to understand that he really would have thrived in the internet era, since he wrote his best works underpaid, working another job, and speaking in the voice of half-literate savages while trying to make deadline. Twitter, however, would be a problem because 140 characters is a warmup for a Faulkner sentence, and no one wants to follow that shit.

J.K. Rowling is the world's most successful English welfare recipient, so pregnant and and in a sports bra and cutoff jorts it is. WINGARDIUM BEVIOSA. [beer flies into hand across room along with darts, a bag of crisps, and an uncashed billion dollar check that was just sitting on the table]

The experience of malt liquor consumption will turn you into a hideous creature overnight. We read Kafka's letters in high school, and reading this written by a pasty tubercular Czech who couldn't hang clean a paper clip made us so sad at the time that we stopped watching The Fugitive for the 38th time and wept.

If one were only an Indian, instantly alert, and on a racing horse, leaning against the wind, kept on quivering jerkily over the quivering ground, until one shed one’s spurs, for there needed no spurs, threw away the reins, for there needed no reins, and hardly saw that the land before one was smoothly shorn heath when horse’s neck and head would be already gone.

That's just so full of sorrow. And racism. And sorrow.

"Why flirt with extinction when Seagram's and Ice Nine will fuck it on the dash of a Lamborghini Countach and wink at the horrified onlookers?"

Our nation's finest children's author was not our finest cook, but if medicare's picking up the bills then you've got a few bucks left over for take out Chinese. LOOTERS DRINK BUD, and fuck Ayn Rand.

This may not be a photoshop. Bukowski is the one on this list most likely to have actually posed in this position at one point in his life in this exact posture with this exact lighting, most likely while heading down the street to have sex with a three hundred pound prostitute. Bukowski preferred liquor, sure, but don't act like he wouldn't be happy to take down a suitcase of Kuala Lampur in the parking lot.

Ballantine Ale was the choice of Hemingway, but in the mortal sandstorm of history let it be shown that the dust swirls and falls and ebbs and covers the dusters of Cormac McCarthy whose throat felt the beer hit like a thousand elderly men in wheelchairs raining onto antarctic ice in a gory hailstorm of intoxicated clattering senescence. The next three posters in this series are Cormac McCarthy drinking beer while gutting a man to drink the water left in his liver, a bottle of Ballantine posed on an infant's skull in a post-nuclear wasteland, and a naked photo of Billy Bob Thornton with the word "NO" written on it, which is weird, but that's what Cormac sent the ad agency in the mail.

John Grisham is Suntory Time, probably in an ad featuring a lawyer strikingly similar to Grisham, who probably has lots of sex multiple times a day with stunning women, and who uses his lawyer power to out-lawyer other lawyers in LAWYERDOME. Then he gets on a sailboat with Suntory, and spends his time slapping his name on shit in Mississippi.

Phillip K. Dick probably didn't drink absinthe, but then again, if he did, would one ever really prove that the consumption of said absinthe was real, and perhaps done by a robot who only appeared to be human?

Don Domingue of Lafayette, LA is the only man on the planet who saw a Lamborghini Gallardo and thought, "You know, that could use some LSU-themed tiger stripes." While waiting to shoot a video in the car at LSU, he spoke with us about the Lamborghini, its paint job, and the time someone danced on its roof at Mardi Gras when he wasn't looking.

Spencer Hall: You attended LSU, correct?

Don Domingue: Yes.

SH: And your job?

DD: I don't really have a job. I have some businesses. They don't require that I be there on a regular basis. I used to have a job as a financial consultant for 25 years.

SH: That works. You now have the free time to do things like buy a Lamborghini Gallardo. How long have you had the car?

DD: About a year.

SH: New or used?

DD: Bought it used with 9,000 miles on it.

SH: Did you buy it knowing you were going to paint it in LSU colors?

DD: No. I drove it a while, and saw the yellow when I was watching a football game and noticed that the helmet color was the same color as my car, and I just put two and two together. I thought my car would look cool with some purple tiger stripes if I took it to the game. Just so happened we had three home games in a row coming up--Alabama, Mississippi State, and Ole Miss--and I thought I'd put the stripes on, go to the home games, and then after a few months take 'em off. I didn't realize the reaction they would get. Nobody wanted me to take the stripes off after that.

SH: When you went to the people who did the paint job: did they think you were insane, or did they just nod along and do it?

DD: Yeah, they kind of questioned it. But they weren't gonna refuse money, you know?

SH: What was the first time the reaction to the car made you think, "Whoa, I've done something here?"

DD: When I drove up at night and these people were surrounding me in every direction, and flashes were going off, and I was like "Man, what's going on?" Kind of felt like I was a movie star or something. I went to Mardi Gras, and the Super Bowl, and it was the same thing. Everyone just turns their head and starts taking pictures. There are like forty people around me taking pictures right now.

SH: You're a Saints fan and have a black Mercedes. Is that getting its own treatment?

DD: Someone did ask me about that, and I said it as kind of a joke. But how do you do a Saints car? Put Fleur-de-lis all over it?

SH: Have you heard from anyone at LSU about it? Like, coaches, players, administrators?

DD: No. I thought I would at least get some special parking privileges or something, but no. In fact, one of the campus policemen pulled me over out of bumper to bumper traffic and accused me of driving drunk. I haven't had a drink in years and years. I had to do a field sobriety test, and passed, of course. They said would have to ticket me for open container because my passenger had a drink in a koozie. It was a Sprite. The cop started stuttering and let us go. So getting pulled over chugging down Nicholson, that's it. A problem is what I got from LSU.

SH: So you're saying campus police will harass anyone, even a successful alum in a school-themed Lamborghini?

DD: Exactly.

SH: Do you have to shoo people away from the car sometimes?

DD: Most people are really polite, ask permission to take pictures, etc. Anyone can take a picture of it. But there are some people who aren't. One of the stripes in the back was torn off by some vandal when I wasn't watching. At Mardi Gras, when I parked and went inside to use the restroom, someone told me that someone jumped up on the roof and was dancing on top of my car. People just run up and jump up on the hood sometimes. No one's damaged it yet, though I have found footprints on the door from where people have tried to kick a dent in it. There's a lot of jealous people out there.

SH: Would you risk an SEC road trip with it? Would you drive it to Tuscaloosa or Oxford?

DD: Probably not. That's a long drive, and the mileage on this thing would bring the value down a lot. Home game are good for that. Now, if someone could carry it behind a motor home or something, well, sure. I'd do that.

SH: How fast have you gone in it?

DD: I'd rather not incriminate myself.

SH: Was it on I-10?

DD: I'm not saying, but that'd be a good guess.

Follow @SBNationCFB

On this President's Day, let us reflect on our greatest sportsman to occupy the Oval Office: Andrew Clawhammer BassProShops Jackson.

Other presidents have athletic résumes, yes. Gerald Ford played offensive line at Michigan. President Obama is known for a fluid hoops game. Richard Nixon was known for his love of bowling, and among many presidents Dwight Eisenhower was the one most fond of the meticulous, frustrating game of golf. Teddy Roosevelt actually invented every American sport we know today, and improved curling by using landmines instead of stones. (Canadians removed these for "safety" in 1934, forever stunting the sport's growth in the United States.)

The stamina of a distance runner (with smallpox). No president, however, displayed the extraordinary athletic gifts of Andrew Jackson. Jackson developed stamina as a youth using the 18th century's most demanding conditioning regimen: smallpox, poverty, starvation and imprisonment by the British. Smallpox endurance work forced on him by the redcoats might have killed family members and made him despise the English for life, but they turned Old Hickory into a distance runner capable of moving a hundred miles in three days over rough terrain fueled by little more than hatred, tree bark and the occasional slow pheasant consumed on the run.

Only Alabama football uses the same brutal regimen in the present day, and their results speak for themselves.

A prodigy at the sports of his time (including smallpox). No other American president excelled as Jackson did in the chosen games of his era. In post-colonial America those sports were summarized in the American Frontier Pentathlon:

• Shootin' (at people)
• Combat with the sharpest thing in arm's reach
• Horsin'
• Bleeding
• Smallpox (with walking)

Jackson by historical record excelled in every element of the Frontier Pentathlon. Boldly ignoring the NCAA's age limits, he joined the fight against the British at the age of 13, an age where most American youths were only consuming only two liters of whiskey a day.

Shooting was a specialty. Think of Andrew Jackson as our country's original lumbering pocket QB. In between wars between large groups of people, Jackson stayed fresh by murdering people individually. Rather than cower, stand sideways, or run screaming like a sensible person, Jackson hung tough in the pocket and delivered a fatal shot into the body of Charles Dickinson--after letting Dickinson shoot first, and taking a bullet in the chest. Andrew Jackson would cough up that blood for the rest of his life with a smile, just like Ben Roethlisberger will.

His weakest event came in sharp object combat, but he did take a sword to the face from a British soldier with aplomb, and made up for it in the equestrian events and in his other specialty: bleeding. Jackson, who while awake was either bleeding or in the act of making someone else bleed, once soaked through two mattresses in a long convalescence after a bullet shattered his shoulder. A month later, Jackson was back in combat, because excellence never sleeps and neither did Andrew Jackson.*

*Unless he was passed out from blood loss, which was common.

A gamer who played with injuries. Nor did Jackson's legacy of toughness stop there. The Bob Probert of the Oval Office played through a draft profile of maladies that included the mandatory smallpox, a dose of Floridian malaria, sword wounds, a shoulder shattered by gunfire, bullets lodged throughout his body, chronic dysentery, depression, and even excessive slobbering. This makes Andrew Jackson sound like frontier America's drooling, underfed, moody and homicidal neighborhood stray dog capable of setting off a metal detector from all the nasty, 19th century firearm-grade lead he carried in his body. This is because this is exactly what Andrew Jackson was.

A leader. You might wonder why he didn't die of rabies, then. The answer is simple: like all champions, Andrew Jackson bit rabies before rabies could bite him, and shrugged off the aches of his injuries when his team needed him. You can let the historians debate whether or not he actually did anything but kill people and yell at clouds while he was president. You can let them decide whether he was a psychopathic maniac, or a really psychopathic maniac. What we know is that men followed his orders and loved him, mostly likely because they were terrified of Andrew Jackson killing them.*

*A legitimate concern.

We do not know what women thought of him, perhaps because women were just trying to stay out of the way of whatever horrible things people were doing to each other in 1824.

An athlete. But we know what we know: that Andrew Jackson didn't sit inside a bowling alley sweating what the Kennedys thought of him like Nixon, and that he didn't bore himself to tears trying to hit the greens of Augusta National like other presidents. No, like a Brett Favre of the hillbilly murder era of American life, the original Gunslinger just went out there and played like a kid--a kid who'd lost everything he'd ever loved, and who has also hated the British, Native Americans, foreigners, more British people, still more British people, minorities of any sort., and basically anyone who wasn't one of three horses he declared "acceptable, and not deserving of instant murder."

We know that Jackson excelled at the sports of the frontier, and did them with grit, tenacity, and a bastard case of the dropsy, the 19th century's term for edema or swelling. What was Andrew Jackson swollen with? Sheer athleticism, American pride, and also gallons of bodily fluids, because even Andrew Jackson's body eventually had to surrender to Andrew Jackson.

PELINI PRISON PLANET. FAU's new stadium will be named after The Geo Group, a Florida company run by an FAU alum specializing in the privatization of prisons around the world. The Geo Group has been accused of fudging its staffing numbers, neglecting basic safety measures, and running a profitable business under the guise of a formerly non-profit enterprise. So it's perfect for college football, particularly because it could lead to Carl Pelini as warden of the first space prison, where an unfairly jailed Bo Pelini will have to fight his way out and tell earth about his brother's misdeeds. (Via)

THE NCAA IS NOW IN LEAGUE OF NATIONS TERRITORY. Firing Mark Emmert would be kind of pointless, since the NCAA from its foundation up is based on a cheat at this point. Not that you shouldn't just fire him because it feels right,since we have a feeling that $1.6 million salary--OBLIGATORY MENTION OF EMMERT'S SALARY--could cushion a rough landing. Oh, and Miami's off the hook if there's any sense in the world. (And there isn't, so expect horrible things.)

HOT SEAT WEEK. It continues with the rare AD-on-the-hot-seat discussion. Okay, not rare if you're an Auburn fan, because Jay Jacobs wasn't even allowed to have much say in the hiring of Malzahn, and doesn't even run a particularly profitable department by SEC standards. The only SEC team with a zero percent subsidy? Those barons of good governance at LSU, whose 0% subsidy as stated in official records is the clearest indicator someone in the Louisiana government is funneling drug money through the school.

AMAZING BOURBON SECRETS. Though we're convinced that most people overpay for their bourbon and couldn't tell a $100 bottle from a $50 bottle, we are pretty sure that even the layperson could tell Spilly's monstrosity from Pappy. (But not from Old Crow, since this is pretty much how they make Old Crow.)

MMMMM STICK/DRAW. Smart Football on the vicious things one can do to a defense with a mobile QB and the Stick/Draw prepackaged concept.

ETC: The list of Presidential pets is all you need this am, including "Fightin' Bob Evans" the guinea pig.

Nas is the Don and RON PRINCE IS THE KING OF NEW YORK NOW.

From Manhattan to Manhattan: that's the Ron Prince story now, or at least "Manhattan to Manhattan, and then back on the ferry to Piscataway. Rutgers officially announced the hiring of Ron Prince as offensive coordinator today, and with it gained dominion over all the lands and peoples owned by the Prince himself, which really just means Mack Brown. Thousands of invisible but dedicated Rutgers fans dominating the New York City sports scene, write Commissioner Jim "Magnolia Asslord" Delany, and thank him for helping boost the Rutgers brand enough to hire true football royalty.

P.S. Rutgers also hired a defensive coordinator and no one cares. RON P BACK.

The NCAA admitted wrongdoing in its case against Miami yesterday, giving the Hurricanes and their administrators reason to celebrate. As Miami does, they went to the club.

11:15 p.m. After being kicked out of a five hour dinner at 1500 Degrees, Miami President Donna Shalala and entourage arrive at LIV. Shalala parks on curb, leaves note reading "PARK IN COLON OF NCAA."

11:32 p.m. "The forecast calls for...HURRICANES!!! DALE!!!!"

11:50 p.m. Longtime Shalala confidant Trina and Senator Marco Rubio join Shalala in VIP. Shalala offers Rubio bottle of water, then hurriedly pulls it away and takes a sip. They laugh.

12:35 a.m. Bottles.

12:58 a.m. Shalala nods in direction of former Miami coach Jimmy Johnson, who exits the building a few seconds later with a blushing Serena Williams on his arm.

1:18 a.m. Al Golden challenges Shalala to full-count Stalingrad Bottle Siege. Shalala accepts.

"CALL ME THE SECRETARY OF WEALTH AND BOOMIN' TWERKVICES" Shalala roared as she finished the bottle, and then shattered it on the ground in celebration. More bottles were ordered.

1:56 a.m. A glum Randy Shannon is turned away at the door, and walks away shaking his head.

2:34 a.m. Shalala takes the dance floor.

3:22 a.m. An altercation ends the evening. One young male is taken to the hospital.

He is listed in critical condition.

A Friday night, according to 1980s Stroh's man: run through traffic in windbreaker, eat entire pizza, go bowling, get so drunk you end up at an unsanctioned boxing match, continue drinking, play pool, teleport back into bowling alley again, and then wait you're back at the unsanctioned boxing match, which is probably in the back of the bowling alley. Fire-brewed Stroh's! It's the beer for the most confusing evening of no-impact sports 1980s man ever had.

P.S. "Pizzas disappear."

Dave Rappoccio has done fantastic work on alternate NFL logos before, but if you're a fan of all things odd and English, then his Anglophile's redo of the entire league is a must. You will never, ever refer to the Bengals as anything but the "Stripey Wotsits" ever again.

FINGERS TO THE SKY. Miami, to the NCAA, in a NSFW piece of orchestral music constructed just for the occasion.

The NCAA somehow avoided cutting itself on the envelope--escaping death by exsanguination--and successfully delivered a letter of inquiry to Miami last night. The best piece of comedy to date in 2013 met an immediate and nasty rebuke by Donna Shalala, Miami President and former Slip N Slide label magnate, where she claims the NCAA, among other absurdities, actually used this methodology in establishing facts in the Shapiro case.

The NCAA enforcement staff acknowledged to the University that if Nevin Shapiro, a convicted con man, said something more than once, it considered the allegation "corroborated"—an argument which is both ludicrous and counter to legal practice.

The NCAA could counter by saying that this is not a legal proceeding. Miami will likely counter by saying yes, but now you have one, and handing the NCAA a lawsuit of some sort. Louisville also received a letter from the NCAA re: Clint Hurtt and their case, and hopefully they'll do the same thing Miami does with theirs. (I.e. applying it to the ass, putting it in an envelope, and returning to sender.)

NOTED POWERS WASHINGTON AND VIRGINIA. Alabama is again the king of oversigning, though it's fun to note that traditional oversigning squawlers in the Big Ten can take comfort that there are four Big Ten schools in the top ten. (Notre Dame is in the Big Ten. Shush. They are. Just because you're not in the party doesn't mean you don't belong there, man.)

RELEVANT: Everyone stop moving for five minutes. Look at your life. Look at your choices, Big Ten. Just look at them. Then, go ahead and invite the best prospects anyway, because JIm Delany is drinking a gallon of milk a day just to come back and win this damn squat-off with the SEC somehow.

MURFREESBORO IS FOR LOVERS. Don't come in the Sun Belt and expect not to tear da club up every now and then, since five MTSU football players (Former and current) were arrested as part of a "near riot" at a local club.

LOOKING APPROPRIATELY GLADITORIAL. Texas A&M's mockups of Kyle Field renovations look awesome.

ETC: Hulk Hogan's restaurant is not good! The rules about corner kicks are ridiculous. George Orwell wins all ledes, forever.

Cam Cameron will be paid $3.4 million over three years as the new offensive coordinator at LSU.

That is an obscene number by any standards for an assistant unless we're talking about Clemson, but even then they're competitive. You might be asking the kinds of questions moral, sensible people would be asking about such money: should we be paying people that much to coach football, especially the former head coach at Indiana? And is it even ethical to do so?

Our first thought: would that be enough to get Cam Cameron, who doesn't run a full football team as his full-time job, a healthy living standard as a Golden Triangle/Bolivian Coke Belt drug baron? For academic purposes we will assume the cash is taken in a lump sum to "do something else," and is smuggled out tax free in the intestines of an exotic animal.

LET'S INVESTIGATE THAT LAO REAL ESTATE MARKET

Don Cameron can't get started without a swanky base of operations, or at the very least a solid base camp on which to host dignitaries, land helicopters, and hoard liquor, cigarettes and loose women. For that you're gonna want to be in Laos, the sleepy heroin-oozing backwater happy to cling to Communism as a thin veil for kleptocracy as long as you pay into the Commisar's kitty.

You'll do that by paying seven percent of whatever you're doing upfront. It was nice knowing you, $238,000, but seven percent isn't really that bad, and unlike Thailand you won't have to worry about "laws" or "paying the the other gang, you know, the ones called the police."

After the local asshole-in-charge has received his cognac and karaoke budget for the decade, you may proceed buying your compound. Let's just put you on this piece of land "near the caves" in Vang Vieng, along the only highway in Laos and convenient to both the capital and the hill country to the north. At 50 bucks a square meter, that's about $230K.

Let's really, really splurge on that house, and say it costs $500K with pool, security systems, generators, helipad, and a bangin' karaoke lounge out back. Maybe a tiger-striped brothel (It wouldn't be the first.) Before we've even gotten off the ground, you're looking at a rough sum of a million out the door, give or take whatever isn't randomly seized by Lao officials.

The house, however, is just a start.

YOU'RE GONNA NEED A PLANE

A baron needs a baronial sky chariot, so you will need to throw down some cash on a plane, both for moving your product and for the possible flight from the country once the Chinese decide you're moving a bit too much black tar happy paste into their basement. The Chinese will decide this at one point. You're gonna need a damn plane.

Everything you know about aviation likely comes from Launchpad McQuack, and that's why you'd die within seconds of purchasing a plane. However, Don Cam ain't gonna take that chance. The last thing you want to skimp on is a helicopter, but the second-to-last thing you want to avoid being cheap about is commercial aircraft. In this corner of the world, you're gonna drop around $200K on a plane without holes in too many parts. You'll also need to pay a pilot if you don't want to die on landing, and a mechanic if you don't want to die shortly after takeoff.

Aviation all told will run you somewhere around $400K at least, and that's before you have to replace the engine that falls off somewhere over the Mekong one sad night.

YOU'LL WANT WHEELS.

A really tough, really expensive car that simultaneously announces "I'm wealthy" and "I'm a total asshole" at the same time, and is capable of carrying you and four terrible flunkies into town for groceries/shakedowns/

Range Rover it is. Additionally, you have purchased a used Lamborghini because you are an idiot and several local SUVs because henchmen need wheels, too. Call land transport and gas for a while at somewhere around $250K.

LIKE IT OR NOT YOU'LL NEED HENCHMEN

This is a bit mysterious, since there's no real formal wage scale available for "henchpeople." However, crime pays, so if we have a core staff of twenty henchpersons (please, gender-neutral terminology only) making twice the average GDP per capital, then we'll have a payroll of around $120K. Add in the food and beverage (top shelf, of course) and call it $150K, because any third-world heroin baron knows henchpeople empty the wallet through your refrigerator and bar first.

GUNS

Oh, so cheap it's frightening. $50K would buy you an obscenity of an armory to get started.

TOTALS

Throw in a few odds and ends you might have forgotten, and the total startup in terms of boots on the ground? Around $2 million, leaving a raw $1.4 million as startup capital.

Now, we're not saying this is gonna be easy. Don Cam is gonna have to make friends. He's gonna have to kiss a few asses and kick a few more. He's gonna have to get his ground game AND his air game straight, and he's going to have to do it all on a pretty trim budget after everyone gets their cut.

But the point remains: Cam could at least get a good running start, and ostensibly so could John Chavis, Chad Morris, or any other assistant with a three year contract totaling three million or so in total value. They've always had the same life expectancy, but now college football coordinators do, in theory, make low-level start-up drug baron money.

P.S. Give him five years and Nick Saban would have the Golden Triangle under his thumb, and be expanding into the methamphetamine trade aggressively throughout India and Australia.

THERE IS ALWAYS A TIME TO HUNT, WARRIOR. You know you've played way too much Far Cry 3 when you read this, sigh, and immediately get the urge to raise a laser-sighted bow at your prey.

If you've got some time to kill #Badgers fans, check out our updated Football video playlist on YouTube go.wisc.edu/1xvx8m

— Badger Football (@BadgerFootball) February 20, 2013

If there is indeed the Most Dangerous Game afoot in Madison, we suggest not doing what we do in the aforementioned video game and attempting to win whole firefights with molotov cocktails and a compound bow. Yeah, it'll get you style points, but there's no way in hell you're winning it all fighting like that. (Big Ten Metaphors, ahoy!)

OWLCATRAZ REMAINS REAL. FAU'S new stadium sponsor, the Geo Group, aka your friends in the booming private prison industry, attempted to turn their Wikipedia entry into a PR statement, even using "We" and "our" like they were, we dunno, writing a college football blog or something.

For all the controversy over the stadium naming deal, there's probably no way in hell FAU's giving up that money even with a petition out to keep the Geo Group's name off the stadium. Six million dollars is a shitload of money for any program, and especially so for tiny FAU and, yeah, their stadium named after a company that imprisons people for profit, and in theory would like to have as many people in jail as possible for their bottom line.

NCAA MOMENT OF EXCELLENCE. Just helping promote amateurism by fucking up lives one facet at a time.

THIS COUCH FEELS SO GOOD, MAN. The Rocky Mountain High of college football couches may have to be transported to the Colorado football offices, since we heard they need chairs for their meeting rooms.

GIVE THE MAN HIS RECRUITING STICK. Ron Zook for Huskers recruiting? GIVE THE MAN FIVE RED BULLS AND A CELLPHONE AND LET HIM BURN, HUSKERS. (Don't let him do much else. BUT LET HIM IN ANYWAY.)

ETC: Fuck Paterno truthers. Dan Shanoff sounds a lot more sanguine at 40 than we will.

We're only just starting to look at depth charts, but on the NBA trade deadline, we ponder a few trades that would work out for the best for all concerned, except for Purdue. (Who just wants something, anything to make them feel alive.) Jadeveon Clowney may not be traded to Georgia, because he is a refugee from a destroyed alien world.*

*He may have destroyed it.

One quality Florida defensive lineman for Jordan Matthews. Will Muschamp's stacking them up like so much beef for the winter, and with five wide receivers waiting to ripen out of the 2013 class, Florida needs some grabbyhands types and needs them fast in order to have anything like a semblance of an offense. "No way, Jose!" you say, Vanderbilt. That's why we're throwing in this tax attorney specializing in offshore trusts just to sweeten the deal for free. Until NYU grows an SEC-quality football team, it's as good a deal as you'll get for developing a pass rush while hiding valuable taxable assets. Now we're speaking the same language.

Trade a spare QB for any of Texas' safeties. Anyone can do it, really. The next step is to place that safety at QB, and watch them win the Heisman Trophy. Your old QB will beat out David Ash for the starting job, and save Mack Brown's job for another year. Maybe you don't really want to do this, Texas fans. Forget we said it, unless you want Texas to make this trade with itself, and thus suck the entire universe into a paradox-pit.

Georgia trades a tailback to South Carolina for a defender to be named later. South Carolina needs someone in the backfield after Lattimore's exit, and running back-rich Georgia just needs....someone on defense. That player cannot be Jadeveon Clowney, who is an alien, and whose migration to the Peach State would violate Georgia's strong anti-immigration laws. Tell South Carolina fans the same about Clowney's resident alien status, and they will not care. Hell, I'd let him lay his evil alien eggs in my esophagus, dude.

Stanford trades TE/OL to UCLA for QB. With a starter nailed down, Stanford would deal one of its QBs to UCLA in return for anyone over 6'2" and 230 pounds. David Shaw will then take him and turn him into a serviceable tight end, all-conference offensive lineman, brilliant chemical engineer, or possibly all three at once. UCLA will have acquired a backup for Brett Hundley, something they may need after the universe gets hungry and remembers its favorite snacks are the connective tissues of UCLA quarterbacks.

Florida State trades a defensive back for a quarterback. FSU, in a perfect world, would be out marketing a defensive back, or any of their other embarrassment of riches on the defensive side of the ball, in exchange for one quarterback thanks to the departure of E.J. Manuel. Ideally this would be Clemson trading Chad Kelly for said d-back, both because FSU needs quarterbacks, and also because Chad Kelly in Tallahassee would be a never-ending spout of soft-serve excellence for us to feast on for years.

Purdue trades their punter to Ohio State. Because the Buckeyes need a punter, and Purdue just wants some respect, or at least recognition they're alive, dammit. Failing that, they will take a dot-matrix printer and an autographed picture of Chris Spielman.

Kentucky and Maryland trade teams to each other. Would anyone notice? This is a question of science, and science runs on experiments. Let's makes some correlations and test some hypotheses, world.

NO ONE TRADES WITH ALABAMA. They're like Iran with a better W-L record. Embargo their asses, even if Nick Saban has this "amazing" sale on six guys he really, really needs to get off the roster before April. He is full of lies, and fifth year seniors strangely resistant to the all-powerful process.

Mat drills are a rite of spring for football players. We mean that in the most Stravinsky-ish of senses: there's a lot of dissonant noise, old men surveying the carnage, and young chosen ones dancing until they fall over from exhaustion. Watching this will remind you that the point at which you likely fell out of the bracket of [available athletic talent] came when someone told you to change directions, your brain acknowledged this, and your ass just continued to chug along on the same track while your feet went shiiiiiiiiiiit wait and probably just exploded.

P.S. Anyone who thinks as an adult "that could have been me, man" really should do ten minutes of change-of-direction drills, or maybe go through Donald Driver's old dancer/wideout routine to get a feel for how inaccurate this statement likely is.

P.P.S. We don't know what that human centipede pushup thing in the first 30 seconds of the video does either, besides "suck with the power of fifteen cocaine and lightning-powered vacuums."

(Via @jokastrength, who points out someone who looks like Redfoo doing drills at the :55 mark)

YOU CAN'T BUY PUBLICITY LIKE THIS, FLORIDA ATLANTIC.

Well done, Geo Group. Notice that FAU doesn't even seem to be picking up much of the blame here, mostly because everyone knows FAU is tiny, took a $13 million subsidy from the university last year for athletics, and is probably going to have to forfeit that because a modern gulag profiteering conglomerate just isn't going to slide in anywhere and put its name on something without public outcry. Then again, that's exactly what Geo Group wanted here, because someone at the Geo Group is a.) a football fan and b.) not very bright.

THE RETURN OF THE COMBOVER. We're trying to track this down ourselves, but Hal Mumme is totally going somewhere in the BCS for a coordinator spot, and yes yes yes yes yes please let this happen.

PAT DYE WAS A TECHNOLOGICAL PIONEER. While others were warning about the dangers of pushing the limits of the average conversion van, Pat Dye boldly forged forward not just with plans for a football machine, but the ULTIMATE football machine. Captain's chairs! People thought they would cause a vehicle to explode, but Pat Dye did it and lived. The Chuck Yeager of van technology doesn't even want you to thank him, man.

HOLGO DEMANDS MORE POWER. Reaching into the Stanford pool for an offensive line coach means one thing: more smashy things along the line.

AND THEY SHOULD GET IT TOSSED. Everyone just sue the NCAA, hire more lawyers, hire a few more, bunker up, appeal, then appeal some more, and then wait to see who runs out of money for legal bills first. But they do such good work!

ETC: The Vikings had a sense of humor, if you didn't know. The finest mashup ever made, and this is not an exaggeration. That is an unfortunate way to get knocked out. "Get the heart get the heart FUCK THERE GOES THE HEART."

ESPN has made a documentary about the 2008 SEC basketball tournament, undoubtedly the strangest thing I have ever seen, ever.

The documentary seems to get a lot of things right, but it's one story, and one story alone. It couldn't really capture the whump-whump-whumping sound the tornado made against the roof of the Dome, or the rippling of the static fabric covering it. They missed the full splendor of an exhausted Billy Gillispie, who looked like a talking boiled egg topped with a toupee by the weekend's end. They include the water rushing down the steps of the Georgia World Congress Center's staircases, but miss the oddly tranquil sight of the Atlanta skyline through its walls.

They also clearly go on talking about the tournament, the one that would finish in front of just a few hundred people in Georgia Tech's gym in a game so quiet you could hear coaches speaking clearly in the huddles during timeouts. I'm glad they have footage of the game, and try to tell some kind of story over it. That is what you are supposed to do with events.

I don't remember events. I only remember a moment when sports were not simply overshadowed, but vaporized by the random and uncontrollable. The way players stopped in midcourt and just listened to the storm steamroll the building, or how Verne Lundquist, standing to my right, didn't dive under a table and instead just muttered "What the shit was that?" The way you could walk right into the hallway past baffled security and listen as SEC officials openly admit they had no idea what to do.

That night I had to drive home right down the storm path to my apartment. The police and fire department were overwhelmed, and swallowed up by the total, pre-Walking Dead zombieness of the night like everything else. You could walk right out of the Georgia Dome and step over fragments of the building, and then drive past the bombed-out corner of the Cabbagetown Lofts, or the completely flattened tire shop on Dekalb Avenue, and around the groups of dudes hanging around a darkened Pink City clearly out to see what doors the storm had blown open for the taking. It was terrifying, humid, a bit evil, and more thrilling than I really still want to admit.

What I remember was everything -- sports being the least of those things -- disappearing, and in a few seconds being replaced by genuine undistilled chaos. I haven't seen the rest of the documentary, and probably won't. It's about a story, and I don't remember a story. All I remember were broken things, the sound of a tornado pinballing drunkenly through downtown Atlanta, and the glow of my headlights on people wandering through unlit streets dotted with broken glass and trees who'd finally surrendered to gravity.

P.S. I drove past the fence by the CSX Hulsey yard that night. The tornado had blown it out like the curve of a lung for three blocks, leaning it back a good three feet before bouncing down the street and knocking the teeth out of the Westin Peachtree. That was five years ago. This is the same fence five years later in a picture from this morning.

ATL, shawty.