Oh, no reason. Why do you ask?

This is your second half thread. SEC Fans! Feel free to disown yourselves of any association with Arkansas! Ohio State fans, LET THE RAWK FLOW.

This is your evening thread. Turkey sandwiches and the dregs of the vodka bottle LET'S GO. 

Details sketchy, but injury certain: Sam Bradford is to the locker room after a BYU defender landed on him in Dallas.

IT IS BY NAME A CAT SCHOOL, AFTER ALL

Trust this advice from a fan of a team whose players and their interactions with dogs have never gone well: leave the dog alone. Yes, that is an adorable dog. All dogs are in their own way adorable, even the Xoloitzcuintli. That's the dog in the Westminster that looked like a hellbeast birthed from the unholy union of a doberman and a sentient, burning oil slick. They're used as living warming pads by pain sufferers, and seem to be perfectly happy just laying on people and waiting around to be fed despite their obvious demon genes.

So yes, even if you are walking to class and see an adorable dog and it turns out to be a service dog, Auburn football players, DO NOT PET THE DOG. Also, don't run up and yell WHAT at the person when they ask you to stop petting the dog, because it is Auburn, and there are plenty of dogs to pet. Brave, fearless dogs there to advance the researches of Auburn's School of Exploding Dog Studies. Dogs that don't belong to a veteran with PTSD who has the dog for that exact reason, and who goes to a local television station and tells them all about it.

P.S. Why you gotta specify "female" veteran, AL.com? We mean, a veteran is a veteran.

P.P.S. Okay maybe Auburn players should just give up on being close to dogs at all, ever.

The Westminster Dog Show reviews its most massive and terrifying group tonight, the Working Group.

Thus follows a terrifying review of the working group, mostly comprised of dogs designed for war, controlling huge animals, the pursuit of frightened humans, and for invasions of other planets.

AKITA

Japanese breed whose name means exactly what it is: "large." Stoic, silent protectors bred when a lonely 17th century woodcutter carved the first Akita into existence to make his only friend in the world. The Akita leapt from the picture and killed his creator, but not before the lonely woodcutter croaked out his famous last words: "At last, friendship." Akitas should not be left alone with children; together, their conspiracies will be your undoing.

ALASKAN MALAMUTE

Will eat nothing but frozen horsemeat for months at a time, thus earning it the nickname "The Novak Djokovic of the dog world."

ANATOLIAN SHEPHERD DOG

Bred for protecting livestock against the wolves of the rugged highlands of Turkey, the Anatolian Shepherd is right behind you. No, don't move; he'll only chase you, and will die before giving up. Just breathe slowly: a racing pulse only makes your fear more delicious to him.

BERNESE MOUNTAIN DOG

Gentrification with four paws. If you put more than four in one space, a coffeeshop with three craft beer taps appears on the nearest streetcorner.

BLACK RUSSIAN TERRIER

Bred with a great cascade of black fur over its eyes to shield the world from the laserlike contempt it holds for human frailty. Highly radioactive, but only when it is in a good mood. Is never radioactive.

BOERBOEL

The Boerboel is WHATEVER IT WANTS YOU TO THINK IT IS because the phrase "African farm muscle car dog" doesn't even really come close to describing it. It guarded the mines against diamond thieves in South Africa so I'm pretty sure its preferred food is "terrified diamond thieves." This one wants to be thought of as a unicorn, and it's a unicorn. It is. Just say it, and back away slowly without making eye contact. JUST SAY IT BEFORE IT NOTICES YOU'RE HESITATING.

BOXER

X-Rays reveal its interior contains no organs, only springs, chewed up shoes, and huge clouds of pure fart gas.

BULLMASTIFF

Per Wikipedia, these are "quiet dogs that very rarely bark." If they do, you are seconds from an imminent death or from being sat on like a lawnchair by a 150 pound dog. Depends on the day, really.

CANE CORSO

A "light sporting mastiff" for the dog owner who wants a Bronze Age war dog, but with modern styling and performance. Described as "dominant," so not recommended for owners incapable of deadlifting twice their bodyweight.

CHINOOK

The state dog of New Hampshire; can turn into a Subaru Outback at will.

DOBERMAN PINSCHER

Bred by a German tax collector, so you know it's going to be bulletproof and incapable of empathy or pity. The Doberman's tail is often docked, as the adult's tail matures into a fully functional submachine gun. Delightful with kids.

DOGUE DU BORDEAUX

Once you find out they're French, it's impossible to shake that Frenchness. This dog should be given cigarettes as a reward in the arena; the breed description should read "must be balanced through its powerful flanks, and committed to a vague but militant atheism it jettisons on visits to its grandmother in Toulouse." Despises America; has never been to America.

GERMAN PINSCHER

This dog is tiny compared to the other beasts in this group, so assume its heavily armed at all times, and wanted for murder in one of those states that don't really seem to find murder suspects very often like South Carolina or Illinois.

GIANT SCHNAUZER

This dog exists only to prove that the dream of a Giant Dachshund remains real and attainable.

GREAT DANE

Deceptive in that they are actually aliens piloting giant dogbots designed to commandeer the most important territory on earth for colonization: the most comfortable couches or beds in any home.

GREAT PYRENEES

A very amiable line of brown bears dyed white by corrupt Spanish breeders for centuries.

GREATER SWISS MOUNTAIN DOG

The try-hard, insecure, title-obsessed brother of the merely Great Swiss Mountain Dog, evidently.

KOMONDOR

The giant white dreadlocked thing running around the ring tonight, the Komondor uses its unique threaded coat to protect its skin against the teeth of predators trying to eat livestock, and its feelings against those who will never understand its need for individuality in an increasingly homogenous society.

KUVASZ

Breed traits include cartoonish racism.

LEONBERGER

An affable, giant goofball of a dog, the Leonberger was bred in hope of making a dog that looked like a lion.

German illustrators of the 19th century SUCKED at drawing lions.

MASTIFF

Would knock over an AT-AT simply by pissing on it. Breed traits include "plodding," "window-rattling steps," and "drool trails reminiscent of whole beached jellyfish."

NEOPOLITAN MASTIFF

A Mastiff left in the oven too long.

NEWFOUNDLAND

Dogs strong enough to pull swimmers in distress out of the water, the Newfoundland is often referred to as the "nanny dog" for its boundless affection for children, and also because it, too, goes undisclosed on tax records. (P.S. It is not legal to leave a child with a dog no matter what Good Dog Carltold you.)

PORTUGUESE WATER DOG

Its hypoallergenic coat made it an ideal choice for President Obama's family. Please share this dog on Facebook immediately for best results.

ROTTWEILER

"The dogs are said to have been used by traveling butchers at markets during the Middle Ages to guard money pouches tied around their necks." BUTCHERS MUST HAVE BEEN THE WEALTHIEST PEOPLE IN GERMANY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

SAMOYED

Hailing from Siberia. Has antifreeze for blood and will eventually settle in South Florida once it attains oligarch status through a copper mining scheme.

SIBERIAN HUSKY

Also hails from Siberia; also will pursue relocation to South Florida, where it will DJ two nights a week as opener for DJ Rony Seikaly.

STANDARD SCHNAUZER

Not really a fit with the rest of these, but the Germans made it so it must be designed to absolutely destroy something.

TIBETAN MASTIFF

The Lhasa Car Alarm! You're supposed to throw a fistful of gravel in the face of one of these if they come after you during a trip to Tibet. A friend did this as instructed, and the dog ran through it like so much buckshot off the hide of a tank. He had to camp out on top of a car for ten minutes until someone came and got the dog. I assume that person was either the mayor, or the mayor's assistant in a scenario where the dog was mayor. (The dog was undoubtedly the mayor.)

ST. BERNARD

Unusual in this category in that it is used for "Search and Rescue," and not merely "Search."

SB Nation Video Archives:Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show Petting Challenge (2012)

REAL SIMULATION OF MAN VERSUS BULL NOT ACCURATE

Mid-February in the South and its brutal fifty degree temperatures drive the spry young frat boys of the SEC to cabin fever. Cabin fever induces madness; madness begets behavior forcing the observer to break out the dumbass bingo card.

For example: did two fraternities on the campus of the University of Georgia get into a fight? Yes, probably while peeing on nearby trees to mark territory, and rubbing freshly sprouted antlers on nearby cars. Did this fight result in gunfire? Of course it did. Did this gunfire allegedly take place from the balcony of a giant, ramshackle house painted to look like an antebellum mansion that still resembled a Branch Davidian compound home? You bet it did.

Was this person the president of the fraternity? OF COURSE HE WAS. Golf-deprivation madness is real, and if it doesn't stop raining in Athens there will be real casualties. This man will be the governor of Georgia in 2032, and will be elected on a platform of pushing for the legal carry and implantation of guns in utero. "If you're serious about protecting the unborn, you'll let them exercise their god-given rights from the moment of conception. Also, we're gonna invade Tennessee for their water." [RIOTOUS APPLAUSE]

The other example shows how far-flung that wintry madness can fly. That guy who was gored in Pamplona Ciudad Rodrigo this year? Oh man I bet he's an SEC frat boy. You bet your ass he is. He's from Ole Miss, isn't he? Check. But he's not even one of those dudes from Mississippi who's just trying to get a degree, but one of those guys from like Franklin, TN or Marietta who goes to Ole Miss to try on the casual racism brand they think they're gonna get there? Where they can listen to David Allen Coe unironically, and get cheap coke from Memphis on road trips? Yup, this gentleman is from Marietta, Georgia.

Did the bull get him in the ass? Well, here's the AP.

Miller underwent a three-hour operation to repair damage to thighs, sphincter and back muscles, Crespo said.

There's photos, too, if you want to see the face of someone realizing in real-time what a terrible idea it is to dare a bull to do something. This has been your latest in SEC Frat Boy Farm Reports. Good morning, and expect obvious, terrible updates as Mardi Gras comes to a close today in New Orleans.

[/cues up "Rednecks" by Randy Newman]

WE LEFT OUT VIRGINIA TECH FOR OBVIOUS REASONS

George Washington. Famous for being first, but hasn't done anything in centuries. RUTGERS

John Adams. Sort of forgotten and small and lost to Thomas Jefferson so...WAKE FOREST

Thomas Jefferson. Bought Louisiana, had zero scruples, drank hard, and invented the disgraceful sex scandal. LSU

James Madison. Tiny, but punched well above his weight, and lasted way longer in the game than he had any right to via craftiness. BOISE STATE

James Monroe. Known for having financial difficulties. MARYLAND

John Quincy Adams. Thorny bastard who swam naked in rivers for fun and had big-ass sideburns. WEST VIRGINIA

Andrew Jackson. Completely insane. Noted for exaggerated sense of hurt feelings versus imagined, fantastical notion of honor. Played weak schedule versus outnumbered opponents. Didn't graduate high school. Wildly successful and generally reviled. FLORIDA STATE

Martin Van Buren. Tiny alcoholic without much of a record from New York. BUFFALO

William Henry Harrison. Was on top for like, thirty days once. BYU

John Tyler. Would have rather been farming, honestly. IOWA STATE

James K. Polk. Blew up the tiny United States from the WAC-sized niblet it was prior to his Presidency to a full Power Five-sized behemoth. TCU

Zachary Taylor. Died mysteriously. PITT

Millard Fillmore. "What's he doing on this list? Was he ever President? That wasn't just a thing they made up just to name schools on television shows after him? Really? He was President, of our country? Why is Dan Hawkins running away from his body with a dagger?" COLORADO

Franklin Pierce. A "popular and outgoing" man with dismal luck, a ferocious drinking problem, and a scanty resume. WAZZU

James Buchanan. Poorly organized, ineffectual, and harbinger of disaster. The dreary Forever Alone of American Presidents. PURDUE

Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps our greatest President, savior of the Union, and dead. NOTRE DAME

Andrew Johnson. Known primarily for "secluding himself in order to avoid public embarrassment." ILLINOIS

Ulysses S. Grant. Spectacularly corrupt, wildly popular, prone to drinking, and known mostly for being good at something else entirely. KENTUCKY

Rutherford B. Hayes. Got where they are via shady backroom politics; big fan of gold standard to back all that green. BAYLOR

James A. Garfield. Spoke a lot of languages, was super smart, and didn't do much because he died before he could ever get to the endzone. Would have been the first person to tell you how smart he was, too. NORTHWESTERN

Chester A. Arthur. Didn't really try to do anything other than pay the bills. The well-considered punt of Presidents. IOWA

Grover Cleveland. Big, unremarkably remarkable, forceful, and suffered horrendous defeat before reclaiming the title out of sheer will and tenacity. Once wrote: "sensible and responsible women do not want to vote" in an article in Ladies Home Journal, which is really the most Michigan Mansplaining thing to do ever.  MICHIGAN

Benjamin Harrison. From Ohio and didn't really do much. OHIO

Grover Cleveland. Big, unremarkably remarkable, forceful, and suffered horrendous defeat before reclaiming the title out of sheer will and tenacity. Once wrote: "sensible and responsible women do not want to vote" in Ladies Home Journal, which specifically is the most 1891 Jonathan Chait thing ever. MICHIGAN

William McKinley. Was goaded into war by the press, wound up being shot by an unemployed anarchist. THE NCAA.

Theodore Roosevelt. A raging, half-mad, football-obsessed egomaniac obsessed with war, shooting people, being shot, killing animals, punching people, being punched,  and generally proving himself to be the baddest man in the room despite being born into every advantage on the planet in his chosen sphere. Counted more territories as his than he actually had. ALABAMA

William Howard Taft. Any ambition and talent the man had was overshadowed by his very public battles with self-defeating behaviors. OKLAHOMA.

Woodrow Wilson. Made up nonsensical garbage conferences to serve his own needs. TEXAS

Warren G. Harding. Beloved criminal with absolutely no talents besides being handsome, charming, and prone to corruption and infidelity. SMU

Calvin Coolidge. Kept a low profile and said as little as possible, which allowed him to dodge responsibility for any problems that began during his tenure but did not manifest until after his departure. NEBRASKA..

Herbert Hoover. Should probably just have stuck to his first love of mining. UTEP

Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Won multiple titles; waged war in three directions; not afraid to try to pack a few courts to get what he wanted. MIAMI

Harry Truman. Cussed a lot, won close contests, had the occasional disaster. Known mostly for a famous tie with North Korea. MICHIGAN STATE

Dwight D. Eisenhower. Known for producing ineffectual subordinates and would rather be at Augusta National. GEORGIA

John F. Kennedy. Spent a good portion of the day with his pants down or looking for amphetamines. Bought titles for the whole family? AUBURN

Lyndon B. Johnson. Known for continuing a long war he could not possibly win. Like a certain mascot, was known for pooping in front of people. TEXAS A&M

Richard Nixon. A vacated title, you say? USC

Gerald Ford. Fell down a lot and was a good sport about it. Exhibited questionable judgment by showing exceeding generosity to a publicly disliked and disgraced leader. KANSAS

Jimmy Carter. No one's still really sure how this happened. GEORGIA TECH

Ronald Reagan. If you hate him, talking about him to one of his lifelong fans is the greatest waste of time, and the reverse is equally true. The simplest course is to just pretend you're not familiar with his work. PENN STATE

George H.W. Bush. Turned a relatively minor political family into a dynasty only to watch some idiot who'd been stashed in Texas turn it into a disgraceful joke. FLORIDA

Bill Clinton. Massive failures, massive comebacks, more massive failures, and a propensity for getting caught with their pants down in so many ways. Prone to bloat. ARKANSAS

George W. Bush. HE'S WILL MUSCHAMP NO THAT'S NOT A TEAM BUT THAT'S WHAT HE IS WE ALREADY SOLVED THAT NEXT NEXT NEXT---

Barack Obama. Blows up people with illegal robots. Cardale Jones is basically an illegal robot, right? OHIO STATE

SEE IT'S NOT ALL SNOWSTORMS AND RECRUITING SNIPING IN FEBRUARY

Been through this process together with the same injury weeks apart @denzyrebfour the opportunity will come again. patiently waiting.. It's been too long, thank you God

A video posted by @successfulquon on Feb 15, 2015 at 6:40pm PST

That's Ole Miss wide receiver Laquon Treadwell running. This is what athletes do normally and without much fanfare, but Laquon Treadwell is the guy you last remember running towards the endzone for a game-winning TD against Auburn on November 1st before...well, before he was tackled from behind, suffered a horrendous leg injury, fumbled the ball as a result of the pain, and played a brutal role in the worst ending to a football game we've ever seen. So this is running, sure. It's also a fantastic sight to see just four and a half months after utter disaster.

(P.S. That's Denzel Nkemdiche running next to him. He is not a slow man.)

THIS CROCODILE DIDN'T DIE. HE LEVELED UP.

He did it. Most of us talk about maxing out our potential in such vague, aimless, and hopelessly ambitious ways, but this creature--this creature did it.

This crocodile lived longer than you probably will, making it to an estimated one hundred years old living in the wild. They did something else you probably won't do, living a life as a demigod fed by passing locals who believed throwing a chicken down his throat would lead them to good fortune. This crocodile had three settings: eat, sleep, and survive, and it did all of them so well that it did something which is only a failure in mankind's realm: it became gloriously, smugly obese. It even outlasted others in the art of gluttony: three other crocodiles who couldn't hack his boss lifestyle in the same pond died from croco-gout, or whatever ridiculously ballin'-ass crocodiles on the demigod route die of in the half-wild.

It even died a celebrity's death: found bloated and unresponsive in a pool, basically. This Crocodile is the most successful animal we know. It did not die from undereating, but instead auto-terminated after determining that this planet, even at its most luxe, still could not meet the limits of his voracious demands for luxury. Live at half its level, and consider yourself a rampaging success.

THE POSITION SHOULD FINALLY BECOME OFFICIAL

If Rutgers is thinking about hiring a recruiting coordinator whose only real contribution to the program has been money and financial consulting, it's time to take the next step in college football evolution with them. Your football program has hired a MAN WITH CASH to recruit players, and it's long past time for it.

What are MAN WITH CASH's talents? He has money, and will give it to recruits. In exchange for money and the services it can purchase for the recruit, the recruit will work as a football player for the university's semi-professional football team.

What will MAN WITH CASH do when he is out of cash? Easy. He will go get more, probably from lucrative TV contracts, or perhaps from the rich-ass people who support the football program because they are bored, and like to own things and push them around the playpen they call life.

What, besides money, will MAN WITH CASH bring to the program? Nothing. He will bring nothing else to the program but money. He will easily be the most popular and beloved person associated with the entire program so long as he continues to dispense money.

What if other people also find a MAN WITH CASH? Other programs will, and then they will have to create a new position called MAN WITH MORE CASH. This will escalate until a market is created. Subsequent interactions will likely follow that market.

This sounds like how everything else in the world works, for the most part, right? Yes. This is how we've agreed to do things in most of the world. You do work, and you mostly get paid for it at discriminatory rates depending on who you are, and whether people hate you because of your gender or race. It's bad. It's a terrible system and like most terrible things it is wildly popular.

Isn't this what we have in college football already buddy? Alabama gets most of the recruits in college football and has an economy the size of Iran's. You go look at the number of houses in Alabama without doors or electricity and tell us whether that's a realistic market economy where big money at work wins out in the end.

How do I apply for the MAN WITH CASH position? Show up to the football program with money. They'll do the rest. And get on it: Stanford and Vanderbilt needs to start flexing for real.

WE'RE ALL JUST STARDUST MAN

1. Someone had to do it, and of course that someone is an asshole who lives in Brooklyn. Fortunately, this particular asshole did a really good job of channeling Florida Man. It's a hair under 50 minutes of long stares into cameras, random discussions about fighting, pills, taking three naps a day, dogs, watching the sunset, getting arrested, how we're all just stardust, and about the difference between being dumb and stupid.

2. The following points are things that are completely fucking on point here.

3. Dudes who got DUIs toodling around on bikes.

4. Random guy outside a hotel toting a car battery into a room

5. Random guy at the laundromat with his pit bull talking about busting another guy in the face with brass knuckles.

6. Same random guy talking about hopping a train to escape the police.

7. This guy and his wife, who appear to be the happiest people on the planet.

8. A huge chunk of this being shot in Tampa/St. Pete.

9. The biker guy doing tai chi in the parking lot of a tattoo parlor at night

10. The liquor store owner just talkin' about the Lightning's chances in the playoffs while smoking

11. The guy talking about how dirty a pond is and how people litter and throw garbage everywhere

12. That same guy pointing out a bike he just threw into the pond

13. Dude getting deep philosophical in front of a Waffle House

14. This guy:

15. The bike-throwing littering guy saying "life can end at anytime" while wearing a Jets hat.

Good morning, you can watch it, you didn't need to get anything done today.

HELLO DYNASTY

Florida football is on a three victory streak. First: a triumphant win over East Carolina in the Birmingham Bowl, complete with what turned out to be literal pants-shitting effort from Adam Lane. This is never meant to embarrass Adam Lane. He simply did what others only talk about doing: working yourself so hard you leave it all on the field.

The second victory: Jeremy Foley vs. window.

UF AD Jeremy Foley at the home of CSU Rams head coach Jim McElwain presumably discussing #Gators job @TFrei#Gatorspic.twitter.com/tLc6IjXKSP

— John Leyba (@Presto89) December 3, 2014

AND YOU CALL YOURSELF DOUBLE-PANED. Foley won that staring contest easily, and hired a coach who was not an overhyped gym teacher with ADHD and an office full of empty Monster Energy Rehab cans. That's almost like a third victory. (Almost.)

The third victory? Getting out of the 2014 NCAA bump violation case with no penalties beyond what Florida has already self-imposed. That's three in a row, and damn near what we'd call a trend. That coach is not named in the NCAA report, but he is outlined by position and experience and role, and his name definitely does not rhyme with Poker Billups. "Poker Billups," again not named in the report, also was tipped off to the recruit's location by a recruiting writer, which is not at all an unseemly and weird look into the dark world of collegiate recruiting, but whatever THREE WINS IN A ROW.

If we get through the spring game without five ACL tears and with more than one quarterback on the roster that's like four in a row. Practically a dynasty at this point, really.

THE OBC PUTS DOWN HIS FIVE IRON FOR TEN SECONDS TO FLEX ON YOU HOLLYWOOD FOOLS

Don't worry about Matthew McConaughey not picking up any awards for Interstellar. Any Longhorn fan's used to a pointless night or two.

I'd say Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking could play quarterback at Florida but he's capable of a decent rollout.

Julianne Moore's pretty expensive. You want a redhead who's happy to get exposed for two hours for less and break down on command, call Jason Garrett when you're ready.

Sound of Music's not so touching once you've seen Lane Kiffin sing "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" at a recruiting camp.

Oregon knows what it's like to win for the best clothes every year and lose the big one, Wes Anderson.

You didn't win, Steve Carell, but at least you're ready to play George O'Leary now.

Poor Bobby Petrino. Must be so confused that Whiplash is a good thing in 2015.

I know Kirk Ferentz was disappointed in Boyhood losing, since he understands what it's like to spend over a decade building something that puts everyone to sleep.

Jeremy Foley cried during Feast because he gets emotional watching anyone else take all the cupcakes, especially if it's a dawg.

When do you think Linklater said "fuck it" and cut the Michigan championship scene from the script?

The Best Foreign Language Film without Lou Holtz on "College Football Final" is no category at all, frankly.

Big win for Florida State last night. The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance is the school motto, after all.

That locked box gag was so weak Baylor's scheduled it in 2018.

Not all bad for that Neil Patrick Harris guy, though. Bomb like that in Los Angeles and they'll still hire you as Alabama's offensive coordinator.

I liked it better when it was Big East Sniper and Frank Beamer was in it.

American Sniper's all about hitting your target accurately so I assume every SEC offensive coordinator hated it.

Always thought Rex Grossman would go to Hollywood, but Ed Norton took the job where you rewrite plays and like the smell of your own farts.

Charlie Weis was fantastic in Big Hero 6. (He turned down The Lego Movie because it's about successful building.)

The "In Memoriam" portion's always tough. I think Dabo's startin' to suspect that Ruby Dee didn't go live on a farm.

Not sure how "UNC Plays Defense Well" didn't get a nomination for Short Film.

Not a single nomination for Godzilla, but that's what happens when you release that and Cardale Jones in the same year.

Y'all think these seat fillers are willing to wear a Jacory Harris jersey?

Stedman shows up on time, sits quietly, and will never leave. He's Hollywood Kirby Smart.

I didn't watch Into the Woods because that's also the name of Ed Orgeron's sex tape.

J.K. Simmons told everyone to call their daddy and yet Mark Richt hasn't even texted me yet.

IF I WANT A TROPHY OF A NUDE MAN I'LL GO TO SWITZER'S CHRISTMAS PARTY

THERE IS NO LIMIT TO THE DEVIOUSNESS OF SEC CHEATIN'

The SEC remains legendary for its cheating, so pardon the paranoia. Maybe getting Urban Meyer on a boat wasn't a conspiracy. Maybe putting him on that boat, and then turning on a powerful weather machine that generates enough fog to trap Urban Meyer on that boat wasn't part of the plan. On a boat. Out of cellphone range, off all social media. LOST.

Port Tampa Bay was closed to shipping traffic early this morning due to the fog. Among the ships stuck at sea is an arriving Royal Carribean cruise with Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes team, according to reports.

Just imagining Urban Meyer trying to go ten minutes without looking at his phone is funny enough, but imagine him doing it on a boat full of people who only want to talk to him. Urban Meyer is easily in five funniest football coaches to imagine trapped on a boat, a list which we most definitely did not just make up on the spot.

5. Gary Patterson. Only because he'd reconfigure the ship into a seastead, write its constitution, and get it bumped up from tiny tax shelter status to member of the UN Security Council in a matter of seven years.

4. Houston Nutt. We've seen this before, and it ends with you getting a whole body of water named after you.

3. Gary Pinkel. After a few days he'd probably just give up and become a steady, eight or nine win a year cruise captain that everyone respected for never talking a lot. (Bonus: already looks like a sea captain.)

2. Bobby Petrino. Only because we want to see if someone can mutiny against themselves before the crew does. Might have a problem with avoiding obstacles, resulting in spectacular wreckage.

1. Bret Bielema. PARTY BARGE AHOY. Why's Bret Bielema flying a plague flag above his ship, even though everyone is healthy and hitting the ice floe shot slide like there's no tomorrow? To let people know this party is SICK.

Tonight a great show ends. Or doesn't. You decide.

Parks and Recreation is a truly great television show. It has adorable characters who are somehow not cloying. It manages to be consistently funny without being cheap, emotionally engaging without being saccharine, and introduced entire new veins of humor without many of them ever feeling forced. It's been a tour de force from start to finish in a way that few shows have ever been. Everyone who made scads of money from it deserves every penny.

That said: by rule, you should not watch the finale tonight unless you have never seen a single episode of the show before.

It's the next logical step to TV bandwagoning, i.e. watching the finale of a show without seeing a single episode of the series. It's also an adaptive strategy for someone like me. I represent a large swath of the viewing public: the irresponsible, schedule-free person whose life is a chaotic hellscape of semi-planned and random events. Oh once, yes, there was a time for watching TV on a clock. That time was 1994, and it was a horrible time that, like most of the past, should be burned from the memory banks of history. (Do you remember when NBC survived by sandwiching Suddenly Susan and Caroline in the City between Friends and Seinfeld? No? Good, you missed nothing.)

Instead, I now watch TV as the cavemen found food: by grabbing it whenever possible. Over the course of seven seasons, I've probably watched sixty percent of the episodes, and watched them in no order whatsoever. It hasn't ruined a thing for me. By design, you can step right into Pawnee, and then step right out again. It has to be made for this, because Parks and Rec's writers know what you know already. No one watches anything in order anymore unless they're binge-watching--the only real reason anyone who watches needs a semblance of an overall story arc anymore.

And when series do get to endings, they can't win.  Get too sentimental and you lose the comedy; wrap up too many threads in one go and you've turned the show into a laundry list of actions. They are generally bad. Seinfeld's worst episode was its last. How I Met Your Mother time-traveled to show that you could, in fact, have sex with your wife and the girl of your dreams so long as one of them died of cancer at a convenient time. Even the series finale of something as universally reviled as Two and a Half Men managed to sink below the low bar of what was expected of it.

Even the finale of Mad Men, the most overanalyzed and carefully wrought TV show of its time? If we're wagering, then here's a bet that people will probably not like it at all because it will be a finale, and thus really, really hard to do as well as you've done the rest of the series. Oooh, look, Don's driving away as a well-curated song plays, and Pete Campbell hides in his backseat with chloroform and rope! That's what will happen, because endings generally suck, and because Matthew Weiner will give you exactly zero percent of what you want.

Some shows do need finales, sure. I'll watch the Justified finale because it has a murder-based plot structure. The same could have been said about The Sopranos, though. If Graham Yost pulls some kind of David Chase shit and has this suddenly end with Raylan and Boyd drinking coffee to a quick blackout at a Waffle House somewhere in Kentucky, we will be pissed to an unholy degree.*

*It's hard to go wrong when your show's backbone is "rural criminal murder," even in a finale.

That's not to say that Parks and Rec will make a bad finale. But even good finales are generally bad episodes of a TV series, and that's probably something not even Parks can escape. You, however, can escape it by simply not watching in the group sobfest every comedy series finale wants to be. There's seven seasons of the show out there in the cosmos forever. Go watch one of those. If you still insist on watching it though, that'll still be a pretty good show. You can watch it when you probably watched the rest of Parks and Rec, too: whenever you want to, and probably in the wrong order. I never watched it the right way to begin with: Why start now?

Or don't watch it at all. A show you like can never end if you refuse to show up at its funeral.

THE BIG TEN'S GOT AN IDEA FOR US ALL

High off Ohio State reviving the conference singlehandedly with the first College Football Playoff Title, Jim Delany is seizing the moment, taking his new pocket full of chips, and letting it ride on the tables Probably while sweating into his watery Jack and Coke. Okay, Jack and Diet Coke. This is Jim Delany, and there's no way he doesn't prefer a diet option as a mixer.

Anyway, the YEAR OF READINESS is a great concept, and not just for football. Who, at one point in life, hasn't pulled back and said "this is all coming too fast, and I need a year to just chill and prepare." The YEAR OF READINESS shouldn't just be a college concept. No, it should be something you can take at any age, and take immediately and on the payroll. If Jim Delany's serious about this, then you have to admit the validity of the premise not just in college, but well beyond the fair ivied gates of the Big Ten's universities.*

*Did you know that only 84% of the University of Iowa's applicants get in? Is higher better? This is something we'll investigate in our YEAR OF READINESS.

Our year of readiness, for instance, would include:

1. An hour of video games a day for a year. The bare minimum to continue identifying with our children, and their passion for educational games like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Far Cry 4
2. Sleep? 11 hours a day at least to prepare ourselves for the inevitable, sleepless grind towards death or Florida retirement, whichever one happens first. It's what athletes require, so just imagine the wonders it could do for a person who barely moves at all.
3. Krav Maga classes. We'll just sign up for them and pay and never attend and probably enable an autodraft on our bank account we won't notice for several years of steady robotic payment. In light of this, we may propose a second YEAR OF READINESS just to figure out this and how we're still being billed for subscriptions to George, Cargo and Official Dreamcast Magazine.
4. A pointless art project. Something we've been meaning to reconnect with that we were never good at. Yes, that's our pottery wheel. It cost nine hundred dollars, and we use it to launch toy cars across the room. But we got this for you for Christmas. It's an egg molester. No, we don't know what that is, but that's exactly what we decided it is. Never art.
5. Working for next to nothing just to improve the depth chart of our semi-employer who doesn't want to pay real wages or provide real benefits for the millions of dollars our athletic talent helps bring in the door and put on the conference's custom television network.

Man, we're gonna be so ready after all this. TO THE POTTERY WHEEL.

YOU ONLY GET ONE CHANCE TO THROW/ YOU ONLY GET THIS OPPORTUNITY ONCE TO LASSO

There are so few moments in life where you know you, and only you, are the only possible person for the situation. Frankly, we don't know or can't remember if we've ever had one of those moments at random: the instant when you do, in fact have the jumper cables, or can indeed fix the cable car motor to avoid certain doom for you and your fellow passengers. Those moments in life are so rare, and even rarer if you're as useless as the average person.*

*Or like us, more useless than the already useless average person

But this man: this man had his moment.

Note the ladder, indicating that they probably were on a worksite and got the radiopsychic bulletin LLAMA ALERT that only people with lasso skills get through the atmospheric wavesphere. Peep the extra boss Dodge Ram that looks like it's got busted apholstery, at least three empty bags of chips on the floor, and possibly a cupholder full of spent .22 shells and/or a dip cup. The hood has sun damage because its driver did some drywall work on the Sun. It was hot, but overtime is overtime no matter how long the commute might be.

Note most importantly that the approach these guys decided on was that the guy should stand up in the back of the pickup truck and try to lasso the animal from the truck. This made sense because the dude in the back said: I GOT THIS. Not "oh, I used to lasso stuff for fun in Boy Scouts." A real, bulletproof confidence that in the middle of the day, perhaps while throwing a gas station sandwich in the back of the truck, that with no warm-up he could get the llama where Animal Control failed.

And on the second attempt, he did, and after a few handshakes drove home and back into his daily life. Excuse me.

THIS MAN SHOULD BE KNIGHTED. THIS IS THE KIND OF FEAT THAT WON YOU LANDS, PRIVILEGES, AND TITLES IN SOCIETIES OF AGRICULTURE AND HERDING. JUST ONCE LIFE OFFERED UP A KEYHOLE AND ONLY HE HAD THE NECESSARY IMPLEMENT TO TURN THE DOORS OF GLORY AND LET THE SUNSHINE OF GENIUS FLOW THROUGH THE FRAME. THIS IS THE KIND OF THING THAT BYPASSES "NEWS" AND INTO LORE. AND TOMORROW, SOMEWHERE IN PHOENIX, THIS DUDE IS PROBABLY GONNA WALK INTO A QT AND GET ANOTHER BISCUIT SANDWICH LIKE HE'S NOT A GOD WALKING THE EARTH.  A GOD WHO WON'T GET HIS SANDWICH BOUGHT FOR HIM FOR THE HONOR OF FREEING THE CITY OF PHOENIX FROM THE TYRANNY OF DISTORTED INCA-GOAT-MONSTERS.

This man is great. Please buy his sandwiches for him forever, Phoenix.