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THE MORNING CONSTITUTIONAL POURS MARYLAND A DRINK

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IT'LL GO WRONG, BUT LET THE TERPS DRINK ANYWAY

Normally the idea of wine and beer sales in stadiums is something we unilaterally support. After all, if West Virginia can do it without suffering instant arson and mayhem in the stadium, then most anyone should be able to do it.

But then someone whispers "Maryland is trying to do something."

University of Maryland President Wallace D. Loh has approved a trial plan for the school to sell beer at its football stadium and other athletic venues beginning this fall — a proposal that has divided the campus community and is opposed by some prominent public health advocates.

This is Maryland, and at Maryland there are rational public health advocates who believe none of this will curb binge drinking. They'll make reasoned cases for this, and that's what they're supposed to do.

We don't have to do that. All we have to do is point out that this is Maryland, the school where Bear Bryant rolled up for a year, took a look around, and quietly fired up a Chesterfield before muttering "To hell with this" and leaving. This is the program that hired Randy Edsall happily. This is the program that in the middle of a large population center with ample resources and a solid fanbase somehow managed to run their athletics finances into a hole so deep only Jim Delany could find them for a rescue.  It's not fair to call their fans riot-y, but...you might want to call their fans a little riot-y.

This will go sideways, is what we're saying. Maryland should be able to do this, and they'll probably do this because it's a successful financial margin they can add to the ledgers, but it'll go sideways because this is Maryland football and in your bones you know something drastic will go wrong. They once had a former coach die from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. The whole campus burned down in 1912. The number of times you see "frustrated, the coach resigned" in their history is terrifying, and that includes a guy who was an alum whose dream job, for whatever insane reasons, was actually the Maryland head coaching gig.

Then again, Maryland's historically been so mediocre that you might as well let them drink in the stadium. A couch is gonna die, sure, and there might be a little pepper spray tossed around the yard, but Maryland fans do that every now and then anyway. The Terps have to play in East Lansing and Iowa City after October 30th this year, which even if you win still sounds like abject misery. Might as well let them have a drink when they get home.


SHUTDOWN FULLCAST 3.6: THE RIVALRIES EPISODE

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WE DISCUSS RIVALRIES AND WHY YOU HATE SIMILAR PEOPLE ONCE A YEAR WITH GREAT INTENSITY

This week's Shutdown Fullcast is not only late, it's recorded on the road with relatively poor audio quality! Obviously you should listen to every terrible second of it.

Topics covered:

1. Rivalries updated, i.e. can you make up a rivalry out of thin air? Should you even have rivals? Which rivalries actually matter, and which ones do people even really care about? Why are the most intense rivalries between the most similar types of people? Remember that time South Carolina and Clemson had a head-kicking brawl that cost South Carolina a bowl game? You should probably remember that more often than you do.

2. Is Les Miles sort of doomed at LSU? Beyond the usual ambient level of doom one might associate with LSU?

3. What teams are you really, really unwilling to admit you enjoy watching? And not "oh, it's a guilty pleasure!" level watching, but "oh god please don't let even my wife know I enjoy watching them" kind of shame or discomfort.

Listen in the Soundcloud player below, subscribe on iTunes under Podcasts/Sports, or download directly here.

THE MC FLIES NORTHWESTERN AIRLINES

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IF NICK SABAN AND LLOYD CARR ENDORSE YOUR BUSINESS, RUN

Video evidence from 1999 that the following things are true:

  1. That Lloyd Carr was considered the senior and/or more prominent football coach to Nick Saban's junior at one weird, now incomprehensible moment in history
  2. That Lloyd Carr probably did not know this was a commercial, and earnestly congratulated all service employees on jobs well done in exactly this fashion all the time.
  3. That Nick Saban Hands have always been a thing, even when delivering stilted lines to grinning airline counter employees.
  4. That we can laugh at Saban here but his 1999 Michigan State team beat Florida in one of those bowl games Spurrier kind of just decided to show up and figure out on the spot.
  5. That if Lloyd Carr and Nick Saban decide to endorse your airline, there is a 100% chance it will be bought and absorbed by Delta.

Good morning.

SHUTDOWN FULLCAST 3.7, OR THE ONE WHERE WE TALK ABOUT BREAKUPS

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NEVER, EVER GO BACK ON A BREAKUP YES WE ARE LOOKING AT YOU URBAN

This week's edition of the Shutdown Fullcast gets right down to business by discussing realignment five years on, the least bad ways to break up with someone in college football, and the other following foolishnesses:

  • How a lot of people still don't seem to know Mizzou is in the SEC
  • The Big East's amazing investment strategies in turning 1.4 billion dollars in possible TV money into one hundred million dollars in just eight years
  • Texas A&M's move to the SEC has been the second marriage your mom dove into with both feet and zero hesitation
  • The various ways to dump a coach or player that involve both the most and least amounts of pain
  • The time Auburn managed to divorce a guy and then date his best friend, aka the Chizik/Malzahn switch
  • The invention of something called the "No Cuddle Offense"
  • Reggie Ball fan fiction! (aka giving the people what they want)
  • A hypothetical marriage between two coaches that results in someone being banned from a Kirk Franklin concert
  • A Kirk Franklin reference on a college football podcast

Listen in the Soundcloud player below, subscribe on iTunes, or simply download directly here.

THE MORNING CONSTITUTIONAL SUMMONS THE USUAL NEST OF VIPERS

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HOOK 'EM, YOU TALKING SPREADSHEET, YOU

If you have forgotten, let us remind you that Texas politics is a simple game. You strap a bag of snakes to your face, walk into a room full of other people with snakes strapped to their face, and then see if you can emerge as the last one standing.

This game of snakebag polka includes everything about the University of Texas, who recently upended their longtime football coach and athletic director and president in a particularly intense bout of snakebaggin'. One of these vacancies was taken by Steve Patterson, onetime president and GM of the Portland Trailblazers known for maximizing revenue and minimizing the respect of anyone who comes into contact with him. Introducing a tactless walking Excel sheet into this situation would, eventually, go as badly as you expected.

And that eventually is evidently "now, or last week, or maybe a few months ago, who knows." There's a lot here, and given Chip Brown's track record you can and should be somewhat skeptical. But if half of it is true, everyone already hates the new AD at Texas and with reason, since he appears to be nickel-and-diming the program down at every level and taking every available shortcut from the professional GM's handbook to maximize profit. (This includes attempting to get the City of Austin to pay for a facility, which LOLOLOLLLL good luck with that, buddy.)

The most damning bit, though?

* Sources said football coach Charlie Strong, who saw his and his coaching staff’s personal ticket allotment cut from eight to four last year, fought to increase the salaries of his eight quality control coaches from $24,000 to $50,000 after last season. Texas has the lowest salaries in the Big 12 for its quality control coaches – even behind last-place football finisher Kansas ($45,000). Strong’s request was denied by Patterson, and six of Texas’ eight quality control coaches who had built relationships with the rest of the staff, left to find better paying jobs, the sources said.

Paying less than Kansas for your QC coaches while running your own cable network off your athletics budget, largely funded by football. HOOK 'EM. As for one casualty of that snakebaggin'? He's just chillin' and hanging out with his close friend Matthew McConaughey, and probably laughing double-hard at the part about Patterson taking trips to Shanghai and Dubai to "raise the profile of the program."

IT'S JUNE 18TH SO LET'S WHISPER THIS IN YOUR EAR

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NEVER TOO EARLY TO START LOOKING AHEAD

Come here. No, a little closer. No, even closer, pal. Get cozy. Don't be nervous. This isn't scary. A little closer, don't make this weird. You smell nice. No that's not a weird thing to say at all, I'm just complimenting your body wash. Is that coconut water and sandalwood? You smell of fictional Indochina. That's a compliment, and you'll take it as one.

Just a little closer. Yes, you know that you'll be watching the first game of the 2015 college football season live from Charlotte, and that it will feature South Carolina and North Carolina. It'll be like the Belk Bowl, but hot and with twice as much live Belkyness. That's great and you already knew that and seriously: this bath gel is KILLING IT. Don't ever use anything else, and sorry about yelling in your ear there.

Whispering again: but guess what you get to watch after that?

WKU/VANDYEEP

Oh yes. You get to watch Vanderbilt lose to a really good Western Kentucky team. THE DREAM. I'M YELLING THE DREAM OF OUR FOREFATHERS AND FOREMOTHERS IN YOUR EAR: A CONFERENCE-USA TEAM BEATING VANDY ON THE FIRST NIGHT OF THE SEASON. GLORIES LOUDER THAN YOUR EARS CAN IMAGINE. What are we saying, you ask, clinging to your permanently damaged eardrum?

Dust it off and prepare to use it, is what we're saying.

TheySupposedToBeSEC

EMERGENCY FINEBAUM OPEN THREAD

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NOT A DRILL REPEAT NOT A DRILL

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOO---

THIS AIN'T A DRILL Y'ALL

FINEBAUM'S GONNA TALK ABOUT THE DANG OL' STARS AND BARS

RIGHT AFTER HE TALKS ABOUT THIS GOLF

CAUSE APPARENTLY WE GOTTA TALK ABOUT THE GOLF

BUT RIGHT AFTER THAT THE CALLERS ARE GONNA EXPRESS SOME FEELINGS ABOUT THE CONFEDERACY

THERE HAVE BEEN ZERO WORK DAYS WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT ON THE SEC NETWORK

PLEASE CONTACT THE EPA AND MAYBE THE ROCK

HE'S HANDY IN DISASTER SITUATIONS

Here's how Fox made bad golf TV out of the 2015 U.S. Open

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Fox's U.S. Open coverage failed mightily and thoroughly.

Fox bought the rights to the U.S. Open for the next 12 years. So there is at least one bright spot here: they have to get better at broadcasting golf, because they paid a large amount of money for it, between this and several other PGA events. When it comes to sports, Fox buys things, doesn't read the manual, and then figures out the whole operation while the vehicle is in motion. Sometimes they hit a few parked cars as they get going, and the 2015 U.S. Open will just have to go as another entry on the accident report.

They do have some cool stuff they can legitimately say worked, like the ball tracker, which helps the 97 percent of the population who cannot spot a white ball in flight against a light blue sky. Greg Norman was pretty good, even if he struggled to say the word "otolith," and even if half that pretty-goodness is his accent. Americans cannot resist sports commentary with an accent, particularly if they're convinced that accent instantly conveys some set of superior character attributes.*

*Australian accent hints: tougher, more chill than Americans, and possibly capable of effortlessly surviving months in a desert climate at the drop of a hat.

The rest is and was bad. Even the casual sports omnivore dropping in on a slow weekend could tell that this was bad TV made badly and at great expense. Fox missed big shots, or was late to them. They showed a shockingly low number of actual live golf shots relative to their peers. They ran an information-poor broadcast that often missed player ID and score, and at one point lost their leaderboard graphics package entirely. Cameras had difficulty tracking the ball, announcers ran together and over each other, and interviews ranged from the mundane to the bizarre. Somehow, on a seaside course with adjacent mountain scenery, the 2015 U.S. Open felt like watching golf through a spyglass.

It was fundamentally bad TV for the following reasons.

One: Televised golf is one of the hardest sporting events to pull off with anything resembling competence. It takes place in staggered series across 18 holes with at least one camera on each hole, and multiple cameras on most. For the TV production geek looking up at 70 monitors of green grass, it doesn't mean just paying attention to two teams. It means knitting all that together into a live narrative as it's happening, and doing it all from the production truck with at least eight different people in your ear and 18 different stories going on at once.

The phrase "shuttle launch" is used a lot, and with reason. If you do it right, everything ends up floating along nicely and with a deceptive lack of effort. Do it wrong, though, and everything blows up on the launchpad.

Two: A lack of chemistry and flight hours together in the booth and production truck. It's not like Mark Loomis, the producer of Fox's U.S. Open coverage, hasn't done this before. Loomis worked with ABC/ESPN on three of the four majors prior to coming to Fox, and was hired especially for this. But unlike those ABC/ESPN crews or CBS' Masters team, which have been working together in some variation for 15 or 20 years, Fox's team doesn't have this familiarity. They don't know the quirks of each other's timing, and haven't developed the kind of rhythm that veteran crews have. That kind of inexperience might not be totally noticeable on something like a football broadcast. In something as intricate as televised golf, though, a couple of hitches in the rope make big knots with a quickness.

That shallow pool of experience makes for big mechanical mistakes, but also forces errors of touch. Joe Buck was as much a victim of this as anyone. He had the worst time with the first two days of the Open because those early days, more than any other time, are when you need a collected store of otherwise truly useless/interesting information to drop about otherwise obscure or lesser known players or courses. Buck didn't have that, and had to anchor Fox's first broadcast of a major in what was effectively his first work in the medium. It's not that he couldn't have succeeded. It's that no one could have in that situation.

Traditionally, Fox's first move is to just heave a pile of money at a task, and hope the weight of sheer cash moves whatever obstacles might be in the way. What's lost in the rush and the cash tsunami are the details. In college football, the running gag is that football broadcasts on Fox feature at least one shot of the marching band at all times, because this is their blunt and limited understanding of collegiate color. In soccer, it meant putting Gus Johnson in the lead spot simply because he was available and exciting. This, despite Johnson having no experience calling international soccer, and often struggling with the basics.

Curt Menefee saying "match" when he should have said "round" doesn't destroy a broadcast, but what it does is confirm what you might have been thinking all along about Fox just deciding to do things without much practice.

Three: Bad ideas. Sandwiching in human interest stories when you could be showing live golf shots is a bad idea, and it's worse when you run a Tiger/Michael Jordan piece completely at odds with the rest of the broadcast.

Four: Chambers Bay was a strange, hostile stage for good sports television. Links golf can look spectacular on television, but finding the ball against what looked like ruined automotive floormat carpet is one of the worst jobs in TV. There's really no getting around the convoluted staging of the course itself, something that had spectators and golfers falling down hillsides all weekend.

Chambers Bay wasn't just hard for TV people, by the way. The beat reporters ended up roped off from some of the most important scenes of the tournament via the strange topography of the course. In the media room afterwards there was near jubilation when Dustin Johnson missed his birdie putt. They weren't Jordan Spieth partisans. The miss just meant they got to go home, and that's an option the TV viewer doesn't really have -- you're stuck with Fox on golf for a decade.

SB Nation video archives:The toughest holes in all of golf (2014)


THE MORNING CONSTITUTIONAL WON'T STOP NOW

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BECAUSE WE CAN'T STOP NOW

It's cute, other sports. The NBA can compete for a while for sheer absurdity. The NFL tries, but fails because it is by design created to stamp every last crinkle and crease of individual out of its participants. (Peyton Manning is basically a talking pressed sheet of aluminum at this point; his greatest concerns in life now is rust and the threat of continued oxidation.) Soccer is really the only serious competitor for total absurdity, even if calling press conferences to deny killing a Ghanaian rapper to perform a human sacrifice is almost cheating.

We say this because yesterday, college football stormed into the party with a sack of oxycontin, a handle of Evan Williams, and eight drunk Marines on shore leave. And it decided it did not like how quiet the party had gotten. For some reason the Marines had hammers. No, we don't want to know why, we just want to get out of the way and out the back door before this gets any more interesting.

To recap: a rapper/media mogul worth about $700 million has a son on the UCLA football team. This son, a redshirt junior on the team, is kicked out of practice by the strength coach for lack of effort. The rapper arrives at the facility and confronts the strength coach. A fracas ensues, and in the fracas a kettlebell is thrown at a student intern. The rapper is then arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. Someone writes all of this down, and does not believe it.

This is the internet and hyperbole and distortion are not norms, but instead the very vocabulary of the thing itself. Carl Hiaasen once said he was getting tired of writing about Florida because the state kept winning. He could make something up, like a bodyguard being sodomized by a horny, lonely dolphin, for instance, and then realize he could not win because inevitably, like clockwork, someone would climb into the pool at Sea World to get sodomized by a dolphin. He kept writing reality before it happened, or at least daring it to rise to the level of his worst imagination.

That's what's happening here. This is a blowout of the first order. This is another touchdown in a 42-0 hammering, and it's not even two minutes before halftime. Reality wins every damn time because if you asked us to make up a story, we would never include any of the following elements because even in satire they would be considered too ridiculous to have any measured effect:

  • The guy who spent most of the 1990s muttering "that's right" and "yeah" behind Mase and Big rapping over recycled disco beats going apeshit and becoming the Chopper Dave of all helicopter parents
  • Puff challenging the worst possible choice in a Coaching Fight Fantasy Draft in an office literally stuffed with jacked fellow trainers and football players capable of hang cleaning him into the drop ceiling
  • That strength coach being Sal Alosi, the guy previously best known for tripping a player from the sideline during his time as strength coach with the Jets
  • Sal Alosi joining any club whose members include 50 Cent and Drake
  • A man who could be UCLA's single biggest athletic department benefactor being arrested and dragged off campus in the back of a campus police car
  • Campus police anywhere actually arresting someone for something they should arrest them for
  • Combs picking the best implement in the weight room for fighting a strength coach out of instinct, which really is some stellar work in the heat of the moment.
  • Jim Mora is involved in a situation where Jim Mora is not one of the aggravating parties

So while we're just attempting to write reality before it happens, let's keep going and get some of this down on paper. This is a plot by Pete Carroll to undermine the UCLA program and pave the way for his return to USC, where he will use his deep connections in the hip-hop and entertainment worlds to drive a river of wayward recruits back to USC. Jim Mora will take an NFL job with the relocated Rams franchise, Sal Alosi will be fired and rehired by Mora, and Puff Daddy will escape all charges because lawyers do amazing work, particularly when they are well-compensated and working in a celebrity-friendly town.

Someone will make a kettlebell cast in the shape of Puff Daddy's head. This person will probably be Sean Combs.

All of this will happen and there is nothing on earth we can do to prevent it.

SHUTDOWN FULLCAST 3.8: THE PUFF DADDY ASSAULT EPISODE

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ALL WE TALK ABOUT THIS WEEK IS FIGHTING AND MAYBE A LITTLE STEVE SPURRIER KARAOKE

This week's edition of the Shutdown Fullcast throws all else to the side to discuss the time Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs allegedly got into a fight with the strength coach at UCLA and threw a kettlebell at him. You need nothing more.

Topics:

  • Where Puff Daddy now stands among Rappers What Do Fightin'
  • A description of a man that includes "his legs look like Kevin Smith's pants"
  • Why you don't ever fight the best recruiter on a football staff
  • Is George O'Leary the worst choice for AD ever? (A: probably not)
  • Why DMX deserves his own Planet Fitness, and also a hug
  • Steve Spurrier singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" at 41:00
  • A discussion of how enjoyable it is to see senior citizens knocked out by t-shirt guns in Florida

The Shea Serrano article on rappers and fightin' we reference in the podcast is here.

Listen in the Soundcloud player below, subscribe on iTunes, or download directly here.

THE MORNING CONSTITUTIONAL WANTS FREE FEDEX

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THE BIG 12 WON'T EXPAND UNLESS IT DOES IT HILARIOUSLY

Asking whether the Big 12 can do anything correctly isn't a bad question at this point. During realignment the conference very nearly dissolved into adjunct wings of the Big Ten, SEC, and Pac-48 (or whatever that was going to be.) The TV deal seemed okay until Texas bought eight middle fingers off fresh corpses, had them sewn onto their hands, and then raised all of them in the direction of the rest of the conference by starting the Longhorn Network. The first year of the playoff saw the Big 12 lose out in part due to their inability to stage a conference championship game.

It's a family, sure, but it's the one on your block whose house could go empty at any minute without anyone raising an eyebrow. Oklahoma President David Boren said the conference should "strive for a 12 team league," meaning in theory something like another round of banditry could shake loose two other teams from somewhere else. (Everyone also still hates the Longhorn Network, but that's not news anywhere.)

That somewhere else is a real mystery, but if we're into wild speculation, let's at least make it semi-plausible wild speculation.

Take the Arizona schools. Both are Pac-12 schools without century-deep roots in the conference. Both joined the Pac-10 out of the WAC, the conference formed in part to give the Arizona schools somewhere to compete. Both are current Pac-12 members, meaning they're probably pissed off at Larry Scott, whose global visioneering and quirky conference TV strategy ended up putting the Pac-12 on a profitable but less visible footing than other conferences. Both are tied together institutionally, and couldn't really make a move without the other. They're a package deal, and a tidy one to get to 12 and also check a lot of other boxes at the same time on the Expansion Partner Checklist.

Or alternately, there's the Jones 'n Jesus option: taking back old SWC member Arkansas, and then grabbing Liberty, an upcoming program with tons of cash and a foothold on the East Coast. This makes no sense whatsoever in a lot of ways, but we wanted to type "Jones 'n Jesus." Arkansas would only leave the SEC if they were insane, but they are insane, so you always have to consider this a real possibility when dealing with the Razorbacks. Disregard this in any format besides absurdist comedy, or reality. Same thing.

Finally, there's this: you could just add a random school and Memphis, because Fred Smith would probably give you free FedEx delivery for life. If this seems farfetched, ask yourself: would Steve Patterson see this as yet another opportunity to cut costs at Texas, and also send the Longhorns' non-revenue sports teams to road games in giant shipping envelopes? It's sounding more probably now, isn't it? We thought it would.

(That random school? Probably a Christian online academy set up by Houston Nutt specifically to get him back in the coaching game, which is another one of those jokes we don't want you to take seriously until it actually happens.)

THE MORNING CONSTITUTIONAL SALUTES EXPLORATION

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WHAT OTHER STRANGE, LIFELESS WORLDS SIT FROZEN IN THE GALAXY'S DEPTHS?

PlutoEtc

We did it. And someday, with any luck, we'll reach those other, cold, desolate, and lifeless planetoids out there, those untouched by the hand of mankind, yet as much a member of the celestial family as our own blessed earth.

Actual FCC complaints from people who saw LeBron James' penis on TV

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Only a few people complained to the government about seeing it, and a couple weren't actually mad, but they're all pretty good.

The Federal Communications Commission receives a lot of complaints, and some of them are about LeBron James' penis. After the King flashed his court jester during an NBA Finals broadcast on June 11, SB Nation filed a records request for any complaints about James' previously unequalled degree of national exposure.

To our shock, the American public made few complaints about the indiscretion. They ranged from the completely sincere to the succinct and included one person who obviously reads sports websites.

The FCC's list of complaints follows.

1. "No more penis please!"

I am shocked and appalled! I was watching the NBA final with my small kids on ABC's TV channel and prior to the start of Game 4 on Thursday 11 June 2015, ABC showed my children the penis of Lebron James. This is unacceptable. I don't want my kids looking at male genitalia on broadcast television. I am OK with seeing cis female mammary glands, labia, vagina, etc, over broadcast TV but no more penis please!

2. "tallywacker"

I was watching game 4 of the NBA finals last night on ABC, and the camera had a close up on LeBron James, who was adjusting his shorts, and then pulled down his boxers and the camera had a close up of his tallywacker. This is the type of stuff I would expect from Game of Thrones, but not from the American Broadcasting Channel. At least I now know that I am bigger than the purportedly "biggest" star in the NBA...

3. A complaint about an entirely different show on an entirely different medium not featuring LeBron James' penis at all, actually.

This morning on Z-100 Elvis Duran morning show, Elvis Duran was discussing in lengthy detail the size of his penis in comparison to his on-air colleagues. The group then went on to discuss and describe Lebron James penis which they have seen online and all expressed envy and awe. It was prurient and totally inappropriate for the morning drive. Elvis Duran (a self-described homosexual) also said he would "rather have sex with a woman" than one of his male colleagues. I found that statement degrading and demeaning to women.

4. The factual snitch without spellcheck

During the game list night, LeBron James exposed himself to the cameras

5. The person who sent in a complaint knowing that eventually a sports blog would request the open records and see it and wonder why someone went to the absurd lengths of posting an FCC complaint just to make a joke that could have been made on social media.

LeBron James showed his dick on natonal television and completeley ruined my tinder date. It made us late for laser tag because i had to rewind it a few times to make sure thats exactly what we saw so we missed our bus. He clearly did it on purpose and hes not as good as Michael Jordan

The complainant here also listed the TV station being watched at the time.

Channel69

In sum: The American people have seen the genitals of a famous athlete briefly. They were completely unfazed by the experience. Clearly, as a nation, we are growing and showing it.

THE ARBY'S CONSPIRACIES

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WHY DOES STEVE SPURRIER VISIT THE SAME ARBY'S AFTER EVERY SEC MEDIA DAY?

1. Years ago, while this Arby's was still under construction, Steve Spurrier drove by. The shocks on his car were nearly shot, weighed down by four duffle bags stuffed with krugerrand. 24 hours earlier, it'd all been in Dan Snyder's safe. And now Spurrier needed to hide it - fast.

2. This Arby's contains every SEC team's allotment of passing yards for the upcoming season. Prior to 1995, this knowledge was known only to Steve Spurrier. Since then, the news has slowly spread to other teams, and now Spurrier is forced to split them with everyone else with relative equality among teams. Will Muschamp attempted to find this Arby's once. He was rescued by Alabama Fish and Wildlife officials in Cheaha State Park days later, bloody and crying about the "man inside his cellphone he killed for tellin' him how to drive."

3. The Fountain of Youth is located at this Arby's. Its healing elixir flows freely from the beverage station, concealed under a label no Alabaman would ever consider potable: "Water."

4. In 1992, Linda Ronstadt sent a letter to Spurrier. It was short, but clear:

ARBY'S I-65, EXIT 255 1:30 PM ¡BESOS!

But she'd neglected to put a date. Never one to quit, he's shown up here every day since.

5. Shows up to make absurdly complex modifications to simple dishes, and then complain about them to Arby's #1506 Day Manager Jackie Sherrill.

6. Poses as a state health inspector, warning management to be on the lookout for a quarantine escapee named "Bret Bielema." He leaves each franchise two items: a blacklight ("check his scalp if you don't believe me") and an incendiary grenade.

7. Visits yearly to ask if the store is "Clemson football, because I heard y'all got turnovers."

8. Pulls back around five minutes later, asks if the store is "Tennessee football, because you don't know what bowls are anymore."

9.He doesn't even buy anything. Just shows up, pulls out a giant check, writes "AUBURN DOCTORATE IN FILL-O-SOPHY PROGRAM" in the memo line, and hands it to the employee checking the horsey sauce pump.

10. He orders food, hands the slip reading "This is a robbery" to the staff, takes the cash with his food in a bag, and leaves a hundred for the cashier in the ice bin. No one has ever called the police, and no one ever will.

SHUTDOWN FULLCAST 3.11: THE MYANMAR OR ALABAMA EPISODE

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FEARLESS LEADER RETURNS TO TALK ABOUT OPIUM CAMPING

The Shutdown Fullcast returns this week with special guest Spencer Hall, senior Myanmar consultant and occasional college football writer.

Highlights include:

  • We play "Myanmar or Alabama?", the game Alabama usually loses
  • A discussion of "camping" for opium
  • An introduction to INSEIN PRISON, Myanmar's hottest talk show, "Monk Talk," and how we're going to get the Big Ten's headquarters coated in jade
  • Where we'd move SEC Media Days (hint hint: a missile silo is involved)
  • A comprehensive review of the conference Media Days that don't suck
  • An appreciation of giant men on a banana boat without any desire to every know what said image means
  • The best players we've ever seen play football in person, which is almost like actual football talk

You may listen in the Soundcloud player below, subscribe on iTunes under Sports Podcasts, or download directly here. WELCOME TO THE INSEIN PRISON BOWL.


THE MC DOES THE WHIP ON A BOAT WITH DABO

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HUUUAAHHHHHHHHH

We're reaching the point where we can't even make fun of Dabo Swinney without a faint tinge of admiration poisoning everything. Consider what your 45 years old could look like, dear reader, and then consider Dabo's. He's rich, and he's on a boat with a bunch of football players playing chaperone and doing the whip.

Or at least trying to do the whip. He's definitely beginning an attempt to do the whip, an attempt that if we try at the age of 45 will result in two dislocations and three major ligament tears. Dabo Swinney is an old man who probably has more fun than you, is the point, and not just because he's making millions off underpaid or unpaid college athletes. (That's a nice accent note, sure, but Dabo'd probably find a way to find sunshine picking rags out of a garbage pile on an overcast day.)

ALBERT GOT AN EYELIFT

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BIG EYES AREN'T THE WORST NEW OPTION FOR A MASCOT

Albert and Alberta got eyelifts. Or eye-opens. Whatever you call it when this happens, and you end up with a much larger eye than you had before. Your own eye, not someone else's. We're never going to be the kind of rich that ends up with the kind of familiarity with plastic surgery terminology, or the distorted Papa John eyelifts and fillers that go with it. We've seen you in person, John Schnatter, and you look like a wind-chapped man in a wind tunnel standing in a hallway with zero breeze.

Anyway, this happened to Albert and Alberta's eyes.

(Cap via Alligator Army.)

We will miss squinty fat Albert, if only for resembling so many of his fellow Gator fans: squinting, via blazing sunshine and a tendency towards being fatfaced from too much mediocre Sonny's barbecue and beer; sort of fat, via the aforementioned barbecue and not wanting to move much in 95 degree temperatures with steady 50% humidity.

We did experiment with making some mascot or mascot-affiliates' eyes larger, and the results are offputting. For instance, Yell Leaders sort of look like Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit's large adult sons.

Still, the option of making the mascot's eyes bigger is a far better option than the other alternative: terrifyingly small eyes.

Brutus looks like he just drove through a billowing, mysterious cloud of chemical smoke from a train derailment.

The Jayhawk looks the same no matter what you do to it, which is sort of appropriate given KU's football history.

The Hokie Bird honestly just looks high as hell.

And...we're sorry. We're so, so sorry for this.

WAKE FOREST'S BOLD NEW MANTRA FOR 2015

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IT'S POIGNANT AND ACCURATE

FUCKTHISSHIT

We're not sure. You have a lot of options in life. You can fill out the spreadsheet dutifully every day, and we respect that. Flaubert wanted to erase all traces of his existence that didn't have anything to do with his best writing. That's an impulse we get. To erase everything you left and die, sure of your ability to hide every last shred of mediocrity you left behind. That's a totally understandable impulse.

FuckThisShit2

We also understand how, in the midst of all that drudgery, you could want one-- just one-- moment to scream BULLSHIT. To put on a Max Headroom mask and jack a television signal from the back of a van. To put your hidden message in the middle of miles of code for some lucky programmer to find, notice, and appreciate in the midst of all that boredom. To turn the world into your own video game, and plant an Easter Egg for the people to hunt after in the dullest hours of the day.

FuckThisShit3

Or maybe this is just an appropriate reaction to looking at Wake Forest football's 2014 season again. We hope no one's fired, is what we're saying, because that is accurate. Fuck that shit. Fuck every last bit of it, and fuck it in all caps. It's ACC Media Days this week, and we hope someone shows this to Dave Clawson and asks, "This is accurate, isn't it?" Hell, this random person might have given Wake Forest the motto they need to turn things around and become competitive in the ACC again. Demon Deacon Football '15: FUCK THIS SHIT. It's as good as any other slogan, and decidedly more accurate.

P.S. Good morning

P.P.S Fuck this shit

SHUTDOWN FULLCAST 3.12: HERE LIES FOOTBALL EROTICA

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THIS EPISODE COVERS THE TRULY AROUSING MOMENTS IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL

PURE FOOTBALL EROTICA. That's not an exaggeration, we discuss pure football erotica this week, or at least what we find to be erotic in the game of football. I mean, before that we all talk about BET Uncut returning, but yeah: definitely some football erotica after all the talk about BET Uncut. Get your towels, because it's gonna get steamy! Also the cleaning crew did not come last night and there's some pretty disgusting stuff on these benches.

In addition to the following suspiciously football-like topics.

  • Gus Malzahn suggesting a freshness seal and/or born-on date for SEC teams is a necessary thing
  • Houston Nutt appearing at Big 12 Media Days either looking for a job or scouting the Mary Kay Convention across the hall
  • A list of things Art Briles could say out loud and not get prosecuted for
  • A record total of coach imitations and serial killer references
  • How Ryan and LaDainian Tomlinson are basically the same person

The issue many of you reported with iTunes seems to have resolved itself, and this episode should be up under Sports/Podcasts. You may also listen in the Soundcloud player below, or download directly here.

THE MC OPENS A WHATABURGER IN YOUR HEART

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BRET BIELEMA CONTINUES TO DRIVE THE PROGRAM TO NEW HEIGHTS

Fayetteville is losing their damn minds over the opening of the town's new Whataburger, and with good reason. Whataburger is consistent and delicious, and serves a breakfast with honey butter chicken biscuits so good it will make your ass fall off, go get another ass, and then make a whole city of magnificent asses on your back. We ate a Thanksgiving meal there once, and cried in the parking lot because it was so good, and maybe also because our blood sugar was dangerously low.

(P.S. We cry in a lot of fast food parking lots during football season.)

Fayetteville is also building a fearsomely stacked fast food menu for the incoming recruit. They've got a Braum's Ice Cream for the farm boys, a mess of Chick-Fil-As for the suburban kids, a Popeyes for the Louisiana dudes, and now Whataburger for the Texas recruits. They even have a Zaxby's, lest they lack the salt-piled chicken that feeds only the largest defensive tackle recruits from rural Georgia and Alabama.

Don't assume any of this is a coincidence. If anyone's gonna get a fast food United Nations going in the Ozarks to attract only the finest hoss-sized recruits, it's Bret Bielema. The Hogluminati knows what they're doing here, and what they're doing is making sure that every recruit has their own preferred feeding trough at the ready. When the In-N-Out opens in Fayetteville, you'll know that the California pipeline is open and ready to go. Other teams may promise a home for the soul, but Arkansas? They know the quickest way to a lineman's heart is straight through the deep-fryer

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