WAC Blog - The FanHouse

The star-crossed Alabama receiver and possessor of the has yet again:

The surgery at DCH Regional Medical Center, performed last Thursday by Dr. Les Fowler, was to remove scar tissue restricting range of motion on his ankle, the university said in a statement Monday.

The kicker:

He spent a month in the hospital after infection set in.

Yuck. And yet Joe Theismann is upon all who behold his terrible visage at hundreds of dollars an hour. This is some Book of Job stuff going on right here.

At this point Prothro is unlikely to ever play again. Emoticon of ultimate sadness :(

After the jump, a highlight video.

Oh, God, no. As MJD , deposed Monday Night Football scourge Joe Theismann may end up next year:

Williamson said ESPN hoped to retain Theismann by offering him another prominent football commentating job.

Williamson would not specify what job, but Theismann later said by phone it was the Saturday night college football package with Brent Musburger. Kirk Herbstreit and Bob Davie worked with Musburger last season.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

It was bad enough having to deal with Paul Maguire in the booth with the otherwise sublime Brad Nessler and Bob Griese -- and that pairing worked out so well that by the end of the year Nessler and Griese were exiling Maguire to the truck and talking openly of their contempt for him on air -- but foisting the entirety of the dismembered and much-hated Sunday Night Football crew upon innocent college football fans is not cool.

Unless, that is, the three are reunited and forced to do Tuesday night WAC games all season. That I could get behind.

I might even watch to see exactly when Maguire snaps and starts stabbing himself with a half-eaten pork chop, trying to end it all.

(EDSBS also . Hates it.

)

Last Year: 8-6 (they flew out to Hawaii for an extra game), unranked.

Fans Are: A little peeved that their two-year window without either Michigan or Ohio State on the schedule expired and the big prize was a 24-7 loss to Maryland in the Champs Sports Bowl. The previously untouchable Tiller is beginning to experience some fan unrest.

Expectations: MOTS.

There's no Drew Brees here, and the return of Michigan and Ohio State will be a shock to the system. There's enough talent for another meh bowl berth, though.

1.

When does Curtis Painter get benched?

Normally a when this question is asked of a quarterback entering his third year of starting, the answer is "never," even if it's Reggie Ball, but Painter has two things working against him:

He's playing for Wilford Brimley. The mustachioed one has a long history of yanking quarterbacks.

Back in his Orton-Kirsch heyday he would go so far as to swap them several times a game, managing to blow it against Michigan by putting Orton in when Michigan couldn't stop Kirsch's running and against Wisconsin by putting Kirsch in when the Badgers couldn't stop Orton's passing. Devoid of plausible options in recent years, you know Tiller's trigger finger is getting itchy.

He's Curtis Painter.

And is no good. Despite the gaudy totals he racked up tossing soft slants to Dorient Bryant, Greg Orton, and Selwyn Lymon, he was only 45th in passer efficiency nationwide. His 19 interceptions nearly matched his 22 touchdowns, and in the Champs Sports Bowl he was awful.

Despite a completion percentage propped up by Purdue's screen-and-slant based offense, Painter completed under 60% of his passes. And this wasn't a matter of not knowing what to do: he's the definition of a spray passer. (Spray passer!

Painter! HA! !

)

Though the above is partially tounge-in-cheek, if Purdue's offense struggles -- and given the attrition on the offensive line, that seems likely -- redshirt sophomore Joey Elliot had better have his helmet handy.

Michigan Athletic Director Bill Martin has been making noises about expanding the Big Ten's conference schedule for a few years now but an actual move has always seemed impossible as long as the Big Ten stuck with 11 conference members, as it's mathematically impossible for 11 teams to play 9 games each (think about it) and many teams would reject a full round-robin for financial and crappy-bowl-related reasons. But the noise increases and it sounds like we may see an unbalanced schedule. Comissioner :

"I think there's some sentiment, a minority, to go to 10 and some sentiment, a minority, to stay at eight," Delany said.

"I think there is a majority to go to nine, but the problem is that with 11 members playing nine games, it doesn't work mathematically."

The proposed solution is to have one team play eight games, which seems like a controversy magnet. What happens if Michigan, 6-1 in conference, beats an 8-0 Ohio State (humor me for a second, Buckeye fans, and pretend Michigan will beat OSU ever again)?

OSU's 8-1 conference record is a half-game better than Michigan's 7-1 conference record, but Michigan will have a head-to-head win. Any time the unbalanced schedule has an impact on the conference championship there's going to be all-caps OUTRAGE! If they could set it up such that really bad teams always get the extra non-conference game, everything would be fine -- that team would probably prefer Northeastern A M Tech than a real opponent -- but that would require schedules to be remade on the relative fly.

Maybe give each team a bye based on the previous season's standings?

Top two teams miss the bottom team and vice versa.

Six and seven miss each other.

That would place a slight extra schedule burden on the better teams in the conference, but probably not an enormous one given the turnover on college teams. And the worst team in the conference would end up scrambling for a sacrificial I-AA opponent every year, but they're pretty much doing that now.

Last Year: 4-8, 1-7 Big Twelve

Fans Are: Vaguely hoping to beat Iowa.

Expectations: None. It's Iowa State.

1.

What now?

For the first time in over a decade, Iowa State has a coach who isn't Dan McCarney. Former Texas defensive coordinator , an adventurous fellow indeed, takes over one of the Big 12's most perpetually moribund programs.

Other than Baylor, there's no team in the conference with the deck stacked so heavily against it. Not only is it further removed from the conference's primary wellspring of talent, Texas, than any other Big 12 team, but it stands alone amongst programs in the sparsely populated Great Plains as the clear little brother to another state school: Iowa. Before McCarney, the 'Clones had experienced nothing but pain and woe.

And even the McCarney era was partially pain and woe interspersed with the occasional Insight Bowl victory and the eclectic Heisman campaign of Seneca Wallace. Chizik has a tough road to hoe indeed.

A chagrined Black Shoe Diaries what's possibly the in the recent history of the Penn State football program*:

The Blue-White Rapper Show is a contest for Penn State Students to showcase their rap talents as well as their love of Penn State football. The winning original rap song will be performed at halftime of the first home football game on September 1, 2007.

The original rap song must be done by a solo artist (no groups) and be under one minute in length. The central theme for the rap should be Penn State Football.

Folks, I was just in Happy Valley this fall, and I'm telling you to mentally remove the "blue" from the first sentence.

This promises to be more awkward then that one time you walked into a karaoke night just as three frat boys started in on " " without realizing how often they'd have to mumble awkwardly when the system prompted them to say "n****". Any Fanhouse aficionados who attend this monstrosity are begged to tape and upload it so the "winner" can receive the thorough internet battering he/she richly deserves.

*(#1: burning Anthony Morelli's redshirt so he could be the third string quarterback and throw a couple Hail Marys a few years ago)

Imagine you're Tim Floyd, the new coach at USC. Your starting point guard has just been murdered, your team hates the idea of playing defense, and everything is in shambles.

Then one day a mysterious man shows up unprompted, says "how would you like OJ Mayo to play for you?" and when you roll your eyes and say "okay, and could I get a unicorn while you're at it?" he says.

.. okay.

Then :

When Floyd answered the phone, he heard a teenager's voice on the other end: "Coach, this is O. J. Mayo.

I'd like to come to your school." Mayo had not been on an official campus visit. He had not seen the new arena, the Galen Center.

He did not know anything about the current roster.

What a country! Streets paved with gold, silky 6'5" point guards walking in off street wanting to sign the paper, doing your recruiting for you.

..

Mayo went through the priority list in his mind.

"Don't worry about recruiting," he said. "I'll take care of it."

Before Floyd hung up, he asked one more time for Mayo's cellphone number.

"No," Mayo said. "I'll call you."

.

..Tim Floyd may be the luckiest man on the planet.

Other than Ringo Starr, natch.

More Mayo:



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