October 26, 2006
Your Weekend Primer…
…or the Aftermath of the Battle of Canae, the most apt metaphor to last week’s bloodbath. I’ll let Livy break it down:
Never before, while the City itself was still safe, had there been such excitement and panic within its walls. I shall not attempt to describe it, nor will I weaken the reality by going into details… it was not wound upon wound but multiplied disaster that was now announced. For according to the reports two consular armies and two consuls were lost; there was no longer any Roman camp, any general, any single soldier in existence…Certainly there is no other nation that would not have succumbed beneath such a weight of calamity.
Applicable to both my picks and Seminole nation, which lay in absolute ruin while the Cerberus of Hubris/Tom O’Brien/Hannibal gnawed at the carcass through poisonous spittle. But just as the vessel in Chinese fountains is emptied only to be filled again, so exists my faith- emptied of all prior expectation, and soon to be teeming with promise. And mosquitoes. Big ones.
(picks are after the jump)
October 19, 2006
Your Weekend Primer…
…in which the long death march makes it’s way to the Tallahassee gates, to lay to loam the soul of the King so formerly great. Also known as Lord of the FSU: Week 2. The Black Mass convenes on a hallowed yet unholy ground ‘neath a Mourning Star with a judgment so piercingly bright that none of the wailing masses may evade it’s castigating rays. For many of the inked crowd, clutching at their memories as they would a golden heirloom, the days of a known and cherished order are darkening – the ebon horses of Chaos now visible, nearing from the olive horizon. “The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.”
(picks are after the jump)
October 12, 2006
Your Weekend Primer…
…also known as Lord of the FSU: Week 1. This kid knows what I’m talking about. “He still says he saw the beastie. It came and went away again an’ came back and wanted to eat him.” And this team as such will soon eat his soul. This week the hunters with sticks travel to Durham, NC to slay the inert sow that is Duke football. There will be much rejoicing, and smearing of flesh on the faces of the hunters. But what really will such a win have wrought?
(picks are after the jump)
October 10, 2006
The Ghost of Saint Bobby and the Driverless Hearse…
If there were any doubt that the Florida State players may as well be running the program Lord of the Flies-style, take the October 21 Funeral Nike-cash-grab Seminole Tribe Tribute Black-Out game against Boston College. While most programs would schedule such an affair for the dead of night, FSU will be kicking off at 3:30 in the afternoon, EST. Forget for a moment that there were rumors of counter-protests with folks wearing their white Noles gear to give the finger to Nike, and realize that this is what happens when a head coach plays patsy to family and former coaches – ESPN kicks your 2-loss ass out of primetime, and into regional coverage, and you take the field looking like a bunch of gold-domed ninjas in daylight. So not only has the funeral come, but there is none to even lead the procession.
So it is with grief, relief and sincerity that we laid a once proud coach and glory years of a program to rest last week, and it will be with curiosity, vigor and hopefully joy with which we will cheer this new team- a tribe only of leaderless and feral athletes. Without any imposed moral imperative they “became fear: hopeless fear on flying feet.”
FSU Football, circa 2006.
October 9, 2006
The Obituary, Part II
On a serious note, I’d like to point you to an amazing eulogy for a dear, dear friend of mine. It’s a special commemoration that can turn somber remembrance into a celebration of the departed, and this is such a tribute. For those that knew and loved the deceased as I did, these words will no doubt bring some measure of relief, as we lay a long-suffering friend to rest, and will also inspire joy to recall his halcyon days long past. Good bye, buddy.
October 6, 2006
The Obituary…
“I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn’t screw to save its species. I wanted to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all the French beaches I’d never see. I wanted to breathe smoke.”
That about covers my emotional condition at the end of the Florida State/NC State game last night. Lucky for you, I kept a running diary of the whole evening, which will probably read more like “The Four Hour Tortured Death of a Fan.” It’s after the jump…
October 5, 2006
Your Weekend Primer…
…will also serve as the Thursday Morning Hate, and will be my last jab at the Wolfpack faithful, who earnestly want nothing more than to turn the faces of their fellow fans into toilet seats. I was also reminded by someone much wiser than myself that it’s always best to show respect to your opponents and their fans, which is why I’ll leave the last words to someone who takes this issue to heart:
(picks are after the jump)
October 4, 2006
Wednesday Morning Hate…
Where we bring you the Official Lee Corso Approved Reverse Jinx Post. Why are such drastic measures warranted at this juncture? Because this is a Statement Game, ladies and gentlemen. And it says volumes about the Florida State program that a Week 6 contest against a .500 team that has dropped games to the likes of Akron and Southern Mississippi is a Statement Game. In fact, you could say that’s a statement in itself. A former powerhouse that at one time could only lose to Miami, now can lose to any former assistant, or any other coach with the last name Bowden. (Also save the joke about FSU losing games to Jeff Bowden. It’s been made. By me. Just then.)
In days gone by your average FSU fan had to work hard to get his britches hiked up about a Thursday night ACC match-up – these were the nights the Virginias and North Carolinas of the world came to get their whoopins. These days, FSU fans have to put in work to convince themselves their team can win on the road against a team whose fans micturate on each other, and whose players are, so kindly put in this video, error-prone.
But that’s all in the past, right? I mean, here we have photographic documentation of Coach Chest making peace with various officials:
Piss-spraying fans and penalty-spraying players – easy pickin’s, right? Not so fast my friend. Though Mr. Red Shoes had more overall success when Philip Rivers was smart-bombing the ball all over the field with laser-guided precision, he still has the Noles number. And, if Flash mock videos are to be believed, an FSU playbook. The Wolfpack were 3-4 when they limped into Doak Campbell last season, and they danced out with a W, sparking a 4-1 finish and an improbable bowl berth. FSU could provide the same springboard this season, this time in front of 80,000 urine-drenched fans. (Yes, Carter-Finley Stadium only holds 58,000 – I’m guessing another 22K fans watching at home can’t hold it ’til they get to a bathroom either. Oddly, there’s no mention of the golden shower shenanigans on the Wiki entry.)
Will Saint Bobby keeps his hands off the offense long enough for them to run the schemes they’ve been working on? Will this be a good or bad thing? Did the offense actually come around at the end of the Clemson game, and on into the Rice game, or did it merely take advantage of a tired Tigers D and an 0-3 C-USA team coming off a brutal beating from Texas? Is the FSU defense stifling (like it was in 3 wins) or prone to the big play (like it was in the 1 loss)? For the answers, I channel Uncle Lee through my vintage Burt Reynolds throwback jersey: No; Bad; Took advantage; Stifling against the run, and prone in the secondary.
So there you have it folks. The odds are that the Seminoles drop a game on the road at night in a hostile, pee-soaked environment. The bigger question is, will the fans’ yellow-stained tighty-wighties begin to chafe as they storm the field?
October 3, 2006
Tuesday Morning Hate…
NORTH CAROLINA!! (State, that is) Please heed the call of the revered Petey Pablo: C’mon and raise up – Take yo banjo off, and twist it ’round yo head – Spin it like a helicopter! It’s time to support your pimp chesty coach, squeal like a pig, and piss all over each other!
All fun aside, it was once fun to root for Mr. Amato- as a former D-Assistant coach at FSU, he helped create some of the most sphincter-napalming defenses known to man; and while yet a highschool lad, I took both his daughters out on dates – great girls. But dropping 3 of 5 to the Raleigh Golden Showers changes shit real fast.
Bring out your finger-totaling IQs and lack of bladder control to the stadium Thursday night!
September 20, 2006
Gossip, Hearsay & Conjecture; Chit-Chat, Speculation & Rumor…
They’re all flying around Tallahassee like 5-pound mosquitoes around the brackish kiddie-pool water you passed out in after prom. So we decided to go straight* to the top- the head, the apex, the acme of all that is FSU football, to get to the truth. Follow the break for our interview with Bobby Bowden…
*Straight meaning using a nudie Tarot deck read by a swarthy Russian gypsy-mystic paid in corn whiskey.
The Itch - Dry, Flaky Sports Commentary 