… sends UD an update on Coastal Carolina’s naughty football team.

Which reminds her that she hasn’t posted this year’s Fulmer Cup results.

First, the latest football thing at Coastal Carolina:

The Coastal Carolina University football team continues to have off-field problems as two more players were dismissed from the team Monday after arrests on disorderly conduct charges.

Chanticleers receivers Jamar Anderson and Paul Nicholas were removed after their arrests early Sunday morning by Horry County Police.

Coastal coach David Bennett said the players were released for violating team rules. Anderson and Nicholas mark the eighth and ninth Coastal Carolina football players charged in the past 13 months. [Nine in 13 months -- That's what reminded UD of the Fulmer.]

Bennett was asked if he was concerned about the program’s image.

“You go, ‘Oh my gosh, another one of these [athletes] has not followed the rules,” Bennett said. “If it is a normal person or student [the media] wouldn’t be standing here [Monday].  These young men have to realize I have tougher rules [for athletes] than a normal person and normal student. To whom much is given, much is required.”

Anderson and Nicholas were arrested in a parking lot outside Break Room Billiards in Conway where police were dispatched to break up a fight.

According to a release from the Horry County Police department, Anderson “yelled and screamed obscenities while police were trying to control the crowd. Further investigation revealed he smelled strongly of alcoholic beverages and was arrested accordingly. While officers were arresting Mr. Anderson, [Nicholas] began yelling at police. Officers tried to calm Mr. Nicholas unsuccessfully and it was discovered he was also emitting a strong odor of alcoholic beverage.”  [Fun prose style here.]

The one-strike-and-you’re-out policy is a departure from how the team handled other situations, and it is a sign that Bennett might be trying to send a message in attempt to end a string of arrests that have stricken the program.  [Stricken's a little strange.]

Former CCU player Scott Fambrough was dismissed in August following a DUI, which was the third time he had been jailed in nine months.

“You have to realize the seriousness of the image we want to portray,” Bennett said. “I tell our guys, ‘Follow the rules, don’t break the rules.’  If rules tighten up, they tighten up.”  [Seriousness of the image, to be sure.  And doesn't look as though they're tightening up.  Looks as though they're tight.]…

Meanwhile, The Great Saban won the Fulmer:

The Fulmer Cup competition for 2008 ends tonight at midnight [August 27], and barring any West Virginia triple murders, Missouri drug busts, or the FBI unearthing a sleeper cell at Michigan, (Buckeye fan: “I knew it!”) this cat is skinned, and its coat is crimson and white. Um, actually, so is the cat, now that we’ve gotten the hide off and everything. What the hell are we supposed to do with this thing? It is pissed.

Congratulations are due to your winner, with a total of 28 points. Some people would say congratulations to someone who just won such a prestigious award. For such an occasion as this, we won’t just crack out the standard Asti Spumante—no, only the Andre Cold Duck Pink will do, and only if we have buckets and buckets of it.

Pop the cork, take a bow, and let the celebrations begin: a champion arriveth. Congratulations to Alabama on their 72nd national title, which Nick Saban appropriately does not have time to accept in person. Roll, Tide, Roll.

Jimmy Johns must be noted for his outstanding work in making this happen, selling cocaine an incomprehensible number of times to undercover cops in Tuscaloosa, but he wasn’t alone. Jeremy Elder, while not particularly good at robbery, was certainly enthusiastic enough to rack up points for two counts of first-degree robbery.

Johns and Elder alone would have won the Copa del Malfeasance, but teammate A.J. Walker kicked in by walking around drunk on the strip. But we’ve done that, you say! Of course you have, and if you are currently on the roster of the Crimson Tide, we invite you to submit your points to be tallied with the rest.

(Note: SAS Wiki includes Rashad Johnson’s dismissed charges for disorderly conduct on their total. This is an error, but the point total is not: 20 for Johns, a conservative seven for Elder, and one for poor A.J.’s solo Jagermeister Tango down the strip.)

This leaves the Ellis T. Jones Award for Outstanding individual Achievement In A Single Crime, which this year must also be awarded to Johns, who racked up twenty points for having the persistence to sell cocaine to undercover officers not once, but FIVE times. That kind of stick-to-it-iveness gets you championships. And lengthy jail sentences.

Our petitions for an award ceremony rebuffed, we had to rely on hidden camera footage take[n] of Nick Saban at home to get any reaction from the most powerful coach in sport. From appearances, the Fulmer Cup is just one more piece of motivation to put on your wall…

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UPDATE: A Carolina writer shares:

… We got a mere whiff of this stuff last season with Jerome Simpson’s arrest, which of course was a mere appetizer for the subsequent main course: the arrest of three gun-toting, pot-hauling Chants who still were proudly wearing some of their CCU-issued athletic gear when the cops grabbed them for driving like the nitwits they are.

… We’re talking nine players arrested since last August.

If the powers-that-be, from CCU president David DeCenzo to AD Moose Koegel to head coach David Bennett, don’t see a systematic element to this ridiculousness, then we have an even larger problem on our hands.

The question is simple: what kind of kids are they recruiting these days out in the wilds of Conway? Just what cost is this academic institution willing to pay for success under the Saturday night lights?…