We’ve followed many of them on this blog over the years, wrenching accounts of young innocents who adored college football and watched it obsessively until, you know, violence, concussions, asshole players and coaches…

I was watching when the Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s fingers twisted up during what looked like a seizure after his head slammed on the turf. But at least Tua had $30 million in the bank. He wasn’t a teenager, too young to understand the risks, counting on the adults to protect him.

… [I] can’t watch college football at all anymore…

Then a whole bunch of stuff about how mentally challenged coach/player-senators and senator-candidates mean all of America’s becoming college football by a different name.

Tommy Tuberville coached in the Cotton Bowl in 2007. He’ll be in the U.S. Senate until at least 2026. He is America’s future.

Maybe a tad overstated, but it’s the final three sentences of the piece and dude wants to end with a bang.

Anyway, people like UD have been saying the same thing about college ball for twenty years – accompanied by mucho scoffing/derision – but it don’t make no nevermind. I don’t actually think Tom of the Tuberville is our national future; but, like his exemplar Trump, he’s certainly able to kick up a lot of shit.

To understand why it’s officially the worst state in the nation, you have to drill down to the details. A routine event hits the national news because it involves (what else) football. The son of an NFL player does that thing. That all-American, but way Louisiana thing. Drives around (maybe drunk) on a Saturday night. Just a tadpole at 21 years of age, but out piloting a huge black Range Rover SUV late at night all by his iddy biddy self. Although he kills a pedestrian … hits and kills an entire adult human being…. he … doesn’t notice. Three days later when witnesses start coming forward his parents get him a lawyer.

I’m waiting to hear he was carrying mucho assault rifles in the car too. All in good time.

And yes, it’s quite likely he waited three days in order to get rid of whatever was in his system.

And the wayest Lousiana thing? Judge will let him off scot free cuz … you know… young, football, booze, gigantic SUVs — it’s not a crime. It’s a way of life.

Wisconsin fired Paul Chryst on Sunday, fired him five games into the 2022 college football season, fired him with a career record of 67-26. Just sent him packing, humiliated the former Wisconsin quarterback, as if his previous seven seasons — all ending in bowl games, the Badgers winning six of those — hadn’t happened.

This is where college football has gone. Into the dumpster, into the land of toxic make-believe.

Into the SEC.

Trees aren’t even shedding leaves yet, and already five Power 5 schools have shed their head football coach. Wisconsin on Sunday joined Nebraska (Scott Frost), Arizona State (Herm Edwards), Georgia Tech (Geoff Collins) and Colorado (Karl Dorrell), firings that will cost those schools more than $50 million in buyouts. All five are public schools. The money comes from somewhere, a shell game of shady boosters in the background writing checks, money diverted from more noble potential causes. Cleaning up a landfill, for example...

[University coaches?] Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher and Alabama’s Nick Saban have contracts in the $100 million range…

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You know, toting up all the money pathetic states like Alabama give their coaches, blah blah. It’s like NFL concussion stories. Blah.

Of course it’s completely hohum for soccer matches to end in bloody slaughter all over the field, but UD wondered about this comment. I think it must mean that the crowd that killed itself the other day was made up exclusively of supporters of the home team. The slaughter wasn’t even about opposing fans – just the local guys unhappy that their guys lost. What an achievement.

A Utah Student has been Charged with

Making Terrorism Threats

Over a Football Game

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‘According to the charging documents, the student studied engineering and had knowledge of the university’s nuclear reactor.

The University of Utah is among more than two dozen U.S. universities with nuclear engineering programs that use reactors for faculty and student research.

The university said in a statement on Thursday that the reactor was secured and campus law enforcement had protocols in place to ensure no breaches are made.’

… of the race.

‘What these players are doing for guaranteed money, what is the incentive to practice? What is the incentive to go out there and earn it in the dirt? You are just getting paid a lot of money up front and playing a few events and playing 54 holes.‘

Tiger Woods, who has just turned down around $800 million guaranteed from Saudi Swingers Inc, describes a dystopian green where mulish millionaires futz a bit with balls before breaking for كافيار.

Me, I love the image. The game Don DeLillo calls an “anal round of scrupulous caution and petty griefs” has always been for UD an excellent aide-sommeil: The low drone of commentators, the long verdant nothingness, the occasional tinny sound of spectators … I’d call it white noise if it weren’t so green.

The last thing UD’s looking for is some flashy hotshot pulling off improbable victories on the course. She wants petty anality, and the more the better. So, Saudi golf: Good on ya.

How the NFL punishes predators.

It’s all in the timing.

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By the way – this blog can also reveal that Nick Kyrgios will be Donald Trump’s chosen running mate in his next presidential bid.

Teehee.

… an allusion to disgraced plagiarist Paul McCrory, who we have covered on this blog, and who has today jumped from far-off Australia to the New York Times. The cause of making the world safe for sports concussions will have to be passed to another creep.

… and the little missus done got that right. Back in 2017, when the state’s newspaper gushed about LSU’s basketball coach boy wonder, Will Wade‘s wife hit it right on the head: Like virtually all of LSU’s storied basketball and football coaches from the word go, young Wade was dirty as the day is long. And as he now departs the school in the time-honored way of its sports leaders — driven out by years of every conceivable violation — we can only comb through our many LSU is the scummiest school in America except maybe for Baylor posts and ponder, as we like to do, America’s poorest, most corrupt, most violent state and its long dedication to three million dollar a year filthy rotten coaches.

Let’s narrate this from the POV of a Bama boy – Bama itself definitely competitive in the southern jock school corruption sweepstakes, of course:

There’s squat going on today, but — dear reader — your Gump Day comes in strong with a bit of schadenfreude, as the sweatiest man this side of Al Golden, at the dirtiest program this side of SMU, finally had the NCAA hammer drop on them.

Or, at least the first part.

To the absolute surprise of no one, a man under investigation by the FBI, at a school under investigation for widespread sexual assault and Title IX violations, and two programs with a history of dirty dealing, have all finally received their Notice of Allegations.

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Oh yeah. Forgot SMU. Lawdie! [flicks hankie o’er lightly sweated brow] Hard to keep up, ain’t it? … But let me add, and I mean this in the nicest way, that we don’t need no big-city Yankee scolds telln us how to educate our youth at our fine universities! Take all the pleasure you want in our anguish, Mr Fancy Pants; we’ll be back bigger and better than ever ‘fore you can say Dave Bliss!

Isn’t there a law in Mexico against bringing children to soccer games? The games are so bloody (this latest brawl featured at least two deaths and over twenty serious injuries), it’s definitely a form of negligence to allow children into the barbarity.

Soccer riots are an old story – the ones I cover are mainly in Europe – with the only wrinkle being an ongoing escalation of the slaughter. It’s also mildly interesting to see whether security can get the players off the field in time to save their lives.

Dude already had a violent crime record.

‘Court records from Wyandotte County show Elmore was convicted in a Feb. 6, 2020, robbery where he stole a wallet from a person “by force or by threat of bodily harm, and did inflict bodily harm.”’

Why was he still enrolled in a mainstream public high school?

Is it because he played for the football team? If so, that’s really fucked up. Putting the safety of everyone at the school at risk because he made the team more competitive…

Of course, having covered the legions of Richie Incognitos out there, UD knows perfectly well that this is a calculation high schools and colleges all over this country make every day: He’s a dangerous person, sure, but he can really play the game. Coaches who make the call – see Art Briles – occasionally have to pay a price for it. The real price is paid by the people raped and beaten.

Background here.

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Richie Incognito! Isn’t that what Roman Abramovich just re-christened his yacht?

Grambling’s head football coach hires his mass rape and assault enabler buddy to be part of the coaching staff at his school, and the entire civilized world – including Grambling icon Doug Williams – says You and your school can go fuck yourselves.

In response to this devastating rejection, Jackson issues a mad slew of lies, boasting in particular that Grambling – a university so out of control as to have produced a mass shooting, with one murder, at its last homecoming event – has in its sports program – almost always the most violent location on campus – “well-developed programs… in place” to avoid the Art Briles-generated catastrophe at Baylor.

Both Putin and Jackson are self-immolating. Let us see if either can be stopped by any sane people that might be around them.

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UPDATE: Does Art Briles know how to save money? Until a few years ago, he was earning over six million a year as a football coach; Baylor settled over fifteen million on him when he left in disgrace. That’s an awful lot of money, and now that Briles is out of yet another job – he ended up staying at Grambling for four days before public opinion made it impossible for him to remain – UD figures he can use that money – I mean, assuming he saved any – to live quite a nice life surrounded by the many Americans – Hue Jackson is only one of them – who don’t care about what he did at Baylor.