Unverified Voracity: Penis == Ratings(!) Edition

First... who thought this incredibly creepy, animated Dennis Dodd was a good idea? John Carpenter? Dude looks like Gollum. Here's a fun tip: move your pointer from his left to his right and watch his lopsided conehead shift. FFTWF.

Andy Warhol lives. Warren St. John gets a massive journalistic scoop by interviewing this guy:

No, not Corso, wiseass. The guy with the sign. As you might expect from someone holding a "Lee Corso is a Penis" sign, he wants to work for ESPN:

...Todd's still a free man -- for now -- and he agreed to talk if we promised not to print his last name. (Todd wants to work for ESPN someday.)

I regret to inform Todd that if the criteria for acquiring an ESPN job was calling various employees of the company unflattering names, I'd be on the six o'clock Sportscenter tonight trying to translate (!) into a complicated series of hand gestures. (Seriously. Both hands move in a downward sweeping motion for the parens, then the right hand draws a line between them and flicks out the dot with considerable flair as I cock an eyebrow; I'm doing this right now as I pretend to narrate highlights; Please send help.)

In any case, the interview is a must read. Warren is also on top of the totally 31337 merchandising angle.

In other Lee Corso Is A Penis Guy news, Golden Tornado's dismissive, dawg-baiting reaction to the interview drew fire from the great man himself. I'd say he obviously has too much time on his hands, but

• he was just on TV with a "Lee Corso is a Penis" sign, so we should encourage his sloth and
• I have a goddamned sports blog.

Speaking of ESPN. You can't spit on the Internet of late without hitting three pages laced with invective against the company. The latest is a parody from the always-on Something Awful that highlights something strange:

We'll be back in a minute folks, but in the meantime enjoy this commercial break featuring an ad for SportsCenter which is infinitely more entertaining and informative than the actual show itself.

Seriously! We should fire the ESPN executives and just hire the ad company.

Illinois at the bottom? That's what we call a sanity check. Pat from Bleed Blue n White pointed out one man's foray into the wonderful world of directed acyclic graphs and how they apply to football at Beatpaths.com and then attempted to apply it to the Big Ten. It's an interesting concept, but I don't think there's really enough data in college football for it to mean much. I would be fascinated to see a beatpaths/pairwise comparison for college hockey or basketball, though.

We respect the upcoming opponent, product, or service immensely. Defensive end Jeremy Van Alstyne on Indiana:

"You know, they have some really good skill players,'' the redshirt junior said with a serious expression. "They're able to make big plays and stuff like that."

And who, exactly, are those skill players?

"I don't know," Van Alstyne said, admitting he hadn't watched much film yet.

No doubt the Wolverines will be jacked for Unnamed Opponent on Saturday.