Not-Suxors Nominations Part I

Hello. There are blog awards coming. Joel @ Rocky Top Talk has the details. There are 22 of these freakin' things, so I'm going to post nominations in blocks. The nomination process is open to anyone who wants their opinion to be heard. All readers/bloggers are encouraged to hit up the nomination form and proffer opinion. Each category will have 1-2 nominees selected by a blue-ribbon committee instead of nomination volume, so even the most obscure blog or post will get notice.

Anyway, on with the show.

The Sports Fans Don't Cry Award

(for best response in the face of crushing misery.)

Hey Jenny Slater. In my head this award is about putting the agony of defeat on paper in a way that simultaneously acknowledges the ridiculousness of feeling anger towards a fundamentally meaningless game and makes it clear that you and your little View-watching compatriots can take your condescenscion and stuff it up the gerbil hole. Bonus points for property destruction. Take it away, Doug Gillett:

While I take college football a lot more seriously than some people, I'd always figured that I could still approach it with a measure of reason and sanity, keeping a level head and venturing toward neither the extreme of overexuberance nor the extreme of seething despair as I see so many other people doing from time to time. Only once have I ever even come close to getting in a fistfight over a game, and I can't remember a single time when I actually destroyed property. But during the Colorado game, my feeling toward the team went beyond disappointment, where it has been before on occasion, and advanced straight into anger. Rage, even. Enough anger that Ann and I had to leave Loco's Deli and Pub in Homewood, where we had been watching the game, for fear that I would do something to get thrown out if we stuck around.

This turned out to be an astute decision on our part, because after Matt Stafford's fumble to end the first drive of the third quarter, I knocked a chair over in the kitchen, then picked it up and threw it a ways. And when Georgia's next drive also ended in a fumble, I yanked my toaster oven off the counter and hurled it off my balcony.

The clincher is the next sentence.

No, I'm not proud of it, but it happens. I'm moving on.

Keith Jackson Circa 1995

(for the best prose.)

Every Day Should Be Saturday. This is a "duh," right?

Sunday Morning Quarterback. Also "duh."

Ron Bellamy's Underachieving All-Stars. One of the persistent frustrations of the past year is that Johnny's posting schedule on RBUAS was around once or twice a week. All that nasty "class" and "writing things for newspapers" interfered with his god-given talent, which was telling us all why Steve Breaston was still his hero and making it sound goooood. I remembered a particular sentence vividly; I looked at RBUAS' August archive -- surely it couldn't have been that old if it stuck in my head like that -- and the June archive, and the May, and April, and March, and February, finding it in none of these. Eventually I did locate it, January 21st of this year:

There’s this feeling you get when you know a player’s worth something, where you sense the eyes of the world and every loose molecule in the atmosphere gravitating toward them. And then before you can catch your breath Michigan’s trailing Penn State by a touchdown, the kick off’s fallen into his hands, he’s at midfield, your lungs deflate, and the camera pans out and you see an image like the one at the end of “Field of Dreams” where miles of headlights are being pulled to that one player everyone can’t stop watching.

So, yeah, I just went through 2/3rds of a year's posts to find that, and I think it was worth it. This is not a phenomenon unique to me.

Best New Blog

Two votes here. One: Card Chronicle, a Louisville blog that introduced the world to Ill-Advised Haircut, Kentucky's version of Spain. Um... "Spain" as in the "Spain" of the On Notice board, an apparently blameless entity that is nonetheless blamed for all the issues facing the favored program. (Though I should point out that Spain has recently done me very wrong indeed and now actually warrants its place on the board. And no, ain't tellin'.) Why? Well, this was the #4 reason Louisville might lose to Rutgers:

4. We got a haircut

We weren't sure whether or not we were going to admit this, but damnit we've never known how to lie you.

Still drunk with happiness last Friday afternoon, we decided things were getting a little too shaggy up top and that it was time to head to our fancy Barbershop (Super Cuts) and get a dome chop. The chair was comfy, the conversation exquisite, and the hair (obviously) glorious. It wasn't until about five minutes after we'd left the lovely Sharon with a generous tip (37 cents) that we realized what we had just done.

Our last cut had been right before our birthday, meaning it was the last week of August, and more importantly meaning it was before the season started.

We may have been the only ones present in our atumomobile at the time, but that didn't stop us from saying "Oh. My. God." out loud. We thought about pulling a U'ey in the middle of the road, sprinting back into the SC and asking what their policy is on super glueing the used hair of a recent client back to his head. Alas we came to terms with the fact that there was nothing to be done, and that we may have just ruined the hopes and dreams of all of Cardinal nation.

If the unthinkable were to happen tonight, rest assured there will be a self-inflicted penalty, and it will involve our hair. Or testicles.

Ill-Advised Haircut recently came in third in a CC poll of BCS opponents Card fans would like to see. One question: what happened to the hair/testicles punishment promised?

Vote #2: Corn From A Jar, the Tennessee blog that gave us "We Must Protect This Cheese" and many other bits of hilarity throughout the season. I am a sucker for a blog that can make me laugh.

Post of the Year

(Tyrone Prothro Award)

On January 12th of this year -- a mere eight days after the NC game which marks the boundary of available posts, Every Day Should Be Saturday posted the triumphant peak of its "Your Schools Promotional Ad Is Teh Suxors" series: Appalachian State is HOT HOT HOT. About a week later, VH1 featured it on its Web Junk show. Coincidence? Maybe. It's now got its own Wikipedia page. Point Orson.

(I reserve the right to expound further here.)

Best Regular Feature

(Old Faithful Award)

Desperately torn here between "Friday Morning Quarterback" and "Sunday Morning Quarterback" from, yes, Sunday Morning Quarterback. I don't actually have to choose, but it poses a philosophical issue: is the most essential preview column in college football more important than the most essential review column in college football? If so, why? 8-10 pages due Monday.

MaxwellPundit. Chris Wilson at Rakes of Mallow put together the Heisman alternative and gave me real reason to hate Reggie Ball, since I kept shoving Calvin Johnson at the top of my ballot right before Ball would lead Georgia Tech to, say, a stirring 31-7 loss versus Clemson in which he wouldn't even look at Johnson all game. Unfortunately, Troy Smith sliced Michigan into ribbons and removed all suspense from further proceedings, but if things had been a little bit different you could see the potential for a person who wasn't a quarterback or running back to win. Wilson also deftly combined everyone's opinions into an entertaining weekly post, pioneered the use of descriptions like "Robot-God of Aerial Destruction" when describing awards candidates, and weekly reminded me to actually vote in the damn thing.

Under The Hood. Burnt Orange Nation's pro-bono comprehensive statistical breakdown of teams and matchups not involving Texas in even the slightest itty-bitty way was an unexpected boon. The Michigan-Ohio State one saved me a couple hours. Distilling a mass of numbers into something sensible is a difficult enterprise, and BON did it with aplomb.

Best Podcast/Audio Thing

Ohhhh yeah, baby... Lee Corso. "I'm about to run a freaky option like you never seen between passion and ecstasy." Orson, Orson, Orson, you have no idea how many sweet love-makin' sessions you've ruined when Corso's head has floated in from the side and hovered over the lovee, Reese-Witherspoon-in-Election style. Half nightmare, half dream, all sexy: The Lee Corso Soul, er, Explosion. Mascot head don't lie.

The Orgeron Song. Memphis radio host Chris Vernon revolutionized the state of the art in weird Orgeron parody/tribute with "Colonel Reb is Crying." yawwwwyawwwyawww yaw yaw footbaw, indeed.



Friday Nite Lites. House Rock Built's semi-regular podcast disappeared towards the end of the season but was still to my knowledge the only regularly produced college football podcast. Also I ruled the lightning round.