Alabama fans, though, will be making a bid for consideration for the award:

Buy ‘em now!

Time: Saturday, 4:30 p.m.

Location: Albuquerque, NM

The state’s official insect kicks your official state insect’s thorax. If the goodie bag at the New Mexico Bowl rolled with the realness, they’d include a free tarantula hawk right next to the Fossil Watch and inevitable logo’d baseball cap. A huge, indestructible wasp wandering the desert with an insectoid howitzer dangling from its chundle, the tarantula hawk does that horrifying dick move of all dick moves by finding a tarantual, hitting it with its paralyzing sting, and then laying eggs which will hatch and feed on the spider before ruining the spider’s credit, killing its pet fish, and urinating on the grave of its mother. In the great waiting room of life, the tarantula hawk sits in the “Owns” row and stares a terrifying stare at the “Gets Owned” people across the way. We advise shooting them with pistols if they get too close, but hit them, since grazing them only makes them angrier.

Your announcers will be Terry Gannon and David Norrie. A celebrated climbing duo from New Zealand? ESPN’s Team Z College Football Announcing Squad? The co-authors of a paper on cat genetics? The founders of an obscure but critically lauded 1990s mellotron and theremin duo? They can only be one of these, but they could, in theory, be any of them. Whoever they are, one of them pissed in a potted plant at Norby’s house at the ESPN Christmas party and is serving their time in broadcasting hell.

Wyoming’s excited about it. And should be, since most 6-6 teams whose only wins against an awful slate include victories over New Mexico, Weber State, and UNLV don’t deserve to go to bowl games, even one as forlorn, sponsorless, and stuck on Dec. 19th at 4:30 in the afternoon like the New Mexico Bowl. We are not exaggerating about the excitement STARBURSTS AND NAVAJO FLAGS:

They will face Fresno State, an 8-4 team deserving your support after dealing [NAME REDACTED] a cruel defeat on a fat lineman catching a tipped 2 point conversion and backing into the endzone against Illinois in overtime. Ryan Matthews is their running back, and he is very, very good, which most leading rushers in the nation tend to be. Wyoming is the 91st ranked rushing defense, and surrenders 170 yards per game on the ground. This combination alone should make for breezy free-running for Matthews, who will use Wyoming defenders as convenient props for spectacular parkour demonstrations in the second half.

Is there any other reason to watch this game? No, not really, though it could be a fair free-fire zone for a while due to both teams’ indifference to defense. The time spent basking in Pat Hill’s mustache rays will give viewers their dose of Vitamin Manbeast, though.

We were clamoring for this to be called the Beef O’Brady’s* Bowl almost as soon as we got over our initial shock and certainty that this whole thing was an elaborate internet prank, but it’s St. Pete, so they’ve got a hardwired urge for ultimately futile efforts to class up the joint. Introducing the St. Petersburg Bowl Presented By Beef ‘O’ Brady’s**, in the style of a platter of congealing wings being presented to your table of gaping exurban cakeholes by a junior college-slogging aspiring radiation technologist who’s got a disquieting vacant look in her eyes, but who needs eyes to get a halfhearted blowjob in the back of your XTerra after close? UP TOP.

Mini Corn Dogs
Holy smoking hell, this place sells mini corn dogs, which we’re guessing makes this a cut-rate poor man’s dead hobo’s Capital One Bowl. Your combatants are Central Florida and Rutgers, two 8-4 teams finishing second in C-USA and fourth in the Big East. If that’s not unappetizing enough, we remind you that this is not the minor Florida football program coached by Howard Schnellenberger.

Killarney Chopped Salad (with crisp wontons, for that taste of Ireland)
Central Florida hasn’t actually put together a bad season here, with losses to two ranked teams (Miami and Texas, both decisive but neither gruesome blowouts), eventual conference champ East Carolina, and Southern Miss back in Week 2 when the Golden Eagles still had a quarterback. Rutgers is still seemingly slogging away in the post-Ray Rice-era disinterest backlash, but … look, we were going to say something nice about how they reeled off seven wins in eight games after that ugly opener with Cincinnati, dropping only to Pitt by a touchdown, but these guys lost to Syracuse, so no, the season is sans possibility of redemption; this is natural law and not open for debate.

Baby Back Ribs with Kickin’ Bayou BBQ, THERE ARE TOO BAYOUS IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC.
Your key matchup: True freshman Rutgers QB Tom Savage and UCF DE Bruce Miller. And this will be a matchup in the most intimate sense of the word — Rutgers has allowed 34 sacks this season and Miller is 5th in the nation in backfield quarterback molestation. Joe Martinek is the team’s leading rusher, but with UCF boasting the country’s fourth-ranked ground defense, don’t count on him getting very far.

Chocolate Eruption Cake (not making this up)
The line: Rutgers by 3. Chance that George O’Leary might say something horrible on television in the event of a minor upset to the swath of UCF fanbase clamoring for his departure: 1/4. Chance that his ill-timed choice of words will include the phrase “Chocolate Eruption”: Even.

POST-MEAL PURGE
The best thing about this matchup by a country mile? Its proximity to Tampa. Your mileage may vary.
*linked because if we told you there was a Sister Hazel download on their front page you’d never believe us
**the only time we will type that ridiculous fauxpostrophe construction correctly, so help us Cranky Old Testament God.
The St. Petersburg Bowl kicks off on ESPN at 8 p.m. Eastern on December 19.

Wayne Terrell since the day he was born. We’re hungover, and in times of crisis we flee to the classics for comfort. Drop that shit, Super Brokers.

Oh, Wayne Terrell. We like to think you ended up as the Ghostface Killah of Kingsport, TN, wandering the town slowly in terrycloth robes and pointing at people and nodding, rubbing the spot on your neck where your freshly inked “WAYNE TERRELL SINCE THE DAY I WAS BORN” tattoo sits. Thoughts like this make the gin halo we’re wearing feel just a little less heavy this morning.

Pat Hill FUCK YEAH. The Fresno State coach wants you to seize the day by the throat and clean your wounds with salt and bleach:

“Winning is everything,” said Hill, who just signed an extension with Fresno State to remain as coach into the foreseeable future. “That’s what it’s all about. Everything’s about winning, whether you’re scrimmaging or you’re playing tiddlywinks or whatever it is. The American way is about winning. That’s why people move to the United States so they have a chance to win and be successful in anything you do. If you don’t like winning, go to another country where everybody does the same thing.”

Take your ass to Belize or Gabon with that weak shit, non-winners. The coaching world’s Courage Wolf will take Fresno State into the New Mexico Bowl, and you bet your ass he’s taking home the…um…weird New Mexico Bowl pottery of victory.

Speaking of winners. What’s more American than greasing the wheels with campaign contributions? Answer: fake tits, putting a laser sight on a billy club, and Johnny Paycheck boxing a bus full of drunk nuns.

Kippy is your destiny. Sometimes head coaches have head coaching names. “Mack Brown” is not a moniker given to assistants; no that, dear friends, is a name given to a leader of men, a kisser of babies, a builder of programs. Kippy Brown, on the other hand? Yeah, that’s someone who is never going to be a head coach anywhere because there will be that awkward moment when someone says “Coach Kippy,” and everyone falls over laughing, and then you resign and go back to coaching wide receivers and hating your parents for giving you an assistant’s name.

The Fear-O-Meter. Kidney stones should really be higher on this scale. (Best blog name ever, btw, especially for a Northwestern blog.)

–The New Mexico Bowl! Home of the baffling trophy depicting Steve Spurrier in a 1976 Bucs uniform running from the Apache! (HT: Jed)

–The St. Petersburg Bowl Presented by Beef O’Brady’s! (Sadly no longer the Magic Jack Bowl. It was so…magical.)

–The R & L Carriers New Orleans Bowl! AKA The Off-Market, Dinner Theater Sugar Bowl with Sun Belt Conference actors who occasionally forget their lines.

See you tomorrow.

Dolphins crave his essence.

Tigers sit meekly mewing for his approval, lest he exercise his massive killing power on their weak souls. If Vladimir Putin sends you an invitation for a bowl game held in Moscow in early January, you accept. If you don’t, you’ll end up eating a gyro loaded with polonium, or sipping a latte laced with strontium 90. And if you get crafty and avoid all solids and liquids, the ex-KGB man will be happy to finish the job himself if necessary.

In Russia, Bowl Invites You. Wait, that’s pretty much how it happens anywhere…

What: The GAZPROM Bowl. Live from Moscow, the GAZPROM Bowl, named after the corporation most easily confused for a shadowy Bond villain’s proxy organization. You know, the one that ostensibly mines the arctic for unexplored mineral wealth, all the while searching for a convenient weak spot in the earth’s electromagnetic field to [SCIENTIFICALLY IMPROBABLE PLOT WIDGET] and extort money from the world’s leaders. You can also just insert “Gazprom’s Actual Business Plan, 2011″ here, too, because they’re totally doing this right now.

Parades? Guaranteed, preferably with a review before a dais filled with evil-ish Soviet luminaries, their supermodel wives, their supermodel mistresses, and some craggy old Soviets-turned-oligarchs staring at an endless parade of green missile launchers and other hardware streaming below them.

Pregame festivities? Certainly, most likely in hilarious Moscow nightclubs, where your team’s players will hobnob with a cast of characters seemingly stolen from the auditions for Jersey Shore, Lubyanka Prison Edition. Your players will enjoy themselves immensely, but be advised that any and all contractual obligations with Ukranian women in tiny dresses must be obligated under Russian law, but are not necessarily transferable under American law. (Additionally, all contracts may be enforced by beefy former Spetznaz members. Be advised.)

Additionally, players may sample some of the unique fruits of post-Soviet Russia’s arts scene, including their quirky and vibrant techno/dance community.

In between this and racing at 200 mph in tiny cars around Moscow’s numerous ring roads evading police, your players and fans should enjoy the colorful, often chaotic sights and sounds of modern Moscow. Be advised: don’t lean on anything, as it may fall over or contain lead, or go ahead and lick everything because it’s all coated in a sixty year old coat of heavy metal scum, and you’re going to get a good solid exposure to it anyway, so go big or go home, buddy.

When: Anytime in January, really. What’s good enough for Napoleon and Hitler is good enough for you.

Why? Because the Big Ten could use a bowl that really tested those cold weather skills they’re always bragging about. Because the Russian Mafia could get involved, and then things would really get spicy. Because everyone would come home with badass Russian prison tattoos whether they liked it or not, and thus gain a +1 on punching power.

(Special note: entry visas to Russia are in fact printed on the skin of incoming visitors. These are often confused for Mafia tats, because they are in fact identical. There is no solution to this, and you will receive a free dose of Hepatitis B with the tattoo at no charge. There is a twenty-five ruble “convenience fee,” however.)

Because you want Russian fans involved:

Most importantly, because Vladimir Putin suggested it would be a very, very good idea if you show up.

Where: Luzhniki Stadium. Some say the Scorpions’ 1989 performance here brought down Communism. Those people can, with all due respect, suck David Hasselhoff’s cock.

How: That’s your problem, friend. All you need to know is that you should be there, or a certain astonishingly virile world leader will be very unhappy with your affront to Russian hospitality. He’ll be waiting for you at the ping-pong table in a Speedo.

The ball is in your court, college football. Vlad’s waiting.

/inserts Ministry video because it’s Texas and decadent

“The recession hasn’t broken any of us,” says oil and gas mogul W.A. “Tex” Moncrief, who gave $18 million to the school’s engineering department in February and whose name is plastered on the school’s athletic center. “We’re all in damn good shape.”

Suck it, America! The Lone Star State is over here knee-deep in titties and blow while you’re all busy greeting each other at Wal-Mart. (Back to speed around 1:00ish with our next hypothetical bowl.) (It involves radiation and murder.)

Old Port Richey says you posin’. Oh, Leon Orr, the scourge of New Port Richey, a town so gully we…wait. New Port Richey? Never heard of it? It’s like Bodymore, but with a Publix, no endless rows of crack houses, and in Florida and not hard in the least. It’s New Port Richey. How weak is it? We went to high school there, something that should dispel any illusions about how gritty the place is. It’s so hard they hang out at the Wendy’s in Tarpon Springs, order a Frosty, and just wait for the mean muggin’ to begin. Leon’s ready, though.

This merciless thug obviously adept at pulling six, or perhaps seven dollars out of his pocket at a time is also being pursued by Florida State, Miami, Tennessee, and notorious thug factory Boston College. WHO ARE YOU RECRUITING FRANK SPAZIANI? When will your rogue ways cease?

To put it in Hipstr Runoff terms: his personal brand is common among young black jock bros, and that is looking tough and carrying a gun like his name was 50 Cent, but without all the bullet holes. We at Florida have standards about our thuggishness, please, which you validate by fighting in the street, discharging automatic weaponry in public, or actually doing something (as opposed to mere posing.) Additionally, Kenneth Page says you’re a busted-ass broke chump sadly deficient of stacks. Get your cheddar game straight and come back when you know a wheel of gouda from a box of Cheez-its, lawya.

Oh let’s just all add on the five-car garage. The Pac-10’s commissioner Larry Scott said he will consider expansion of the conference, thus setting in motion further fun hypotheticals involving BeiDa coming over to the Pac-10 in order to access the burgeoning Asian market (weak football, strong table tennis) and the University of Sydney just because they could boast the only football team that generates its own antivenom in case of onfield Brown Snake bite. At least the Pac-10 has pretty good options when it comes to expansion, though it does have to add two schools instead of one because it, unlike some other conferences, can count properly.

Economists predict strong swing upward in the El Paso whore market. El Paso bypasses much of the violence plaguing its sister city of Ciudad Juarez by being armed to the teeth and protected by a heavily patrolled stretch of border fence, but Oklahoma fans don’t care and plan to stay away from the Sun Bowl anyway. This has to do something to do with OU fans’ deep lust for prostitutes, something we base on watching no fewer than three OU fans at Club Madonna on South Beach get taken in the back for the full treatment. Three people=trend=scientific fact that OU fans love them some whores. This has been your pseudojournalistic math lesson for the morning, sponsored by Local Columnists: Making Sweeping Assumptions About Reality With Little Data for 90 Years.

Jahvid Best, out. Concussion treatment done right, even if it is painful to miss the final game of the year.

Fat baby pancakes, lawyaz. Marky M don’t need your tears, just hand him an umbrella/ ’cause when it rains it pours, make him a richa fella.

Yesterday the mothership’s Big Televen Borg covered the possibility of conference expansion from a multitude of angles, many of them cautiously negative, however resigned: “We don’t want traditional conference rivalries diminished.” “The extra week at the end of the season helps keep the student in our student-athletes.” “We don’t want to be nice to Notre Dame for extended periods of time.” What hasn’t been addressed in many outlets just yet is the obvious and inescapable money angle. Being gooey liberal-arts types, we certainly don’t intend to start tripping down that analytical path ourselves, but let’s put some hazy dollar figures to this. Turns out the Big Ten Network, for a start, might not exactly be a disincentive except on a purely aesthetic level:

The revenue from the unprecedented conference media initiative will be distributed between the general campus (30 percent) and the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics (70 percent) with the breakdown as follows:
Guaranteed revenue: $6.125 million;
Less campus programming costs: $250,000;
Percentage of net revenue to campus (30 percent): $1.762 million. Of that amount, 75 percent distributed to Student Financial Services (75 percent): $1.321 million; and 25 percent distributed to General Library System: $440,625;
Percentage of net revenue to Athletics (70 percent): $4.112 million.

That’s from the year of the network’s inception, and that’s just Wisconsin [ducks carburetor torn loose from Ford F150 and hurled from Madison by Bret Bielema whom we thought was sleeping, really we did he has the stillness of a crocodile in repose]. So it stands to reason it’s a pretty good financial deal for a school to enter into, especially once they figure out how to actually get the network on air in the entire Big Ten. Add the additional revenue from the conference championship game that would ostensibly be part of this deal, and it really starts to add up. Look where most of the conference programs are clustered on this list, and imagine what they’ll gain with another week of media buys. On a purely financial level, it’s sort of amazing this didn’t happen five years ago. (The reason is, of course, that the Big Ten is very slow in all things. You might have heard.)

And because this has to end with a crackpot wish-fulfillment prediction by secret internet bylaw, we have ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTY PRECENT reliable sources who SWEAR that Vanderbilt will be leaving to join the B10 TOMORROW and Miami will take their place in the SEC East and THAT’s why Jeremy Foley didn’t want to schedule an out-of-conference home-and-home with the ‘Canes because how can you be out of conference when THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE CONFERENCE EXCLUSIVE MUST CREDIT EDSBS [passes out]

Notes:

a.) That hair is a butt cut straight from the head of the primordial Sumerian god of butt cuts. It is cleaved like the fissure from which all life comes, the kind of haircut that would happen if you went to a barber and said “make it look like I have a deep axe wound along the crown of my head, but made of hair. That is the hair that send a thousand skinny dweebs flying inside of a locker. That is the hair seen crowning through the t-top of a Trans-Am’s roof. That is the hair seen wiggling between the legs of a thousand girls named Linda or Josie in a backseat parked outside an REO Speedwagon concert.

That hair will keep on loving you.

That hair, we would wager, is seen on at least one out of every three heads in archival footage of the 1986 Green Bay Packers. It is the Midwestern Pussy Hunter’s Pith Helmet, and can be neatly replicated with a Flowbee, a hair dryer, and flat, non-curly coiffures.

Today, every man besides Brewster who has this haircut has a goatee and wears baseball caps everywhere. This is a natural law and cannot be debated.

b.) That ’stache sold car stereos in a shop in Kenosha for a while back in ‘83 before doing a bid for check kiting.

(HT: Lost Lettermen.)

Not really, of course. (HT: Alligator Army.) Purchase more than four Sugar Bowl tickets and you will likely win the price of armroom in the form of an empty seat next to you, because an extended deadline always means one thing: that Florida fans are not exactly snapping up their allotment of reserved tickets, and that between a Cincy team coaching with an interim coach (who will not be there thanks to the hiring of Butch Jones) and a Florida team taking the game as a consolation prize….well, you’re looking at a flop of Orange Bowl-scale proportions. (At least the Orange Bowl is going to have a spectacular score.)

Those bodies flying off the bridge in NOLA just after New Year’s will be scalpers. The certainty of this is certainly a pleasant change from the usual mystery of the flying bodies’ identities in New Orleans. (Could be anyone! The governor! A drifter with a colorful past! A drifter with a colorful past who became governor!)

The entire thing is an interview with Howard Schnellenberger, which is of course worth the listen all by itself. However, if you want the best quote in the entire thing, go to 8:50 and you’ll hear the fumblerooski referred to as “illegal immoral, and unsportsmanlike play.”

Happy Joe-lidays.

Make custom Glitter Graphics

Our sources say your holidays need Joe Schad lurking outside your door waiting to ask you about your interest in the San Jose State job. He also hears that the spirit of Christmas is interested in using coaching’s most dynamic young character in a holiday spectacular where, despite being unjustly passed over for the UVA, ND, Cincy, and Kansas jobs, Ron Prince learns the true meaning of Christmas while trapped in a snowed-in bowling alley with colorful cast of characters. Ron Prince is Ron Prince in The Prince of Christmas: When The Holiday Spirit Strikes. (You bet your ass there’s a scene where he helps an orphan throw a magical bowling ball through a wall of ice to free them all.)

Cincinnati gets Butch. Butch Jones will be the new coach at Cincinnati as the Bearcats nab Central Michigan’s coach for the second time in four years. Butch is now the most overrepresented name by percentage in D-1 football with a whopping total of two coaches named Butch.

Anchors Aweigh. In the sci-fi proposals for Big Ten expansion, Navy is certainly the London Gentleman-classy suggestion for conference play, even if it’s not quite geographically harmonious with the Big Ten’s traditional footprint. Also, it turns the Big Ten into America by brand, and you’d hate America by rooting against them (unless they balance out those Commies in Madison, and then we’re merely even in the accounts of conference patriotism.) The SEC remains the most red-blooded American of conferences by percentage of American cars owned, guns fired willy-nilly, titties flaunted openly, and education shunned in favor of gut decisions. If you doubt this, remember our trump card in this department.

It’s still rollin’. The weirdest chapter in Alabama football history, recounted nicely by Team Speed Kills. As he points out, in the long run it all worked out, even if Bama had to go through the embarrassing rebound date of Mike Shula before landing Nick Saban.

Plenty to go around. The Year in Schadenfreude kicks the dead horse of Charlie Weis one last time, but it just makes such a satisfying thump when kicked.

“We don’t need no kicker ’cause we goin’ for two.” Oh, now we know you’re just making shit up, especially with number three receiver Duron Carter out for the Rose Bowl thanks to academics (along with defensive end Rob Rose.)

The intimidating thing in the clip are the ferocious-looking children hanging out with the MC here. Laugh, but you really could beat up far fewer nine-year olds thank you think. Our personal bet was always somewhere around nine of them if they were coordinated, ten if they weren’t, and fifteen if they were disabled in any way. You have to plan for these things, because knowing is half the battle, and who are you to say categorically that you won’t be forced to fight an army of disabled nine-year olds for your life one day?*

*Syracuse football joke goes here.

Hey, whaddya lookin’ at. I see you, there’s mirrors on my shoes just for this purpose. Walkin’ along last night and my back just went like this. When you’re four hundred and fifty-three this happens–er, “eighty-two.” Yeah, that’s what I meant. Eighty-two.”

(HT: NESN.) In other Big Ten related imagery, Jim Delany is popping his suspenders, talking on his enormous cellphone, and pondering which team to add to this “sports-based cable television broadcasting syndicate” he’s been working on for a while. Because we hold a Ph.D. from Wikipedia University, we know things, things like the growth rates for the Midwest and the states that the Big Ten is in. They’re not good, particularly in Ohio and Michigan, two states gutted by the recession, but they’re better than average in Kentucky, making Louisville a nice add from a growth perspective and from the dual strengths of its basketball and football programs. Pitt’s still the favorite, but if one Big East team doesn’t work out for expansion (now formally being looked into) then another one might work out just as well.

Or you could just start throwing out stupid shit at random, like the suggestions of Texas, Notre Dame, Central Michigan, Ohio and Memphis that have been mentioned elsewhere. (We’re not linking to either of ‘em.) That works pretty well, too.