Leisurely breakfast over a skillet of fried eggs, sausage, potatoes, cheese, and onions, with a milkshake: $12.75 (with tip).

Eventual Cardiology Bills: Priceless

Waltzing into the office on a glorious Friday morning around 10:30: Priceless-ier

We’ve been waiting for you, Mr. domer.mq

• We’re not ignoring “Spygate.” We don’t like that Weis has been implicated in any way. We do think it’s funny that the Pats still lost to a bad team even while if they knew the signals. We think it’s really sad that Senator Spector is pursuing this with far more vigor than he’s ever pursued, say, a resolution to the Iraq war, solutions to poverty, or the end of genocide in 3rd world countries. See if I pay your salary next year, Mr. Spector. Leave the intense, irrational debate about sports to bloggers. We have a lot of thoughts on this.
• Finally, Washington has received a ranking commensurate with their coaching. (HT: EDSBS)
• This will blow our doors off? Sir, the only thing that will blow our doors off is the party to celebrate it.
• While ND-SoCal is a great rivalry. UCLA-SoCal is a great hatred. And Bruins Nation is reveling in the schadenfreude over the Bush/Mayo thing.
• I find myself asking this question a lot, “Dude, why are you shirtless?“
• More proof that the Foo Fighters are the greatest rock band still carrying a tune.
• They’ve only steered me wrong with their “beer of the week” like 7 or 8 times.

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• Friday Roundup: The Biscuit Edition
• Friday Roundup: The “It’s All About Bob” Edition
• Friday Roundup: The Day Late and a Dollar Short Edition

No one is shocked.

If UF wins?  It’s all Urban.  If they lose?  His players are slackers.  If they do well in the classroom and preach to prison mates?  Urban’s a leader, a role model.  If they steal dead peoples’ credit cards?  It’s the NCAA’s fault.

This is complete and utter, and major, BS.  Urban clearly has lost control of his players.  He recruits kids with suspect integrity, little/no academic background to stand on, and he doesn’t do anything to ‘mold men’.  Then he blames the NCAA for his kids going out of control? 

We’ve documented pretty well the absurd number of arrests and problems in that program.   That’s old news.  But now it’s the NCAA’s fault?  It’s not Urban’s fault? Or UF’s?  Or some combination of those two and the kids themselves?  Nope:

”The NCAA is pulling us off the recruiting process,” he said. “I’m not allowed to go out [to visit players] anymore. I’m not allowed to text message. I’m trying to find out as best I can. You just keep re-evaluating.

“If you just look around and see some of the things that are going on, it’s amazing. It’s concerning. It’s alarming. So we take a great deal of time and effort in trying to educate guys, work with them and recruit character. Are we perfect? Absolutely not.”

Now this doesn’t make ANY sense whatsoever.  I don’t like the new limiting rules either.  I think they reward lazy coaches (Ty) and hurt hard-working coaches (Urban, Charlie, Pete).  But c’mon now, Urban, this is beyond shady.   The key fact Urb leaves out is that those rules JUST took effect this past year.  The dude that just stole and used his deceased friend’s credit card was a Sophomore, which means Urban recruited him 2 freaking years ago!  So Urb is saying that 2 new rules (text ban and reduced recruiting time allowed on the road), implemented in the past year is why he had over 14 arrests in the past year and change?  Ummm, yeah, we’re not buying it Urb.

And Urb happily glosses over all of those other problems over the past year (AK-47’s, burglary, robbery, fraud…eh, nothin’ for Urb) and points to what he says is the ’success’ of ALL 104 other guys:

”It’s a shame that one person had to steal away from what the other 104 guys are doing,” Meyer said. “We had the highest GPA in University of Florida football history. We had 58 [players] that had over a 3.0.”

Urb, I’m glad some guys are doing well.  I’m glad 58 dudes (barely half) have a 3.0.  But you HAVE to count the dudes that got arrested and/or kicked off the team in this type of stuff.  Seriously, man!  Clean up your program, or at least accept some responsibility for it.

And no, Tim Tebow being a preacher does not make up for everyone else.

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• Urban Meyer Played Role of Liar McFirePants With Respect To Things Said About Cheaty McSweaterVest’s Team
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…That Joe Paterno was taken to the hospital for dehydration.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — Penn State coach Joe Paterno is in a hospital undergoing tests and is being treated for apparent dehydration.

A team spokesman says the 81-year-old football coach was taken to Mount Nittany Medical Center by ambulance Thursday morning after feeling nauseated.

Guido D’Elia says Paterno has not been admitted to the hospital, but is currently undergoing tests.

D’Elia says Paterno still plans to make a trip Friday to Texas for a dinner with University of Texas football coach Mack Brown.

Paterno had been on a busy schedule of late, traveling to Philadelphia last weekend. He also recently returned from a meeting with Big Ten Conference coaches.

Stay tuned to see if more comes of this and whether or not we leave our “classy” reputation in shambles.

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• Bring It
• West Virginia Keeps Coach, Burns Couch
• Offense U

Tim Brown is the first former Notre Dame Football player who, upon seeing him in person off the football field, caused me to exclaim at a volume loud enough for Tim to hear me, “Holy Crap! That’s Tim Brown!” Granted, exlaiming “Holy Crap! That’s Tim Brown!” upon seeing Rocket or Zorich would have been odd, but that doesn’t take away from the legend of Tim Brown. And now Tim’s building on his legend by helping make the every-man wealthier.

Sports fans will likely recognize me from my years with the National Football League’s Los Angeles and Oakland Raiders. I spent the bulk of my career in the silver and black after winning the Heisman trophy with Notre Dame.

However, since my retirement from the gridiron, I have been involved in a number of different ventures, including the stock market. And just like I sized up opposing defenses, I have taken to scanning public the financials of public companies and trying to spot strengths and weaknesses. Having played alongside some of the all-time greats, like Jerry Rice, I know how to spot a winner both on and off the field.

Today is my first shot at writing a column for TheStreet.com. I will be a regular, and I will try and point out stocks that I think are worth backing. I’ve had some success with my own portfolio and I am hoping to share some of my insight with you the readers in a way that is both interesting and that gives you insight into my thinking.

Tim’s first pick? Microsoft. (MSFT)

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• This Reminds Me Of My Entire Life
• Fraud-riguez.
• Let’s Clear One Thing Up Real Quickly…

Now, given DTK’s input the other day on the Urban-runs-a-prison-holding-cell story, I promised I wouldn’t mock Michigan.  And I’m not gonna. 

Just saying that the deposition of Coach Richard Rodriguez is up on the internets.  And some of you may want to read it, and then post your ‘thoughts’ on it in the comments.  I, for one, am just letting everyone know it’s out there.

Here and here and are parts 1 and 2.  (Part 3 is just legal mumbo jumbo.)

Seriously and Non-mockingly,

The Biscuit (aka “flaming liberal” - anyone want some pot brownies?)

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• ESPN’s Todd McSucks Continues the Madness
• Mitch Mustain Prefers Southern Cal Bench Over Arkansas Bench

Sign it!
Sign this huge contract so we may pay you a fortune!

I’m not sure what will end first, this Dick-Rod-Not-Paying-His-Buyout thing or the Democratic Nomination process, but both have reached rarefied levels of stupidity. While Hillary Clinton is vowing to continue fighting, Dick Rod is claiming he was “coerced” into signing his West Virginia contract.

Former West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez says Gov. Joe Manchin and three members of the university’s board of governors pressured him into signing a new contract before the start of the 2007 season, even though it had a $4 million buyout clause he didn’t want.

Let’s take a look at the definition of “coerced.”

Main Entry: co·erce
Pronunciation: kO-’&rs
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): co·erced; co·erc·ing
Etymology: Middle English cohercen, from Anglo-French *cohercer Latin coercEre, from co- + arcEre to shut up, enclose — more at ARK
Date: 15th century
1 : to restrain or dominate by force
2 : to compel to an act or choice
3 : to achieve by force or threat

We’ll leave the first definition out of this. I assume Dick wasn’t restrained or dominated by force. That may be a leap, considering he was in West Virginia, but it’s a prospect I’d just rather ignore. So let’s go with 2 or 3. Dick was either compelled or threatened. To sign a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract to do a job far less important to humanity than about 95% of the jobs that exist in the world.

Here’s how I figure this “coercion” probably went.

Governor Manchin: Sign this contract, Dick.

Dick: No!

Manchin: Do it, or else!

Dick: Or else what?

Manchin: Or else we wont pay you millions of dollars to do a job that, ultimately, falls incredibly low on the totem pole of global importance.

Dick: Well, it looks as though I’ve no choice in the matter!

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• Dumbest Writer In The History of Communication Found

Seriously, Chuck says, you don’t know me unless you’ve met me.

And given that most people haven’t met Chuck (except me), he’s talking to the majority of the fans/haters out there when he says this.  It’s an interesting interview, taken from a more personal angle than most. 

“And it’s probably the biggest, I don’t know if it bothered me the most, just the thing that I don’t understand the most, is all these people have an impression of you. They’ve never even met you. I mean, they’ve never even talked to you.”

In a way, I get it.  And I have to admit Charlie’s right:  people don’t KNOW him.  They haven’t met him, they don’t hang out, and they don’t get the full picture of who he is.  And I really agree that the public’s opinion should be much much less about WHO Charlie is, and much more about HOW he coaches.  Of course, some of that is intertwined, but it’s up to the fans and the public to delineate the difference.  The haters often focus on his weight problems, his jersey-ish style of speaking and scream, cry and whine foul.  FOUL they say! The ND fans are often close to, if not quite, as bad. 

But at the same time, Coach, that’s the nature of the beast.  You’re in a public job with a public jury, and so people will certainly form an opinion about you - and quickly.    I mean, I can pretty much tell you with utmost certainty that our President is a moron.  And I’ve never come close to meeting the guy. 

FYI:  The reporter is blind.

Point is, if Charlie does something illegal, or even shady, feel free to call him out.  But don’t hate the player, hate the game!

Yes, the way he says some things is less-than-sophisticated.  His mastery of PR is far from ‘there’ yet.  But that doesn’t make Charlie Weis a bad guy, it makes him a questionable public speaker.  Don’t pull the guy down as a person until you tell me he’s doing some Urban-esque type stuff.   At that point, anyone’s fair game.  But I don’t think you’ll ever see that kind of thing out of Charlie.   After all, he cares…

“I think that anyone that works with me will probably tell you that there probably isn’t anyone who’s more caring than me,” he said.

And that quote right there sums it up for Charlie, on both sides.  I do believe the guy cares about people.  From the stories and from my personal interaction with him, I believe that he really does care about his family, friends, players, and the fans.  But somehow, he manages to say it in a way that makes him sound like a pompous ass. 

But don’t crucify him for the jersey-ish, less-than-eloquent talk.   It’s the thought that counts, people!

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• Seriously, Don’t Freak Out.
• “To Hell with Michigan”
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I was going to ignore the entire “OJ Mayo Took Money From Agents In High School and College” thing. For one, OJ Mayo didn’t play football at Southern Cal. He played basketball, and we’re a college football blog. Second, I didn’t really think it would get much attention outside of enraged UCLA and Notre Dame fans because the entire scenario seemed like a giant “Duh Moment.” Honestly, who among us is actually surprised by this? It was practically assumed that OJ Mayo was receiving payouts from someone or, at the very least, getting courted by agents since his umbilical cord dried up and fell off. But the story has gotten a lot of traction nationally, it does speak to a lack of institutional control at Southern Cal, our one and only rival, and just because it was obvious doesn’t make it right.

And that seems to be the first defense of Southern Cal: They can’t be held responsible when it was so obvious that OJ would do what he did. It’s an argument that’s nearly as stupid as the “everybody does it, so who cares” defense. In fact, both defenses are so stupid that I refuse to waste many keystrokes on them. If you truly believe one and/or the other, I invite you to direct your web browser elsewhere. You’re too stupid to read this site, and literacy coupled with intellects such as yours tend to lead to very sad movies on HBO about “death marches” in various geographies.

The other defense that I keep encountering on the internet, on the radio waves, and at the lunch counter goes something like this: The world has signaled that graduating players and keeping their noses clean comes a distant second to winning, and so Southern Cal and Tim Floydd should not be held accountable. It’s too hard to monitor these players and build a winning team at the same time.

And while the argument nearly follows some semblance of logic, it shares a common trait with the previous 2 defenses in that it’s patently false. It may be very, very hard as administrators and coaches to do everything by the letter of the NCAA law (and the local, state, and federal laws), ensure that the players keep their noses clean, and win, but, frankly, what the hell else are we paying these people for?

These coaches and administrators are paid a ton of money to do all of the things I just mentioned, not most of them. It’s why we positively freaked out at Kevin White when he uttered the famous “Sunday to Friday” comment. We don’t pay coaches millions of dollars to “do all the right things” OR win. We pay them to do it all! And we pay them well! And besides, how much are we really needing to pay them to motivate them to go about trying to win? Aren’t they coaches? Isn’t it inherent within their chosen profession to want to win anyway? Isn’t the compensation entirely designed to entice the coaches to win (something they want to do) while navigating the waters of legal and NCAA codes?

Is the argument by those who would defend Southern Cal that the coaches and administrators aren’t paid enough to keep tabs on their players and make sure the players are on the up-and-up? How about Southern Cal’s NCAA Compliance Officer? Why does that person even bother having a job at all if not to be a thorn in the side of Southern Cal student athletes? Does Southern Cal even have a Compliance Officer? I’m just assuming they do, but considering this and the Reggie Bush thing, maybe they don’t.

All this ranting aside, I want to be clear that I don’t like the idea of giving Southern Cal the “death penalty” at this point. Both the OJ Mayo and Reggie Bush issues seem only to involve agents who want to represent the athletes once they turn pro rather than boosters looking to entice talent to their schools. And Southern Cal, as far as I’m aware, isn’t on probation for committing any similar NCAA violations. But I do support a real, live, actual NCAA investigation with some teeth, and some form of punishment that wont leave Southern Cal bloggers breathing a collective sigh of relief. Forfeiture of TV revenues might be a good start. A few lost scholarships could be a good step.

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• WE WON!! (thank you defense)
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