Mocking Point 1. Former mascot - The Fighting Methodists.

Bring it on, ladies.

It’s truly a shame that this mascot had to fall by the wayside in 1912. There could have been some lingering staredowns with the Fighting Quakers of Earlham College followed by a very tense round of donuts and coffee in the basement commons room. As it is, USC dispatched with the belligerent-Christian label and adopted their new, pagan mascot, the steroid proponent from ancient Troy. Eight years later, the Trojan condom was created to protect the world from his genitals.

A side note: if the headlines I’m reading are true, Catholics may also now dabble in the practice of wearing a rubber sheath over our old fellas, so long as we’re male prostitutes. I may be misrepresenting Catholic doctrine again, though. I keep doing that.

Mocking Point 2. America’s fattest president, William Howard Taft visited USC’s campus once, in 1911. 76 years later according to USC’s website, they became the first U.S. college to own and operate a fast-food franchise, a Carl Jr.’s. Think about that for awhile. What’s that tell ya? I don’t know. You tell me. Think about it.

Mocking Point 3. USC rejected Steven Spielberg from their undergraduate program three times, but accepted Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray without flinching. Think about that. Let that stew for awhile.

Other alums of note, pulled at random from the wikipedia: Annabel Chong- the porn actress who set a world’s record with 251 deeds done with 70 dudes in 10 hours; Paris Hilton’s grandfather; Richard Perle; and Judge Wapner, that bastard.

Mocking Point 4. Your school is in massive trouble with the NCAA. You’re handing back Heismans and wins and dignity. You need help. You need a fixer. A squeaky clean figure with a reputation for steering large ships packed with Mazda convertibles through Somali pirate-infested waters. You need a man of character and wisdom.

You call Lane Kiffin.

Are you stupid or crazy? You’re both. You’re SC.

Mocking Point 5. As you may know, an investigation by Yahoo Sports, which I believe invented a reporting arm strictly for this story, revealed that Reggie Bush began playing professional football well before he had finished his playing career at USC.

The story is old at this point, but the details in the original reporting still delight those who are glad to see that the Trojans mailed themselves a horse and then forgot what was inside. Reggie Bush and his family, making it rain. Among the many details in that story are allegations that sports agents were not only on the sidelines of games and practices in 2005, but in the locker room, to boot. Basically, they were omnipresent. One can only assume that things would have been crazy worse if the whole truth of how uncompliant USC was in their recent heyday was revealed. Thankfully, Reggie Bush screwed his golden goose who promptly spilled beans all over creation, if I may mix a metaphor or three.

USC, after receiving their well-earned punishment decided to appeal the harsh decision, and their representatives released this statement of protest. Which we’ve enhanced with a bit of context:

Time will tell, as it always does. And on Saturday evening, as we pardon ourselves at halftime to divest our bowels of a seemingly endless parade of leftover turkey and mashed potatoes, may the score read Notre Dame 28, USC 0. And when the game is over, may it read Notre Dame 56, USC 0. And yea, Lord, we shall mock them anew. We mock you, USC. Her Loyal Sons mock you. We mock you now. We mock you mid-game. We mock you post-game. We mock you forever.
H’amen.

I feel this way when I encounter fan video blogs. I feel like I’m being tested. The very goodness of my person is on trial. God has placed these videos on the internet to see if I’m going to be a big, old asshole about it or not. Why do I think this?

It’s one thing to mock a competing school, right? It’s an abstraction. It’s an organization, a collection of buildings and people and schools. We mock each other, and feelings may be hurt (as I sometimes can tell by the comments on different posts) but it’s nothing personal. It’s just your school sucks, is all. But these home-brewed college football video reports... there’s something deeply intimate about them.

A man in his home, tiny camera built into the lid of his laptop, wearing his school gear, screwing up his courage to do his version of a very poor color commentator imitation coupled with the weird exhibitionism of the “Vlog.”

I have two exhibits, both Pittsburgh-related (topical) that exhibit this genre in full-force. As God is clearly testing me, I will not write anything about these gentlemen, I will merely present them in all their glory. First of all, here’s a Miami commentator’s pre-season take on the Pitt Pathers…

And here’s a Pittsburgh fan, a little piece from last year’s vault after a game versus West Virginia…

Boom goes the dynamite. I must stay true. I will not mock these gentlemen or the video genre they exemplify. That would be wrong. Rather, I will put my money where my mouth is, and produce my own video blog entry on this week’s game versus the Panthers of Pittsburgh. I will show you that Vlogging ain’t easy. Apologies in advance:

So there you go. You may now watch the game as an informed bystander. Uh huh. If there's time tomorrow morning, a video tribute to Dave Wannstadt's mustache will appear in this internet space.

If it weren’t Boston College this weekend, if it were say... Army, or Navy, I’d probably just say screw it to the weekly mocking video. I just don’t have it in me after three straight weeks of disheartening football viewing. But it is Boston College. And I sure hate them. I do. I don’t consider them a rival. I don’t hate them that way. I hate them like I hate parasites. Like a tapeworm. Or a liver fluke. Boston College fans always have trouble with this distinction.

New mascot. At least consider it.

They are the mythical jungle cats who sneak into your dairy pastures at night and suckle your cows until their udders are as dry, dangly and flaccid as Tom Hammond’s dewlap. Such parasites give nothing. They only take. There is no symbiosis there. They are worth nothing in themselves.

I have an intricate heart divided into pockets for love, indifference (inexplicably), and hatred, and in the upper Northwest quadrant of the right atrium there is a slot allotted specifically, and solely, for Boston College.

I mean it.

How much of this is because of David Gordon kicking a field goal to ruin Notre Dame’s perfect season seventeen years ago? A lot. It’s difficult to think of a more painful moment in the football portion of my life. That’s really it for me. The bottom. What’s maybe worse, in a way, is the manner in which Boston College fans I have met since that awful day tend to bring it up. That’s almost two decades worth of schadenfreude dribbling past me here and there, now and then, for 17 years. That wears on a soul, my friend.

And I’m ranting, so let me just take some time to expound on the fact that Boston College is never very good. The only joy their fans CAN take from a season is a moment like that, the upset. They hang their only hopes for satisfaction on the fragile coat-rack of other people’s suffering. Boston College has never won a national championship. They probably never will. In the past 25 years, Boston College has lost at least three games in every season. Over the past 55 years, they’ve lost at least two games each season. They’ve had some decent teams and some good players, but they haven’t really been great since World War II. When everyone worth playing was out putting his life in the hands of his fellow man, pitting might against might, steel against flesh, out there on the beach in Saipan laying a beatin’ on the goddamned j... Whoa... easy... easy, Grandpa. Here, let’s help you into this chair. Turn on that Andrews Sisters album, dammit! Here. Comb his hair. He loves that. There you go. Theeere you go. Ready for your pill?

So that’s kind of how I feel about Boston College. I went to their stadium once, ayuh, back in 1998, nigh on 12 years ago. They piped in music and crowd noise. They stomped on their aluminum high school stadium seats. Their fans were abusive. They hung Notre Dame players in effigy in this strange student-housing shambles by the stadium. And Notre Dame beat them with an incredible goal-line stand. And it was sweet. But not as sweet as it would have been for Boston College if the shoe had been on the other foot. Which is really what separates Notre Dame from Boston College. A Notre Dame fan can know pain. A Notre Dame fan has something worth suffering for.

It’s science.

BC's one of those teams who you can only feel relief after beating. There's no real joy in it.

A few good reasons to mock Boston College:
1. They’re Catholic! Wah ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh wait.

BC President, Father William P. Leahy SJ wows the crowd with an irreverent limerick about a young woman with a fondness for licorice. Jesuits.

2. They’re a college, but they still call themselves a University. Because there’s already a Boston University. And it’s more prestigious..

3. They get Notre Dame’s admissions office’s sloppy seconds. That’s right. I said it. Go buy a ticket on the T and cry about it... while listening to Elliot Smith. As the sun rises.

4. They have a better record than Notre Dame. That doesn’t make sense initially, but they beat a I-AA school 38-20, beat a MAC team, and last week got shut out by an unranked Virginia Tech team that lost to James Madison. Which I always thought was a private high school. Anyone else hear that? Whatever.

If they were dropped from the schedule, I would not miss them.
You know what, maybe I’ll get more creative next week. For now, I’ll let their team demean themselves. Here you go:

Boston College vs. Virginia Tech "Highlights"

We mock you.

1. They made Tyrone Willingham look halfway decent for a few years, thus inflicting him on Notre Dame. Then that woman shaved her head. All Stanford’s fault, really.

2. Jim Harbaugh. Whines and pouts during games like a two-year-old leaving Chuck-E-Cheese before the animatronic garage band has finished “Proud Mary”. He embarrasses humanity at least once a game. Also, as domer_mq notes: went to Michigan.

3. Their halftime shows. I was in Ireland during the Stanford band’s salute to the Potato Famine. I’m all about the mocking, clearly, but it was kind of difficult to explain to my Irish friends what was so hilarious about a million deaths. I didn’t really try that hard, though, to be honest.

In any event, their collection of YouTube videos is thousands deep. Everything at Stanford is documented and instantly uploaded. Not a sparrow farts, but a member of Stanford’s videography department is there to capture it. They also have the standard boilerplate academic commercials that roll through football games from time to time, just to remind you that Stanford is more than just a football school that won its last national championship in 1926 (and they shared that with Alabama, so let's call that half a national championship, really). Here’s one example.

To summarize: “Blah blah blah…science! Blah blah blah… collaboration!” accompanied by unnecessary helicopter tracking shots and use of green screen technology. You know what, here’s a better summary:

We mock you, Stanford. We mock you and your, your… healthy endowment! And… your, your breezy attitude, and your…proximity to the Pacific Ocean and your, your… water polo dominance. Go stuff yourselves.

Here's the revised:

Michigan (State), We Mock You

Michigan, we mock you.

The Roundup

It has begun. And One Foot Down does a nice job of breaking down last night’s games with a view from the couch. Insights of note include the way that Hawaii outgained USC last night and a brief exploration of whether Pitt isn’t scary at all or Utah is really scary.

The optimists clear their throats. Would you rather lose an arm or a leg? A kidney or a lung? A tooth or an eyebrow? A Floyd or a Crist?

The Alchemist Brian Kelly’s history is a tale of making whatever he’s given into something successful. Like a zen koan, consider… When you give a man a fetid turd, and he turns it into gold, what happens when you give him gold? We’re counting on some platinum, sir. Or perhaps a diamond made of gold. Do that.

Also, it will be shown in gleaming Technicolor. NBC spouts off about the unmanned drone technology that will be hovering behind the backfield at Notre Dame Stadium this year. Let’s hope Tom Hammond can keep his head out of the shot. Zing!

I swear I’m on the list, man! The AP lists their Top 12 tailgating locations, putting LSU at #1 (fair enough) and Purdue at #12 because some guy turned a grill into a coffin. Not on the list: ND, Georgia, Julliard, Alabama, or Florida.

Like you’re actually there. Oh wait. Michigan fans hoping to watch their team lose from multiple angles while actually sitting in their stadium will finally have their dreams come true. Pro: A bit easier to ignore the man vomiting on your shoes. Con: Pretty much everything else. Get some binoculars and a memory, son.

Time to start scouting lacrosse practice. North Carolina’s going to be down, oh, a significant percentage of their players in their opener against LSU. They’re being held out until the university can figure out just what, exactly, the NCAA can prove.

Head for the Public House. The Wall Street Journal provides a listing of where you should go to watch your team while in New York City, regardless of who your team might be.

The Beer (kind of)

In keeping with tradition, I offer you the gluten-intolerant version of mq_domer’s beer happenings.  As I am intolerant of barley (I don’t like the way it looks at me while I’m kissing its mother (wheat)) I will be imbibing Red Bridge beer, a tolerable beer facsimile composed primarily of rice and sorghum while politely refusing pita chips, chex mix, and a number of delicious foods wrapped in bread.  I won’t care so much, though after around four bottles of this slightly-too-sweet concoction.  That’s why they make it.  Go Irish!

As of now, you can go online to the school's official website and purchase tickets to all but the first two home games. Of course, add on a $5 fee and a $9 order charge to that ticket. I don’t know what those charges are for, exactly, but it’s fine by me, because I poop fourteen-dollar bills. I do. It’s gross, but I really do. I’d be happy to mail you one. They work at Wal-Mart only, for some reason.

Stingy rant aside, other schools sometimes do have to hustle a bit to sell-out the old chicken-wire-lined patch of grass they call “home.” Purdue, in particular, is a stadium I’ve been to that reminded me a bit too much of John Steinbeck’s dustbowl. Everything covered in a brown film, people in tattered clothing, limping around all thirsty and shit. Pardon me. I may be thinking of “The Road.” Either way, that was Purdue, as I recall it.

It’s changed since then, apparently, with a $70 million dollar makeover completed seven years ago, and a few years back they tossed up a $1.7 million flat panel over their gigantic faux-fireplace. That way when you fall asleep at the game it can feel a little more like a Double Tree Inn.
Last year, the average attendance in their 62,500 seat stadium was just shy of 50,000, so around one of every five seats lay fallow on a typical game day, gathering up nutrients, sunlight, and restorative energy, awaiting the day when a four hundred pound man dressed as a locomotive engine will take his place in that well-rested seat.
For that reason, from time to time Purdue’s got to bust out the fishnet hosiery and shake it a little bit. Their ticket website offers group discounts, variable pricing dependent on the strength of the opponent, buy-one-get-one-free promotions, reasonable rates on half and halfs, the works. It warms the cockles of my stingy heart. They also produce videos such as this one , which, for the joy that comes with swatting a small child’s jumpshot, we have amateurishly re-dubbed for you here and now.

Purdue: we mock you and we mock your multi-media presentation.
Football is nigh. Amen.

It has been a year and a half since my last profession.  I have been writing and thinking, about this, that, and occasionally, your sister, just not on this particular forum.

Like all stalwart Catholics, I must at times seclude myself in a beehive hut in some sparsely populated region of the world and contemplate the ball of wax that is my soul.  Elusive wax.  Malleable, somewhat sticky stuff, the soul, not to mention flammable.  I emerged a year later from that beehived assemblage of stones with a cleansed heart, a thick, priestly beard, and a difficulty with sunlight.  Blinded, the first thing I did was stumble naked into the picnic of a very surprised young couple, landing genitals-first in their potato salad.  It was a delicious reintroduction to the world.

They still enjoyed it.

The gentle ruminations in the darkness of my solitude led me to many truths and a number of conclusions and resolutions:

1.  No more blogging until I complete my fictional masterpiece.
2.  No more blogging until an Irish surname coached the Irish again.
3.  No more blogging until my pants fit better
4.  No more calling it blogging.  From now on, I shall call it “blournalism” in the hopes of lifting the profession ever higher in the minds of those I most esteem.  Such as Stewart Mandel.

All conditions have been met.  As to point 1, a draft is complete, so Nabokov can suck it.  Posthumously.

As to point 2, obviously, objective surpassed.  Kelly, a proud last name, plus the first name of Ireland’s greatest high king, Brian Boru, so Ulster can suck it. 

As to point 3, Dockers may be so bold as to suck it. 

And as to point 4, I can already sense the term blournalism’s inevitable leap onto the AP wire.  The AP, via fair-use, may suck it.

All that being said, I will soon begin a weekly look at the use of video technology by those who would dare oppose her loyal sons (eh!) on the fields of combat.

Football’s almost back.
H’amen!

Silky coiffed Bea Arthur waves "So long" to an indifferent crowd of well-wishers.

Soon after the cancellation of her hit sit-com Golden Girls, Arthur found her way to another passion: Notre Dame football.  Assuming a nom de télévision, Arthur worked alongside former USC quarterback and elf Pat Haden to bring her wry wit, astute observations, and rich, vanilla timbre to homes across America for many years.

We will miss her soulful eyes, her shimmering neck scarves, and the way she'd seamlessly weave a reference to the upcoming episode of "My Name is Earl" into game action.

Gone too soon.  Gone.... too soon.