Drunken Omelette

Now with 30 more percent character and talent development than the former Alabama running back.

What could stir us from our hibernation, our sabbatical from sportsblogging to shakes us from our months of higher learning and deep thought?*

How about former running back turned linebacker Jimmy Johns getting booted from Alabama football of a series of early morning poor life decisions. See cocaine. See meth. See weed. See The Saban, the evil doll-man ground and carved from stone, smiting your underproductive ass off the team … with a bat.

Honestly, we’re not surprised. There was something about Jimmy Johns, particularly during that season when he was the best, underutilized offensive weapon on the team, that just seemed off.

There were a lot of rumors about attitude. And by rumors, we mean we read and heard he had a bad attitude and didn’t go to class — something that docked him a lot of playing time for the past three years.

But we were always bothered with the immediate bump to running back after being brought in as a highly-touted quarterback recruit. People we knew who watched him throw said something to the effect that he couldn’t hit the broad side of barn — and by barn we mean wide, gaping chasm — while others said he didn’t fit the offense and their might have been some thinkin’ issues as well.

We tend to side with latter — particularly the thinking issues. While the Shula is an unshakable source of bland, offensive suck, having seen him coach up David Garrard (who is likely much, much smarter) tells us he wouldn’t have too much trouble putting a running quarterback in charge of vaguely West Coast scheme.

But what Jimmy Johns was always missing seemed to be in attitude and thought. His role on the disappointing 2007 Tide team was to be a disturbing leftover of what was wrong with the later Shula teams. Bad attitude, dumb mistakes, incredibly wrong sense of entitlement.

If you want to know Jimmy Johns position the last time he played in a Crimson Tide uniform, it was the teeth-clenching, ill-timed special teams flag.

And he didn’t excel at it at all.

In Fulmer Cup land, this is probably worth a 15-point jump, possibly pushing our dear Crimson Tide into the stratosphere of offseason disciplinary hijinks in one fell swoop.**

Hope.

As far as Jimmy’s future, messing up this late before your last year eligibility can’t be good.** Not knowing the full extent of his charges, we’re not sure what future he has legally or penally, but we can only dream of the Ryan Perrilloux/Jimmy Johns backfield of underwhelming doom that Jackonsville State will (probably) never offer us.

Still, we can pray …

GO GAMECOCKS!

*We bought the fifth season of Angel last week. What the hell is wrong with America that this show was canceled when it was this good? The demon legal mumbo jumbo. The bad life decisions that turn into worse life decisions. The subtle mega-arcing that leads to big payoffs at season’s end. Where the hell was Boston Legal’s audience when this show was on? No matter The WB no longer exists. You deserve it.

**Of cocaine.

***As in fatal, permanent error not good.

I totally saved your ass. You can thank by drafting me … to the NBDL.

Thank you staving off the inevitable, bro. Totally.
Remember when we said that we thought Gottfried was going to win the SEC tournament? Mykal Riley’s magical 3-pointer took the game to OT, then nature happened all over the Georgia Dome.

Here’s what Mykal said a few days back when asked about making that shot:

I couldn’t sleep last night because I kept thinking about it. A lot of people could be dead if that hadn’t happened. I believe it was God. I keep thinking about how the ball just rolled in. It was supposed to happen so that no one would be hurt.* I believe God had His hand in that to protect the people who were in the Dome.

And somehow magically saving a bunch of people’s lives with a J doesn’t even earn a spot in the NIT. Go figure. (more…)

Failure.

Alabama has fired women’s basketball coach Stephany Smith after she put together a Christ Jesus Why?! 27-61 record with the Lady Tide.

Smith could never fashion a team capable of contending with Georgia, Tennessee and LSU in the ferocious ladies B-ball of the SEC.

Here’s what she also couldn’t do:

• Tame lions into dancing on pogo sticks with less than three fatalities.
• Conveniently turn powdered sugar into crack cocaine and vice versa.
• Stop bad things from happening to good people.
• Stop bad things from happening to good people who like to do bad things.
• Go back in time and stop Antonio Langham from signing with that damned agent.
• End all murder in the world.
• Freaking fly!

Maybe she should have just tried harder.

Jake Long is expected to provide better protection for Marc Bulger if the Rams take him with the draft’s second pick.

That’s a big man, daddy. Don’t let him eat us.
While everyone is waiting for Deion Sanders II to take off on another amazing 40 run at this week’s NFL Draft combine, the sports nets are filling time by talking about how friggin’ huge (subscriber only) former Michigan OT Jake Long is.

How big is he? Well, 6′7, 313 pounds, arms that are 3-feet long, and a nearly 1-foot hand span.

He is expected to perform well in drills after spending the past practicing at his home in the woods around Hogwarts, occasionally stopping to swipe at deer and Centaurs that darted past his reach.

Sometimes he caught them. And if no one was around, then the feast would begin. (more…)

Joey Jones, showing ‘em how they roll in West Birmingham.

Hadn’t heard about the South Alabama head coaching job with all that fervor about North Carolina hiring Minnesota’s defensive coordinator? Well, the Confederate-side USA has hired former Mountain Brook High School coach Joey Jones, a one-time Crimson Tide wideout who’d made the poor life decision to reanimate the Birmingham Southern Unfunny Practical Jokes, to start the school’s new football program.

And Jones promises not to just idly let some of that fresh warm weather talent escape to the frigid, excessively temperate fields of his alma mater:

In building the first team, Jones said he intends to ‘lock down’ recruits along the Interstate 10 corridor on the Gulf Coast, particularly in Mobile.

‘When they leave the Mobile area, it’s going to be tough on them,’ Jones predicted.

How tough? Well, let’s take a look at what pitches Jones could use some of the impressive haul Nick Saban was able to claim this month from Alabama’s wet, sort of French-y parts*: (more…)

The prosecution calls, uh, JULIO! JULIO! JULIO!

Alabama wide receiver recruit Julio Jones will bring justice to the football field this fall and … oh, oh God …

The kind of weird thing about this:

Wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with the Oklahoma Sooners logo, Jones took the stand after Gibbs, essentially repeating his friend’s testimony (that he saw someone shot in the head).

Uh … Boomer Sooner?

Oh, crap.
Richard Zednik of the Florida Hockey-Panthers is in stable condition after having his throat slashed open by a skate in his team’s 5-3 loss to the (really unfortunately named) Buffalo Sabres last night. Zednik reacted quickly, putting pressure on his apparently severed jugular vein while skating over to a team trainer.

We are not fans of the hockey, though this is not why. We’re glad to hear this fella is all right, but we have to wonder how something like this doesn’t happen more often, even if the folks on skates are (semi-)trained professionals.

This is why we prefer a support like football, where you only have an 80 percent chance of being killed on field:

Mmm. Safety.

JULIO! JULIO! JULIO!
We apologize for our prolonged absence, but we were distracted by issues caused by the massive, deadly tornado that ripped up much of the Mid-South early last week.

But while most of the blogosphere has put the recruiting to the bed, we will now give you our first of our delayed reactions: (more…)

Give me the damn scarf.

Your role as an untalented Michael Irvin stand-in has made our world a little bit more popular.
Thank you Keyshawn Johnson. You inspired America’s bewilderment over while the hell you decided to wear a breezy little purple scarf in the desert for the entirety of ESPN’s Super Bowl Sunday coverage*.

And because the God-loving populace went to the Internet searching for answers, our pre-verted little sportsblog’s hits and page views mega-dupled in the past 24 hours since we made much mention of its inherent goofiness while liveblogging American football’s Super-Jesus Christmas Day.

That’s right, America: We’re not just the site that scores hits from guys searching for cuckholding porn anymore. (more…)

“Hi, I’m that image of Jon Tenuta you’ve seen at college football sites around the Internet. I’m blitzing the hell out of you right now.”

SEC quarterbacks will be allowed to keep their spines.
Jon Tenuta, he who is used to culling a good defense from crappy talent at a academic school, has accepted a job to cull a good defense from crappy talent at a bigger, more haughty academic school.

Tenuta has been the big-name defensive coordinator candidate this off season — the Steve Spurrier-Bobby Petrino-Anonymous Atlanta Falcons Coach leave-your-keys-in-a-bowl-and-we’ll-see-who-goes-home-with-whom situation a few weeks back notwithstanding. The prevailing rumor was that he would end up with The Hat down at LSU, where he would use mutant Bayou talent to disembowel offenses and force poor little Wesley Carroll to soak his pillows in tears regardless of whether he’s really wants to be scared.

He was also on the short list for South Carolina before and after the hillbilly wife coordinator swap, and I’m sure his named would have been bandied about on Tider Insider if he’d hung out a little bit longer …

Because Dennis Franchione* got punk’d … by life and opportunity, and deserved it.
… since Tide defensive coordinator Kevin Steele’s continues to be “ominously” connected to the head coaching job of South Alabama’s start-up program. If he does depart, it’s expected to be after signing day, though defensive talent does not look to be in too short of supply on Bama’s recruiting board so far (see below).

What would be the allure of the South Alabama job? Well, it would be better than Baylor — very key to hiring Steele.

No. Not again. (more…)

Do you dare defy The Doll-Man?

While everyone else in ‘Bama is obsessed with losing to Tennessee in other sports, the Press-Register is reporting that Jim McElwain could possibly maybe sort of take the Bama OC job today. McElwain has called a morning press conference, but it appears to be in California, which would suggest he’s going to stay over there, though the P-R says that would be a big change of heart.

McElwain turned down the head job at Eastern Washington earlier this month. But that job doesn’t invoke the wrath of a small angry man whose been known to make 300-pounders cry like little girls.

Stay tuned… or something.