On Notice: Fiasco Edition

There's no in or out. It's all in.

REGGIE FISH: Seriously dude, what the hell was that? I have never seen someone try to catch a punt over his shoulder at the five with four defenders bearing down on him. That was the stupidest play in the history of college football. (Plaxico Burress spiking a live ball wins "all of football.") The free touchdown you gave them was the difference between a 10-point Florida win and an Arkansas drive to tie or win that has time to utilize McFadden and Jones. I kind of hate you.

JIM WALDEN: If you claim "the Big Ten is a joke," what does that make you and your 0-17-versus-the-Big-Ten ass?

SMARMY-ASS CBS: CBS has long been in a neck-and-neck race with NBC to see who can put out the most feminized, patronizing sports broadcasts. The amazing thing is that SEC fans constantly decry ESPN/ABC as some sort of Big Ten propaganda machine. On Saturday night ESPN and ABC featured debate. Corso, Mark May, Lou Holtz, and Craig James all argued for Florida. Herbstreit, Flute, Fowler argued for Michigan. By comparison, CBS was Pravda, beating out a steady SEC SEC SEC SEC SEC drumbeat without the barest hint of debate. The second half of the the SEC championship game was less a football game and more an informercial for the magical juicing power of Florida. It was unprofessional, inappropriate, and hypocritical. I never want to hear another word about "bias" from SEC fans.

THE HARRIS POLL: I say this in all seriousness. If you gave me ten percent of the funding and a year, I could turn the BlogPoll into something more reliable and respectable than the Harris Poll. I'm close to saying "if you gave me no funding and made me deliver it right now" after Walden's comments.

RYAN SUCCOP: Three blocked kicks, one an extra point? You missed an extra point! You suck! Aaaaaargh.

SPAIN: I swear to God I'm going to get you for this, Spain.

"THEY HAD THEIR CHANCE." I guarantee you that when Florida loses to OSU that I will reference the 2006 Gators as the SEC's "chance" and incessantly argue against any SEC team ever making the title game again. Because they'll have had their chance. This will be stupid. It will also be the point.

URBAN MEYER: Wetzel has a column on this. I don't know if it's something in the water in SEC states that makes their coaches paranoid, bitchy, and irritating, but it seems to leak out from Tommy Tuberville and infect everyone around him.

And, in the grand finale:

DEAD TO ME

GARY DANIELSON: I can't summon my mental faculties to give him what he deserves. It would be a string of personal insults bordering on the obscene. So I'll let Braves & Birds say it:

Gary Danielson's performance last night was an absolute disgrace. I understand that he's reputedly a human being who is paid to have opinions, but I've rarely seen an announcer turn the fourth quarter of a football game into a 30-minute advertisement for one school. The fact that Danielson (a) was not recruited by Michigan (and thus went to Purdue) and (b) is working for the one network that exclusively covers the SEC surely had nothing to do with his open rooting for Florida and his subjective, idiotic comparison of the two team's schedules. Regardless of the result of the vote this afternoon, Danielson is going to go down in Michigan lore along with Sean McDonough, who performed a similar role in 1997 during CBS's broadcast of the Nebraska-Tennessee Orange Bowl to facilitate the Huskers picking up part of the national title.

CBS and Danielson framed the debate by focusing on the points that favor Florida - more good teams on their schedule - and ignoring the points that favored Michigan, such as the critical "not outgained by Vanderbilt" category. Thus, you ended up with voters hearing the Florida talking points drummed into their heads for the final hours before casting their ballots. The voters who stayed up for ESPN2's College Football Final then had those points repeated by Lou Holtz and Mark May, so they ended up going to bed with the impression that there was consensus that Florida was #2. Groupthink, anyone? You think these people wouldn't have sung along with "Throw Lloyd Carr down the Well" if May and Holtz were singing it?

Danielson irresponsibly used a captive audience and may have seriously harmed Michigan's chances of getting to the national championship game with his incessant, retarded assertions that Michigan didn't deserve the national championship game because it was a "second place team." He's lost the considerable respect I had for his color commentary. Now I only hope I can identify him getting out of his car so I can STAB STAB STAB STAB HIM IN THE STABBY PLACES let the air out of his tires. KNIFEY NEEDS BLOOD TO BREATHE I don't like him very much.