Unverified Voracity Paddles Uphill

Dr. Z, out and about. I made mention of this when Paul Zimmerman suffered a series of debilitating strokes, but it bears mentioning again: Zimmerman was a formative influence on yrs truly. His crotchety, detail-obsessed, no-bullshit work was the spiritual predecessor of UFR and this blog's desire to find a number that corroborates any belief it happens to have. In my first heady years of broadband internet I absorbed every word he wrote for what was then CNNSI.com. A couple years ago I bought a used copy of "The New Thinking Man's Guide To Pro Football" and—this is unusual when it comes to sports books for me—read it.

So the stroke was pretty harsh, and it's good that Zimmerman is both alive and mobile but tragic that the strokes have left him bereft of the thing that was his stock and trade:

The e-mails suddenly stopped last autumn. Zimmerman, better known to the readers of Sports Illustrated as "Dr. Z," suffered a series of strokes that left him unable to speak or write.

There was a fundraiser for Dr. Z a few days ago that endeavors to get him in an expensive, specialized program that might restore his ability to do these things. It's at a place you might be familiar with:

The event, along with an online memorabilia auction, is expected to raise more than $125,000 to help offset the costs of a six-week immersion program at the University of Michigan. Most of the treatment, aimed at getting Zimmerman behind a keyboard again, is not covered by insurance.

Again: I hope he makes it back.

(HT: @richarddeitsch)

That's a zinger. As you might imagine, Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician is intimately familiar with the various nonsensical utterances of Greg Robinson and enjoys them in a fashion that has only recently ceased to be ironic. So of course it caught this gem from a long fluff piece in the Free Press:

"In his mind, [Troy Woolfolk] saw himself paddling uphill with two real good corners playing ahead of him...All of the sudden he had the opportunity to compete for a starting job and he took to it like a duck to water.”

Yes, our defensive coordinator just accused someone of paddling uphill.

Also of note is Robinson's wholly unique approach to defense. He likes aggression. Desmond Howard:

He told me he's going to have his defense as an aggressive defense, a defense that's going to keep pressure on quarterbacks so they can never get comfortable.

I can tell you that in my ten thousand years covering college football I have never heard a defensive coordinator suggest he would be anything other than a piteous mewling fraidy-cat, and this new "aggressive" mantra both thrills and frightens me, like the opportunity to make out with Paris Hilton.

But wait! There's more! Robinson's philosophical inspiration appears to be the comments section/message board on this very blog. Howard again:

Remember that little fishbowl that your teacher used to have on her desk with the goldfish in it? Imagine 11 piranhas in that thing. It's like a frenzy.

Imagine 11 "douchey" MGoBlog posters in that thing: dead quarterbacks. Opponents averaging 20 yards per game. Meticulously spelled and punctuated game recaps. Let's get to it. (NOTE TO ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT: I expect a Rose Bowl ring out of this.)

Upon this, we can all agree. This is treading dangerously close to politics, which is verboten in this place, so let this not suggest any opinion one way or the other about abortion. On this subject, I believe exactly what you believe.

But one thing we can all agree on is that Notre Dame is a strange island in the sea of time populated mostly by strange bitter short insecure impolite people and one enormous mofo who may be Sam Young but probably isn't and seems pretty cool:

Sitting president makes the gesture of providing a commencement speech, is extremely gracious and polite, and gets spittle flecked on him and booed. It's a cult, I say.

Etc.: College Game Balls gets all mathematical with nonconference schedules. The Pac-10 wins handily, and that's without considering the fact that their fourth "nonconference" game is an average Pac-10 team instead of Delaware State. The Weis-record-omission thing? Eh… overblown.