You become vaguely aware of your own consciousness.
Stirring, you feel the cold of a concrete floor and hear the drum-drum-drumming
of a nearby commercial air-conditioner.  Standing, you realize you are in the
bowels of a large building.  A sign on the wall says "Wynfrey - Mechanical."
As you walk out into a bright lobby you remember: you were at SEC Media Days
yesterday and you overdosed bigtime on collegiate football excellence. You shake
your cobwebbed head, and then hear the strains of hotel lobby musick. It's The 
Carpenters, and Karen is singing to you alone, "Its only just begun . . . "

• – Day 2 of Media Days starts off with an unfortunate snore, as Mark Richt takes to the podium bright and early at 8:30 am.  This morning time slot is no accident, as the SEC front office types have years of hard-learned lessons re: scheduling Coach Richt after lunch.
• – After the media in attendance recover from Richt’s coma-talk we will all be honored to hear from the SEC’s 10th-ranked returning quarterback, Kentucky’s  Morgan Newton.  In what is obviously a harbinger of things to come on Saturday, November 19th, Mr. Newton is sandwiched between two Georgia Bulldogs in the speaking order.
• – Speaking of Georgia, Super Soph (soft?) QB Aaron Murray is next up, and in what promises to be an early indicator of the 2011 season, we find out if the Bulldog signal caller can even walk or speak now that he is without A.J. Green and Kris Durham propping him up.
• – UK Linebacker Danny Trevathan is the next speaker of interest.  RANDOM SEC STAT FACT: Trevathan led the SEC in tackles last year.  ANOTHER RANDOM SEC STAT FACT: No other Wildcat recorded a tackle.
• – UK Head Coach Joker Phillips is up immediately after his defensive star, but he will be forced to answer awkward questions from the Lexington media about the progress of the basketball team’s offseason workouts. NO ONE INFO WILL BE REQUESTED OR PROVIDED.
• – Georgia Tennessee coach Derek Dooley will then field questions about last year’s LSU  and UNC debacles.  He may or may not work strange World War II references into his spiel, and while these anecdotes won’t be relevant, we do have to admit it is kind of endearing the way he earnestly commits to them.
• – Georgia’s Brandon Boykin follows Coach Dooley, but he is still so grumpy and tired from chasing Alshon Jeffrey last fall that he may not take any questions.
• – Gene Chizik will then speak and introduce three of the numerous players he acquired in the offseason.  DO NOT QUESTION HIM FURTHER. Reason?  Witness THIS.
• – UT’s Tauren Poole bats clean up on the day, that is unless Bryce Brown suddenly reappears.

And Gentle Reader, Day 3 still awaits!

(NOTE: by "Complete Idiots" we mean to refer to all you 
CTU lurkers out there)

In the minds of many, The 2011 SEC Football Season kicks off tomorrow afternoon in Birmingham, Alabama at SEC Football Media Days.  Over 900 sportswriters and broadcasters (and three times that many corpulent Bama fans) will descend on the Wynfrey Hotel for a chance to rub shoulders with the elite in college football – the SEC head coaches and star players.  This contrasts to other such events, such as the ACC Media Days, which happen a week later in Greensboro, North Carolina and will be covered by no one (well, maybe some corpulent East Carolina fans will make the drive for the free buffet, but still).

• – The 2011 football media guide will be officially released on the first day, although the cover art has already been revealed.  Note that the cover is either a tribute to the SEC’s five straight BCS championships, or an odd homage to the 2008 Autozone Liberty Bowl MVP, Mike Hartline.
• – The scheduled speakers will start off with a Boom, as Georgia’s Florida’s Will Muschamp will take the podium at 1:00 pm Central Time.   The tradition of having a brand new coach lead off the event goes back for years, sometimes with entertaining results.  Former UF head coach Ron Zook talked so fast during his initial appearance that no one could write down a single word he said, and former USC head honcho Lou Holtz showered the front row media with so much spittle that they wore rain gear in subsequent years.
• – A variety of Arkansas and Florida players will speak next, but as they are all named some version of Denarius, Jenarius or Deontarius, the media will quickly become disoriented and start instinctively writing stories about oversigning.  Knile Davis is in this segment, but you will find that everyone ignores him, no matter how garish his stats.
• – Bobby Petrino is next up, and you will immediately notice his hair.  Or what looks like hair.  Kinda.  Its thin and wiry, and makes us think he’s been to a certain hairclub we won’t mention.  Oh, and we should probably mention that he’s an ass, so there’s that.
• – The Head Waterbuffalo, Mike Slive (is it pronounced like ‘leave’ or like ‘live?’  Or maybe the ‘ve’ is silent and its pronounced ‘sly?’) is next on the podium and blah blah blah we dominate in every single metric in every single sport, blah blah etc, etc, etc.   Ears will be raised in College Station and Clemson when he accidentally says there are 14 member schools.  Do not be alarmed, gentle fans, WE WILL NEVER DO THAT.  NEVER. EVER. (please?).
• – At about 3:20 in the afternoon you can watch MSU Coach Dan Mullen audition for another, higher profile, gig.  He will not even be subtle about this, and who can blame him?  Only those who have never been to Starkville, that’s who.
• – More Gators, more Bulldogs, more boredom, until 4:30 when Jeffrey, Robertson, Lattimore, and the HBC take over the ballroom.  All three of the Gamecock players are humble, quiet, and understated (except for on the gridiron) so don’t expect much in the way of quips and quotes.  That’s what Steve Spurrier is there for, after all.
• – The day ends with someone named Fletcher Cox from MSU.  But really, does anyone think the ballroom will remain occupied after the HBC wraps his comments?  Its like having Springsteen as your opening act – everyone will be spent before you take the stage.  I don’t know this Cox fellow, but someone at the SEC front office hates his ass.

Have you seen them yet?  The first pictures of the 2011 edition football uniforms hit the web this week.  Opinions in the twitter/blog/webboard-a-sphere have been mixed.  Some think the new unis are clean, modern designs that will motivate our players and attract fashion-forward recruits.  Others think the new duds are more evidence that the UA corporate overlords are secretly obsessed with the Louisville Cardinals, circa 1999.

In case you haven’t seen them yet, take a gander:

We here at TRC did some digging, talked with some of our sources, poked around a little, and compiled the follow list of little known facts about our new Under Armour Uniforms:

• Kyle Nunn is not actually wearing the garnet uniform – its just a cardboard cutout he is standing behind.
• Under Armour is apparently itching for patent infringement litigation with the Sarah Blakely Corporation, maker of Spanx.
• The sleeve stripes were inspired by a beach umbrella the HBC saw while in Destin last summer.
• Justice Cunnigham’s mom agreed to take him to the arcade if he would “just try on the [expletive deleted] clothes first.”
• Strength and Conditioning Coach Craig Fitzgerald insisted that barbed wire be sown into the inseams – this is obvious by looking at the face of the three players, but the purpose is unknown..
• The numbers and the CAROLINA are both in a new, proprietary font that USC hopes to standardize across all sports called “machine” (this is actually true).
• The machine font was first introduced in the high score screen of KC Munchkin’s Crazy Chase on the Odyssey 2 Videogame platform.
• The extra long belts were mandated by the SEC in the wake of Marcus Lattimore’s 2010 dismantling of the Georgia Bulldogs, and are officially referred to as “Bacari Rambo Tackling Assistance Handles.”
• Yes, the black version has equestrian riding pants complete with saddle-hugging side billows (riding crop not shown).
•  This photo was not taken in the Williams-Brice home lockerrroom.  That’s actually the changing room at Aeropostale in the Columbiana Mall.
• The dye used for the uniform material has the unfortunate side effect of making all human hair spontaneously fall out 8 seconds after contact.  Note that Justice was the last to don the uniform, doing so approximately 7 seconds prior to the taking of this photo.
• Also note the absence of the SEC badge on the jerseys.  This is a sign that the conference still has some sense.  This writer is encouraged thereby that all hope is not lost, and TAMU will never be invited to join the league.
• In the packing list was a note from the UA design team that said “lulz lulz lulz, we trollz youz.”  No one knows what this means.
• Further explanation on the UA logo – its not initials, its a side view of butt cheeks, which gives you a good idea of their opinion of us all.
• As bad of an abomination these unis are, they don’t even approach the eye-assaulting purple nonsense of the CTU Nikes.

So I’m headed home for the day, looking forward to a nice relaxing evening at home.  I pull up to a red light and surreptitiously check my phone (doggone texting ban, you make such sense, but I hate you still) for messages.  I roll across a retweet of the following:

http://twitter.com/#!/pastorofpain/status/90539559762399234

Wow.  W.O.W.  Did not see that one coming.  Jeffrey has always been, as far as I can tell, a model student-athlete.  In fact, his team leadership was just rewarded when he was named as one of three Gamecock representatives to SEC Media Days.  The HBC doesn’t just hand those plane tickets out like candy, you’ve got to earn it.

But still, the tweet was from Sport Radio personality, ne’ New York Giant, ne’ Gamecock Footballer, Corey Miller.  He would know, right?  And he says he has a source, and a source would know, wouldn’t he/she/it?

A few minutes pass, and Miller’s source has more information:

http://twitter.com/#!/pastorofpain/status/90544597494804481

How do you blog the sound of a needle scratching off a record?  Would it look like SSSCCCRRREEEAAAACCCCTTTTCCCHHHH? Not sure, but I digress.  Bottom line, I quickly developed a reasonable doubt about the veracity of this story.  First, either Corey or his source were woefully behind the curve on our current football roster, as Nick Allison quit the team over a year ago and ran back home to his Asheville, NC girl-squeeze.  But even more than that, I doubted that our all-american gazelle of a wide-out was hanging out in Fivepoints with a reserve no-name trenchman.

I mean, I WANT our team to be built like that, I would LOVE to think we had that kind of top-to-bottom cohesiveness, but I strongly suspect that Alshon Jeffrey, potential Biletnikoff Award Winner and 2012 NFL First Round Draft pick, might have a slightly more glamorous entourage.

So the story had cracks, but it was still a concern, right?  Then I saw this:

http://twitter.com/#!/pastorofpain/status/90549221685596160

Apparently the story had developed to the point where a brand new member of our offensive line was hit in the mouth by an unknown assailant who was actually wielding our potential Heisman Candidate as a weapon!  Unbelievable.

Really.  I mean that.  The story was and is unbelievable.

Within a couple of hours, Miller revised and extended his earlier remarks thusly:

http://twitter.com/#!/pastorofpain/status/90598270170185728

So what do we know?  Not much as it turns out, other than Alshon Jeffrey absolutely did NOT get arrested over the weekend.

Can I have the last two hours of my life back?  More importantly, can Alshon?

Too much drama.  Too many heroes.  Too much quintessential fighting gamecock spirit.

Words fail me, which is a big admission from a loudmouth blogger.

The Post and Courier‘s Travis Haney said it best via tweet:

http://twitter.com/#!/TravHaney/status/85554518238035968

I agree with Haney, but, but, I wanna say MORE.

Geeze.

Aw, heck, just watch the ESPN highlights – as bad a Mike Patrick was last night (and he was bad), the actions of these Gamecocks speak louder than any words of mine.

This is your weekend CWS open thread.

– Les Miles doesn’t need another nickname. He’s been the Mad Hatter, the Ball Clocker, the Grass Eater, and the Kick Faker. But after watching this video, I hereby decree, mutatis mutandis, that TRC shall henceforth call him the Honey Badger (link slightly NSFW for language). I get that the LSU mascot is not a badger, and that while Les did coach in the Big Ten, it wasn’t at Minnesota Wisconsin. Nevertheless, it’s clear to me from the above vid that this Honey Badger doesn’t care, this Honey Badger doesn’t give a $#*!.

– Victor Hampton was dismissed from the team, reinstated, and then immediately suspended. Or something. Its not clear what’s going on here, as we have an SID that is the sports equivalent of Newt Gingrich’s lone remaining campaign staffer. Why do we even know that he was dismissed in the first place? Why do we know that he was reinstated? Didn’t this sort of thing happen all the time over past summers, and all we were told was that “workout participation wasn’t 100 percent?” Regardless, young Vic needs to keep his head up, and know that some of us agree with the old Honey Badger on your past transgressions – we don’t give a $#*!.

Well said, 2chains, well said.

–The SEC should just drop the pretense and hold its conference baseball tourney in Omaha. An SEC team has played for the CWS title for what, four straight years? Won the last two, and now has three of the final four in this year. Little question for you to ponder: would this be what a college football playoff would look like? Start with 16 or 32 teams and end up with a bunch of SEC squads facing off? I think it might. And since the conference has now won 500 straight national titles in football, perhaps we shouldn’t give a $#*! what method the BCS uses.

– CTU is apparently putting together a remarkable recruiting class, at least at this early juncture. Just like last year. And the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that. All I can say is that I trust our staff, and also remember numbers like 34-17 and 29-7. I therefore don’t give a $#*!about a bunch of unsigned highschool juniors.

Is it safe to say that David Roth doesn’t give a $#*! about his job, and would walk through @*&$^# for his son. Good on you, David.

Oh, and while it might be some cheesy $#*!, the following proposal is heartily REC’D.

http://twitter.com/#!/vic2715/status/81782006551289856