While most of us are eagerly awaiting the most important bowl game of the year – the GoDaddy.com Bowl, obviously – some people are still apparently hung up on that BCS Championship Game that is taking place on Monday night in New Orleans. I mean, I guess if you’re into things like the No. 1 and 2 teams in the country playing each other to determine the season’s ultimate champion, then this game is alluring. But still – Arkansas State! Northern Illinois! A match made in heaven.

With all the hoopla surrounding Monday’s title game, it’s easy to lose track of everything that LSU and Alabama players and coaches have been up to, like, for instance, Nick Saban showing off his DERP cannon at practice. LSU coach Les Miles and his players took time away from their practice to visit the cancer ward of the Children’s Hospital of New Orleans yesterday, and I think that’s worthy of a hearty With Leather Solemn Nod of Respect.

And in return, I’d like to ask that both teams play one man short on defense so we’re not stuck with another 9-6 snorefest. Well, unless it gives us this again…

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Usually when a school in the deep south wants to insult a rival, they print out a bunch of stickers of Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes pissing on their logo or something and plaster them on the windows of their trucks, and an entire school of rednecks end up with a child urinating on their car forever and we move on with our lives. Unfortunately for the University of Alabama, some enterprising soul has decided to take the “lol look you got peed on” joshing to a weird, hate crimey place.

The report, from the unfortunately named UnicornBooty.com:

In preparation of their upcoming game against LSU on January 9, the University of Alabama is selling t-shirts promoting a hate crime. The plan is for thousands of Alabama Crimson Tide fans to flood Bourbon Street, home to some of the oldest gay watering holes in the country, dressed in t-shirts that read:

HEY HOMEAUXS – WE JUST BEAT THE HELL OUT OF YOU.

As if using violent assaults against LGBT victims as a pun to sell college football merchandise wasn’t bad enough, the printer’s French is also atrocious. Aux is already plural, and in no need of an S.

Thank goodness LSU’s mascot isn’t the “black” something, I guess.

The comments section of the mythical creature’s ass contains a conversation with someone claiming to be the creator of the shirt, rationalizing that he didn’t realize gay people would be offended by “hey faggot I’m going to murder you” and noting that the shirts are a response to some fans from a few years ago wearing “Alabama Fans Are Homeauxs” shirts to games. He’s very sorry. And while it’s pretty easy to believe a guy from Alabama could be super stupid instead of homophobic, it’s interesting to consider why a Louisiana team would think calling a Tuscaloosa team with a vaginal bleeding euphemism for a mascot “homos” with a Frenglish spelling is beyond me. I’m gonna stick with “he’s an inbred goon and thought this was hilarious”.

This gallery may not appeal to the more Hot-Cheerleaders-In-Slow-Motion-inclined members of the With Leather readership, but don’t be afraid to enjoy it, because at some point during the 1970s the Walt Disney Corporation teamed up with Wonder Bread to give away pennant stickers with loaves of bread that are literally nothing but Disney characters destroying college names with puns. Yes, that’s a sentence I’ve written.

As I see it, there are two fine ways to enjoy this:

1. Flipping through and trying to figure out which school each pennant represents, because some of them are a stretch.
2. Losing control of your neck and bashing your head against the desk in a full-body groan when you realize “Mickey Can Skate” is Michigan State, or whatever.

A third way to enjoy it is through the absurdity of the illustrations, like Cinderella doing 2,000 pounds of laundry in her ball gown or Goofy with a broken leg because you can only make so many puns about Tulane. And yes, ACC fans, here is where you learn about how Disney preappropriated your “dook” joke for Duke and made it about fowl royalty a decade or so before you were born. I kept expecting to see a Virginia Tech pennant where Shan Yu from Mulan is holding up a castrated turkey.

Note: Full credit for these goes to Disney, I guess, but credit for putting them on the Internet goes to Jason Liebig.

[h/t Disney Food Blog]

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"Seriously, guys... you've got me at here."

We all knew it was coming. After No. 1 LSU defeated No. 2 Alabama 9-6 on Nov. 5, anyone who has ever watched college football should have been able to see that we would be getting a National Championship rematch, so long as LSU won the SEC Championship. And seaux the Tigers did, whomping the No. 12 Georgia Bulldogs 42-10. I even got a kick out the ESPN scroll reading that LSU would “likely play in National Championship game.” Likely. Because Southern Miss’ win over Houston might have fried the computers.

So here we are, awaiting this rematch of the two SEC rivals. But wait a second… LSU wasn’t the only team that turned its opponent into the receiving end of a donkey show in a conference championship game. Oklahoma State spanked Oklahoma 44-10, so we were all like, “Well they should jump Alabama for No. 2, right?” Haha, you morons, of course not. OK St., despite finishing with a Big 12 championship and therefore a better record than Alabama, was still not good enough by the BCS computer’s standard to take the No. 2 spot. By a margin of .0086.

All right, everybody pick your side. Either you think that Alabama deserves a rematch with LSU because the Tide only lost by 3 points in such an amazing defensive game or you think that Oklahoma State is a conference champion and deserves to play for the title. Either you think that Alabama’s sole loss being to the No. 1 team in the country means more than OSU’s pathetic overtime loss to Iowa State or you think, So what, the Cowboys WON THEIR CONFERENCE. Draw your battle lines in the sand and prepare to argue via Facebook status updates and Twitter for the next month until LSU and Alabama play again.

For the record, I don’t think Alabama has any business playing in the BCS Title Game, but it’s not because the Tide didn’t win the SEC or anything like that. I just love seeing Alabama fans cry.

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Meet Kimberly, Alabama’s Vince Gilham, the 44-year-old Jefferson County deputy who won The Birmingham News’ “Ultimate Man Cave” contest, Tide Rolling country’s “quest to find the most elaborate set-up to watch college football on Saturdays”. Vince works part-time and his wife was laid off 18 months ago, but he spent a reported $35,000 on the cave, including leather recliners, Bear Bryant mannequins and three rolls of Legion Field AstroTurf to serve as carpet.

In case you’re the type who assumes writing for a sports blog means I think this is awesome, I present to you the following snippet from AL.com‘s report:

Ultimately, man caves boil down to this: “The only rules here,” said John Graves, a good friend of Vince’s, “are Vince’s rules.”

Also, “no black people”.

Pam Gilham, Vince’s wife, doesn’t just go along. She thinks it’s fun. “Every man should have his own cave,” she said in a remark that will endear herself to men everywhere.

If you use “heh” on the Internet or the word “babes” in real life, you may not be aware that most grown-up adult men do not need a “man cave” because they live in homes and are one-half of partnerships that should probably allow both people to live in peace. The age of that King of Queens style of marriage where the lady puts floral-print couches in the living room and has tea parties for the Colored Hat Society while the guy is a fat nimrod who loves his football and can’t wait to pal around with “the guys” should be f**king over, and the only thing more depressing than a guy with a man cave is a guy who says “man cave”.

Believe it or not, this is the first “can you believe this guy from Alabama” story that doesn’t hinge on him being from Alabama. Although the phrase “see some of Alabama’s man caves” is concerning.

“The only drawback to our man cave is we don’t have bathroom facilities,” Vince said. “If we had that, it would be top top-notch.”

Heh!

[h/t Fark]

In case you missed it during that weird period when a video goes viral and the person who made it gets butthurt and takes it down, then realizes it is their only shot at ironic fame and puts it back up so they can get on Tosh, please enjoy this video of University of Alabama Panhellenic Association Board combining their awful white teen girl powers to form some Godless approximation of musical Voltron. In layman’s terms, white girls are stealing from every culture imaginable, be it Greek to African-American to Internet, and they feel totally amazing doing it. Vince Mancini and Josh Zerkle gave the track (cough) a listen on the latest Frotcast, and it is my job to sorta shuffle it over here. Every day I’m shuffling.

Highlights include a namedrop of football coach Nick Saban, a big “ta-da” finish inside Bryant–Denny Stadium and a Rebecca Black remix, because that’s something people still think is funny. Who am I kidding, the only highlight is that you’re watching this and not one of the people in it.

From the Daily Mail:

The school’s media relations director, Cathy Andreen, told The Huffington Post: ‘It was supposed to just be to welcome the girls who were going out for Greek rush.’

Ashley Getwan, president of the Panhellenic Association at the university, said: ‘We didn’t realize it would get so much publicity… Any publicity is good publicity, we hope.’

CBS42.com reported that the school’s rush week has seen a record number of would-be pledges, with more than 1,700 and counting.

Counterpoint:

One YouTube commenter wrote: ‘This is f**king embarrassing. I love this school, but this is why people can’t stand these sh*theads.’

I’m going to throw in with the second guy.