My friends and I were joking this weekend, as I struggled through watching the UCF Knights blow their game against the Missouri Tigers and the Miami Dolphins really blow their game against the Arizona Cardinals, that I could just do these Faces of ‘Freude (new name, this one’s sticking) posts with pictures of me screaming at bar TVs for three hours every Saturday and Sunday. And yeah, once the Orlando Magic season starts, I may be able to power the entire planet with just my rage. But I’m not sure the world is ready for so many pictures of how handsome I am.

Thankfully, we have Derek Dooley and his derpy dome to fill the void. On the surface, a 3-2 record shouldn’t have a team’s fans searching for the world’s tallest bridge, but Dooley’s Tennessee Volunteers dropped to 0-2 in the SEC after yesterday’s exciting 51-44 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs. I like Dooley and I don’t have any problems with the Vols, so I think it’s encouraging that they’re putting up such a good fight. Hopefully they’ll start winning more so fans can finish washing away the Lane Kiffin stink.

But in the meantime, keep baking those frownies, college football fans.

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As I most often point out as to avoid being called a hack – my feelings get hurt easy, y’all – I do not profess to be a sports expert, like ol’ Dick Vitale up there. I’m simply a guy who has a big TV and 12 web browser windows open at all times to follow multiple games until smoke starts to spray out of my ears. And watching all of those games, I develop opinions that I like to share with all of you. I believe that Mufasa or Pumba called it the “Circle of Life.”

So my point is that there are people out there who might be flipping through channels tonight, and they’ll be all like, “Hey, these guys are playing basketball, but I don’t know a thing about them.” Even worse, you could be a dude on a date with a hot girl and she’ll be like, “Why don’t we go back to your place and watch NCAA Tournament basketball and maybe I’ll take my shirt off if you know a lot about the games.” But you’re all like, “Snap, I haven’t watched anything.”

That’s why I created this handy-dandy guide to enjoying the Sweet 16, and to keep with the time-honored tradition of UPROXX live-blogging, I’ll be hanging out tonight to chat and make jokes about things that I notice. I invite you to join me, mainly because it’s fun, but also because I’ll be giving out free shirts at random to people who tell me why I’m wrong.

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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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I’m a sucker for anything that combines sports with appreciating the men and women of our Armed Forces. There aren’t enough videos of soldiers showing up at ballgames to surprise their families, and I was even pulling against my own alma mater against Southern Miss on Saturday night because there were soldiers attending the game to cheer on the Golden Eagles before they were deployed yesterday. And I know that I certainly can’t pay tribute to or even understand our soldiers the same way that Ufford can – hell, I can’t even write it as well as Justin Timberlake. So I’ll just reiterate that I love it when we can use sports to honor our troops.

That said, the 2011 Quicken Loans Carrier Classic was absolutely amazing. Just the idea of playing a basketball game on an aircraft carrier is incredible enough, and God knows we could have just sent a couple mid-majors to play on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson, but we sent the No. 1 team in the country, the UNC Tar Heels, and Michigan State to put on a show for our service men and women. UNC, of course, defeated the Spartans 67-55 and the action was less than thrilling. But the No. 1 team and another perennial contender agreeing to play outdoors in the middle of the ocean is simply awesome.

As if the game wasn’t enough, President Barack Obama and the First Lady attended and addressed the troops, and Magic Johnson and James Worthy represented their college teams and took pictures as well. For some reason Pamela Anderson was there, and I assume it’s because she was just floating by. Most importantly, Brooklyn Decker was there. Although, to properly honor our troops, Kate Upton and Marissa Miller should have also been there. But I’d say that this was just good enough.

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The Michigan State Spartans and head coach Tom Izzo have hit a really crappy streak lately, going from 12-5 to 13-10 in six games. Yes, three of those losses were to ranked teams (#22 Illinois, #13 Purdue, #18 Wisconsin), but one of them was also to a 72-52 loss against Iowa, a 10-13 team. That’s not what you really expect from a team who just a season ago made it to the Final Four. Yes, there’s some kind of dropoff after players decide to go to the NBA Draft, but there should be some kind of foundation so you don’t go from really good to really sh-tty in just one season.

Izzo is getting yelled at from fans and the Spartans are basically unwatchable right now. Hey, what’s that?! Up in the sky! It’s Dan Gilbert with his amazing angry yelling powers! Look what he did to motivate the Cleveland Cavaliers after they lost LeBron! Actually, don’t look. You might throw up due to how ugly it is now.
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Michigan State’s basketball team has already lost seven games (including one to Penn State… who lost to Maine) and have dropped out of the Top 25. The last thing they need is trouble within the team, which is exactly what they got when coach Tom Izzo suspended Korie Lucious for the rest of the season. This isn’t completely out of the blue, however, as Lucious has already been given a second chance after a DUI last August.

“Man did I really mess up this time…off 2 the gym I go!,” Lucious posted on his Twitter account shortly before the school announced his suspension late Tuesday night.

“Unfortunately, Korie Lucious displayed conduct detrimental to the program,” Izzo said in a statement issued by the school. “My focus is on this team for the remainder of the season.”-ESPN.

If we’ve learned anything about athletes, it’s that going to Twitter after having problems with your team is always the best decision. Nothing ever goes wrong when that happens, and no one ever “hacks” their accounts.

“Conduct detrimental to the program” could really be anything. Later in the article, it says that the police have “no active cases” of any kind filed against Lucious, so it must be something that happened in school. We can start taking bets here if you’d like. I’ve got 1000:1 odds that it was a food fight, and I wouldn’t even be mad if I lost, because food fights in college haven’t happened in so long.

Photo via.