The summer of unnecessary goddamn sports-related Carly Rae Jepsen ‘Call Me Maybe’ covers continues. First it was eight million views for a Harvard Crimson baseball team lip sync video, then it was literally everyone else on the planet, from the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders (good) to local Oklahoma bands who are excited about the NBA Finals (not so good).

You’d think that would’ve died down by now, but nope, between every update about whether or not Dwight Howard has heard of the Indiana Pacers (he hasn’t) there’s a ‘Call Me Maybe’ parody. Today’s effort, relevant to my interests, is from the Big Ten conference mascots. Highlights include Sparty chasing tail, Brutus Buckeye’s arbitrary hip-hop dancing and Herbie Husker hanging out with the four attractive women in Nebraska. At no point does Carly Rae Jepsen stop being the most grating f**king thing of all time.

Don’t let that dissuade you from watching, though. Full video (with a hat tip to Kegs n Eggs) is below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Remember that 12-1 season that the Buckeyes just enjoyed, including their Sugar Bowl win over Arkansas? No you don’t, because Ohio State just said that it never happened. THE university announced earlier today that the football program is vacating its 2010 season as part of a self-imposed punishment. The program will also start a two-year probationary period today.

The powers that be in Columbus is hoping that firing Jim Tressel and forfeiting an entire season would be enough to dodge the NCAA’s wrath. While that remains to be seen, the glaring oddities of Ohio State’s self-flagellation included (a) no deduction in scholarships, and (b) no ban on postseason appearances. What gives, yo?

The university argues that Tressel’s “integrity and proven history of promoting rules compliance,” combined with his team’s improving academic performance and other factors, should mitigate the severity of any NCAA sanctions.[..]

The fallout from the scandal has included the resignation of Tressel, the partial-season suspension of six players, and quarterback Terrelle Pryor’s decision to skip his senior season and turn pro.

–THE Columbus Dispatch.

We’ve mentioned before that this makes Ohio State a repeat violator and eligible for the NCAA’s death penalty, a measure that Gene Smith and the athletic department are obviously desperate to avoid. The more of “Tat-Gate” that can be pinned on Tressel, the less culpability the school has for lack of institutional control, which would figure to be a key ingredient if the NCAA were to deem Ohio State’s probation insufficient.

Which they probably will.

It’s worth pointing out again that Ohio State is being punished because their players decided to sell and trade stuff that was legally theirs. NCAA violation or no, college football’s governing body is running out of time to drop the guise of “amateurism” on its own terms. Schools can’t sign billion-dollar TV deals and then cry about how money shouldn’t be an issue with compensating student-athletes. Letting players cash in on their own likenesses would be a start to that. Usually when someone cites “the greater good,” it’s just another way of saying that some guy’s about to get screwed. Again.

Penn State will wear “new” unis this fall, and as you can see from the images above, the changes are next to pointless. The only modification being made is that the trim on the sleeves and neck of the jerseys will be gone, leaving a bland base look with absolutely no detail whatsoever. Oh, except for the Nike swoosh. I’m sure Nike was just an innocent bystander in the whole thing and didn’t engineer this to sell more replica gear.

As if it wasn’t easy enough to recruit against the Big Ten, those schools in the south can now boast that their practice jerseys are even nicer than Penn State’s gameday apparel. It wasn’t enough that Penn State football has cold winters, no built-in TV market and a head coach that could die at any moment. No, they had to put themselves even farther in the hole. Next year they might even ban liquor and women from campus. Hey, look how well that works for BYU.

We’re trying to get caught up on some tax stuff today, so apologies for the lapse in posting. To tide you over, here are some alternative Big Ten logos developed by fans as part of an independent design contest. Yes, thousands of people were convinced that they could create a better Big Ten logo than the Big Ten could.

Of course, most of them were right.

More contest entries and the winners are here.

Via Eamonnn Sports Programming Network

Ohio State might have to reverse its field on incoming recruit Chris Carter. No, not the Cris Carter that played for the Buckeyes in the 1980s and later the Minnesota Vikings. Referring to the 6-5, 350-pound offensive lineman from John F. Kennedy High School in the Cleveland area, Carter coerced female students at the school to strip for him while he pretended to measure them for ROTC uniforms, according to a police report filed after his arrest yesterday.

Cleveland police said a 15-year-old girl told officers that Carter took her out of her classroom and into a room behind the JFK auditorium and told her he needed to measure her for the uniform.
“Once inside the room, [Carter] asked the victim to take off her sweat shirt and shirt so he could take her measurements,” the police report said.

“He cut off the lights. . . and stated ‘I need you to take your bra off.’ The arrested male than put his arms under her arms from behind and attempted to pull her bra up.”

–Plain Dealer.

And that was the underwire that broke the pervert’s back, to coin a phrase.

Police said when they talked to Carter he admitted that he had fondled other girls using the same ruse. Police asked him to give them the book that he used to record the measurements and he turned it over.
“The book revealed more victims,” the report said, noting there was measurement information for eight girls in the book.

Another victim told police that Carter stopped her in the hallway and asked her to come into a room where he “asked her to take her clothes off. The victim took off everything except her panties” and then he measured her, police said in the report.

–via Eye On Recruiting.

I don’t even have a joke for that, except that I’m glad I was never in ROTC. Ohio State hasn’t made any announcement on the scholarship offer it had extended to Carter, but knowing Ohio State, they might just offer him two or three scholarships now. Hey, he’s a big boy. He’s good for it.

"This logo is the gayest thing I've ever seen..."

It’s official: I’m done apologizing for the Big Ten. Because this new logo for the NCAA’s Big Ten conference is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. If that logo was my newborn child, I would drown it in the bathtub and not even bother to make it look like an accident, because no jury would convict me for ridding the earth of something so irredeemable. And since the design came from a firm known as Pentagram, it’s clearly the work of Satan.

“The new Big Ten logo provides a contemporary identifying mark unifying 12 outstanding institutions,” said [ Big Ten Commissioner Jim] Delany. “It conveys some elements from the past while simultaneously introducing new features. We think the new logo is fun and has something for everyone.”

–BTN., via Midwest Sports Fans.

You are wrong. That logo is not fun. It is sad. It will scare children. It will cause political unrest in many sub-Saharan African nations. It makes me want to abandon hope for our world. These are all just nice ways of saying that I really, really hate it.

Oh, and the league as also named their new divisions. Leaders and Legends?! Someone please kill me.