Ooh baby, this one’s gonna be a tough one.  As we wind down the Western division in the next couple of weeks, there will be few and far between easy answers.  Of course, as we move over to the East in a few weeks, I feel like it’ll get easier, as we’re more familiar with evil players from the East, but as of now, we’re going to have to go with what we’ve got.

1.  Who was the worst/most evil Mississippi State player of all time?

2. Who was the hottest actress (or actor or whatever), from the 90s?  Difficulty: TV Show star.  Name the actress/actor and the show.

Good luck, see you all on Mondee.

I am going to out myself as a bit of a geek here (not that I haven’t really done that in the past), but one of my favorite shows of all time has got to be Quantum Leap starring the venerable Scott Bakula. For those of you who aren’t quite familiar with the show, a theoretical physicist from the future (all the way in the year 1999), started “leaping” into the bodies of people in the past in order to put right things that once went wrong. This included things such as, keeping someone from making a mistake, or changing the outcome of a certain event in order to change history for the better.

This got me to thinking: what if this were possible and one could leap into the body of another person at any moment in time? I think it would be cool to be able to see and live the part of another person at a pivotal moment in time. This being a sports blog, I started thinking of what moments would be considered magical and pivotal in sports but as is the case, it is obviously up for debate what moment would serve as being such.

Of course, in Tennessee history, there is the 1999 BCS National Championship Game where Peerless Price took what should have amounted to a short pass, and was able to break free and run it in for a touchdown. Granted, if I could leap, I wouldn’t necessarily want to leap into the body of either Tee Martin or Peerless Price namely for the fact that I have no athletic ability whatsoever, but it would have been cool to leap into the body of say, a towel boy on the sidelines, lest we might lose the game.

In other sports, I think it would be cool to leap into the body of a Chicago Bull during the Jordan years, since aside from Michael Jordan, nobody really needed to handle the ball (except Scottie Pippen, who, you know, had to handle the ball). Plus, I think it’d be cool to be named “BJ Armstrong” for a couple of hours.

But of course, the single greatest person that one could leap into in the world of sports would obviously be Roger Clemens. A man for whom drugs nor minimum age laws stand in his way of love. Since most of our hits on this site during the offseason come from google image searches for “jailbait,” I just assumed everyone else would agree with me. Far be it for me to go against the ways of a superstar like Clemens.

This week’s Classic Post Wednesday is brought to you by Don, the purveyor of all things wonderful and organic chemistry related.  And by “all things wonderful and organic chemistry related” I mean, sucky.  But his posts are actually pretty good, unlike chemistry, which sucks balls.  So, here’s the Classic Post for this Wednesday:

Forget the SEC – Let’s go to the Big East

While we’ve alluded to it in the past, I think it’s time we just come out and say it – Tennessee should join the Big East. So far this season, of the 3 ranked opponents the Vols have faced, 3 were in the top 10 at the time they played them (2 are currently still in the top 10). Of our next four opponents, 2 are ranked (13 and 12). So in the current season, 5 of the 12 games played will have been against a ranked opponent and four will most likely still be ranked at the end of the season. Translation – unless something short of a miracle occurs, the best we’ll see at the end of a season is an at large BCS berth, which I think will happen if we win out.

Now let’s look at the number 3 team in the nation – WVU. Number of ranked opponents faced (either at the time or currently): zero. Assuming Rutgers loses to WVU and Louisville, they will not be ranked at the end of the season and WVU will really have only faced one ranked opponent the whole season until (and this is assuming they win out) the national championship game. The WVU coach was actually complaining the other week of how unfair the BCS rankings were (calling them the BS rankings) due to their weak strength of schedule. The computers have an average ranking this week for WVU at 13.

WVU’s toughest opponent this season

How nice would that be? Take a team with the talent of Tennessee and just give them a series of high school teams scrimmages easy games until it’s time to compete for the national championship. I’m not saying WVU has a bad team, I’m just saying they’ve not been able to show us that they are a good team. Maybe instead of playing teams like Marshall, Eastern Carolina, The League of Women Voters, Eastern Washington, and Mississippi State, they could be like Louisville and schedule teams like Miami (Miami may not be good this year, but they had no way of knowing it at the time they scheduled the game).

I hope Louisville wins on Thursday because if any team goes to the national championship game, it ought to be one that’s at least tried to play a few decent teams.

Everyone is eagerly awaiting the coming football season, and knowing that Memorial Day just passed us by, leaving an entire summer to be without sports of any kind (baseball and the NBA Playoffs, which still have about 92 rounds to play out don’t count).  That being said, people are already talking about college football now, with their high hopes for next season.  The old cliche is that every team is undefeated right now, and whereas that is true, there are now, and will always be, teams that have no realistic chance for winning next season.

Of course, for the few teams out there that are a few payoffs to referees away from a possible berth in the national championship game, the preseason hype is alive and well.  Now is the time when coaches start to put out the propaganda unlike anything since well, last season.  The sheer amount of smoke that is being blown up fans and boosters’ asses alike is enough to be able to actually write about how great their team will be in the upcoming season in smoke signals.  In fact, if coaches could find out how to hype their team via smoke signals, don’t imagine for a minute that you wouldn’t see them popping up all over town.

The biggest venue currently for the coaches to get out the good news is from news conferences.  At these news conferences, coaches tend to give updates on how everything is going (well), and what that prognosis for the season is (excellent).  At that point, they’ll generally open up for questions from “reporters” a.k.a. “people who get paid by the University to ask soft questions” where they will answer questions about how the quarterback battle is going (competitively), and about what kinds of improvement he’d like to see in upcoming practices (someone to step up).

Of course, now that you know what is going on, you’ll be able to see through the b.s. and see the truth.  Of course, the various schools’ sports information directors will not like it if you don’t buy in to their hype, and thus will more than likely try to get me to stop writin

This week’s comment winner.. (since I’m so freaking tired from coming back from Vegas, no snarky comments.. just yet)  beefe.

1. My sophomore year of college 2001 TN just beat Florida late in the year, people were burning couches on the strip afterwards. Later that night there was an impromtu pep rally on the track as players came in that night from game. I remember seeing Casey Clausen with a rose in his mouth. It scared me. MATT MAUCK made all those fears come true. I will hate him forever because of that game. Why did that sucky 40 year old player beat us sooooo bad.

2. Sophia Loren. I read something the other day that she was asked to pose nude for a calender. I didn’t search for the images but she has gotta be like 90 or something. Thats has to be GILF worthy right?

Congrats, I’m gonna go pass out.

This week’s comment contest comes to you from sunny (and thunderstorm-y) Las Vegas, NV.  Las Vegas, the City of Sin, the maker of all things bad (in terms of movies starting Ashton Kutcher and that one blonde ugly girl that people think is hot for no discernible reason, oh yeah, Cameron Diaz).

That being said, we shall continue on our worst players tribute, as well as a second question request which frankly makes me scared of what kind of porn our readers might have on their hard drives right now.

1. Who was the worst LSU player ever?  (Worst or most evil, whichever works).

2. Who was/is the hottest GILF (Grandma… and I can’t say the rest, because it’s gross) ever?  (Feel free not to have to link to images).

Winner gets made fun of on Monday.

We don’t usually write about non-college news, and even then, we don’t usually write about news about players from conferences other than the SEC.  That being said, something must be addressed: Matt Ryan’s ridiculous rookie contract for the Atlanta Falcons.

Matt Ryan, former quarterback of the Boston College Eagles, and the third overall pick in the 2008 NFL Draft, signed a 800 year, $284 gagillion dollar contract with $182 gagillion guaranteed.  The actual numbers are 6 years for $72 Million with $34.5 Million guaranteed.  Thus far, the Falcons own 2 of the top 3 biggest contract in terms of guaranteed money in history, with Ryan coming in at #3, and #1 being… Michael Vick.

Now, I’ve been to Atlanta lots of times and I know quite a few people who currently live, or have previously lived in Atlanta.  For the most part, those people are fine people, who are relatively intelligent, and usually fiscally responsible.  Apparently the same cannot be said for the Atlanta upper crust.  “Upper crust” at this juncture meaning “Arthur Blank.”

Seriously, this guy needs to wake up and get a clue.  He could have signed Ryan for much less if he wanted to, but apparently he just loves throwing money at quarterbacks before they’re proven.  Some might argue that aside from the whole “letting dogs fight each other to the death” thing, Vick was a good quarterback.  He wasn’t.  He was a good athlete.  But a good quarterback makes a team win.  Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, these guys are good quarterbacks.  Sure they are gifted athletically, but they aren’t the best athletes on the field.  Their strongest muscles are their brains.  Yes, I know you saw that one coming from a mile away, and it was full of Gorgonzola (cheesy), but I had to do it.

The ridiculous rookie contracts started a while back, but to me, came to a head last year when #1 overall pick Jamarcus Russell essentially sat out what amounted to most of the year due to his need for just one extra Bentley with rims and diamond studded steering wheel.  Honestly, as a fan of football, this is the kind of shit that makes me hate pro sports more and more.

$34.5 Million is a lot of guaranteed money, and if I were Matt Ryan (which I clearly could be seeing as how I’m super tall and very athletic…), and I perhaps didn’t like the prospect of playing for a crappy team in a city that will never really appreciate their team unless they win 5 Super Bowls, or perhaps if I just felt lazy and didn’t want to work out (this is far more likely for me), I’d just shoot myself in the foot, collect my Purple Heart final paycheck, and call it a career.  Do it Matt, don’t tarnish your good name by pulling a Ryan Leaf.  What’s Leaf doing now anyway?  Oh yeah, I think I tipped him $3 bucks at the car wash the other day.  He wasn’t the one actually drying off my car, but rather the guy bringing the towels back to the washing machine.  Good people.