While watching Arkansas’s John L. Smith flick his tongue in and out of his mouth during his win over Auburn on Saturday — victory is more savory than bankruptcy — I had a thought. It inevitably falls into the contrarian/trollish category, so forgive me. Here’s the thought: Why can’t Arkansas and Bobby Petrino get back together? Why exactly is that marriage unsalvageable?
I think the argument breaks down into two parts:
1. Bobby Petrino is a liar and an asshole. (We pretty much all agree on this.)
2. College football is a morally pure place that can’t accommodate liars and assholes. (Here’s where we may differ.)
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
The NFL and the referee union released a joint statement last night announcing they had reached an agreement to end the lockout. Unfortunately, this probably means that troubled ex-Charger Ryan Leaf is now out of a job as a Division III line judge.
While agonizing over the possibility of a second straight Alabama-LSU title game, I think I came up with the worst thing about their horrible dominance: as a neutral college football fan, you have to pick a favorite.
Well, let me qualify that. A person like me, who is incapable of watching a sporting event of any kind (including youth Frisbee) without vilifying one team and venerating the other, needs to pick a favorite. Believe me, that is a hateful, torturous task in this world of Tigers and Tide. Anyone with a semblance of love for the amateur unpredictability of college football probably despises these two programs. They are the evil empire, magnified by a power of two. While the rest of us stand by and watch, helpless, Les Miles and Nick Saban have created near-professional super-teams in a non-professional sport, slowly sucking the competitive life out of the game.