Posts from the Florida Football Category at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

I like Erin Andrews. She's blonde and pretty and as my colleague Brian Cook so eloquently put it, she's not terribly annoying. But to date I've managed to safely avoid the whole weird stalker thing if you don't count the whole "Why Did Herbstreit just call her Poopsie?" thing.

Others? Not so much.

If giving further oxygen to the "Erin Andrews + male admirers" phenomena is your bag, however, we've got great news: you can now own your very own Mr. Erin Andrews t-shirt.

How long before someone gets their mug wearing this shirt blasted all over SportsByBrooks, FanHouse, etc. doing something stupid in the presence of the poor Ms. Andrews? Or at least, Photoshopping themselves doing something stupid. My money's on: not long.

(Via: Hot Clicks)

Ridiculous. I realize Vandy is a private school and they provide a valuable service to the SEC in helping with the conference graduations rates. Still, if they aren't going to actually pay their football coach over $1 million dollars, there's a problem. Sylvester Croom just got his pay pushed into the seven figure zone. Now Bobby Johnson is the only SEC coach still earning a paltry 6 figure salary. Keep up.

Les Miles, LSU, $3,750,000
Nick Saban, Alabama, $3,750,000
Urban Meyer, Florida, $3,250,000
Bobby Petrino, Arkansas, $2,850,000
Mark Richt, Georgia, $2,800,000
Tommy Tuberville, Auburn, $2,800,000
Phillip Fulmer, Tennessee, $2,050,000
Steve Spurrier, South Carolina, $1,750,000
Sylvester Croom, Mississippi State, $1,700,000
Houston Nutt, Ole Miss, $1,700,000
Rich Brooks, Kentucky, $1,600,000
Bobby Johnson, Vanderbilt, $950,000

Then again, Johnson is the only SEC coach not to be automatically placed on a hot seat after a losing season.

If you just came across this post because you did a Google search on "porn", you need to head down to Florida and fess up. If you did a Google search for "porn + Tim Tebow", you might be pictured at right giving Tim Tebow a high five. In a federal obscenity trial, the defense tried to argue that their clients website should not be considered obscene by showing porn searches are more popular than searches for Tim Tebow.

In a federal obscenity case heard this month, Mr. Douglas defended another Florida pornographer. In the trial, Mr. Douglas set up a computer in the courtroom and did Internet searches for sexually explicit terms to show the jury that there were millions of Web pages discussing such material. He then searched for other topics, like the University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, to demonstrate that there were not nearly as many related Web sites.

Outside the box thinking for sure, but it didn't work. His client was convicted on all counts. Mr. Douglas isn't giving up, though. In his current case, Douglas is employing Google Trends to show porn searches are at least as popular as apple pie.

"We tried to come up with comparison search terms that would embody typical American values," Mr. Walters said. "What is more American than apple pie?" But according to the search service, he said, "people are at least as interested in group sex and orgies as they are in apple pie." The Google service does, however, show the relative strength of many mainstream queries in Pensacola: "Nascar," "surfing" and "Nintendo" all beat "orgy."

So does that mean that Nascar, surfing, and Nintendo are more popular than Tim Tebow? Or is it just that people in coastal areas have enough sex that they don't need to go looking for it on the internet? I'm confused. Anyway, if you run a porn site I would suggest you steer clear of Douglas until he gets this defense strategy perfected.

hat tip: Blutarsky

FanHouse is counting down the ten best, ten worst, and ten weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

Yes, here's another moment you just knew was coming.

Anything I can possibly say about how awful it is that Ohio State lost back-to-back BCS Title Games must, of course, be tempered by the mandatory statement about how unbelievably hard it is to make it to one such game, let alone making it to two in a row. Thus if we're going to hail on the Buckeyes for giving a new layer of meaning to the term "epic fail," we owe them ... well, we owe them 50% of the respect we give to the early-90s Buffalo Bills. Or the same amount of respect we give to Bob Stoops' Oklahoma Sooners, who have the same resume (one title, back-to-back title game losses).

So you can't say the Buckeyes are bad, not even if you're an SEC fan, and you can't say that Jim Tressel isn't a very good coach. You can, however, wonder what went wrong. The answer: Lots. In both 2007 and 2008, the Buckeyes were undone by a combination of bad execution (which was within their control) and an imploding hype machine (which wasn't).

High school All-American offensive lineman Matt Patchan was shot at a Tampa-area park Friday night, but should be okay.

"Matt Patchan was a gunshot victim Friday night at a Tampa-area park," Meyer said in the statement. "He was a bystander and shot in the left shoulder and is expected to fully recover in three weeks."

Patchan's injuries are described as "non-lifethreatening" (obviously) and doctors chose to leave the bullet lodged in "soft tissue." As the old saying goes, bullet goes in, bullet stays in.*

The true freshman has been a standout in spring practice, even considered by some local beat writers to be among the most impressive players on the Gators' defensive roster. (Patchan was moved to defensive line by coaches after his arrival and is currently expected to remain with the defense.) Patchan is 6'6" and listed at 265 lbs., but an injury sustained during his senior year of high school caused him to report in to Florida underweight at 238 lbs.

Gator fans are leery of bad news after Jamar Hornsby's felonious use of a dead woman's credit card, leading to his dismissal from the team last week. Meyer's quick support of Patchan makes it seem likely that Patchan was an unfortunate victim in the wrong place at the wrong time.

*Actually not an old saying, but a dumb saying that was just invented. By me.

(Former?) Florida safety Jamar Hornsby is in trouble. Trouble with the law, yeah. But you have to wonder about the soul of this guy -- this is pretty disturbing stuff.

Florida football players wear a black circle on their helmets with the word "Sunshine" on them. Purpose: honor the memory of fallen teammate Michael Guilford, who died in a motorcycle accident last October. That accident also claimed the life of his passenger, Ashley Slonina, who was reportedly the girlfriend of cornerback Joe Haden.

Somehow, in the aftermath of the accident, Slonina's credit card found its way into Hornsby's hands. EDSBS claims Hornsby stole the card when he was helping Haden clean out Slonina's apartment shortly after she died. Precisely however or whenever Hornsby managed to pilfer the plastic is not officially known, but what we do know is that Hornsby used the card 70 times, the first being the day after Slonina's death, and racked up $3,000 worth of debt for Slonina's grieving parents over the course of the past six months.

When a judge issued a warrant for his arrest, Hornsby surrendered himself, was briefly jailed, and subsequently released "own his own recognizance." His status with the football team is uncertain at this point.

"Old School" is the College Football FanHouse's irregular look back at the rich history of college football, usually through the medium of embeddable flash video. Check out the Old School archive for more famous plays and infamous hair.

Step back in time with me, college football fans, to an earlier era. Here we have the Seminoles of Florida State taking on the Florida Gators in 1973.



This is pre-Ben Hill Griffin stadium stuff, so that's just Florida Field. Note that the Swamp is highly recognizable. Back then the stadium was painted blue rather than orange but "This is... Gator Country!" is still scribed on those trademark vertical walls rising out of the east and west stands. The press box was a tad smaller back then, too, as you might notice.

Florida's mascot was in a woeful state in those days. "Albert E. Gator" looked like an inflatable green jalapeno with teeth and a tail.

As for the game itself? Florida routed the Seminoles 49-0. For the rivalry, it was an era which favored the Gators, who won 9 straight from 1968-1976. Today, Florida leads the overall series, 30-19-2, but FSU is 17-15-1 against the Gators under Bobby Bowden.

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

There wasn't a more disappointing team in the Big Ten last year than the Michigan Wolverines. Players like Chad Henne and Mike Hart sacrificed twelve months of NFL-sized paychecks to stay in Ann Arbor for one more year, sincere in their belief that 2007 would be a special season.

Of course, "special" and "wonderful" are two completely different words. "Non-wonderful" would be a better way to describe how the 2007 season turned out for Big Blue. They entered the 2007 season ranked fifth in the nation, only to lose to ... well, I think you know what happened in the first game of the year. And the second. The Wolverines did manage to win eight games in a row after that, but closed the regular season with losses to Wisconsin and, of course, Ohio State. The day after the OSU loss, Lloyd Carr told his team he would be retiring after Michigan's bowl game.

When the bids came out and the college football world learned that Michigan would be facing the Florida Gators (defending national champions with the eventual Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow starting at quarterback) everyone figured Lloyd Carr would go out a loser. The only real question was how many points Michigan would lose by.

Just stop in your local Hooters establishment and you might stumble across a Heisman Trophy Winner, his offensive line, and some of his speedy receivers:



This photo was taken at the Hooters in Gainesville, Florida -- as evidenced by the Gator helmet and Gator-head table -- and comes to us courtesy of our friends at SportsByBrooks.com. No word on whether Tebow likes 'em mild, hot, or super-spicy.

The wings, that is.

You. Why aren't you as fast as Harvin? Oh, I guess "I am not a mutant" is a pretty good answer.

You may remember Carl Moore from Urban Meyer's winter of discontent. He was the five-star JUCO wideout whose gymnast girlfriend got to know Meyer's recruiting pitch for UF real well. This is kinda sorta maybe against NCAA regulations and momentarily got Meyer in trouble before he was cleared of all wrongdoing, as per usual.

So you'd think he'd have to be awesome, right? Well, uh... no:

Florida receiver Percy Harvin, one of the most explosive playmakers in college football, can spot a speedy player. And he knows transfer receiver Carl Moore is not fast.

Although Moore, who played at Sierra (Calif.) Community College in 2007 and is listed by rivals.com as running a 4.45-second 40-yard dash, might not win any sprints the next few weeks during the Gators' spring football practices, the five-star recruit could earn a spot on Florida's first-team offense.

All this drama for a possession receiver? What, Chris Doering wasn't available?

Harvin, for his part, is using his speed on the Wii or something: he's got a heel injury that will keep him out this spring, but since his coaching largely consists of "you should run considerably faster than anyone on the field and many champion racehorses," Florida should not be unduly affected this fall.