Talking Points for 8/20/10, quick-like, because I'm late yet again:
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This is why you never let him get leverage on you. Steve Spurrier is back at it:
"Golly, times have changed when Tennessee doesn’t want to play North Carolina in football because they’re too good for them," Spurrier said. "That’s kind of amazing right there.
That hurts, Steve. But you knew that.
"We’re not going to bail out from playing North Carolina the way Tennessee did."
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Apparently, the Kool-Aid and Pop-Tarts visits are true. David Oku is a little self-conscious about the 21 pounds he's added to his 5'10" frame:
"It’s hard having this weight on you and you’re not used to it," Oku said. "I’m just walking around sluggish. People are like, ‘You look like you’ve gained 20 pounds.’ I take that as an insult. It used to be like, ‘You’re skinny. You’re small.’ Now it’s just, ‘You’re fat.’ It hurts. I’ve got feelings. I’ve got emotions."
"I feel like Jerome Bettis."
Player features. Daniel Lincoln is taking the competition with Michael Palardy in stride. . . . Arthur Jeffery probably wouldn't play this year in a normal situation, but might in this abnormal one. . . . Gerald "It's Gone Be Liiiiive" Williams is improving 2% each day. . . . You down with O.L.P.? Yeah, you know me. The immediately preceding sentence exhausts the sum of Joel's knowledge of rap lyrics.
OUTRAGED about the OUTRAGE. A strong lead -- "It’s startling, sometimes, how easy it is for a college football coach to control and bend the minds of his otherwise freethinking student-athletes." -- gives way to crazy placard man shouting on the street corner, complete with EXCLAMATION POINTS! and angry words like "scowled" and "venting" and "unprovoked" and "RAGE." The story? Florida's defensive line is using a preseason magazine's ranking of them as the 7th-best in the league for motivation.
Teaching tenacity. Chuck Smith is teaching his undersized d-line players to "strike and be aggressive" as opposed to trying to finesse their way around blocks.
Thoughts and prayers to the family of Vols great and Outland Trophy winner Steve DeLong, who died Wednesday at the age of 67.