August 26, 2003

It's nice to be back and ready to talk some college football with you.

My good friends at ESPN have gotten into the "reality TV" business. Last year they had this show called "Beg Borrow and Deal". People would set out with some teammates, raise money by selling their blood or other bodily fluids, and do various sports type things, like catching punts and singing the national anthem before a baseball game.

Unfortunately, the final event, stealing and washing former basketball player Dennis Rodman's jockstrap, led to all the contestants coming down with a mysterious deadly combination of every social disease known to man.

So ESPN had to start over. They created a new reality show, called "I'm with Beeno". Instead of having immature pretty people with inadequate immune systems, ESPN hired a prominent coach to go cross-country doing various challenges with me, Beeno.

The first episode involved me and my teammate going to a fraternity party and drinking all their beer. My coach sidekick disappointed me, he just sat there sipping on a can of Natural Light and chatting with some fat girls.

It was up to me to take care of business, so I picked up the frat's keg, shoved the tap in my mouth, and sucked that baby dry. Having finished that task singlehandledly, I grabbed my teammate Larry to leave. Larry, with his arm around some hairy 200-pound "girl", told me "no, Beeno, I can't leave, I just met my soulmate" and refused to go.

These Iowa State guys like Coach Larry are a discredit to their fellow Big 10 coaches, you'd never have seen Woody wuss out of a beer-drinking challenge to propose marriage to some chubby frat boy in a dress. Of course Larry may have been auditioning "for the other team" given that switch-hitters are so popular on TV these days (just ask my good friend Lee Corso).

ESPN got me a new partner, a pretty famous female coach. Our assignment was to predict the winner of the NCAA basketball tournament. My partner, Rickie Sue, made the pick, she went with Mississippi State. Rickie Sue said she put us down for "10 bills" on the Rebels. Ten bucks didn't seem like much, so I was okay with that and I liked the pick--I've been a big fan of Coach Sherrill since his Pitt days.

Mississippi State ended up losing their first game to something called Butler. Rickie Sue tore up her purple and white U-Washington turtleneck then she took out her guitar and started smashing up all the ESPN equipment, so that was the end of that partnership.

I was getting a bit frustrated with all this and said "just give me a regular guy football coach as a partner". So ESPN lined me up to go to Florida for my next challenge.

This time my partner Mike and I were to play in a two-day pro-am golf tournament and try to have our best score each day be under 100. I'm not much of a golfer, my swing is a bit disjointed due to my jangling jowls, but on the first day I did manage to shoot my age, barely. Fortunately, my partner Mike shot an 85, so we were in good shape.

That night Mike took me out for dinner and drinks. We ended up at this bar called Angels. Things got a bit wild. I'm no prude, but I'm used to places like Joe's Grille in Pittsburgh. Women at Joe's are told to keep their clothes on because nobody wants to see their skanky 60-year-old bodies.

I left early and headed back to my half of the suite and fell asleep. I woke up and heard a voice in the other room calling out "roll Tide roll", and then I heard Mike saying "it's rolling, it's rolling".

I was a bit out of it, so I went out to the Chinese restaurant and bought a couple rolls, then picked up some Tide detergent. I came back, opened the door, and I saw more stretch mark covered naked skin than in that topless Purdue offensive line photo.

That was enough for me, I told ESPN I was quitting the reality TV business and spent the next few months in a nice vodka-induced stupor. I woke up the other day and realized that a lot happened in the world of college football during my hiatus.

Carson Daly, famed USC quarterback and matinee idol, has transferred to Cincinnati. I saw him the other night playing on TV. Somehow he was granted immediate eligibility.

Ohio State Fiesta Bowl hero Marcy Clarett is my pick for CFL rookie of the year.

Last weekend Kansas City State made their debut in their new stadium in Kansas City. I never understood why a team from Kansas City played their home games 1,000 miles away on Manhattan.

The biggest story of the off-season was the shift in conferences. Miami left the Big East to join archrival Florida State in a conference. I predict that the Miami/FSU game will decide the SEC South title.

The Big East is falling apart. Virginia Tech jumped ship with Miami. Syracuse is going to the Atlantic Coast Conference, though the only coastline up there is Lake Erie. Boston College will drop football (their legend Gordie Lochbaum will be crushed). And Western Virginia is going to join division I-AA in order to rekindle their rivalry with fellow Virginia school Marshall.

That of course leaves Pitt by its lonesome in the Big East, unless you count Temple, Rutgers, and Yukon as football programs (I don't).

Pittsburgh's seeing a serious downturn in its sports fortunes. There are reports that the pro hockey team there will leave. The baseball team has struggled. The Pittsburgh NBA team has been lousy ever since Julius Irvin made that fish movie, and the Steelers haven't been the same since Bradshaw retired.

Speaking of my good friend Terry, I notice that he's on TV all the time now. You'd think he could just live off his divorce settlement from coffeeshop mogul JoJo Starbucks.

We are thinking about setting up something like what they have on Terry's NFL show, with Corso and me acting out various plays from the game. Rehearsal went well until Corso played QB and lined up to take the snap from me. I had forgotten to take my Beeno that day. Lee's regained most of his vision, but is still suffering from hearing loss.

Bradshaw's not the first player to be involved with someone famous. Tom "ole number 9" Harmon married an actress. A present-day Wolverine, John Navarro has been linked in the tabloids with lots of women due to his playing with the swing band known as the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Those tabloids are pretty fun to read. Lately they're all full of stuff about J Lo. How J Lo is going to get married. How J Lo's fiancee upset J Lo by running off with a stripper. How J Lo's ass is getting even bigger.

Well, for crying out loud, UK QB Jared Lorenzo is up to over 300 pounds, of course J Lo's ass got bigger.