Another Round of Links? WHY NOT

I'll be honest with you, although repetitive and generally void of the creative  process, I like slapping these links up for several reasons.  One, it's easy.  10 minutes of web surfing and I've got all I need.  Two, I am very important and very busy so it's time efficient.  And three, do you know how I like to spend my free time?  NOT TYPING IN THIS SPACE.  Just kidding.  Sort of.  Like anything, I often enjoy it, but have days where I'd like nothing more than to douse this place in jet fuel and light a match (assuming you can actually set something on the Internet on fire).  Moving on...

Steve Spurrier may have lost his fastball, but remains crafty
The days of Spurrier going out and hitting 99 on the gun for nine innings are gone (Stephen Garcia and South Carolina will do that to a man).  But, he's a veteran who knows a thing or two about his craft.  It's all about location and changing speeds.  Think of him as a 1953 version of Jamie Moyer.  Not overpowering, but he can easily go out and throw eight innings of two-hit, shutout baseball.  And yesterday, he showed us what he still has left in the tank while commenting on Tennessee's decision to buy its way out of its series against North Carolina:

"I said, '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."

South Carolina is scheduled to play the Tar Heels in 2013, but not to worry South Carolina fans, Spurrier plans on honoring that agreement:

"We're not going to bail out from playing North Carolina the way Tennessee did," Spurrier said.

It's good to see his dislike of Tennessee still burns bright.

A tip of the hat to you, young Rob Ezell
Outraged that I forgot to DVR ESPN's hour-long inside look at Alabama football last night, I spent a good part of the evening looking for quotes or any sort of reviews to let me know the awesomeness that I missed, as well as to motivate myself to set the DVR for the next time it aired.  God bless the soul who put this on YouTube:


"THE DAY I CAN'T GET YOU GUYS TO GET IT RIGHT, I'M GONNA GO TO THE LAKE, SIT ON THE DOCKS AND WATCH THE DUCKS SHIT IN THE YARD."

That is a first-ballot inductee into the greatest quotes that have ever been heard by these ears.  Again, well done, Rob Ezell.  Now GO RUN FROM TUSCALOOSA TO BIRMINGHAM EIGHTY-FIVE TIMES.

Pete Boone assures Ole Miss of four more years of fiscal responsibility and public relations shitstorms
The Ole Miss AD received a contract extension through the year 2014, though his salary will remain at its current level of $429,287.  My stance on Boone has long been in the camp of "PLEASE RETIRE" so clearly I was not a fan of this news.  Boone, while financial responsible (although to a fault) and probably takes too much heat for issues within the athletic department, has the people skills of a Kodiak bear.  Every time he opens his mouth, I assume the earthquake drill position and wait for the impending disaster, one of his most infamous being the "t-shirt and cap crowd" comment.

Boone runs the athletic department exactly the way an accountant would.  Cuts costs (the idea of spending money to make money doesn't fly with him) and spends no time developing relationships outside the athletic department circle or good ol' boy network that continues to plague Ole Miss.  A real athletic director runs an athletic department like a business because college athletics is a multimillion dollar business.  The bottom lines are winning, giving your university a positive image, producing a profit and making people feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves (or developing a community), which will increase their willingness to give and support.  Boone, through a combination of skill and good old fashioned luck, has managed to accomplish the winning (minus the Ed Orgeron years) and money making parts.  And I suppose I can give him the positive image category, even though his assistance in the mangling of the removal of From Dixie With Love from the band's playlist eventually led to the KKK being on campus.  That one was not totally on him.

However, the community aspect, and the one aspect you truly need in order to sustain an athletic program, is an area in which Boone has failed miserably.  Ole Miss, because of its small size, already has a pretty strong sense of community, but a real AD is out making it bigger, stronger and united, not consistently pissing members of it off with some on-top-of-a-mountain quote.  He doesn't get that you need everyone, and I mean everyone (all the way down to the guy making $18K a year) to have a truly successful athletic program.  As one of the smallest schools in the SEC, we can't have isolated pieces within Ole Miss community.  We need everyone in the same group.  He has to reach out to those he deemed in the "t-shirt and cap crowd," make them feel welcome and, most importantly, get them to believe that they are a contributing part to the success of Ole Miss.  Boone has been there a total of 13 years and still hasn't figured this out, and I don't expect he ever will.  So, wherever you are next athletic director, don't be Pete Boone 2.0.