Under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic

I know this should be common knowledge, but after the last week, it bears reiterating, especially from someone who is, shall we say, a more-than-casual fan of American football.

No man -- player or coach or anything else -- is bigger than the game.

And the game (and any aspects thereof) is utterly irrelevant to the point of nonexistence against a person's life.

This should go without saying, And yet I feel oddly compelled to point it out. I enjoy a good throttling of an instate rival or a four-overtime knife fight as much as the next guy. But it's good to keep some perspective. It's just a damned game.

That said, if anyone wants to get me a Christmas present, bring me the skull of Norv Turner.

Okay, I'm gonna need your help on this. I have two projects I'm working on for the immediate blogging future. This is one. (The pieces for the second haven't arrived yet.)

So I've been playing with NCAA Football '11's dynasty mode, specifically in conjunction with its TeamBuilder feature, and it's like crack for these grubby little hands. There are over 4000 voiced team names in the game now, and importing custom helmet logos is a breeze. So I need to create a team I can follow for more than a few years, through recruiting, the regular season, the bowl games...everything.

And I have it nailed down to four finalists (though I could always take suggestions for teams I haven't thought of yet). ( And here they are.... )