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Official Report: Clay's Bye Week, and the DDT so far
10/11/06
by Clay

Typically, the bye week is a time when teams assess their strengths and weaknesses, heal their injuries and gather their fortitude for the final stretch of games. Now that college football has gone to 12 games, there is only one bye week. Since the DDT is nothing if not a rigorous, precise and scientifically exhaustive analysis of the Southeastern Conference, I thought it would be ridiculous not to have a bye week myself. And so I did.

I spent last weekend watching college football for 12½ consecutive hours. I began with UT-Memphis at 11 a.m. CT, followed that up with Florida-Alabama at 2:30 p.m., left in the fourth quarter to watch Vanderbilt-Temple in person (the lowest cost for a scalped ticket on record at $6), returned home to watch the end of Michigan-Minnesota, Kansas-Nebraska and most of Georgia-Mississippi. It was a thoroughly unproductive day that felt, paradoxically, extremely productive. And by the end of the weekend, I was ready to once more embark on the DDT.

After four weeks and stops at Tennessee, Mississippi State, Auburn and Arkansas, I feel pretty good about the status of the DDT. So far, no one has taken a swing at me, I haven't been arrested, and I haven't even gotten a speeding ticket. Also, I haven't had to pay more than $50 for a ticket to any game. Occasionally during the columns, I've gotten wrapped up in all sorts of interesting questions. Some of them have been resolved. Others, like whether you can see after your head gets chopped off by a guillotine, remain scientific mysteries. Nevertheless, now that the bye week has come and the DDT is officially one-third complete, it's time for a self-assessment, examining what I've learned thus far.

Included in my analysis will be e-mails from readers. And we've gotten a ton. Many were funny, some were from people who hate me and, even more amusing, considering they have done nothing at all, hate my friends as well. Four came from people with ideas of how to get in touch with Jake the Snake (one guy says he is a friend of the Snake's agent), and one threatened a pompon-infused beating. All reflect, in various states of grammar from the eloquent to the Orgeron, a true passion for Southern football. Thanks to all of you for writing, and I only hope I can keep you as entertained on the remaining eight trips as much as y'all have kept me entertained on the first four.

Without further ado, 12 things I've learned on the DDT so far:

1. Cymbal players get scholarships. Some of you will probably recall that I ruminated upon this with Krishna, Shekhar, Shaw and Cliff while we were in Starkville and were passed by the cymbal players. Now we have the answer, thanks to cymbal player Andrew Barnes of Mississippi State. Andrew wrote:

"Hi. My name is Andrew, and I'm a cymbal player from MSU. I read your interesting article about your trip here, and the exciting time you had. ... I also agree that we should have ordered the khaki shorts along with the polo and the band T-shirt, etc. (It does look pretty tacky.) But of course, you had to bash the cymbals. (Clay: Was this pun intended? If so, well done.) This is the first I actually played cymbals for any marching band, and it's harder than it looks. They do get heavy, and it's hard to memorize scores of random crashes and chokes (if you don't know, chokes are when we crash the cymbals and immediately bring it to our chest to muffle the sound, which resulted in numerous bruises). And yes, we do get scholarships. We deserve it, and it IS possible to be a better cymbal player than someone else. If you ever joined a drumline, you would understand things a little better."

Andrew,

This is the 50th time in my life someone has said that if I joined a drumline, I would understand things better. I don't doubt this is true. That's why it was particularly disappointing to me when I got cut really early in the auditions for the movie Drumline. Now you've had to go and make me dredge that whole memory up again. (Wiping the corners of my eyes.) Give me a second ...

OK. I stand by my contention that getting a cymbal scholarship has to be the easiest route to a college scholarship on earth. You don't have to get a particular score on a standardized test, be particularly athletic, be any smarter than average, taller than average, fatter than average or dumber than average. You really don't have to be anything except willing to bang two metal objects together. Think about it, aside from being a mascot, name something you can get a full ride to college for and not be much better than a random person on the street.

Bottom line: Playing the cymbals is the easiest way to get a scholarship on campus. (I take this back if those people who walk around with flags beside the band also get scholarships. That's even more ridiculous and requires even less qualification. Someone can write me if you get a scholarship for this as well.)

I also heard from another cymbal player, Matthew Livaudais (incidentally this is probably the first time someone has ever heard from more than one cymbal player).

Hey, I'm on the Auburn University Cymbal Line and I thought what you said about the Mississippi State University Cymbal Line was hilarious but ... I think you should check out this link. This is an example of a better cymbal player. Enjoy.

This is awesome. OK. So I couldn't be on the Santa Clara 2001 Cymbals Line. I wish Matthew had written more. I'm filled with questions now. Does the band leader show this video to cymbals players to get them excited before the game? On a larger scale, does the band get together and watch video from particularly great band performances in the past to get them fired up? Do they get a pep talk? Basically, I wish someone would let me play the cymbals in an SEC band.

3. If you show up at an SEC stadium on game day and wait until kickoff, the ticket prices are very affordable. So far, I've paid face value at three stadiums and less than face value at Arkansas. I suspect this occurs because most people panic and buy tickets online before they arrive at the stadium. SEC stadiums are just so big there are a ton of tickets available to begin with. I may have just jinxed myself by writing this, but everywhere thus far has been affordable.

4. Conversely, the Tickle Me Elmo resale market is really strong. Thankfully, I have no children. If I did, I would be really nervous about how much these damn Elmos might cost. According to my friend Amir, who is a prosecutor and also purchased 25 Tickle Me Elmo dolls to resale, "I only have 20 now. I sold five for between $90 and $100 (they retail for $35 at Wal-Mart). Now I'm not selling the other 20 until December because the market is liked stuffed-animal gold bullion. The other day, my fiancée said she wanted to go shopping and asked me how much she could spend on clothes, 'I told her about two Elmo's worth.'" You've been warned.

5. Everyone thinks I need to see the ------ Walk and gets upset if I don't. My friend Shanlever says he was deluged by e-mails from Auburn fans who wanted to know how he could have missed taking me to the Tiger Walk. And each week, if I don't write about watching the players walk into the stadium, I hear all about it as well from my readers. "How in the world could you go all the way to (insert city or stadium here) and not see the (insert team mascot, name or other identifier) Walk?" Look, how many different ways can a team walk into the stadium? Every team does a walk now and they all look the exact same way. Young guys walk inside a cordoned off area with police protection while old people scream and yell for them.

It's like the Christians being led into the lions in ancient Rome, except people aren't rooting for the lions. Until bulls start chasing the team into the stadium or Coach Shula mandates that the Alabama offense crawl on their hands and knees so they don't risk injuring themselves, once you've seen one team walk into the stadium, you've seen them all. Now if one school takes a leap and, say, gets led by the Santa Clara 2001 Cymbals Line, well, count me in. Otherwise, I'll pass.

6. 'Bama Bangs are the Southern equivalent of the killer bees. Remember when you were in elementary school, you heard all about how dangerous the killer bees from Brazil were going to be? There were these maps of the bees gradually advancing across North America and then some horrible picture of a killer bee magnified about 15 million percent until the bee was roughly the size of Phil Fulmer.

I remember in third grade, my teacher at Goodlettsville Elementary, Miss Franklin, convinced us that death was imminent and we were basically just all playing out the string of our lives until the bees arrived in Tennessee. This is the only thing I remember from third-grade science class. For the rest of the school year, anytime a bee came near someone on the playground, every kid would flip out and run around screaming and yelling about how the killer bees had arrived. Well, 'Bama Bangs are spreading just as rapidly. We've had sightings all over the South. I'm doing an expose on this next week. The map is going to be just as scary.

7. The most mocked coach in the SEC is Ole Miss's Ed Orgeron. Seriously, it's insane. I'll get e-mails that are completely focused on another topic and then at the end, someone will just write, "Oh, and Coach Orgeron is an idiot." Orgeron doesn't do himself any favors by sounding like the Incredible Hulk if the Incredible Hulk spoke with a small ferret attempting to escape from his esophagus. Which leads me to the link below that dozens of people have e-mailed me: Please watch this. I beg of you. If tears aren't streaming down your face by the time this song ends, you need to seriously reconsider your life.

Without a doubt the funniest song about an SEC coach in football history.

I'm a Birmingham native, Arkansas grad working at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock. I will see if I can decipher the President's handwriting for you. I'm surprised you failed to mention that Nolan misspelled "tough" in his letter to the President. It reads, "Though times don't last, though people do.'

I missed this. Although Nolan's misspelling makes him sound very philosophical in that way that someone can sound philosophical if they write something that makes no sense. Richardson is like Thoreau if Thoreau wore snakeskin boots.

9. Every SEC stadium that I've visited thus far has hedges. This is ridiculous. Everyone is also beginning to spell out the first letter of their team's name and have the team run through that as well. Pretty soon, I think the SEC is going to decide every team should have the same color uniforms and play all their games in Birmingham.

At least the fog and dry ice is here to stay for player introductions. That is absolutely tubular.

10. According to reader Rocky Top Frog, Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville wears transition lenses that adjust based on the sunlight. Quoth the Frog, "Surely he can afford two pairs of glasses? One regular pair for indoors and one dark pair for outside." Financial constraints should not be an issue. Of course, today's SEC football coaches are not known for their stylistic traits. The same quirky ridicule could be foisted upon Rich Brooks for wearing a shirt that appears to be constructed of space-age fibers, Les Miles for his inability to wear a baseball cap without looking like the Pontiff, Mark Richt for his obsession with fondling his mouthpiece, Houston Nutt for tucking his khaki pants into his socks, Sylvester Croom for wearing wristbands and Ed Orgeron for, quite simply, being Ed Orgeron.

11. There is a monkey in Atlanta that can throw and catch footballs. This proves that when it comes to SEC football, there is truly no hyperbole. His name is Dr. Irving and according to e-mail correspondence from his trainer Bobby, "He's a Georgia Bulldog fan, did the football picks for CNN last season, can catch and throw a football, eats with a spoon, drinks from a glass and brushes his teeth, among many other human traits. ... He's the only non-human primate in the world used for therapy with special needs kids." Other than the whole Georgia Bulldog fan thing (which is sort of hard to hold against a monkey), I'm pretty excited to meet Dr. Irving. I can report that ClayNation has entered into monkey negotiations for the DDT. It's a time consuming process. Think the Dayton Peace Accords only not in Dayton.

2. Men who cheer with pompons are willing to do whatever they need to do to justify cheering with pompons. There are two main arguments set forth by the pro-pompon contingent of SEC men. These are: The shaker/pompon sticks are useful for stirring mixed drinks and pompons look good on television. Both are absurd.

Taking them in order, drink mixers? First of all, deal with a drink that isn't mixed properly. This isn't MixMasters 2006 World Championships. It's rum or whiskey and Coke in a plastic cup at a football game. Deal with it. Or if you absolutely can't stomach the liquor without Coke, fill the cup up halfway with Coke, pour in your alcohol and then pour in the rest of the Coke. If you must have proper mixing, use your damn finger. Suggesting that you need the pompons to mix your drink is like saying you need your blankie to sleep with when your bed is already covered with other blankets.

Also, if you're cheering with pompons, you are using the plastic stick that you've already been holding in your hand as a mixer. You're basically putting your hand into the drink already via the pompon. If you're really afraid of germs, there are just as many on the pompon as your finger. Finally, these are the same guys who have been playing beer pong for years. Not thinking twice about picking up a dirty pingpong ball that's rolling around on rat-trap covered floors that haven't been cleaned since the Truman administration and drinking beer out of cups that these same pingpong ball land in.

Yet somehow they all turn into Martha Stewart the minute they enter a football stadium? I'm not buying this justification. If you have to use something long and slender, why not just go ahead and use your girlfriend's pocket vibrator as a mixer instead? Then you can cheer with that alongside the pompons. Touchdown Alabama ... buzzzzzz.

The other argument is that the pompons "look good on television." This is even more ridiculous. Synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics both look good on television, too. Maybe the men in the student section should all wear Speedos and do handstands ending in the splits every time their team scores. That would look so awesome on television with everyone doing scissor kicks in Speedos together. I'll tell you what cheering with pompons looks like on television ... it looks like cheering with pompons. There is no excuse or legitimate justification.