Are you tired of the swine’s flu yet? Yes? THAT IS TOO BAD BECAUSE SWINE’S FLU IS NOT TIRED OF YOU. Despite it being a relatively mild disease in terms of the severity of symptoms, the sheer ass-kicking efficiency of the H1N1 virus to spread itself among a large population has college campuses and athletic programs cowering in fear. Hell, it’s the only thing that kept Tennessee within 10 points of Florida, whether Lane Kiffin wants to admit it or not.

(Next up, the ‘roids!)

So while the direst warnings - you know, that betting lines would be delayed - haven’t come to fruition, campuses are still fighting the inexorable spread of the virus in their own way. For Ohio State and coach Jim Tressel, it’s adopting The Way of Howie Mandel, eschewing all hand-to-hand contact. Problem solved.

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• Charles Barkley has some relationship advice for Shawne Merriman: “You don’t get your women from reality TV.”

• Well, Jay Cutler’s debut for the Chicago Bears could have gone better.

• Fox Sports reporter Chris Myers compares Larry Foote’s jersey from the Steelers to the Lions to going from dating Beyonce to Whoopi Goldberg.

• Michelle Wie’s blog is worth checking out - if only for the leather skirts.

• Jim Tressel says Ohio State fans are unhappy & miserable. And William Rolle sort of proves the coach’s theory.

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Jim Tressel may have just made a bigger miscalculation than passing on two downs instead of running out the clock at the end of the second quarter. At his weekly teleconference today, he seemed to take a poke at disgruntled OSU fans (are there any other kind right now?) and their reaction to Saturday’s 18-15 loss to USC.

Tressel, who resembles every vice principal you’ve ever had and is three times as likely to confiscate your chocolate milk, is a bit chagrined at all the negative email he’s been receiving since Pete Carroll beat him for the 17th consecutive time (actual facts may vary). But in calling Buckeye fans “miserable,” he may have actually missed the target low. A telling, horrible example below:

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For the college football fans among us, if you haven’t already, you’ll want to check out the complete dismantling of the Jim Tressel offense featured on DR. SATURDAY today. It’s as thorough a damnation of the system in which Terrelle Pryor toils as you can imagine, and it highlights just how remarkable it is that Ohio State actually let USC win last Saturday’s game. No offense to Matt Barkley or anything, but seriously: OSU should have won handily.

(Ho hum.)

Anyway, one of the points that SMART FOOTBALL’s Chris Brown (no, not him) makes in the aforementioned article is that “one of the problems with a plan that relies on fitting square pegs into round holes is that it makes the players look really bad,” or in other words, if a player’s not put in a position to succeed, you’re not going to think he’s very good.

Perhaps, then, that’s the reason for triumphant USC coach’s Pete Carroll’s comments earlier today as he looked ahead to this week’s game against Washington, casually dismissing the notion that Pryor’s the best player his team will face in September.

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Recall, if you will, the words of Ohio State’s Ray Small, a wide receiver, in the leadup to Ohio State’s epic fail clash with USC earlier this year: “Here at Ohio State, they teach you to be a better man,” Small said. “There, it’s just all about football.” Terribly ill-advised, yes, but his heart was in the right place, even if USC went on to demolish the Buckeyes, 35-3. It was still a nice thing to say about head coach Jim Tressel and his program.

(Jim Tressel can’t get that stupid “Five Dollar Footlongs” jingle out of his head, and now neither can you.)

Now, just a couple months later, Tressel has rewarded the young public relations guru with… a suspension for violating team rules (read: sleeping through a lecture or something). Small’s family responded by not drawing attention to the situation and explaining the value of following rules and guidelines to the young man. Oh, just kidding, they’ve completely flipped out and have accused Tressel of sabotaging Small’s career, and I swear to God I am not making that up.

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How ironic is it that the giant nail in the coffin of John McCain’s Presidential hopes last night came when the networks declared Ohio for Barack Obama. After all, McCain appeared to run his campaign like Jim Tressel cluelessly bumbling his way through coaching Ohio State to another BCS Title Game meltdown. In this analogy, Obama really was LSU or Florida: faster, hungrier and ready to deliver a hellacious beatdown.

(Does this make Sarah Palin the Maurice Clarett of the ticket - initially exciting but eventually a total disaster? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.)

But while the Maverick of the Senate might have suffered an historic thumping on Tuesday night, the Mavericks of Dallas were taking a venerable but aging institution out to the woodshed, beating the Spurs 98-81 to drop San Antonio to 0-3 for the first time in the team’s NBA history. They can’t possibly be missing Manu Ginobli this much, could they?

And what about Matt Lindland, the MMA fighter who was the Republician candidate for a State House seat? Unfortunately for him, he was about as competitive as Kimbo Slice, as he fell to a double digit defeat at the hands of his Democratic opponent. I would have said that having a campaign manager named Tootie Smith was a bad sign, but then again…Scooter Libby.

On to the other, slightly less significant news:

• Don’t tase him, bro! The TRI-CITY HERALD says that an Arena Football player was zapped by airport security after busting through a window at the terminal and getting on the tarmac trying to get to his flight. That’s called dedication.
• FARTHER OFF THE WALL has an offer for you: how about having Pete Arbogast, the radio voice of the USC Trojans, call your kids’ soccer game for just $500? And the Web site offering these services is just as professional looking as you would expect from a media type whoring himself out for a few bucks.
• The NEW YORK TIMES dials in news that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is sending a letter to Senators blaming the cable companies for why you don’t have the NFL Network. Didn’t he get the memo that Obama’s first priority is getting a college football playoff?
• The CHICAGO TRIBUNE breaks down the news that Illinois WR Jeff Cumberland is going to play this week despite breaking teammate Mikel LeShoure’s jaw in a fight last Saturday night.
• Do they have any decent sushi places in Atlanta? The ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION notes that the Braves have made an offer to 22-year-old Japanese pitching phenom Junichi Tazawa.
• How far has the Tennesee football program fallen? The WINSTON SALEM JOURAL says that David Cutcliffe would rather stay at Duke than consider taking the Vols’ head coaching job.
• The MOSCOW-PULLMAN DAILY NEWS reports that three Idaho football players have been suspended after being charged with battery after a fight at a house party this weekend. What do you expect from the players when you call the team the “Vandals?”
• According to the LOS ANGELES TIMES, Oaks Christian High School - the school that has the sons of Joe Montana, Wayne Gretzky and Will Smith - might be in trouble for advertising its athletic department on local TV. The ads were OK, but still better than Hancock.
• BYU quarterback Max Hall tells the SALT LAKE TRIBUNE that he’ll be missing Thursday night’s huge Mountain West Conference game between Utah and TCU because he can’t miss The Office. And I thought Dwight Schrute was Amish and not Mormon.
• Bob Stoops tells THE OKLAHOMAN that he’s come full circle and now supports a college football playoff. Sounds like Obama’s minions got to him.

I want to congratulate Jim Tressel for ensuring that his Buckeyes still have a chance to play in the BCS Championship game. Since the pollsters didn’t bury the Bucks (#13?), by holding out Beanie Wells in what now turns out to be a somewhat meaningless game, Tressel’s team will have a better chance to run the table in the Big 10 - and then benefit (again) from the creaking, maddening machinery of the BCS.

With a healthy Wells, even after Saturday’s SoCal shellacking, the rest of the Big 10 is probably no match for OSU. So long as UGA, UF and Okla. lose, you can almost guarantee the Bucks a return trip to the BCS’ big game (and another rout at the hands of the Trojans). I can already hear people firing up their CPAP machines in South Beach.

(Right before I called in the airstrike to escape the fourth quarter)

That whole scenario is far-fetched, you say? Then you haven’t been paying attention to the dark ages of a once-great sport. Yes, the pageantry and atmosphere of games like OSU-USC at the Coli is what defines college football, especially when you’re there to experience it first-hand.

But Saturday as I settled into my seat at the game (thanks to My Boy Barry), I couldn’t help being pissed about Tressel not allowing Beanie to play.

Safe to say, Wells could’ve beaned up and done more than the entire Buckeye backfield that day. But Tressel & Co. are gaming the BCS to perfection. They know that to risk further injury to Wells would be to eliminate the Bucks from BCS Championship Game contention.

(Those eyes smoked me out of the ESPN 710 VIP Tent)

Now, isn’t that what the great college game is all about? Sandbagging in front of a hundi-thousand in the most-anticipated college football clash in years?

DEADSPIN Editor A.J. Daulerio spent Saturday with me, and provided the day’s only excitement. On our walk to the stadium, A.J. accidently dropped his ticket. He didn’t discover this fact until he had until we’d walked five minutes down the road.

After backtracking about 1000 feet, we found the ticket, still somehow sitting on the sidewalk. (If only the fine citizens of Watts had been more considerate, and prevented us from attending the game.)

Now onward, to some of my fun pics from the Coli collection (Rick Reilly, Billy Bush, anonymous hotties!): Read more…

When the #2 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes took the field to open up their season this afternoon with Youngstown State, their redshirt junior defensive tackle Doug Worthington was there with them. No not as an emotional leader on the sidelines in his sweatsuit, but with the Buckeyes on the field in uniform.

A little more than a month ago Worthington, 20, was caught driving his white Cadillac Escalade with a blood alcohol content somewhere between .o8 and .17. That’s not enough to keep him out of today’s game, however. Coach Jim Tressel allowed Worthington, who figures to be a key contributor to the Buckeyes, to take the field despite the fact that his case is still open and headed for pre-trial on October 1st.

THE DETROIT FREE PRESS (that’s in Michigan where they don’t think too kindly of OSU) reminds us that Tressel sat out third string quarterback Antonio Henton for seven games last season while waiting out his case for an arrest for soliciting a prostitute. So a third stringer looking for some love, and by love I mean sex with a professional, sits out seven games and a key contributor driving 42 in a 25 with some booze in the system gets more playing time.

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The U.S. Open is underway and Ana Ivanovic is, of course, everyone’s favorite.

Some even like her tennis game. If she bags a few more Majors, she has the chance to become an iconic figure in tennis and pop culture here stateside, thanks to her striking looks and disarming personality. But for Ana to win, she’ll have to avoid being bounced by some formidable bracket busters. And I do mean bounced.

So as a public service, I’m here to document the dangerous curves that may await Ms. Ivanovic. First off in that field, we bring you an old SbB favorite, Tamira Paszek:

Then there’s the ever-dangerous Sania Mirza of India:

And finally, if you’re betting the field:

Clockwise, from top left: Loudmila Skavronskaya, Simona Halep, Marta Domachowska and Andrea Petkovic.

Yeah, it’s all fun and games at the U.S. Open, until someone loses an eye. Or two.

TRUE HOOP’s Henry Abbott and Ian Whittell at ESPN.com once and for all debunk the preposterous prospect of Lebron and/or Kobe and/or ‘Melo eloping to Euroleague.

Whittell notes the paltry attendance figures, obsolete arenas and low ticket prices for Euroleague powerhouses and Abbott aptly offers that even if partial ownership was offered to a player, who would want to partake in what would likely be a money-losing enterprise?

Lotsa talk here in Los Angeles about the status of Andrew Bynum, who eschewed care of his ailing knee by Laker team doctors in favor of his own Atlanta-based medical team. For a guy who talked of coming back last playoffs and now claims he’s now 100%, there are still off-the-record concerns among Laker front office staffers that he will not be ready for training camp.

The explosion of online conversation about Jay Mariotti’s ouster today really underlines the raw, unmitigated power of ESPN. For years Mariotti launched his predictably contrarian missives in anonymity for Chicago’s junior varsity daily, the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES.

Then he landed a regular role on ESPN’s “Around The Horn,” and suddenly more than just the janitors checking the tops of condom machines in Cabrini Green cared what he thought.

The irony about the oft-violent reaction to Mariotti by sports fans and the media is that most of them only know Mariotti because of ESPN’s “Around The Horn.”And on that show, Mariotti displays a sensibility that is far removed from his bomb-throwing print persona. His opinions on ATH are usually measured and factual (and actually entertaining). He’s the best panelist on the show, hands down.

Meanwhile, at the S-T, he was the central casting madman shouting from the rooftop.

Marriotti said the main reason for leaving the S-T was that the print media biz was dead, and the internet was clearly the future of sports reportage. Very true. But if it wasn’t for his TV experience on ESPN, how many non-Chicago-centric sites would have any interest in Mariotti’s services? The WWL is clearly driving his career, and if he’s smart, Bristol’s where he should look for his next security detail.

SbB makes the front page of ABCNews.com today:

FYI: I’ll be at the UCLA-Tennessee game at the Rose Bowl on Barry’s dime this Monday night, with a live blog on SbB.  Don’t be a stranger.

If you haven’t gotten your college football tix for this Saturday, it’s not too late. Do what I do, and hit up My Boy Barry.

As you would expect, Ohio State is hawking Jim Tressel sweater vests all over the place. Besides overly conservative Columbites, the duds are no doubt huge every Ann Arbor Halloween. Also offered for purchase - a delightful twist (literally) on Tressel’s weekly, regrettable apparel selection:

(Just what OSU fans need, another reason to drink)

I thought initially that a “Jim Tressel Sweater Vest Koozie” was rogue merch, but the website offering the alcoholic companion claims it is “officially licensed.” I’m sure the Ohio Highway Patrol will be happy to hear that upon discovery under the driver’s seat.

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Ohio State University football coach Jim Tressel is set for the Tuesday release of his new book, The Winners Manual: For the Game of Life. The book promotes Tressel’s “Big Ten” fundamentals for success, and is availabe at the coach’s fancy little website.

The book isn’t a tell-all, behind the scenes look at the Ohio St. football program, but rather an inspiring blend of football stories, spiritual insights, motivational reading, and practical application. Here are a couple of highlights: Read more…