From a friend and fellow alum, who says “this will never stop being awesome:”

The University of Alabama is set to honor Mobile native James M. Fail by placing his name on a prominent fixture at Bryant-Denny Stadium. A donation by Mr. Fail to the Crimson Tide Foundation will result in the visitors’ locker room being officially named “The Fail Room.”

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas has introduced a bill essentially mandating a college football playoff:

He said the bill — being co-sponsored by Reps. Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat, and Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican — “will prohibit the marketing, promotion, and advertising of a postseason game as a ‘national championship’ football game, unless it is the result of a playoff system. Violations of the prohibition will be treated as violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act as an unfair or deceptive act or practice.”

This whole Plaxico thing just reeks of boneheadedness, which is painful for Heathen Central to admit given our affection for the Giants generally and Plaxico specifically (Burress has been our favorite player for a while, an honor that is predicted predominately on “which productive NFL player on a team we like has the funniest name.” (The runner-up is Atari Bigby in Green Bay)).

Consequently, the light this event shines into Plaxico’s fucktardery is, well, disappointing to us. The entire affair is error on error on error in a chain that could have, at any moment, been broken and thereby prevented the near-certain incarceration endgame.

So, in the order he probably committed them, a brief survey of stupid Plaxico tricks:

1. “I’ll wear a shit-ton of jewelry worth tens of thousands of dollars to a loud and chaotic night club where snatch-and-run type thefts are easy to perpetrate, and I’ll do this on the off chance that someone around me may of missed the fact that I make a fuckload of money by being one of Eli’s favorite targets, and — oh yes — I caught the winning TD in the Super Bowl last year.” Stupidity rating: 3. Lots of people, especially people who come from below the upper-middle-class, have a tendency to suffer from Wife of Bath syndrome in an effort to show everyone how well they’ve done. Pro athletes are particularly vulnerable, and it’s hard to completely condemn the practice for this reason. However — and I say this as someone dumb enough to have regularly stumbled home drunk from Egan’s wearing my dad’s Rolex — wearing flashy jewelry in a club like that is just silly.

2. “Because I have to wear such fancy jewelry to illustrate my station in life, I must also carry a gun to protect same.” Stupidity rating: 6. Plax jumps a lot here, since he’s making a bad assumption based on a bad assumption which compounds the whole affair. Carry a gun because you HAVE to go someplace where you don’t feel safe, sure. But creating a situation you perceive as dangerous (wearing the jewels into the club) and then compounding that danger by carrying a gun as well makes you pretty stupid. Better to avoid the danger in the first place, but therein you see how the chain develops.

3. “I have no reason to bother with registering this firearm.” Stupidity rating: 8. Carrying a loaded gun without a permit in NYC is a felony. Dude, you’re rich as metric FUCK; hire a security service if you need to wear 30 pounds of gold out in public. Carrying just tempts fate, and fate can be a bitch.

4. “I’m going to pick a gun to carry based on popular culture and not on my specific carry needs.” Stupidity rating: 5+ (see below; this plays into point 6, below). This is inferred, but at least a few reports suggested that Burress was carrying a full-sized pistol; there appears to be no dispute that it was a Glock in .40S&W. All Glocks, even the small ones, are double-stacked — meaning they’re much wider than many more carry-appropriate guns. You can get a 9mm or even .40 that’s far slimmer, and that will fit neatly in one’s pocket; when you’re carrying on the sly, concealability is paramount, and absent a proper carry rig, being able to slip it in your pocket securely is pretty important.

5. “Wait, you mean you can get carry rigs that work in just about any set of clothes, from inside-the-waistband holsters to full shoulder clutches to fanny-pack setups?” If you’re gonna carry, SECURE THE MOTHERFUCKING PIECE. Plax did NOT do this; he was apparently trying to carry a double-stacked Glock in the waistband of his sweatpants. WTF, man? Stupidity rating: 9.

6. “I’m gonna go ahead and keep one in the pipe just in case despite lacking a real safety or a real carry rig.” Stupidity rating: 10. Most folks who carry probably DO keep a round in the chamber, but they’re probably using real gun leather, or a pistol with a more affirmative safety mechanism than the Glock has. Plax dropped his gun and, in fumbling for it, pulled the trigger. The Glock’s safety is IN the trigger, which one source of criticism for the pistol’s design. There’s no click-on, click-off safety at all. This means carrying a Glock with a round in the chamber without a secure rig is really, really, really stupid; had he picked a safer gun, a real holster, or carried without a round in the chamber, none of this would have happened. (I.e., if Plax had just dropped the gun and avoided shooting himself or anyone else, nobody would have ever known.)

7. “Now that I’m at the club, wearing loads of jewelry, and carrying a gun, I’d better go ahead and get drunk.” Stupidity rating: 10. In Texas, by the way, carrying a gun EVEN WITH A PERMIT into a place that makes more than 51% of its money selling booze is also a felony. This is NOT a bad law. Carrying when you’re drunk is a bad, bad idea — no good can come from it.

Plax is going to jail. What he’s really going to jail for is being a fucking idiot, given how many choices he could have made differently in this sequence. “Skip the jewels, so I don’t need the gun” would’ve been a great start, but even “get a real holster” or “carry something with an affirmative safety” or “don’t fucking keep one in the chamber” would’ve also saved his career and kept him out of the loving arms of New York State.

Word is that Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville is out in the wake of a disappointing season and a stunning shutout in the Iron Bowl. This is almost certainly a mistake; in 10 years at Auburn, Tuberville has produced consistently, taken them to a bowl every year since 2000, and posted winning seasons every year but his first and this one. He’s the only Aubur coach to ever beat Alabama six years in a row. His 85-40 (68%) record isn’t better than Bowden (73%, fired in 1998) or Dye (71%, forced out in an rules violation scandal in 1992), but it’s close — and n.b. that neither of those guys left voluntarily, either.

If this is true, it means four of the six teams in the SEC West will have coaches with less than 2 years tenure at kickoff next August: Mississippi State, Arkansas, Auburn, and Ole Miss. (I’d make a joke about Saban scaring them all off, but when you factor in Nutt’s move from Arkansas to Ole Miss it’s really only 3 who shuffled out of the SEC — and there’s at least some chance Tuberville might go to Starkville.)

MSU isn’t going to do better without Croom. I find it hard to believe Auburn will do better without Tuberville. Nutt might do a little better at Ole Miss than he did at Arkansas, but even that would be inconsistent. Longtime Heathen Third-Party Contract Oil insists that Petrino’s Louisville roots mean Arkansas will become an offensive power in a couple years, but even if that’s true it still means lots of rebuilding in the SEC West, which is bad for everybody because of perceptions of weakness in strength of schedule.

(Sorry, Lindsey.)

Notre Dame’s AD says Weis will be back next year.

BCS is out, and despite having BEATEN Oklahoma, this goofball system we have put Texas BEHIND Oklahoma in the rankings, which means it’s the Sooners that will whip Mizzou in the Big XII game and play the SEC champion in Miami.

Of course, we here at Heathen know that the SEC will prevail, and our home conference will enjoy its third title in a row. But suppose they don’t, and Oklahoma wins. Texas sits out the big game despite having beaten them, and the champs know there’s a team better than them down in Austin.

This whole things just stinks.

I’d have been happier with 40+ points, but a 36 to zippo shutout of Auburn ends the regular season for both teams. Auburn’s difficult year ends at 5 and 7, a game shy of a bowl slot, which suits us just fine. Tuberville may have a year left — his six-game Iron Bowl streak will probably buy him some time — but something tells me that next year won’t be much better, and the Auburn faithful aren’t likely to be very patient at that point.

Alabama, of course, improves to 12-0 and will continue to the SEC championship game in Atlanta next Saturday against one-loss Florida. Meyer’s Gators are hot, and have played very well since their shocking loss to Ole Miss, so the game is likely to be quite a brawl. The winner there will for certain go to the BCS game in Miami, meeting whomever ends up on top of the Big XII South. All three contenders in that division won their games this weekend, though only Texas‘s 49 to 9 over A&M was truly authoritative; Texas Tech needed a big late-game rally to escape Baylor, and Oklahoma allowed 41 points in their 61-point win over Oklahoma State. (Frankly, the confusion may actually be all hype: after the drubbing from Oklahoma and the scare from Baylor, smart money says Texas Tech is out of the running for good — and Texas has already beaten Oklahoma in the regular season, which ought to get them into the Big XII game ahead of the Sooners.)

Elsewhere, LSU continued their downward slide with a 31-30 loss to Arkansas, which we’re certain will give the Tiger Boosters a bit of heartburn considering what they’re paying Les Miles.

Next door in Mississippi, the Egg Bowl turned into a 45 to nothing slaughter that also ended Croom’s career there. I hate seeing the preppie bastards in Oxford win that game, but you can’t argue with 45 unanswered points and Houston Nutt’s near-immediate success in his first year there.

On the other end of the coaching spectrum, as always, is Notre Dame’s Charlie Weis. Just a year after an embarrassing 3-9 season, and only a week out from a collapse for the ages against 8-loss Syracuse, the Irish gave up 38 points against the USC Trojans in a pathetic excuse for a game that has pundits all over calling for Weis’ head. The bad news for the ND athletic department is that apparently Weis’ contract buyout is friggin’ huge. Look for several more years of Irish mediocrity with or without Weis; their lackluster performance goes back further than Weis’ tenure.