It's no secret that Johnny Manziel is Outkick the Coverage's favorite SEC football player of all time. 

But even we continue to be amazed by his feats of athletic excellence.

Last night he homered during San Diego Padres batting practice while wearing jeans and boat shoes. Then he executed one of the most amazing first pitches in history.

How so?

He reenacted his fumbled touchdown pass against Alabama.

Really, he did.

Watch.  

The man, the myth, the legend Vinnie Verno will be giving y'all five locks of the week every week during college football season. Already Danny Sheridan is jealous as hell. In fact, let's not kid ourselves, there's an 80% chance that Vinnie Verno is Sheridan's source when it comes to Cam's bag man.

College football is officially here.

Go ahead and start drinking from that flask hidden in the back of your lower desk drawer. Don't lie to me, I know it's there. You won't need to work anyway after the millions you're set to make courtesy of Vinnie Verno.

Here's his first week picks. With HD Video!

Now that we know Texas A&M is officially divorced from the Big 12, the complications for the SEC actually become more substantial. The next step is fairly simple: The SEC presidents will vote to extend an offer to Texas A&M once the Aggies officially submit an application. (The application is really fun to think about. In particular, is there an essay portion? I'm picturing R. Bowen Loftin sitting up late at night staring at his computer screen screaming: "Why am I so damn boring?" If this essay doesn't focus on the trials and tribulations of male cheerleaders, I'm going to be really disappointed.) 

At least nine SEC presidents will vote yes and A&M will join the best conference in America. 

Then things get difficult.  

OKTC has been told the 2012 scheduling process will move into the hands of the SEC office which will present three or four different potential schedules and allow the ADs to vote on the best option. Simple majority will carry the day. That is, assuming the SEC schedulers aren't all throwing themselves off bridges before all is said and done

I spent an hour tonight trying to draft a potential 2012 SEC football schedule for A&M. Then I gave up. How did I give up? I called my friend Chris Shaw, a Math PhD living in Chicago, gave him the divisional parameters -- every team plays every other team in its division and all teams play eight total SEC games.

I didn't even worry about the issue of making the dates work, which layers a degree of complexity on top of an already intractable problem. 

I asked my math PhD buddy to confirm what I believed was true -- that an eight game schedule for 13 teams predicated on playing every team in your division was impossible. 

Ten minutes later he texted me back -- "That is impossible." 

For those who don't know or haven't really paid much attention to it right now the SEC football schedule is fairly simple -- each SEC team plays the other five teams in its division, a consistent rivalry game from the other division, and two rotating opponents from the opposing division.

SEC message boards are zany, wild, and crazy places. No message board is crazier than TigerDroppings.com, the LSU destination of choice for conspiracy theories, ridicule, and often great humor. OKTC gets email tips from TigerDroppings posters about ten times a week. Most of the time I read the threads, laugh a few times, and then move on to something else. But late last night we got a series of tips claiming that there was video that proves Jordan Jefferson is not the kicker in the bar fight.

The theory relies upon a couple of pieces of evidence that you can see posted here.

I've linked three videos below to allow you to make your own determination. It certainly appears clear that Jefferson and the kicker were dressed differently.

Well ladies, kiss your boyfriends and husbands goodbye.   Or, for those of us with no actual men but several faithful cats, brace yourselves for a drastic decline in activity on your Match.com profile.   (I’ll let you all decide which category I fall into.)   (WHY ARE YOU ALL JUST AUTOMATICALLY ASSUMING I FALL INTO THE LATTER CATEGORY?)   Because in about 24 hours, the entire male race will check out of Hotel Sanity and won’t be back for a long, long time; the lights will be on, but no one will be home.   It’s hard enough getting a date as a single girl in this city, and it’s only about to get harder starting tomorrow, a day which I’ve aptly renamed, “Black Thursday.”

This year thanks to a new rule in college football touchdowns can be called back for celebrations that occur on the field. In a Louisville,Ohio high school game this past weekend wide receiver Alex Schooley caught a touchdown pass with 1:15 left to give his team a 26-24 lead. Overcome with emotion, Schooley and a teammate pointed to the heavens. Only the players weren't doing it to draw attention to themselves. When he scored Schooley was honoring a 16 year old former classmate who died in a Monday traffic accident.

Schooley was a pallbearer in the funeral on Friday, the day of the game. His point to the heavens was a tribute to his friend.   

Officials didn't see it that way, penalizing the Louisville Leopards for excessive celebration. Quoth the officiating supervisor:

"Assistant Ohio High School Athletic Association Commissioner Henry Zaborniak tells Fox 8 News that the penalty was appropriate by the rules. Zaborniak says while the rule may be open to some interpretation, 'any prolonged gesture that draws attention to himself is a foul.'"

And in this case pointing to the Heavens was an excessive celebration. As a result, the opposing team received favorable field position, drove down the field, and kicked a field goal as time expired. The Louisville Leopards lost by a single point, 27-26.

Even casting aside the question of whether the official knew the motivation behind the gesture -- reportedly, he didn't -- was this really a celebration penalty? A team scores with 1:15 left to take the lead and this is excessive?

Decide for yourself by watching the video of the score.

In case y'all wondered, I love Barbara Dooley. Absolutely. Love. Her. That's why her banning from the radio was tough for me to take. As a way of saying goodbye we had her on 3HL this afternoon and, as always, Momma Dooley was must listen radio. I'd encourage y'all to click the link here and listen to the entire interview. But, as I try to do on the site, I'll take some of the most entertaining quotes from her interview with us and include it for you here.

But, again, I beg you, click on the link and listen to the woman. Merely reading her words doesn't do her justice, she's a storyteller, a stand-up comedian who happens to be a coaches wife and mother. She needs her own reality television show.

Barbara Dooley called in to the show as she drove north to Knoxville for the home opener against Montana. "I'm 66 miles from the Tennessee border where I can put on my orange," she said.

It's August 30th. 

A great day to be an American, a great day to be a man.  It's Madden release day. 

We live in a different world these days, my friends.  A world where a man can no longer go catch some food, bring it home to his family, and be pleasured by his woman.  No.  Now a man is often forced to hide his real desires in favor of getting a pedicure with his girlfriend/ wife. Or maybe, if he's lucky, he only has to watch a cooking show with Paula Dean, or a few episodes of Dancing With the Stars...

Bottom line- we don't have a lot of days left where we're allowed to just be a man.  Today is one of them.  Here is a recounting of the others, the blessed few days that are to be treasured, my male brethren.  Any woman who wants to take one of these days away from you should have her wedding ring confiscated.  We don't ask for much, so don't let them take the few remaining pleasures we still have.  Trust me on this one brothers... as a co-author of Man: The Book, I am a certified expert of all things that involve our species. 

Here are our remaining days to actually be men:

As Texas A&M's official notice of departure from the Big 12 grows closer talk has shifted to what exactly the exit fees may be for the Aggies. And the answer to that question is a Facebook-centric -- it's complicated. That's because the lawyers who drafted the exit provisions of the Big 12 bylaws should be summarily executed. It's incredibly difficult to figure out what is and is not owed under this framework and the payouts aren't very substantial. That's what OKTC has learned from a close examination of the Big 12 bylaws.  

That's the reason that Nebraska and Colorado were able to escape the conference by paying pennies on the dollar.  

It's possible these bylaw terms were drafted in such a way to be intentionally vague. That is, everyone who read this language recognized that it was impossible to know exactly what was expected of them in the event of dissolution. Hence every school entered into this agreement with the understanding that what they were agreeing to wasn't entirely certain. It's also possible that these bylaws once made sense and then when 12 schools pored over the document and inserted their own language that was supposed to clarify things it actually made it more complex.

Finally, it's possible that no one ever expected for a school to want to leave the Big 12. What isn't in dispute is that these bylaws are a mess.

Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin already referred to this bylaws as "confusing," and he wasn't lying. Read the language for yourself and then we'll discuss that language in greater detail after you're finished. But be prepared to read these provisions a dozen or more times to really understand what the heck is going on.

Today Paul Finebaum announced that Barbara Dooley, the most popular woman in the state of Tennessee sports who isn't named Pat Summitt, is not allowed to go on his radio show any longer. Barbara, who happens to be the wife of Georgia Hall of Fame coach Vince, once answered the door for her husband wearing nothing at all. "Play me or trade me, Coach," she said. Seriously, how could you not love this woman?  

Her Finebaum prohibition comes courtesy of her son Derek, the head football coach at the University of Tennessee, who informed his mother that her regular appearances on the radio were hurting recruiting.

Reached by OKTC today, Barbara Dooley confirmed that she'd been yanked off the airwaves. Aghast at the injustice, I told her that anyone who wasn't coming to Tennessee because of her radio appearances was a recruit the Vols didn't need. Barbara laughed anew. She'd previously been banned from regular appearances on airwaves in the state of Tennessee, which meant we could only schedule her occasionally. Yet every time she appeared with us, she was appointment radio.

Let me put this as clearly as possible -- the world needs more Barbara Dooley on the radio, not less.

As we wait for the final details of Texas A&M's move to the SEC to be complete -- a move that will cement Mike Slive's legacy as one of the greatest conference commissioners of all time -- Dan Beebe and the Big 12 are floating big time names as A&M's replacement. Give the conference credit, it's attempting a haymaker in response to the SEC's raid. The Big 12 is wooing Notre Dame and Arkansas. I don't believe either school will join the Big 12 because the conference's future remains all too tied to the whims and proclivities of Texas, but I am fascinated by the Big 12's pursuit of Arkansas. Why? Because it's an attempt at Civil War between the SEC and the Big 12. That's what multiple SEC officials told me, anyway, that they wonder whether the Big 12 might want Arkansas so bad that they're willing to make a pretty intriguing offer that we haven't seen before.

Namely this one -- Arkansas would get all the buyout money that A&M will owe the Big 12 for moving to the SEC.