This bigfoot-esque fuzzy picture was tossed up on tigerboard.com yesterday and appears to be a Big 12 North championship trophy to Kansas from the Big XII. Mizzou and KU ended regular season play with one loss each, although Mizzou was the North representative by virtue of beating KU 36-28. Assuming this picture is for real, the Big XII conference can't seem to make up its mind. Missouri won, but KU won, too?

A couple of thoughts on this. First, if I were Mangino, Lew Perkins or anyone of power within the Kansas athletic department and the dunderheads at the Big XII corporate headquarters tried to give me a self esteem trophy after getting face planted by Mizzou on national tv, I'd politely decline. If the trophy came in the mail, it would go in the Kaw. That's because champions don't accept championship trophies after a loss. Only in today's environment would someone even think to produce a second place championship trophy.

Obviously this is a ridiculous exercise. Big XII rules gave the North title to Mizzou. Whether the conference then embarrasses itself by issuing a trophy and KU sheepishly accepts the "honor" is just a sad spectacle that I can hardly process. Congratulations, Kansas, on your second place championship.

How do you top last season's offense?

"We're getting spreadier," said Missouri head football coach Gary Pinkel.

"We'll be taking our entire 11 players and putting them on either sideline, leaving a giant gap in the middle, so we'll be able to play the ball up the middle, so I guess we'll need players in the middle, but they'll be way spread out, so we'll probably keep some players in the middle and then leave players way out on the sidelines. What was the question?"

Coach Gary Pinkel expects to use the entire field to make the defense follow them around.

We'll be running all over the place here and there, around there and over here and we'll just run the whole field and try and stay within the boundaries, but all over. We'll use some parts of the field that doesn't yet exist. We'll find it and use it. It's the undiscovered world. We'll discover it and then run and pass all over that place."

Finding undiscovered parts of the field?

"That's correct. We have some innovative new things in our offense. It's never been seen. It exploits some dimensional aspects like time and space."

So, the Tigers are time travelers?

"More like phantom alien ghost mystery spy dust bunnies. We're here, but we're not here. We're over there, but we're not. We're turning the gridiron into 7 dimensions, like that chess board on Star Trek, but more dimensions."

I'm looking forward to it.

Here is the Mizzou tailgate survey. I guess you can read whatever you want into it, but there's a heavy emphasis on alcohol. Rumor has it they're considering an alcohol-free zone.

On a side note, notice the first question. Are you serious? I'm not familiar with the third gender. Folks, your penis/vagina is not a state of mind.

But let's say there's a lot of people saying they're tired of the drunken debauchery at the tailgating. I'm not really sure what you can do about that. People are going to drink and some will drink too much. A ban on alcohol is patronizing and will anesthetize the atmosphere. Adults can determine if they've had too much. If the problem is unruly behavior, that's what the P.D. is for. I suppose creating an alcohol-free zone might be a decent compromise if those who really want to be insulated from so much as seeing a heathen with a beer will feel better. We could also buy them blinders. In Oklahoma, you can't carry your beer to the car unless it's in a paper bag. Similar concept, I guess.

Just a wild, baseless guess...Mizzou will start a "drink responsibly" marketing campaign this fall.

Some of you might remember the little scuffle I got into with CLC. Joe College of Lawrence, Kansas is going through a similar battle, except they're currently in the middle of a federal jury trial. While this blog has nothing to do with my livelihood and I'm just as likely to post as I am to forget about it for a few months at a time, Joe College is a business and provides a living to owner Larry Sinks. To date, Sinks has sunk $300,000 into defending his business.

There are many nuances and complexities to copyright & trademark law. Key to this case is a legal doctrine known as 'fair use'. I won't get into a legal memo here, my brain will melt, but with apologies to the egg heads who live in the world of trademark and copyright law, it more or less gets down to this: are you confused? Would a normal person look at a shirt and think "that's an official shirt from the University of Kansas"?

Let's first look at KU. Like most universities, they're humorless, take themselves too seriously and have the creative acumen of a Soviet architect (here building four walls you live shut up). Universities do things like change "Border War" to "Border Misunderstanding". They take traditions and bathe them in the icy pools of political correctness. Remember, we now live in the self esteem generation, where overpraising and celebrating the mundane have become virtues. How do we feel good? We never feel bad.

Then there's Joe College. Irreverent, sometimes funny, sometimes not so funny, but certainly a far cry from what you would expect from the dull minds of a university marketing department or anything they would approve and license.

The atmosphere at campuses have become intellectually dishonest to the point where it is impossible to attribute something edgy and punchy like a Joe College shirt with something a modern university would put out. Universities are in the feel good business. Before long, you'll see professor tunnels after lectures to make the students feel good. Joe College and other purveyors of sassy attire are in the entertainment business. The difference is while there is overlap in the use of certain words like 'Kansas', Joe College uses its own creativity to say things with those words that people want to have on their shirt. The University of Kansas has "Kansas Basketball" on their shirts. Joe College has "Kansas, the Birthplace of North Carolina Basketball". Not in a thousand years would KU get behind something like that. Thus, no consumer confusion.

But the issue here isn't that of consumer confusion. It's really twofold. First, KU wants to cleanse all speech associated with it for political correctness. They want everyone to be nice. Second, KU wants all expressions of fan support to go through the KU athletic department toll booth.

The latter bothers me, but the former makes me irate. At Mizzou, I was a GDI. I understand this was a common term at KU, too, so we all know what this means. Don't tell me how to be a fan. Don't tell me how to live. Don't tell me that what I say, do and think has to have 'Collegiate Licensing' stamped on it. People have different tastes, different standards and some people like to be annoying and wear annoying clothing. If that were illegal, then all of you Crocs-wearing dads would be lining up for prison time.

Public universities belong to the people of that state, not the athletic departments. A university setting is the last place freedom of speech should be under assault.

Lighten up, KU. Muzzling your fans is so 1950.

That's the rumor. Dumb. I'll wait until it's confirmed that the AD is mulling it over before I go bananas. Meanwhile, here's my artist's rendering of what the games will be like:

Topping the list: 2 barns

Yay, Kansas.