Why the governor needs to wear a cup I don’t know, nor can I figure out why anybody else would want it.

“Congratulations, boys!” the governor says, reaching into his trousers. “I’ve got a little something for you. And it ain’t fried chicken!”

To paraphrase George Patton: Carlin, you magnificent bastard! I read your books!

I also bought his videos and saw his live shows!

I don’t know who’s ever been funnier, really . . .

CNN has an obit, and Fox Sports has wisely reprinted “The Difference Between Baseball and Football.”

The conventional wisdom in recent years has been that USC has trouble defending spread offenses and mobile quarterbacks, like Illinois’ Juice Williams.

I’m not sure that’s true. They’ve had trouble defending some mobile quarterbacks — Vince Young, Dennis Dixon — but so has every other team in the country.

We took it to a real personal nature because we wanted to figure the spread-thing out, defend it really well and take the mystery out of it. We practiced so beautifully that it had to work out well. That’s a big deal. A really big deal.

— Pete Carroll

A total systematic beatdown.

FIGHT ON!

I can’t stop in the middle of a game. Roger Goodell has not sent me a notice that we can do that. Unless there’s a weather delay or fans throwing things on the field, which there isn’t, so that can’t happen.

Background

Barry Sanders, as you may already know, was a running back for the Detroit Lions — one of the best running backs ever.

It was shocking news — to the extent that an athlete’s retirement can be considered “shocking” — when Sanders retired in 1998 because, at age 31, he was at the peak of his career, and on the verge of breaking the all-time NFL rushing record.

Some Lions fans — to this day — still expect him to change his mind and play again.

What Sanders Said

Sanders has an “as told to” autobiography coming out, in which he says that he retired, not — as the above headline says — because the Lions weren’t winning (which they weren’t), but because of his realization that the management of the team no longer cared about winning.

Big difference.

Here’s what he says in the book:

“That realization trivialized everything I did during the off-season to prepare myself. It trivialized everything I dreamed about from the time I was a kid in Wichita . . .”

It’s very similar to something DeMarco and Lister said in Peopleware:

Most forms of teamicide do their damage by effectively demeaning the work, or demeaning the people who do it. Teams are catalyzed by a common sense that the work is important and that doing it well is worthwhile.

People want to do great work. People are dying for opportunities to do great work.

I wish this information could somehow be implanted into the brain of every IT manager.

Thus spoke The Programmer.

He says, “UCLA hired a new coach: Carlos Burrell!”

By which I think he means Karl Dorrell.

That is a great, great hire.

I say that as a USC grad who was sorry to see Bob Toledo go. They might never beat the Trojans again . . .