Tales From the Recruiting Trail

The summer recruiting circuit is a tough racket. Coaches pile into cars and airplanes, leave their families and other loved ones -- blenders, two-ply toilet paper, etc. -- behind, and travel across the country to scour the land for talent. The road, consequently, is a somewhat angry place and it leads to very defined emotions -- angry ones, mixed with vengeance and momentary disdain.

Outside of Georgetown's Kevin Warne getting dumptruck'd (the highlight of the offseason so far), here is a first-level check-in with how some coaches are dealing with traveling the nation.

RYAN DANEHY: MICHIGAN OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR

ANGER LEVEL: Moderate. Basically willing to watch a drifter bleed out on the side of the road to teach him a lesson about hitchin'.

I don't do 100 degrees. In fact, once the thermometer tops 75, I'm heading for the refrigerator to pretend to make a sandwich while I quietly unzip my pants to get some cool refreshment where it's needed most. I'm pale and prone to sunburn simply thinking about the sun's existence; 100-degree heat and blaring sunshine is basically a nuclear weapon aimed at my skull with no chance of jamming the radar. Doing this . . . .

. . . in screaming heat just to find a few potential studs isn't my idea of having a blast. This is why I majored in books and words in college instead of crushing bones on the lacrosse field. For everyone else out there -- coaches, players, parents -- that need to endure this, I have one thing to say to you: Shine on you crazy diamonds; you guys are stronger than me.

J.P. BRAZEL: HOFSTRA OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR

ANGER LEVEL: High. Basically willing to sell Staten Island to Canada for 60 bucks and allowing the United States to take a fat tax loss on the sale.

Brazel is sort of right: Traveling to, from, and through Staten Island is something that the government should make captive terrorists do as a form of torture to extract information from them. That isn't the sole purpose of Staten Island, though. Rather, Staten Island has all kinds of other purposes: as a quarantine to keep even more jerkfaces out of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn; as a threat to parents if their children ever start having too much fun in the city's other four boroughs -- "I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DON'T CLEAN UP YOUR ACT WE'RE MOVING TO STATEN ISLAND!"; Staten Island also exists to make Brooklyn and Queens feel better about themselves; when it comes time to sacrifice one borough to the robots upon their revolt from their human masters, Staten Island will be that place (to be renamed "1000111001001"); and Staten Island remains an ecological environment designed to foster research into the effects of hair spray and families populated with at least 20 males named "Tommy" (colloquially "TAWMMY!") and an equal number of females named "Andrea" (colloquially "THAT DUMB BROAD!").

So, yeah. Staten Island is a different kind of place.