Week #9 - NCAA Ruminations (Halloween Edition)

If popular NCAA figures were scary movie characters, who would they be?
(Character descriptions come from from Yahoo!'s "The Most Famous Horror Movie Villains:Michael Myers & Other Horror Movie Icons" Chance McMillan, Yahoo! Contributor Network)

THE CHARACTER: Michael Myers, Halloween: 

THE PROFILE: Myers is typically depicted as a tall man, who is abnormally intelligent and likes to murder his victims with knives and scalpels rather than guns and other weapons. Michael is a mute killer with a seemingly calm, methodological demeanor, always walking after his victims. He also possesses the ability to recuperate very quickly and has done so from being shot, burned, electrocuted and other acts of physical punishment.

THE DOPPELGANGER: Nick Saban. Nick Saban may not be tall, but he most assuredly possesses abnormal football intelligence and, like his monstrous doppelganger Mike, he likes to use a finely tuned, precision instrument with which to finish his victims (disciplined offense, defense, and special teams units that just take care of business).

THE CHARACTER: Jigsaw, The Saw Movies: 

THE PROFILE: Jigsaw is supposed to be seen as more of a scientist than a serial killer in that he kills people unconventionally by placing them in symbolic death traps which they can escape from via self-mutilation and other forms of psychological and physical torture. Darren Lynn Bousman, the director of Saw II, III and IV, has stated on the character's role "He's not Jason or Freddy. He's not even Hannibal Lecter. He's a person with extreme beliefs and he really thinks he's making a difference. He's a vigilante if anything. He thinks he's making a difference,"

THE DOPPELGANGER: Mike Leech didn't come from football lineage. He was going to be a lawyer at one point in time. But somewhere along the way he discovered he was good at teaching gimmicky offenses to college aged men. He also found out that he loved psychological torture. Whether placing Craig James' pretty-boy son in solitary confinement or describing his seniors on his current Washington State squad as possessing an "empty corpse quality", Coach Leech is simply making a difference in his own special way.

THE CHARACTER: Freddy Krueger, The Nightmare on Elm Street Movies: 

THE PROFILE: Kreguer is the main fictional character in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. He was created by Wes Craven and portrayed by Robert Englund. Kreuger is an undead serial killer who attacks victims in their dreams, thus killing them in their sleep. He's is characterized by his face scarred by burns, his striped shirts, fedora hat and metal glove featuring knives extending from the fingers. Perhaps the worst part about Freddy was that he killed children, though in a surprising turn of events he was eventually killed by his own daughter when she lured him into reality and killed him with his own glove.

THE DOPPELGANGER: John L. Smith at Arkansas. Not that I think John L. Smith is evil in a way Freddy Kreuger is evil but he most definitely haunts the dreams of the Arkansas brass that hired him for inexplicable reasons after the departure of Bobby Petrino. That said, the comparison is apt, for this reason. If any coach was capable of so screwing up the multiple golden platters he's served, it would be John L. Smith who, in the wake of stumbling and bumbling through a season with Top Ten talent, is also facing a multi-million dollar bankruptcy process. Let's face it, if Coach Smith donned a bladed glove, would it be so far-fetched to assume that someone would get him with it?

THE CHARACTER: Jason Voorhees, The Friday the 13th Movies: 

THE PROFILE: Voorhees is the fictional character (they're all fictional so I could stop writing that I guess) in the Friday the 13^th series. Jason has been portrayed by many different actors and stunt man and was not even intended to be the series main villain. The trademark mask did not become a part of the character until Part III. Though Jason started out as a mentally disabled young boy, he quickly became a non-verbal, indestructible, machete holding maniac. He's been described as a man with no personality that you cannot defeat, you can just hope to survive. Eventually Jason is supposedly depicted as a man who murders those who do wrong in acts of vengeance and thus is slightly more human than Myers and Kreuger - though in many polls Jason has been deemed the scariest because it seems he "enjoys his killing so much."

THE DOPPELGANGER: Charlie Weiss, Kansas. Coach Weiss continues to wear the mask of Belichick. He was anointed as a genius since his days at New England were so successful (pay no heed to the fact that the Pats have hummed along quite well without the mastery of Sir Weiss) That said, he is largely misunderstood by those of us who do silly things like look at win/loss records to measure the effectiveness of a coach. Coach Weiss, much like his Voorhees counterpart, doesn't care much for young, good-looking college student types, having looked to ban the KU student newspapers for having the audacity to report that his team sucked. Truthfully, he left Notre Dame in shambles, went onto to offensive coordinator failures in three places, including Gainesville, Florida and is currently taking Kansas, once feared and respected when another rotund individual named Mangino roamed the sidelines, into a mockery. I'm starting to think, like Jason, he simply enjoys killing programs.

THE CHARACTER: Chucky, The Chucky Movies: 

THE PROFILE: Is the primary antagonist in the Child's Play films. Charles Lee Ray was a notorious strangler who was gunned down, but before he died managed to get into a toy store and fall on a pile of dolls. He then used voodoo to transfer his soul into one of the "Good Guy" dolls. He spends a lot of time trying to transfer back into a human and killing a lot of people with anything weapon he can get his hands on. One interesting fact is that the longer he inhabits the doll's body the more 'human' he becomes in that he bleeds like a human and has the ability to procreate, evidenced by the fifth installment, 'Seed of Chucky.'

THE DOPPELGANGER: This one was easy (for obvious reasons). Gruden. No question. Gruden is nicer than the Chucky doll, of course. In fact, he never has uttered a negative comment about anything that has happened on a college football field. Rumor has it he is eyeballing the Tennessee job. Look out SEC east - Chucky's coming for you!

THE CHARACTER: Hannibal Lector, The Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal: 

THE PROFILE: Probably the most fascinating of all of these characters to me, maybe because he's a genius or maybe because Anthony Hopkins depicts him so well in The Silence of the Lambs, among others. In 2001 the American Film Institute voted him the most memorable villain in film history, (AFI). His M.O. is cannibalism and torture. He is known to be a brilliant psychiatrist who spends his time writing for medical journals whilst in prison.

THE DOPPELGANGER: Les Miles. Diabolical genius. Prisons (given LSU's roster). Eats grass. They're practically twins.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 

MY BUCFPey FRIENDS!!!