We are gonna miss everybody…including Uncle Charles

After 3 years plus of forced jokes, questionable spelling practices, professional wrestling references, and an exhaustion of the full jokes-about-Houston-Nutt catalog, I have decided that it’s time to shut down Friends of Program in it’s current state and form.  There are a couple of factors that led up to this, but essentially it’s just a lack of time and the self-inflicted pressure to keep it going on a daily basis.  The moment I started to feel like I had to get something up on the site and not because I wanted to was when I knew it was probably time.  Eh…we had a good run.

There are several people that I absolutely need to acknowledge and thank for making this site what it was…whatever that may be.  The list is long, so brace yourselves.  First off, this site would never have even started or evolved if not for my good friends Mike Medallion and The Juice.  Auburn fans both, but don’t judge their character on that one fact…FOTP wouldn’t be what it is without them.  Thanks to Rick Muscles for bringing his creativity, humor, and workout tips to the site and to our podcast, Friends with Muscles (which we will continue to do). I also want to thank others that contributed to the site over years, including Steven Godfrey, Ray T., TZilla,  and the brothers Stuckey, who lended actual talent to whatever it is we normally do around here.  I want to thank a couple of bloggers and writers specifically, who helped promote and encourage this site over the years….A big thanks to Joe Kinsey at Busted Coverage who was there to always offer advice and the occasional story of Bama fan doing something gumpish.   Thank you to Spencer Hall at SBNation/EDSBS who helped validate the site by linking to it over at EDSBS and on his Twitter every now and again.  He’s a much better writer than all of us and the simple fact that you would go from his site to this one means that some of his readers are either extremely bored or just don’t have discerning enough writing tastes.  Thank you to Holly Anderson (and Doug, of course) at SI.com and Jason Kirk at SBNation for including the site in their mentions on the regular….probably undeserved but certainly appreciated.  Thanks to other blogging bros like Matt Hinton, Bobby Big Wheel, Celebrity Hot Tub, the guys at Red Cup Rebellion, Adam Kramer, Barrett Sallee, and Adam Jacobi for including me in the fun and inspiring (attempted) better writing around here thanks to your efforts on your own sites.  Thank you to several radio guys who let me come on their shows and talk nonsense every now and again as well as anyone who has ever let me contribute to their site, you were truly a terrible judge of character.  Thanks to everyone who has ever linked, referenced, posted on a message board, tweeted, or mentioned in a dark corner somewhere anything from this site.  You helped keep this thing going as long as it did…and more importantly, thank you to anyone and everyone who has ever stopped by the site, from those of you that come here on a regular basis (what’s wrong with you people!?) to those that stumbled on here thanks to a really racist comment thread from AL.com.  Thanks for your patronage and cocktails to you all.  Finally I want to thank  Houston Nutt, Dan Mullen, Bobby Petrino, Bobby Petrino’s mistress, Les Miles, Nick Saban, Gene Chizik, Lane Kiffin, Will Muschamp, PAAAWWWLLL, the bag man, Trooper Taylor, Ryan Mallett, AJ McCarron, AJ McCarron’s tattoo, AJ McCarron’s mom, Bama fan, Auburn fan, Arkansas fan, LSU fan, Shreveport, Ric Flair, and really anyone else who made writing jokes about college football fun and pretty easy sometimes….Gems, every single one of you.

As for me, Bunkie T. Perkins, I’m not gone for good…sorry.  I’ll be appearing on a site or two that you may be familiar within the near future.  I’ll keep you posted of the details when they become available on the ol’ Twitter feed.  Thank you again to everyone who has ever stopped by the site, on purpose or otherwise.  It’s been fun.

So Rick Muscles and I had the bright idea that we would try and record an new episode of Friends with Muscles right after the national championship game.  We wanted instant reaction and hopefully catch young Mr. Muscles in full gump mode following his Tide’s victory.  The game even did it’s part by essentially being over in the 3rd quarter so we were able to record during the game instead of after it.  Hell, we even brought in Captain Annoying from SBNation to add to what had all the making of a spectacular show.  But, as these things go on FwM from time to time, it was all  a complete and utter disaster.

Enjoy the train wreck with us, won’t you.  Peep the show here.

Hugh Freeze has been noted as a bit of a voracious recruiter by the media and is peers.  Such is the approach one must take when trying to rebuild something from the ground, or more accurately, Houston Nutt’s basement of failure, up.  The lengths to which Freeze and his staff will go, however, seems to be putting a bit of a strain on our national postal system…as evidenced by this picture of one day of mail from Ole Miss from John Curtis linebacker and recruit Duke Riley.

What’s that?  Two “AJ McCarron’s girlfriend” posts in the span of a few hours that is totally pandering for pageviews, you say?  For shame, sir.  I’m just here to point out that, lost in all of the “holy cow that girl is more than moderately attractive” sentiment that seems to be spreading about the internet today is the picture below of Katherine Webb, taken with some moderately creepy looking gentlemen in, what looks to be, a sensible man’s haberdashery.  But that isn’t just any creepy guy and that’s not just any place to find reasonably priced suits for the modern man, that’s Tom Albetar, owner of the infamous T-Town Menswear….the same T-Town Menswear who got a cease and desist letter from Alabama related to his relationships with certain Alabama football players.

To be fair, they never said anything about player’s girlfriends, and besides, I’m sure she was just out shopping for AJ a new bowtie, or suit, or velvet fedora…you know, something classy.

The National Championship game, and southern college football in the greater sense, is simply not the same without a good Wright Thompson voice over as it’s soundtrack. According to the below video, which somehow did not make the cut onto last night’s telecast, more than just the echos were stirred on the trip to Miami…

[HT: Anonymous]

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 AJ McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb was the big winner last night, despite whatever it was her boyfriend and his friends did on the field last night.  She’s Miss Alabama USA 2012 (a Miss USA title is always the hotter, less virtuous of pageant titles)…she had, as you can hear above, creepy old man Brent Musberger fawning over her, Darnell Dockett hitting her up for a date to Wingstop, and gaining about 125, 000 Twitter followers in a matter of hours in the process.

If that wasn’t enough, according to her bio, she works for Chick-fil-a and thus has access to all the free Chicken Minis you can eat.  Roll Tide, indeed.

It has since been deleted, but we now know where College Gameday’s true allegiances lie.  Roll ESPN impartiallity.

[Via Reddit]