This time of year is so devoid of college football news it’s depressing. That’s why when any quasi-relevant news breaks, we’re all over it, drooling, hoping it will get us to September a little faster. We’re still mourning the disappearance of offseason Arkansas bombshells (adulterous text messaging, whiny momma’s boy quarterbacks, bat shit crazy boosters, a fumbling coach named Nutt, etc.). That was priceless. You’re OK in our book Razorbacks.

The notable story we’ve heard reported a couple of places this week is that golden boy Notre Dame quarterback recruit and part time gremlin, Jimmy Clausen, had surgery on his elbow and could possibly miss the whole season. Big news seeing that this kid was the number one recruit in the nation and the supposed football savior for a consistently over-hyped and underachieving Notre Dame program. A lot of expectations for a dude with obvious tendencies for douchebaggery (see ring flashing photo above) and questionable genetic makeup (see respective football careers of Casey and Rick Clausen).

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The finals start tonight and with Lebron and the Cavaliers in this series the NBA has officially reached levels of national anticipation that the league hasn’t seen since the mid-90s. We’re talking collective anticipation probably somewhere around the level of a new “24″ episode. It’s definitely not “Lost” by any means, but the jump is pretty significant seeing that the league has been in the “One Tree Hill” range for about a decade. Looks like this would be the perfect time for the NBA to deliver a really exciting, dramatic seven game series.

Too bad we’re not going to see one. At least if Vegas knows what it’s talking about. And in our experience, Vegas does know what it’s talking about, especially when it comes to sports, magicians, and prostitutes.

We’re looking at a 7 1/2 point line favoring the Spurs for tonight’s opener. And this is for a Game 1 where the Cavs should have a ton of momentum and energy, and the Spurs should be a little rusty and thinking about this series as a marathon, not a sprint. Remember the first game of the Lakers/Sixers series about five years ago? Where A.I. and the Sixers rolled into LA and stole Game 1 under pretty much the same pretense? We were kind of hoping for something like that tonight.

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It’s official. DUIs are finally rivaling Cancer and AIDS as the most devastating, unavoidable travesties to rock our modern society. We motion we all band together and start wearing a ribbon or something to show our solidarity against this senseless plague that is robbing us of some our best and brightest. Because things are not getting better, they’re getting far worse.

It’s time we all opened our eyes to the damage DUIs are doing to our country. In the span of the last six months, charitable, selfless, honest people the likes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Tony Larussa, Ty Pennington, Jerry Buss, USC Safety Josh Pinkard, Eve, Tracy Morgan, Nicole Richie, and even part-time apostle Mel Gibson have all had their lives ravaged by the cruel beast that is DUI. It’s like a mini Katrina, only worse, as it’s pinpointing only the truly contributory people in our society as it’s victims. Where’s the outrage?

It’s not like these people are super rich and have any viable option to pursue other than get behind the wheel of their cars. They can’t afford drivers, let alone shell out twenty bucks for a cab and then talk a friend into driving them to pick up their car the next morning like you and I do. It’s not an option.

Here in Atlanta we’ve even discovered a service where you pay thirty bucks for some D&D playing loser to drive his scooter to your car, fold that bitch up in your trunk, and drive your car home for you. The victims mentioned above do not have these luxuries. LA’s a different place, a place without options. Think America’s version of war torn Eastern Europe, except replace poverty and fascism with over priced tapas and breast augmentation.

Len Pasquarelli is reporting that the first round of the NFL Draft is likely to be shortened and moved to prime time.

We’ve given a lot of thought to this possibility and our emotions range from excited to outraged, all based on how the NFL decides to pull it off.

On one hand, with the current setup, we really enjoy the excuse in the spring to pretend it’s a college football weekend, cracking open beers by 11 AM, mocking and booing shitty decision making, making passes at random chicks who stroll by (usually someone’s girlfriend or wife refilling the salsa since we spend the whole day in a predetermined basement and the women in our lives know their role), and then pissing ourselves and falling asleep by 4 PM on Saturday.

On the other hand, if done properly, the prime time move for the draft could dominate. Shortening the time between picks to ten minutes (from fifteen) is a must. Let’s be honest, if your team can’t make a competent first round pick in ten minutes after months of deliberating and reviewing players, you’re fucked as a fan anyway, so might as well shorten the whole excruciating ordeal. The key here is the night. If Goodell and his cronies think they can move this thing to Friday night and it will be a success, he’s spent too much time in a closed room with Ricky Williams. Friday night might work well as a lead in to the remainder of the draft on Saturday, but people have plans to attempt to get laid on Friday nights, and despite the NFL pretty much dictating the lives of 85% of the guys our age, it won’t be the draw it could be on Sunday through Thursday.

Goodell has a chance to turn this thing into a serious cultural event. Let’s all pray he doesn’t make the wrong decision. Dog fighting takes up the majority of our Friday nights, anyways.

(Side Note: Has anyone seen Pasquarelli lately? We think he’s been sick or something, but the guy currently looks like he spent the last decade in a sand storm. Not pretty.)

Keeping in mind the sad state of boxing and that none of us will see a decent, big name fight again until the sequel to “Rocky Balboa” comes out, we thought we’d present this killer boxing knockout montage.

We sometimes like to just sit around and watch video like this and remind ourselves of how tough we get when shit goes down. Seriously, we piss like 95% testosterone and the rest malt liquor.

Some of these poor bastards never saw it coming. Much like that chick Booth rufeed dated a few years back.

Well, wouldn’t you know it. Right when all you haters out there thought our girl Slutty Miss USA (aka Tara Conner) had finally made her exit from public consciousness, she rises like a really hot Phoenix from the ashes (or more appropriately, like a high dollar stripper from the coke mound) to remind you that you she’s not going any fucking where.

Yeah, that’s right, NextRound’s very own spokesgirl will soon be twilighting as eye candy in the new reincarnation of “Singled Out” on MTV. Remember “Singled Out”? That crappy game show in the late nineties? It had a lame premise and unlikeable guests, but was extremely watchable solely due to the casting of Jenny McCarthy and later Carmen Electra in the bimbo/co-host role–the very role Slutty Miss USA will be taking over.

Seeing that the “Singled Out” bimbo role was responsible for a remarkable amount of boners in high school boys in the late nineties (our hands are raised), we’re supremely confident that Tara will shine in her new role and rejuvenate a once dead game show into a massive success.

We just hope that Tara has the energy and motivation necessary to fulfill both her roles with NextRound.net and on MTV. It will be interesting to see how she fairs, because we work her pretty hard, and by pretty hard, we mean a lot of inappropriate staring and sarcastic verbal abuse. It’s the only way she’ll learn.

With Leather has done a really solid job of keeping us updated on the Rich Eisen/Alycia Lane/Suzy Shuster bikini email happenings. You should already be aware of this story, mainly because it’s really funny/random/ridiculous and bikini pictures are involved, but if you aren’t check out this and this.

The short of it is: Rich Eisen (NFL Network, seems to be OK guy) is married to Suzy Shuster (long faced ABC sideline reporter, we think Rich aimed a little low), and Alycia Lane (bimbo Philly News Anchor, possibly had stint in porn) sent pictures of herself in a bikini to Rich’s email address only to have Shuster intercept the email and write an angry email back to Alycia. Good stuff right? (The only shitty thing about this story is that the bikini pics haven’t been released yet.)

Tons of places are reporting this story. And reporting isn’t what we’re about so we don’t really care to give you all the facts or the apology. All we want to do is get right down to baseless speculation on the only thing we care about: whether or not Rich Eisen is boning the slutty anchor or not.

Why we think Rich is boning her:

1) From what we’ve gathered, the slutty anchor is way hotter than Shuster (who looks like she definitely went to college on a volleyball scholarship).

2) We’ve got really keen slut detection abilities (years of practice) and from the few shots we seen of Alycia, she’s definitely oozing backdoor skankiness. Our best guess she smells like stripper.

3) Alycia apparently has no issue teasing men richer than her husband with the poon.

4) We know guys like Rich guys and, well, when some slutty news anchor is asking for it, they’re asking for it. Enough said.

Why we think Rich isn’t boning her:

1) Rich Eisen is a unich.

So feel free to run with the analysis and draw your own conclusion to this debate.

Adam Schefter of NFL.com is reporting that the Chiefs are looking to trade Larry Johnson. We’ve seen Schefter on the NFL Network a couple of times and he kind of looks like a penis, so we’re not sure how much we can trust his reporting.

Either way, we’re not Chief fans or fans of any AFC West teams, so there is only one place where the ramifications of these trade rumors hit us, and that’s where it really hurts. You guessed it: Fantasy Football.

LJ has carried a couple of our teams for the last two years now (except for last year in the playoffs, but we put the blame for that one on Herm Edward’s ineptitude). We need him to be on KC where he is the only source of offense. Can you imagine what might happen to our points total if he lands somewhere like Buffalo?

LJ is sensitive. A bit of a head case. Buffalo will be too damn cold. J.P. Losman will be too damn feable. This could end with us not even making the playoffs.

Or this could just be some hail mary effort by the Chiefs since they know no one is going to take on the contract LJ is going to demand going into the 2008 season. But if you see this guy in a Browns jersey at the beginning of next season, don’t say we didn’t warn you. Just do your best to trade him to that one schmuck in your league who takes Calvin Johnson with his first round pick.

Seeing that our primary objective is to deliver hard hitting analysis on the most serious of subjects, we want to touch on the recent parade of sex tapes either rumored to be close to surfacing or already out there. Seriously, we can’t stop talking about them. What the hell is going on this year?

Some hooker from “American Idol” season 2 is the latest girl with low self esteem to join the ranks of the disappointing Kim Kardashian, Betty Beef Curtains from “The Hills”, and the equally untalented but seriously hot Keely Hazell.

We have so many questions that need to be answered: Is this outbreak a good thing or a bad thing? Should porno be left to the professionals? Will Paris Hilton’s legacy be that she legitimized the sex tape? How many fucking retarded chicks are walking the streets? Why are these rumors always true even after weepy denials? How many people own camcorders? When does the Tara Connor sex tape hit the market?

We literally might not sleep for weeks beating ourselves up over these questions. And if another rumor hits, then our documentary is on the way. Their are just too many angles and too many insecure females out there for us not to explore this further.

In case you haven’t heard, rumors have been floating around that everyone’s favorite NCAA rules violator, Reggie Bush, has been banned from the Playboy Mansion.

We can’t find any hard facts on this, and we haven’t heard the reason for the ban (rubbing wood up on bunnies, having a bigger dong than Hef, etc.), but since this a story involving the most electrifying player in football and naked chicks, of course many sites are offering their opinion (Deadspin and The Big Lead).

The Big Lead reports that Kendra Wilkinson (that hooker from the E! show) has said on a radio show that the whole thing is a big misunderstanding and pretty much came about from Reggie acting like a prick at the Mansion on his last visit.

Well, seeing that it’s this same Kendra Wilkinson and a whole other Conspiracy Theory Thursday could be devoted to just how big of an attention seeking whore she must be to go down on an eighty year old dude, we’re going to side with our boy #25 on this one.

(Side Note: Pictured is–you guessed–our boy Reggie and wannabe/big disappointment porn star/celebrity heiress Kim Kardashian. She may have a thing for black dudes.)