FSU Fiasco A Case Of Nole-O Contendere

Far be it for this space to offend anyone, but if there is a scintilla of common decency, fair play and/or most certainly poetry, come this Monday the Florida State University Dimbulbanoles will lose their Music City Bowl game somewhere along the lines of 257-to-Minus 125.

Not to worry, though: Most FSU players can't count high enough to appreciate the score.

You should know, I have no rooting interest in any way in FSU's fate, never having attended a Florida school.

Rather, the fanciful desire to see FSU become the mother of all doormats to the University of Kentucky Wildcats is grounded in the Tallahassee school's seeming indifference to ... scruples.

The Stumblebumanoles will take to the field with some 30 players missing from the roster after being caught in an academic cheating scandal.

Making matters an even more low-life situation, these "student athletes" got busted for cheating on an FSU online music course.

Not to put too fine of a repressed rolling of the eyes on this, but this wasn't as if these "scholars" were cheating on a quantum physics course. They were fudging on a cockamamie music class, for crying out loud.

Louie ... Oh No, Me Gotta Go

How hard could this be?

• "Complete this song lyric: 'I'm dreaming of a white _______'."

• "Francis Scott Key wrote which song: A) 'Louie, Louie', B) 'The Star Spangled Banner,' C) 'Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?'"

• "Complete this song title: 'Louie, _______'."

FSU President T.K. Wetherell attempted to foist the players' aversion to academic honesty to a "rogue tutor," as if this scandal was the handiwork of a gooberesque Jason Bourne, who infiltrated the university to put a gun to the heads of the jocks, forcing them to cheat on an already basket-weaving-like course.

Duke Who?

Apparently, some 900 other FSU students managed to successfully complete the music course - Quick! "Who was the founder of the Duke Ellington Orchestra"? - without resorting to a "rogue tutor" to abduct their consciences.

If you can't get at least a C from a music course at FSU, which has never been confused with the Julliard Conservatory, should you be allowed to handle heavy machinery, much less a football?

Of course, FSU Head Coach Bobby Bowden, who loves to promote himself as a man of God, could have done the right thing and said something like: "These imbeciles have embarrassed themselves, their teammates, their school and me.

"Obviously I too have failed these punks and my employer by failing as the role model I'm supposed to be. For us to participate in a bowl game would be a travesty of everything good that college sports is SUPPOSED to represent.

"So we're going to stand aside and let another school take our place. We're going to do this because, quite simply, it is the right thing to do."

But St. Bobby and his enabler T.K Wetherell aren't going to do that, precisely because it would require knowing what the right thing to do is.

And so, no matter what the final score may be Monday, FSU will still be - losers.