We live in a fine, outstanding state. I know that because I've seen most of it — in fact, I saw a good bit of it today.
But enough about that. Here are some links to make you feel better about working inside on a day like this one ...

— Well, this won't make you feel better: Alabama's Jeremy Elder continues his courageous one-man effort to upset every ounce of progress Nick Saban's football program in Tuscaloosa has made since the 2007 season ended. Ian Rapaport has more.
Bravo, Mr. Elder. Bravo.

— Remember that discussion we had last week about over-signing? It briefly turned into a full-scale battle between Michigan and Alabama fans, with vulgar blog posts fired across the bow by both sides. Ultimately, it died down over the weekend, owing mostly to RBR's wise decision to lock commentary and prevent any more flare-ups. We'll look back on it like one of those shoving matches at our local pub: some insults were exchanged, it looked pretty ugly there for a minute ... but ultimately nobody got hurt, and we both went home talking about what jerks the other guys are.
Todd from RBR has the rundown of what exactly happened.

— More shoving and posturing: UAB's agonizing loss to Memphis, which ended with UAB students throwing things (not in Alabama!) and Memphis players wanting to re-enact Ron Artest's venture into the Detroit stands. On the bright side, it did give us this picture.
In UAB's defense, that was like the perfect storm of bad: you had players from Memphis (long famous as a thug program) celebrating a huge win on someone else's floor; at the same time, you had UAB's students rushing the court after what they thought was the game-winning shot (it was correctly disallowed). And cooler heads prevailed before anything serious happened. So no harm, no foul.
Well, except for the poster. Somebody should've stopped that.

— Capstone voices the concerns of all Alabama fans: please, for the love of Paul Bryant, LEAVE DANIEL A. MOORE ALONE.

— Finebaum wonders why Jeff Lebo gets a free pass from the state's basketball fans.
Speaking of basketball ... seriously, did you SEE Saturday's game at South Carolina? I mean, you saw that, right?
I'm not going to fault Gottfried for the game-winning shot — that kid hit that from about 40 feet, and the foul called on Torrance was chintzy, at best. But there were 14 seconds left after the free throw! FOURTEEN! DIECICUATRO! And Alabama had a timeout left!
So Torrance, naturally, rushes the ball up the floor, pulling up at around 10. Immediately he starts looking for Riley — on fire at that point — for an open look. But Carolina's defense is back, Riley's smothered, so instead Alabama frantically passes the ball around, looking for an opening that isn't there. When South Carolina finally knocks a poor pass from Torrance out of bounds ... there's :00.2 left on the clock.
Gottfried finally calls timeout.
On the bright side, this did lead to an award-winning phone call between my brother and me — I saw the phone ringing and started giggling, knowing what was about to ensue, then he started ranting (a brief excerpt: EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE) and my giggling turned into uproarious laughter, to the utter amazement of my co-workers, who thought I'd lost my mind.

— Finally, TD makes Charles Barkley's case for governor of Alabama.

Anyway, I plan to run for da office of Governor of Alabama in the year 2014. My home needs me….. no, not Arizona, the proud state of Alabama! So what if I turned my back on my home state ever since I joined the NBA? I’m coming back to save all you ignorant hicks aren’t I?! I’m NBA royalty, and I have the fire and will power needed to make Alabama great!

That's TideDruid: a real man of genius.

wlh