For the sports fan who hasn't the time to listen to the audio or read the entire transcript of alleged Toomer's Corner tree-poisoner Harvey Updyke's incredible visit to the Paul Finebaum Show on Wednesday, here are the five lines you'll most need to be able to recite this fall at your nearest SEC tailgate:
5. "I'd like to apologize to my children, the University of Alabama, and my high school coach." Updyke is 62 years old, making his high school coach perhaps 90. Updyke has not played high school football in over 40 years. This part isn't very funny. It's just amazing.
4. "I stopped to get a bottle of green tea." Green tea is really good for you.
3. TIE: "I am not winning. I am losing" and "I saw Tommy Tuberville sticking his fingers and thumbs up in the air." Charlie Sheen jokes feel 100,000 years old, but Updyke gets a pass. Also, mental image of Tuberville throwing up dozens of accidentally suggestive hand signs all at once, somehow infuriating Alabama fans. I wrote this pretty late at night.
2. "It's on sale in there for $4.95." During a voluntary backtracking of his entire day in court, Updyke mentions he visited a Books-A-Million to acquire The Missing Ring [he calls it "The Lost Ring"], a book you're floored to learn he doesn't already own. He then plugs the sale price. The man knows a good deal; you cannot deny that.
1. "Roll damn Tide." Never in the history of fandom has a man gone down with his ship to the degree of Harvey Almorn Updyke Jr. These were his last words on the program, and were also his last words when he first called up to claim the crime.