• You're a thug, I'm a thug, we're all thugs together. The "Florida is the new Thug U." meme was just that, an offseason time killer by a a hacked-off hack in Miami. And then, because other people are bored, it catches on. This is a standard issue cycle-on, cycle-off bit, faux hand-wringing in response to (and stoking the flames of) faux righteousness and primordial taunting. It is the Internet; it is June. It will go away. There was no reason for Florida to acknowledge the critics by breaking down the 24 player arrests in Urban Meyer's tenure, and certainly no reason to start treating its players like they need to be scared straight last week:

After all the negative attention the Florida football program has gotten over its increasing number of run-ins with law enforcement, the Gators have decided to try something different — getting an inside look at police work.

UF players have joined in a ride-a-long program offered by the Gainesville Police Department to the general public. UF coach Urban Meyer expressed an interest in getting his team involved, to help them get a first-hand look at what the crime fighters go through each day. GPD welcomed the request.

Which, of course, will only stoke the message board embers: Look, Tim Tebow's in a cop car! For some context (a novel concept, I know) on just how random the focus on Florida's legal woes really is, the Gainesville Sun did a little side-by-side comparison:

• Charges involving eight of the 24 cases either were dropped or not pursued.

• The arrest rate for Florida players is comparable to the rate for the entire student body. (... Gainesville police arrest 25 to 30 students each weekend. Based on the GPD sample, between 3.7 percent and 4.4 percent of Florida undergraduate students are arrested each year. ... the average number of UF football players arrested per year is 4.2 percent.)

The Sun's survey also revealed UF's arrests are in line with those of its traditional rivals. Georgia football players have accumulated 30 arrests during the same four-year period. Tennessee has tallied 21 arrests, while Florida State has totaled 13 arrests.

Obviously, the logical response by the university would be to put its entire student body into patrol cars, like those old phone booth-crowding parties from the twenties. That'll teach those hooligans to stay inside with their Pat Boone and Hi-C.

In other weekend legal news, two New Mexico players, Byron Bell and Quintell Solomon, were arrested early Sunday for disorderly conduct and public affray outside an Albuquerque club; Bell was also charged with larceny/shoplifting. They're the third and fourth Lobos arrested in the last five months under new coach Mike Locksley, a rate some four times higher!! than Florida's under Urban Meyer. Better get those kids a good look at skid row while they've still got the chance to walk out, coach.

• You're not going to start prioritizing on us now, are you? How powerful and entrenched is the BCS? Apparently more than an entire, 113-year-old state of the Union:

SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff plans to formally ask officials with the U.S. Department of Justice to get involved in his controversial investigation into college football's Bowl Championship Series.

... Shurtleff said he plans to make a pitch to the Justice Department to bring the weight of its anti-trust division into the probe. "Because they have the resources that Utah does not have," Shurtleff said. "Taking on the BCS is a huge undertaking financially."

I am positive the righteous people of Utah can foot the bill to bring down the Series, unless Shurtleff's pending senatorial run has made him suddenly conscious of "priorities" in tight times. What is it, Shurtleff, you're suddenly feeling "responsible"? Sell out.

• Now you're just being weird, Leach. The biggest win of Mike Leach's career -- obviously, the last-second upset over Texas that vaulted Texas Tech to No. 2 last November, right?

"It was definitely a good win," Leach said. "But, I coached a 13-year-old all star team and we beat Cheyenne one time and I thought that was a bigger win."

In the meantime, Colt McCoy may not have been so lucky in Lubbock. Everywhere else, though, the Texas quarterback has been golden -- and fishing champion Alton Jones thinks he's discovered Colt's secret: Of course it's the pants.

As long as they're back in Austin in one piece by August, dude.

Quickly ... Two months after agreeing to pay $2 million to the famiy of Aaron O'Neal, the player who collapsed and died during an offseason workout in 2005, Missouri will join the majority of Division I-A schools by testing players for sickle-cell trait. ... Former Michigan State coach George Perles is planning to run for governor in Michigan. ... Maybe Perles should talk to former CongressmanTom Osborne, who once talked Bill Snyder out of a run at politics. ("Make a messianic return to the hellhole your beloved program has become," he said.) ... Likely starting receiver E.J. Abrams is one of three players leaving Kentucky; he plans to join suspended teammate Jeremy Jarmon in the NFL's supplemental draft next month. ... Bill Bye, star of Minnesota's first post-World War II teams, died in a boating accident on Friday. ... Also Friday, former Kansas athletic director Bob Frederick died in a bike accident. ... Rose Bowl CEO Mitch Dorger will resign after this year's game. ... Ron Zook blames himself for Illinois' loss to Missouri last August. ... Inside Tennessee's quarterback problems. And, shockingly, the Vols' first football-for-women camp was a hit. (Whaddaya know, so was Michigan's.) ... Oklahoma star DeMarco Murray is feeling like his old self after an injury-plagued '08. ... Oklahoma State players tour their new digs. ... LSU hopes its latest quarterback recruit works out better than the last Texan named "Lee" who wound up in Baton Rouge. ... Even a year-and-a-half later, Rich Rodriguez still can't go home again. ... And attention high schoolers: You know how you know you're not that good? When your coach gets an e-mail from a college asking for your information and immediately suspects fraud.