I’ve posted some of the highlights from T.K. Wetherell’s press conference earlier today but this warrants its own space. Toward the end of the presser, Wetherell, who had mostly maintained his calm for more than 30 minutes, began to, well … lose it a little. Not sure if that’s an accurate description, so we’ll let you decide.

Here’s the first instance of Wetherell gone loopy: He was talking about Bowden and, inevitably, some of Wetherell’s focus turned to the notion that Bowden wants to stick around because of a desire to retire the most victorious coach in major college football history.

Wetherell had said that wasn’t the reason why Bowden wanted to stay and then, at about the 33-minute mark of this press conference, Wetherell says: “Now, we understand all the rest of it. We’ve heard [Sentinel columnist Mike] Bianchi over there saying, well hell, 31 wins don’t count anyway because they were at some [dipstick] school …”

He was referring, of course, to Bowden’s victories long ago at Samford (now Howard) University in Birmingham, Ala. Now, it’s important to note that I have written the word “dipstick” in brackets, which means that’s not actually what Wetherell said.

The first three letters are correct, and you can probably guess what the last four letters were. As soon as it came out of his mouth, amid the laughter that filled the conference room in the Wescott building here at the heart of FSU’s campus, Wetherell paused. Some university officials in attendance appeared a bit mortified.

“I’m sorry, Lee,” Wetherell said to Lee Hinkle, FSU’s vice president for university relations. “I got wound up.”

Wetherell wasn’t finished, though. Moments after referring to small, Baptist college as a “[dipstick] school,” he used an elaborate hypothetical story involving Florida quarterback Tim Tebow. The story was meant to illustrate Wetherell’s disdain for the way the NCAA handled some aspects of its ruling regarding FSU’s academic fraud case.

“I mean, I figured out how to beat Florida,” Wetherell said.  “I told them the other day – I’ve got the deal, man. I got the deal. We’re going to send a graduate assistant down to write a [paper] for Tebow, and go ahead and turn it in.

“And then we’re not going to tell anybody, until about the 15th of August. And we’re going to say, Oh, by the way, look what happened. Urban [Meyer] doesn’t know anything about this – he’s not involved. And the letter according to the NCAA – you think a violation occurred, not that it did occur, you think it occurred, you’ve got to sit him.

“Well, we’ve got the proof, we’ve the [paper], we’ve got the one he turned in, we’ve got the one the graduate assistant [did]. He violated the rules. He’s ineligible … now, they can redshirt him next year, and they may need to do that because they’re going to need a quarterback, anyway, in two years and that may not be a bad idea. But – that’s just not right. I mean, it’s just not right. That’s what’s the problem – it’s just flat wrong.”

It’s probably not a coincidence that, not long after Wetherell finished the above hypothetical story, Frank Murphy, the university’s lead spokesman, rose from his chair and told Wetherell that it was near time to end the press conference.