Here's the link to several of the first week's interviews. Click here. The interviews linked are Gregg Williams--the one that led SportsCenter yesterday--, Barbara Dooley, Carl Pickens, and former Saints wide-receiver Joe Horn.
If you're not listening, we had an awesome time in studio the first week. We stream online every day from 12-3 central.
For those of you who are listening thanks for the calls and emails.
GREECE, N.Y. -- It's a winter morning in Rochester, N.Y. Dirty, ice-caked snow rests up against the side of cracked concrete sidewalks. Old buildings, once bustling, are silent, as dim sunlight spills over the windy roads that lead from downtown, 15 miles west, to the suburban town of Greece. It was here, almost four years ago, that a young, autistic basketball player named Jason McElwain, then a senior manager, stepped off the bench and into celebrity.
Then, as so often happens, the attention faded.
Now, it's morning in Greece and outside his home an old basketball hoop where Jason learned to shoot, chipped black paint on the pole revealing the rust underneath, rises into the clear blue sky. The hoop is weathered, the lower left part of the backboard chipped away, and there is no longer any color at all on the backboard, it's faded white, the paint rubbed off from overuse.
Pass the hoop and a two-car garage rises alongside a brick house with a blue-paneled second story. Inside the house a sock-footed Jason McElwain, who as a senior hit six 3-pointers in a little over four minutes, stands with a cantaloupe in hand. "Hi," he says, "I'm eating breakfast."
It has been four years since Jason, "My friends call me J-Mac," won an ESPY and was transported in an instant from a sleepy suburban town to the center of the sports universe. From anonymity to hanging alongside Kobe, LeBron, Shaq and Derek Jeter and back. Now J-Mac is a volunteer assistant coach for the Greece-Athena Junior Varsity sitting in his parents' quiet living room.
"We're 9-2," he says, "but last year we only lost one game."
The team has won two overtime games, "In both of them we were down four with 12 seconds to go," J-Mac says. He's taller than you expect, over six feet, rail thin, with a buzzed haircut. He's sitting in a brown recliner surrounded by the wood-paneled living room walls.
His feet, antsy on the cream carpet, bounce up and down. He's ready to ride to the gym with his father, David, who will drive since J-Mac can't, for morning practice.
"I think he could probably drive," his mom says, "but he gets distracted. He's always on his phone. People call me and say, 'J-Mac wasn't paying attention while he was riding his bike.'"
J-Mac is the second of David and Debbie's two children. Josh, J-Mac's older brother, is 16 months older. Despite their close age, J-Mac was different than his older brother -- for five years he didn't speak.
Share Then came sports. J-Mac followed his older brother everywhere. Eventually, he started to play basketball too. And he fell in love with the sport.
The old basketball hoop outside had an adjustable height. "We started at six feet," says David, standing over 6-foot-4 and also thin. "As soon as they were tall enough they would dunk on it all the time, hang on the rim."
"He moved it higher with a broom stick," says J-Mac.
"Every boy in the neighborhood came over and played. We were lucky then, all the boys were the same age. Now it's different, but then ..."
Debbie, a short-haired woman who works as a dental hygienist, nods, "So much mud in the spring," she says, "the tracking."
Slowly, as sports suffused his life, J-Mac emerged from his shell.
"Do you know about autism?" Debbie asks.
"No," I say.
"He won't look at you when you talk to him, that's one of the signs," she says.
"I look," says J-Mac.
"You're better," she says. "Jason is a high-functioning autistic."
J-Mac works at Wegman's, a grocery store chain, a little over a mile from his home. He works in the produce department and specializes in making sure that the breads are stocked adequately.
"You've got to watch them," he says, "some days sourdough is popular."
He's been working at Wegman's for 3 1/2 years.
"How often do you work there?" I ask.
"Not enough," says Debbie, "he needs to work 20 hours to get benefits."
Currently, J-Mac works 14-16 hours. But his dream is to be a high-school basketball coach.
He's proud of the job. "Wegman's is a great place," he says. Occasionally, says his manager Peggy Allan, Jason sings the only song he knows ... "Sweet Caroline."
"He's an awful singer," Peggy Allen will say later.
Slowly, the talk turns to the February night when J-Mac, student manager for the basketball team, suited up and entered the final home game of the season.
"We had a huge snowstorm the night before, it was a Wednesday," David says.
The parents watched their son's performance from the crowd, jaws agape, as J-Mac rained in basket after basket. Entering the game with just over four minutes remaining, J-Mac, channeling his inner Pete Maravich, would take 13 shots, hitting six 3s and one two-point basket, en route to a team-high 20 points.
Greece-Athena head basketball coach Jim Johnson says the most remarkable thing of all was this fact, "No one told the kids to get J the ball or told them not to shoot. They did it all on their own."
Coach Johnson pauses for a moment, grins. "I tell J-Mac we're still looking for his first assist."
On Friday after the game, the local CBS affiliate ran J-Mac's story, featuring game footage shot from inside the gym. By Sunday, the national CBS reporters were in Greece-Athena and when the story ran on CBS' national news, the onslaught was officially on.
So many calls arrived for Debbie at the dentist's office that eventually Dr. Spinelli, seeing how overwhelmed his hygienist was, instituted a rule. "Unless it's the president or Oprah," he said, "she doesn't talk to them."
Shortly thereafter Oprah and the president called.
******
Downstairs in the family basement are J-Mac's treasures. His silver ESPY trophy, and a wallboard filled with pictures. There's J-Mac with Peyton Manning. The Colts quarterback invited him to preseason camp, and for the past four seasons J-Mac has worked the event, living in the dorms alongside the team at Rose-Hulman college.
"Peyton's really serious," says J-Mac in his husky voice.
"Every year in fantasy football he has to have Peyton and Adam Vinatieri," David says. "Every year."
Last year as soon as he drafted Vinatieri, J-Mac texted the Colts kicker to let him know about the draft. Vinatieri texted J-Mac back immediately and the other drafters swooned.
"He said, 'Good,'" says J-Mac.
As part of his duties with the Colts, J-Mac is not supposed to travel, but that doesn't mean he's not willing to pull a fast one on his parents.
As David and Debbie sat down to watch the Hall of Fame game to look for Jason on the sideline, Debbie suddenly sprang from her seat. "This game's from Ohio," she said, "he didn't tell me he was traveling outside the state."
"No big deal," deadpans J-Mac.
J-Mac and his dad travel to one Colts game every season, and a couple of weeks ago they went to Buffalo and stood on the sideline in the snow. The Colts, resting their starters for much of the game, lost.
"It was freezing," says David.
"It wasn't that cold," says J-Mac.
Back in the basement a collage of photos of J-Mac with athletes of every shape and size cover the wallboard in front of him. But also, J-Mac with President George W. Bush and Oprah, J-Mac with Jessica Simpson and the Olsen twins. Now, four years later, he's unimpressed as a visitor looks over his pictures.
"Dad," he says, "can we get to the practice?"
"Look at this," says David, handing me a binder from a Gatorade commercial shoot. J-Mac and his father traveled to Orlando to film the "What's G?" ad. Just before they arrived, Tiger Woods filmed his commercial.
"Nice guy," says David, "but he didn't have a lot to say."
"Dad, can we go now?" asks J-Mac, clutching his red basketball shoes, with the inscription "RIP Tom Bazold" on the right sneaker. Bezold is the sports editor for the Rochester Gazette who died suddenly last season.
"He was a really good guy," J-Mac says later.
J-Mac climbs the basement stairs, ready to leave for practice.
David continues to speak, "Gilbert Arenas called and asked for one of J-Mac's jerseys. But we only had one. I guess Gilbert collects jerseys. So I had them make a new one and we sent it to him."
Arenas returned the favor and signed a jersey for J-Mac.
David is silent as we climb the stairs. Finally, he speaks. "That story was better before the guns," he says.
******
The Greece-Athena junior varsity practice is in full flow by the time we arrive. Immediately J-Mac (above), wearing a white T-shirt, black basketball shorts, and a long, dangling whistle around his neck begins to stalk the sideline.
Mike Setzer, chemistry teacher, and Greece-Athena junior varsity coach, welcomes him.
"What's up J?" he asks. "Ready to coach?"
J-Mac blows his hands, the gym is cold because the heat is turned off on weekends. Gold and black pads, alternating colored stripes, ring the small gym. A large divider is down to close off one side of the court, the other sideline runs into a red line, and then, almost immediately, the folded-up bleachers.
By now you're all still kicking yourselves because you don't have $64,000 in the bank from betting on the SEC in the past six BCS title games. (By the way, the most hardcore gamblers among you keep e-mailing about the vig. I've simplified the numbers, but the fact remains that the SEC has not been favored in three of these games. So betting on the SEC to win, as opposed to just taking the line, would actually have netted you more than 64K. Please stop with the gambling e-mails now.) Another year, another SEC champ in college football. Ho hum. Some things never change. And, like it or not, I'll probably be able to write the same column in 2011, after the SEC wins a fifth in a row.
Notwithstanding the SEC's continued dominance, some things did change this year. And that's why we're bringing you a very special end of the year Starting 11 focusing on the season that was in the SEC. But before we do that, it's time to bring to a close the picks challenge with my family's former French exchange student, Audrey. You'll recall that we picked games against the spread all season, and as a grand finale we both picked all 10 bowl games featuring SEC teams.
Ultimately, Audrey and I both went 6-4 in those games.
Meaning, drum roll, after picking 70 games against the spread this season, Audrey, who has never watched a college football game in her life, went 32-34-4.
Meanwhile, in a triumphant turn, I routed her with a record of 36-31-3.
That's a prodigious 3.5 game victory.
I take my bow.
And now with my bona fides as a football picks genius validated by my victory over a French girl, here is the Starting 11 (plus one) wrap-up and look ahead on the SEC.
1. With a wobbly 2009, Les Miles confirmed that 2010 will be his final year at LSU.
I know, I know, LSU fans will point to close losses to Alabama, Ole Miss and Penn State as evidence that the Bayou Bengals are on the comeback trail.
That the Tigers were almost 12-1, 11-2 at worst.
I feel differently. And in your heart so do you, LSU fans.
Why?
Because change a single play in the Arkansas, Mississippi State, and Georgia games and the Tigers lose three more SEC contests.
So, lucky for them, LSU split their close games this season.
Miles is now 8-8 in the past two SEC seasons. 2010 will be the season that breaks him. Especially with Nick Saban and Alabama running roughshod over LSU in the SEC West.
2. Nick Saban proved that he's the best coach in college football.
There are conferences where you can have a life off the field and still win. The SEC is not among them.
If I give him five years, a BCS level conference, and a top 50 team from those conferences, does anyone believe that Nick Saban wouldn't have that team in the BCS title game in the next five years?
I'm convinced he would.
3. Georgia's continuing decline will be the story of the SEC east in 2010.
Like 2009, the Bulldogs will go 7-5. Only this upcoming season the schedule is much easier. No matter. The Bulldogs are taking on water and they can't bail out fast enough.
Both the offense and defense will be weaker. And even in a weakened SEC east, the Bulldogs will be in trouble.
At some point this offseason, I'm going to chart the top six programs in the SEC by wins, and measure the relative strength of those six. I've got a theory that the total number of wins among those six stays pretty constant and that what we see is a fluctuation among which teams in the SEC are in the top of the mix.
Basically everyone makes their run, and then returns to the average.
Right now Florida and Alabama are ascendant.
LSU and Georgia are in decline.
Tennessee and Auburn are in holding patterns under new coaches. One of these will rise and become dominant. The other will remain left behind. Given that no one has any idea what to expect from Derek Dooley, the early money is on Auburn reclaiming some past glory. At least assuming that offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn returns.
4. Ole Miss is still Ole Miss and consequently, the bottom half of the SEC is still the bottom half of the SEC.
This was going to be Ole Miss' year to return to SEC prominence, right? How quickly did those dreams die? I'll tell you, they were dashed before September ended.
Quick, which programs in the SEC have not won an SEC title since before the Civil Rights movement?
Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, South Carolina and Arkansas.
Quick, which three programs have never won an SEC title?
South Carolina, Arkansas, and Vanderbilt.
Granted two of those teams are the new additions, but we're moving up on two decades since the SEC split into two divisions. That's plenty of time for a football program to demonstrate it belongs among the championship contenders.
Which of these six teams have never even been to the SEC title game?
Ole Miss, South Carolina, Vanderbilt, and Kentucky.
What's my point in asking all of these questions?
Pointing out that none of these six programs in the SEC are ever going to be relevant for more than a one season spurt. Ole Miss had their chance this season.
The Rebels failed.
Arkansas, who admittedly has been to the title game more than the other teams listed here, will have their chance in 2010.
But odds are they'll fail too. Follow Us on Twitter Friend Us on Facebook
5. After a 2-10 season will Bobby Johnson spend all his free time wondering why he stayed at Vanderbilt after a bowl win?
Yes, sigh, yes, he will.
We all agree that Bobby Johnson is a good coach, right? I mean, Johnson is probably questioned less than any coach in the entire SEC.
Yet what is Bobby Johnson's record at Vanderbilt after seven complete seasons?
29-66!
He's 37 games under .500!
And his record in the SEC? 12-52!
Yet everyone assumes he's a great coach.
Just how poorly does Vandy have to perform for someone to be a bad coach?
Anyway, things were bad in 2009, 2-10, but they're about to get worse. In fact, what's the most brutal thing about Vandy's upcoming schedule? For some reason the Commodores continue to schedule like madmen.
Take a look.
The Commodore non-conference?
How about: Northwestern, at UConn, at Wake Forest, and Eastern Michigan
Yep, Eastern is the only guaranteed win on that schedule.
Fact is, the Commodores are going 3-9 at best next year even if they are massively improved. Thank the schedule. No matter the circumstances, Vandy is never going to get to more than four wins in the SEC.
The Commodore schedule should reflect that fact so the team can have a realistic chance at getting to 6-6 and advancing to a bowl game.
Unfortunately it doesn't.
There is a zero percent chance the Commodores are in a bowl game in 2010. And after eight years Bobby Johnson is likely to be 31-77 or thereabouts.
Good Lord.
6. Kentucky was relevant for the fourth consecutive season under Rich Brooks, will that change under new coach Joker Phillips?
Wildcat fans are nervous that Charlie Strong will make inroads at Louisville. After all, there's a pretty strong argument to be made that the state of Kentucky can't support two bowl-winning programs. Meanwhile, Joker Phillips has brought out the scythe and fired two coaches for not being committed enough to recruiting.
With the weakest SEC East in recent memory coming in 2010, this would normally be Kentucky's year to sneak toward the top and make a run at 5-3 or better in conference. Even with the bowl wins, Kentucky still has not done better than 4-4 in conference in over two decades.
If they don't do it now, when?
7. South Carolina finished its fifth consecutive disappointing season under Steve Spurrier.
It's time to pronounce Spurrier's tenure at South Carolina what it is: a failure.
Spurrier is now 35-28 overall in five seasons in Columbia. In that time he's lost three bowls and won a single bowl game, the Liberty Bowl. That season, Spurrier's second in 2006, is also the only time the Gamecocks have managed to finish with eight wins under the Ole Ball Coach.
As if that wasn't enough, Spurrier is now 18-22 in the SEC and, wait for it, he's lost more games at South Carolina in just five seasons than he lost at Florida in 12 seasons.
Maybe it's finally time to go ahead and bury the Gamecock football program. No matter who is the coach, they aren't winning.
Period.
Not unless the Gamecocks join the ACC, anyway.
8. Florida will win the SEC East again with a much weaker team than it fielded in 2009.
In fact, given his success in the NFL this season, does anyone think Florida would have gone 14-0 with Percy Harvin back last year?
I do.
I think he would have made the Gators offense explosive, and provided necessary playmaking both in the backfield and at wide receiver.
But that was last season.
With five early entrants, and a questionable head coaching commitment during the offseason, the Gators will take some lumps early in the season. But Urban Meyer will be on the sideline for all of those games. After an early loss at Alabama spells doom, the rest of the SEC East will be so down no one can take advantage of Florida's returning to the middle of the pack. In fact, it's hard to imagine anyone in the East knocking off the Gators head-to-head and managing to get to six wins in the SEC.
The Gators will go 6-2 in the SEC east and no one else will get to 5-3.
How well is Peyton Manning playing? He can take a second-year D-III wide receiver and a 25-year-old, blonde-haired rookie Mormon against the best defense in the NFL, and turn those players into Randy Moss and Terrell Owens. In the AFC championship game, no less. Think about that for a moment, we're not talking about a great quarterback surrounded by unbelievable talent. We're talking about a quarterback performance the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time ... if ever.
Right now, Peyton Manning is playing quarterback better than anyone has ever played the position in the history of the game. And all over the country wide receivers for the 28 teams who entered Sunday already eliminated from playoff contention sat in front of their television screens and cursed their misfortune over not being drafted by the Colts. "Damn," they all thought, "I'd be in the Pro Bowl if I got to play for Peyton Manning."
Hell, you or I might be in the Pro Bowl if we got to play with Peyton Manning. He's so good, that everyone around him becomes cloaked in his aura of greatness. Here are 15 other things that jumped out at me from the televised AFC championship game.
1. I think Mark Sanchez's beard deserves more attention.
Why?
Because only the power of the beard can explain how a rookie quarterback can win two playoff games with only one go-to pass play, the one-step slant.
How in the world did no one jump this in three playoff games? It's Sanchez's only consistent throw, his go-to play call on third and anything.
Granted Sanchez has a laser of an arm -- if Marcia Brady had gotten hit by a Sanchez football pass her nose would have exited the back of her head -- but you still have to jump this at some point, right?
2. Peyton Manning gets sacked like you or I shop for lingerie near Valentine's Day.
Namely, he knows he's not supposed to be there and he just takes a dive and avoids punishment as best he can.
You know what I'm talking about, right? You have about four minutes to be in a lingerie shop by yourself without looking like a complete idiot. Otherwise you turn into the creepy old guy making jokes with the sales associates about what they would look like in the lingerie.
So you make a beeline to one thing that you saw in the window, it's probably pink and made of silk, rapidly assess the size and then get the hell out of there.
Manning does the same thing in the pocket. When his internal clock expires and there's a defender near him, he takes a dive.
3. Pierre Garçon is the most successful man with a cedille on his name in the history of football.
Prior to Garçon being drafted, I can picture NFL execs looking at the list of draft eligible players and having this conversation with their scout.
Exec: "Hell, what's that squiggly thing? Is he French?"
Scout: "Yeah, his last name is French for boy, but he ..."
Exec: "Boy!"
Scout: "Yes, but ..."
Exec: "Where did he play in college?"
Scout: "A Division III school ..."
Exec: "Next!"
Also, if you've ever doubted the quality of high school football in Florida, it's that a guy like Garçon could be overlooked. Remember that Chris Johnson, a fellow Floridian, only had three scholarship offers: East Carolina, UConn, and Eastern Kentucky. Well, Garcon was even more overlooked. He ended up playing at Norwich University in Vermont.
Think about that for a moment, a six-foot receiver with 4.4 speed would be hard to ignore in most states because this combination is a pretty rare commodity in high school football. But there are so many kids who fit that bill in Florida that a bunch of guys get overlooked.
The wonder on Garçon isn't that he set an AFC championship game record for receiving yards, it's that if he doesn't love football so much that he's playing at a 2,000-person military school in Vermont, this game never happens.
4. Does Colts head coach Jim Caldwell speak during games?
Because I swear every time the camera cuts to him, he looks incredibly morose, like he's listening to Muddy Waters on his headset.
Has there ever been a head coach who showed less emotion and spoke less while he was on the sideline? Keep a running tally in your head during the Super Bowl of the number of times he's shown on camera and the number of times he's not speaking when he's shown.
If you want to get wasted beyond belief, make this your Super Bowl drinking game: If Jim Caldwell is shown on television and isn't speaking, then drink for 10 seconds.
You'll be drunk by the end of the first quarter.
5. How many games would you or I have won as the head coach of the Colts this season?
Only two requirements: A. you are of average intelligence and B. you can get along with people at your job.
I think you or I get 10 wins.
My rationale: Manning and Tom Moore determine just about everything the offense does in a given week. All you'd have to do is get out of their way. Coming into the season, the only real question was how Larry Coyer would do with the defense, and he came in with great experience under Tony Dungy and as his own coordinator with the Denver Broncos. So you could piddle around over on the defensive side of the ball, but basically you could stay out of that way too.
Basically, you'd just have to be egoless and of average intelligence and you or I would have had this team in the playoffs as well.
And 10 games might be an understatement.
6. After he makes a big play, I keep expecting to see Braylon Edwards on the sideline sending hate texts to LeBron James.
I'm starting to think Edwards is a mad genius and punched the little man in LeBron's entourage just to get out of Cleveland. Think about this for a minute, has anyone ever emerged in better shape after punching someone outside a nightclub?
Following the incident, Edwards is traded in early October from a team headed nowhere to a playoff team, gets to leave Cleveland for New York City, and will get a lucrative extension after this offseason because he's played well in limited passing opportunities.
All while trading Brady Quinn for Mark Sanchez.
If LeBron ends up joining the Knicks, Edwards is going to punch LeBron's little man again and end up Secretary of State under Obama.
Follow Us on Twitter Friend Us on Facebook 7. Rex Ryan reminds me of a fatter Teddy Roosevelt.
And now that I've said that, you're not going to be able to forget it, either. Imagine if he started wearing those old-school spectacles on the sidelines, he'd be a dead ringer. At least a fat ringer, anyway.
This offseason Ryan needs to go to a Washington Nationals game and stand-in for Roosevelt in the President races.
8. What are the odds Peyton Manning knows the Jets' defense better than many Jets defenders?
During his pre-snap reads you halfway expect Manning to start gesturing to the Jets defensive end, "Your spacing's off. You're faking the blitz and dropping into a zone coverage in this defense. From that angle you're not going to get your proper depth."
As is, you can actually hear Manning calling out the numbers of Jets defenders and making sure his offensive linemen have them picked up for the blitz. If you're the blitzing player, how crushing is this?
9. How amazing was the fake option, pass play with Brad Smith?
I'm convinced it's the play call of the playoffs. In fact, credit to the Jets, both of the big plays they dialed up worked, the Braylon Edwards double move, and this play.
It looked just like Nebraska in the late '90s. So much so that I'm convinced that somewhere Eric Crouch was watching this game and thought, "See, I could have played quarterback in the NFL. I knew it."
10. Stat of the year: In eight out of 18 games this season, the Colts have scored a touchdown in the final two minutes of the half.
Think about how hard this is to accomplish.
First, you have to have possession in the final two minutes of the half. Second, you have to manage the clock such that your possession has time to end in a touchdown. Third, you have to drive the field and, you know, score a touchdown, one of the most difficult things to manage in all of sports.
Yet after his score at the end of the half that made it a 17-13 game, Peyton Manning has done it in almost half the games he's played this season. Just more evidence, if you needed any, that Manning is playing at a higher level than any quarterback ever has.
But even that wasn't enough.
Want a higher degree of difficulty in the AFC championship game?
Okay, you have to complete every pass to the same receiver for all 80 yards. And that receiver has to be a rookie Mormon wide receiver.
What odds could you have gotten on this in 2008, four million to 1?
For those who aren't aware, the good news I hinted at a while ago, is that we're debuting a daily radio show on Nashville's 104.5. It's going to be me, former Titans safety Blaine Bishop, and Brent Dougherty.
In the past decade, college coaches have become strippers. Words like loyalty, commitment, and honor are out the door. Nope, major college athletics has become nothing if not a strip club. Coaches work the floor like colorfully clad dancers late at night, waiting for a welcoming glance of interest before sashaying over and plopping themselves down at your table.
"Wanna dance, baby?" coo strippers in clear heels and thongs. "Wanna coach, baby?" coo college coaches in pinstripe suits and Italian loafers.
Perpetual free agents, once seated, these stripper coaches whisper sweet words of endearment to a willing fan base. "My family loves it here. I don't want to be anywhere else," is coach speech for "Wanna buy me a drink? Don't you want to get somewhere more private?" Past championships are the coaches' cleavage, the glittering, powdered flesh that fans can't look away from.
Just like in a strip club, the coaching intimacy is false, every word a calculated attempt to make you open your wallet one more time. Have a stripper coach sitting with your program, reveling in fun, swimming eye-deep in wins? All it takes is a nod from another table and your coach or stripper is up and gone, off to the next willing participant.
In my last book, "On Rocky Top," I referred to the present state of coaching in college sports as a mercenary era. But I think I was too kind. Mercenaries are more straightforward in their dealings; pay them and they're yours. But there's no expectation of intimacy or loyalty, it's all about the money. Our present era is dirtier, seamier, like a gentlemen's club full of coaches during a two for one special dance. It's not just getting the new jobs that this generation of coaches have perfected, it's the soundbite of seduction, saying just the right things to make your union seem more permanent than the short lap dance that is really taking place.
The result?
The college coaching business has become the dirtiest and least loyal part of sports in America. Part of the reason is contractual -- I'm sure that NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL coaches would leap at the opportunity to double their salaries on a mere offer, but all of those leagues are subject to collective bargaining agreements that keep coaches in place once they sign contracts. It's why, say, Phil Jackson doesn't jump to the Boston Celtics in the offseason for more money and why Bill Cowher, for instance, had to sit out a year before he could even contemplate another NFL job. Once you sign a professional coaching contract, you are tethered to that team for the length of the deal, so long as the team wants you to remain.
But college coaches?
College coaches can take jobs anywhere at any point with virtually no contractual recourse. In the past, coaches were constrained by a genuine love for the places they worked, a recognition that as college coaches they represented something more than the dollars they earned; they worked for a university as molders of young men, and that required a degree of decorum.
No longer.
Now all our modern coaches are strippers and your school's fight song might as well be the prelude to Chastity taking the stage: "Hail to the Victors" followed by "Pour Some Sugar On Me."
Ultimately, fan bases across America end up infuriated at falling for the seduction, listening to those magic words that made us give up our better judgment and pay for Coach Cal's lap dance. If you aren't convinced yet, then follow me along a greatest hits routine, the most stripper-level moves by coaches in a stripper coach era.
As a prelude, there are a couple of ground rules to the stripper coach: A.) The coach has to be moving from one place where he could win a national championship to another; leaving a mid-major job for a big-time job doesn't qualify and B.) The departing coach has to be in some form of physical danger upon his first return to the scene of his former job.
Without further ado, here are the 10 biggest stripper coaching moves:
10. Roy Williams takes the North Carolina job after spurning Bonnie Bernstein in his famous postgame interview.
Remember that?
"I don't give a [expletive] about North Carolina."
It's hard to call Ole Roy a stripper coach since he spent 15 years at Kansas before leaving for his dream job at North Carolina. But I'm sliding him into the picture based on his answer to the interview question, the way he left Kansas fans twirling in the breeze while he made his decision, and the anger that resulted from his leaving. That's started to wane now thanks to Kansas winning their own title, but it has been six full seasons now.
Not to mention the fact that ole Roy waited until Matt Doherty had blown up the program to leave for the Tar Heel state, having spurned the Heels following Bill Guthridge's retirement in 2000, which struck many as a pretty calculated move.
9. Nick Saban leaves the Miami Dolphins for Alabama, spurning LSU in the process.
Once more, Saban, I think, is a coach on the fine line between mercenary and stripper head coach. Saban covered his move among SEC rivals with a brief trip to the Miami Dolphins after leaving LSU, and he's not exactly the most charismatic talker out there. If he were in the strip club, Saban would be the angry, drunk stripper, who doesn't seduce you into a lap dance so much as she angers you into one. The kind of stripper who walks up, sneers at you and says, "You spilled my last drink when you moved your seat. Buy me a new one. Move over."
By the way, if you think about the stripper analogy and actually start picturing the coaches in clear high heels, everyone loses. (Except possibly Marv Albert.)
Finally, LSU is, at best, Alabama's third biggest rival in the SEC after Auburn and Tennessee. So it's not like Saban pulled a Pitino and went to the biggest rival.
8. Rick Pitino accepts the Louisville job leaving Kentucky fans furious.
Even with the buffer of the Boston Celtics between jobs, Pitino inaugurated the era of the stripper coach with his decision to join up with Kentucky's biggest rival, the Louisville Cardinals. In fact, Pitino might be the ultimate picture of the stripper coach because he's so well-manicured. His hair is perfectly adorned with gel, his suits are specially fitted, his fingernails are always immaculately groomed. Pitino might as well be an old male stripper.
It's the height of the stripper coach era to move from one blood-feud rival program to another. The decision shows a degree of tactless disloyalty that hits right at the heart of the stripper coach mantra: I do what I want when I want, consequences be damned.
Pitino is now in his eighth year at Louisville, and his dalliances with women in restaurants somehow seems perfectly appropriate given it was his move to the Cardinals in the first decade of the 21st century that helped to unleash the stripper coach phenomenon.
It's only the Boston Celtics job in between these two positions that keeps Pitino from being No. 1 on our list.
7. Houston Nutt bails on Arkansas for Ole Miss.
Ten years after Tuberville pulled the ditch job on Ole Miss -- higher on our list -- the Rebels get their revenge by stealing Arkansas' coach. Granted, Houston Nutt left with a small lynch mob already chasing him in Fayetteville, but the decision to jump ship within the division is the ultimate stripper coach move.
Why?
Because it's such a calculated attempt to make a move, you clearly know the strengths and weaknesses of every team. Moving within a division isn't a wild and outlandish maneuver or a decision predicated on loyalty. It's completely and utterly stripper-esque, hopping from one couch to the next because you know the situation is better for you.
Plus, Nutt even looks kind of like a Saturday Night Live skit version of a male stripper with his frantic twitching antics. Can't you see him alongside the now deceased Swayze and Farley, swaying to the Chippendale's beat?
6. Dennis Franchione leaves for Texas A&M after turning down a 10-year contract extension from Alabama.
How does Coach Fran notify his team of the offer he accepted at Texas A&M?
Via video conference.
Yep, he doesn't even have the decency to return to Tuscaloosa.
It's like Fran wrote the entire script for "Up In The Air" before the novel was even completed and the movie was released in theaters.
5. Tommy Tuberville tells Ole Miss, "They'll have to carry me out of here in a pine box." Two days later he accepts the Auburn job.
With nary a pine box to be seen anywhere, Tuberville leaves after spending four seasons at Ole Miss, during which time he runs up a 25-20 overall record. Anytime there is no buffer between your coaching moves, i.e. you take another job, and you end up coaching against the team you previously coached the next season, you're the definition of a stripper, hopping from one client to the next between songs.
Tuberville pulled the classic stripper move on Ole Miss. "I'll be right back, hunny," before vanishing for the fat man in the next booth with the fatter wallet. And, let's be clear, Tuberville's jilting of Ole Miss was worse than Nutt's jilting of Arkansas because there was no real heat on Tuberville from an angry fan base and because of the pine box quote.
A quote, mind you, that deserves to end up on Tuberville's gravestone.
4. Bobby Petrino moves to Arkansas in the middle of the NFL season and ditches the Atlanta Falcons.
Petrino's stripper coach move hits at a major theme, the enabling nature of college contracts. As I stated above, college contracts don't restrict the movement of a coach from one job to another within college sports. But they also offer immediate escape valves for any coach on a professional level, who would otherwise have to sit out once they abandoned their contract.
Witness Petrino.
Petrino, after flirting with Auburn about replacing Tuberville -- oh, the irony, one stripper trying to snag another stripper's sugar daddy -- bolts from the Atlanta Falcons in the midst of his first season coaching the team, a 3-10 disaster.
How did Petrino depart?
He left a note for the team in the locker room.
Seriously, you can't even make this stuff up.
Before the ink on the note was dry, Petrino was in Fayetteville, Ark., calling the Hogs at the Razorback press conference. Read the rest of the column here.
If you date strippers, sooner or later you wake up one morning and it hurts to pee. Last Tuesday night it hurt to pee for Tennessee fans. That's the lesson of Lane Kiffin and UT, a program without a previous history of stripper loving. Nope, in the past we've gone with the down home good ole boy as our coach. Phil Fulmer and Johnny Majors played and coached at Tennessee, they weren't flashy but you were sure they weren't going anywhere else -- Tennessee was their dream job.
Lane Kiffin's dream job?
Lane Kiffin's dream job is wherever winning football games is easier. And he made a calculated decision that it's easier to win championships at USC than it is at Tennessee. Given the Pac-10's weakness and the sunny Los Angeles locale, I think that's true.
So am I surprised that Lane Kiffin left for USC? No. Am I surprised that USC, given its looming NCAA issues, hired Lane Kiffin?
Hell, yes.
But if you needed any single event that better symbolized the massive difference between the mercenary/stripper era of college football and the era that ended in the SEC with the firing of Coach Phil Fulmer, how both men made their exits summed it up best.
Phil Fulmer wore a suit, prepared his remarks, sat at a table next to the man who was firing him, Mike Hamilton, allowed the event to be carried on live television, fielded questions from the media, and cried on his departure from Tennessee. The entire Volunteer team was there to support their coach.
Lane Kiffin showed up in a white polo shirt -- short sleeved -- and jeans. He had no prepared remarks, refused to allow the media to carry his statement live, talked for just 90 seconds, took no questions, and not one single player was there to support their coach. How could they be? The departing coaches were too busy trying to convince them to skip across the country to California and join them there.
And there you have it, Tennessee moved into the fast lane and got burned. But it's not all depressing, there's been an awful lot of high comedy the past few days. Let's dive in, shall we:
By the way, as a preliminary, some people have e-mailed and asked about my story that went up last Tuesday night, about how it came to be so quickly. The answer is pretty simple. I've had most of that information for some time, but prior to last night I didn't have anyone who was willing to attach their name to it, and I didn't want to write an entirely anonymous piece.
It's fairly common for college athletes to be unwilling to go public with criticisms of their coaches while they're still college athletes.
Why?
Because they have no power in that situation. As soon as Lane Kiffin left, the power dynamic switched, and the story opened up.
So that's a prelude, now on to the departure, the coaching search and whatnot.
1. My favorite quote from this whole imbroglio?
Even in the midst of police protection being deployed for him, Kiffin still took the time to take a shot at Urban Meyer. Asked if he was going to cease his criticism of Urban Meyer, Kiffin told Volquest, "No, it's good. Now I can do it and not get fined for it."
The fact that this quote hasn't gotten any attention is criminal.
2. How much is Lane Kiffin tarnishing his dad's legacy?
If Monte never leaves Tampa Bay, he coaches five or six more yeas, retires, and probably gets inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame.
Now he's jumping from one college job to another after years of stability.
Plus, from everything I've heard, Monte is a class act.
Unlike Lane, Monte made the rounds apologizing to UT officials for his son's decision to bolt to Los Angeles. Monte even let it be known that he didn't agree with the decision.
3. I can't let this go: Who shows up in an oversized, short sleeve, untucked polo and jeans for their farewell press conference?
It's incredibly disrespectful.
And this is coming from someone who wore flip-flops while he worked in a law firm.
It's not like Lane Kiffin didn't know the media was going to be there or that he might have to talk to someone before leaving for USC.
Plus, it was 20 degrees in Knoxville, why was he in short sleeves anyway?
4. Best tweet received on Tuesday? "Should Mike Hamilton show up to his presser with an old Starter jacket and an overhead projector?"
That would have been epic.
What if Hamilton had said, "I've sought and received permission to be added as a third-party plaintiff in Oakland Raiders v. Lane Kiffin?"
5. Is Ed Orgeron the dirtiest recruiter in college football?
Yes.
Consider this.
He calls guys who become Tennessee students at midnight, at 10 in the evening, telling them not to go to class. And he did this while the head coach was addressing the team abut leaving.
Then someone at Tennessee has to get his phone shut off!
How does this happen?
I'm picturing a UT underling rushing down the hall, arms pumping, screaming, "Get Sprint on the phone! Push the red button, push the red button!"
There are so many questions about this: Who can you immediately call and get a phone disconnected? Does that also kill your address book in the phone?
You couldn't make this up if you wanted to.
Also, am I the only person who can't stop thinking about how funny it would be to have Tennessee rehire Coach O and have USC have to turn off his cell phone when he started calling recruits from USC to get them to go back to Tennessee?
"Uh, hello, dis Coach O, I'm back with the Vols. Come to Tennessee."
He's like a big, dumb recruiting robot.
6. The Knoxville police had to be posted outside Lane Kiffin's house.
That's not a joke.
What's even more incredible?
They had to call-in the national guard to watch the Knoxville police to make sure they didn't shoot Kiffin.
7. What's up with Kiffin leaving behind David Reaves, his brother-in-law, Layla's brother, in Knoxville on the UT staff?
How has this not gotten more attention? And how can the other coaches left behind trust him?
That's like Fidel Castro jumping to the Florida Keys and then telling the Cuban people, "Don't worry, Raul is harmless. He's a good guy. He loves free speech."
Yeah, right.
How awkward is Christmas going to be in that household?
Your brother-in-law and father-in-law hop on a plane for Los Angeles and leave behind the wife's brother to take all the crap in the city of Knoxville for their decision?
Scene: A Kiffin family Christmas. David Reaves hands present to Lane.
Lane Kiffin opens Christmas present: "David, is that Smoky's feces?"
8. The only thing that could have made this entire situation better is if Nu'Keese Richardson had shown up at the airport and robbed Kiffin before he could leave town.
Even better, what if he'd shot him with the pellet gun?
Kiffin would have crumpled and gone down like Lee Harvey Oswald.
Oh, stop it, he would have been fine. You probably used to shoot your friends with pellet guns too.
You didn't?
You're not from the South then.
9. Find me another person who has been less successful in life and kept getting promoted?
George W. BushOkay, other than George W. Bush.
Kiffin is now 34 years old, and 12-21 as a head coach with three different teams.
Let me repeat that: Three different teams have hired him!
Think about how hard that is to manage. How many coaches pour their heart and soul into coaching and never even sniff one head job? And yet Kiffin gets three before he's even 35?
This entire process has me convinced that most football coaches aren't very smart. Otherwise, how can a guy of medium intelligence run absolute circles around them?
10. What if Lane's last name wasn't Kiffin?
He's probably still toiling away somewhere as a wide receivers coach at a non-BCS school.
Even more incredible, now that he's in a great situation at USC, isn't he likely to succeed even if he isn't that great at coaching?
Yeah, he is.
Because a huge part of being a success anywhere is the quality of the people around you. After all, if you put someone who is average at best in a great job, they'd be successful too. For instance, if you put The Situation in a Martin Scorcese crime drama, he could get nominated for an Oscar.
Okay, maybe a stretch.
11. Thank God for T.J. Simers of the LA Times and his questioning of Lane Kiffin at the USC press conference Wednesday.
With his pointed questioning he turned Kiffin into Richard Nixon. He also demonstrated the difference between the press corps in big cities and in small Southern cities.
Kiffin is hired at Tennessee: "Lane, is your grandmomma happy to see you with this job?"
Kiffin is hired at USC: "How can you say you run a clean program when your top recruiter is telling recruits not to go to class?"
Also, someone please explain why people say Kiffin is great at interviewing when he can't respond to questions without using the word "umm" or "okay" 4 billion times.
12. Monte Kiffin went on Knoxville radio last week and committed a secondary violation by naming an unsigned recruit, Jacques Smith.
Whose violation is this?
I'm serious.
It's like the black hole of secondary violations. Does USC have to take this one or does Tennessee?
13. In leaving, Kiffin said over and over that he'd been at Tennessee for 14 months.
Not quite.
Kiffin was offered the job on November 28, 2008, the Friday before the Kentucky game, but he wasn't introduced until November 30th.
So he's officially been at Tennessee for 1 year and 13 days. (Evidently I missed a month in my calculations here, he's been at Tennessee for 13 months. This is why I took a course called Mathematical Ideas in college. One of our exam questions involved coming up with an imaginary formula to count how many squares there were on a soccer ball. Also, we had to answer an essay question about whether we liked addition or subtraction better. I am not making this up.)
Even giving him 13 months is rounding up.
But I love that he chose to go with 14 months instead of just saying a year, as if 14 months is a commitment and one year is much less so.
Although, credit to Kiffin, he could have claimed that he'd been here 3 years, 2008, 2009, 2010, thanks to the quirks of the calendar.
14. Did Kiffin leave the program in better shape as he asserted throughout his USC press conference?
Not hardly.
Let's review.
When Phil Fulmer was fired, Fulmer had the No. 7 recruiting class in the country committed. Lane Kiffin finished with the No. 7 recruiting class in the country.
Kiffin made a big deal of turning a 5-7 team into at 7-6 team, but the reason Fulmer was fired in 2008 was because the offense sucked under Dave Clawson. That 2008 team, which finished third in the nation on defense, had quite a bit of returning talent, they just had an awful offensive system.
The expectation was that with a new offensive coordinator who simplified the system things would work out much better.
And a new offense helped.
So Kiffin turned a 5-7 team into a 7-6 team, but that 5-7 team was the defending SEC east champs. To hear Kiffin tell it, he walked into a program with no talent whatsoever. News flash, an untalented team wouldn't have been favored in nine of last year's games by Las Vegas.
Kiffin won seven.
So did this 2009 team really overachieve with him at the helm?
And can you possibly argue that leaving your second class, and the only one you recruited in its entirety, three weeks before signing day leaves the program in better shape?
The fact is, the program is in worse shape now than it was in when Kiffin took over. Any other argument is laughable.
While the most popular point of debate regarding this year's NFL draft will be how Florida star quarterback Tim Tebow projects for pro football, come Sunday, Feb. 7, Tebow will already be on the Super Bowl telecast. That's because Tebow and a faith group, Focus on the Family, will be debuting a 30-second commercial that utilizes Tebow's own life story to make the case that abortion is wrong.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past four college football seasons, you know that Tebow is an evangelical Christian who sees football as a platform that allows him to spread his Christianity. For most of his four years that message has resounded throughout the South, and I've argued Tebow's passionate Christianity is one reason that he became popular not just with Florida fans but with many other Southern football fans.
Now that he transitions to a larger stage outside the welcoming footprint of the most religious portion of the United States, the question has to be asked: How will Tebow's evangelism be received?
In many ways, Tebow's ascent in college football is unique. Thanks to his 48-7 career record, including three 13-1 seasons, two national titles, Heisman Trophy, and consistent exposure on ESPN and CBS national telecasts, there are few, if any, college athletes in the country who have ever received more attention during their careers. The result is that before he even takes a single snap, Tebow is already more popular than at least half the starting quarterbacks in the NFL.
Tebow's on- and off-field popularity has been firmly focused on his own personal biography, his mission trips, his family's faith and even what is likely to be the focus of the television ad during the Super Bowl, the fact that Tebow's mother was told to have an abortion rather than carry her fifth child to term. Pam Tebow became sick during a mission trip and rejected doctor's advice that she have an abortion. Ultimately she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Tebow.
Now the 30-second Super Bowl ad, which will cost around $2.5 million, is being paid for by Focus on the Family, a religious organization that opposes abortion. In a release the organization stated as follows:
"Tim and Pam share our respect for life and our passion for helping families thrive. Focus on the Family is about ... strengthening families by empowering them with the tools they need to live lives rooted in morals and values." The Super Bowl ad will just be the latest surge of attention for the most famous college athlete ... ever. With that attention has come fawning cover profiles in Sports Illustrated, countless television stories, and the seduction of yours truly into the camp of devout Tebow fandom. As I stated in my Sugar Bowl column, I love Tebow. But little to none of that media attention has been critical. Indeed, in the annals of American sporting culture, it's hard to find a player who has received more positive publicity in comparison to negative publicity.
The old cliche is that all publicity is good publicity. But with Tebow all publicity truly is good publicity.
In fact, I dare you, find me an entire article about Tim Tebow that has been written by anyone, anywhere and has a negative tone.
Those stories don't exist.
Will that change now that Tebow is becoming a pro athlete?
I think so.
Why?
Because our society doesn't view religious pro athletes with the same level of deference. We view their sincerity in a more questionable light, raise issues with the proselytizing they do in post-game interviews. Whereas many Southerners, the largest audience for his college games, felt Tebow's religiosity was a welcome departure for a college athlete, many feel hearing a multi-millionaire pro athlete espouse his religious views to the entire nation crosses the line from welcoming to hectoring.
That's why few, if any, pro athletes have approached Tebow's level of influence. Not only is our society too cynical to accept the legitimacy of the pro athletes' beliefs, we expect that the athlete is living a double life, hypocritical to his core. The result is that most pro athletes have a negligible influence on cultural mores.
Don't believe me? Who is the pro athlete most famous for his religion in the present day?
Probably Kurt Warner.
Tim Tebow is already far more famous than Kurt Warner.
In fact, let's be clear, the moment he is drafted Tim Tebow will be the athlete most famous for his religion since Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali.
And suddenly multicultural America, with a variety of religious beliefs, will come face-to-face with a man whose strict adherence to a muscular form of Christianity, despite his personal charisma, isn't all warm and fuzzy. Especially when that statement of religious values comes not at the close of a game in a short on-field interview, but in a contest that the athlete is not even competing in. Focus on the Family, the right wing non-profit funding Tebow's ad, isn't a middle-of-the-road religious organization. Tebow's Super Bowl ad, for instance, will embrace a pro-life stance, which is the position of Focus on the Family, but something that half of America will disagree with.
Will that stance be controversial?
Certainly it will in many cities across the length and width of our country. And certainly it will be for many sports fans who sit down to watch the Super Bowl as an escape from the more serious issues facing our society. We come to watch football and funny ads, not be convinced that our view on abortion is wrong or right.
But opposing abortion isn't the most controversial of Focus on the Family's stances. The organization also opposes all forms of gambling, the theory of evolution -- preferring intelligent design -- premarital sex, and the so-called "homosexual agenda."
How many fans watching the Super Bowl will be able to raise their hand and assert that they've never gambled or had premarital sex or supported the theory of evolution? (Heck, some may do all three during the telecast)
In the wake of Lane Kiffin's unexpected departure Tuesday, Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton found himself in an extremely difficult position. In less than a week he had to hire the man who would be responsible for ensuring that the engine for the nearly $100 million Vol athletic budget, the football team, didn't crumble. Hamilton moved quickly, rushing off in pursuit of both Will Muschamp, Texas' coach in waiting, and Troy Calhoun, Air Force's coach, to offer the Tennessee job to them.
Both men, who Hamilton had previously interviewed before hiring Lane Kiffin in 2008, turned down Hamilton's overtures. But Muschamp recommended Derek Dooley very highly. And Hamilton was left with a real decision, turn back into the direction of the man he fired, Phil Fulmer, and hire former offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe, or make another attempt at a bold and risky hire.
To put it in baseball terms, Hamilton could take the line-drive single to left, and hire Cutcliffe, or he could buckle down and swing once more for the fences.
Hamilton swung for the fences, reportedly hiring Dooley. And now we have to wait and see whether he made any contact at all.
1. But first, we have to see whether or not Hamilton or Dooley gets Chizik'd on their arrival in Knoxville.
You'll recall the specter of a lone, angry fan haranguing Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs as he arrived back in Alabama after hiring Gene Chizik.
Hamilton and Dooley have to avoid this shot. And I'm not even joking about that. So much of Chizik's early trouble was the perception of him as a desperation hire.
What fueled that desperation hire? The antipathy of Auburn's reaction to his hiring.
But what crystallized that antipathy in 20 seconds? The video of a lone fan ripping the decision.
Remember how they snuck Abraham Lincoln into Washington via a train ride with only one plainclothes officer for protection?
This is how Dooley needs to get to Knoxville ... quietly.
2. Hamilton also has to overcome this detail, he hired an unknown head coach.
Lane Kiffin hadn't really done anything, but he was a sexy hire because the media had built him up to the point where everyone knew the name. Kiffin was the youngest coach in NFL history and he'd been the recruiting coordinator for USC; both of those details conspired to create an aura of competence.
Even though, you know, Lane Kiffin had a career head-coaching record of 5-15. Once Tennessee had the opportunity to craft Kiffin's story, he appeared to be a good fit.
You can make the same argument here. You point to the law degree for Dooley's brains, you point to the top recruiting classes in 2001 and 2003 under Nick Saban at LSU when Dooley was recruiting coordinator, you bask in the glow of a Southern icon in Vince Dooley (Derek's father), and you point to Dooley's role in helping to resurrect Louisiana Tech.
How so?
By pointing out that prior to Dooley's second season at Tech, the school had not won a bowl game since 1977. It's not like was coaching at a football powerhouse.
After all, Gene Chizik won more games in his first year at Auburn than he won in two seasons at Iowa State.
3. In the wake of the Kiffin departure, Tennessee fans wanted a name we could bask in the reflected glory of. Derek Dooley is not that name.
That doesn't mean he can't succeed, but it does men that in this business, where thanks to the long layoffs between games, perceptions of success sometimes end up governing success, he has to win the press conference.
And then he has to prove that he's not Mike Shula, another heir to the coaching throne who was the spawn of a big name.
4. Detail that I like the most: Derek Dooley left a big Atlanta law firm to take a $10,000 grad assistant job at Georgia.
As someone who doesn't practice in a law firm despite having a law degree, I admire the guts that takes.
Especially if you're already married.
If you haven't left a law firm and the guaranteed income, prestige, and lifestyle simply because you didn't like your profession as much as another one, then that won't be a big deal to you.
But, trust me, it is the definition of guts.
And you have to be fearless to do it.
5. Early thesis: This restores Tennessee to the good graces of the SEC.
For two reasons, one cultural and the second competitive:
First the cultural. After the Kiffin tornado where Tennessee attempted to become the USC of the South and eschewed all tradition, Dooley is steeped in SEC lore. His daddy won a national championship at Georgia, and Derek worked as a graduate assistant there. Both of his parents are Auburn grads. Derek Dooley was an assistant with Nick Saban at LSU.
Dooley is steeped in SEC lore, knows why people care about the games and understands that being a football coach extends beyond the field down here.
Second, the competitive. Every other school believes they can beat Dooley and Tennessee.
6. Dooley's wife is a gynecologist.
Layla Kiffin was hot, but we never really learned much else about her.
Lots of coaches marry dumb wives, Dooley didn't. Again, as someone who has a wife smarter than he is, I think that speaks well of him.
Nevertheless Layla Kiffin became an internet folk hero that led to a Facebook group I founded, "Our Coach's Wife Is Hotter Than Your Coach's Wife."
I haven't deleted that group, but now it's very popular in Southern California.
I'm contemplating starting a new group: "Our Coach's Wife Is A Better Lady Parts Doctor Than Your Coach's Wife."
I don't think it will be as popular.
7. Having said that, this is probably going to lead to a lot of gynecological humor.
I mean, the Internet basically exists, as a medium, for genital-related humor and videos of cats wearing funny hats.
If the Dooleys have a cat that wears funny hats, the Internet might explode.
At least in Tennessee.
8. One concern: Is there a contractual provision keeping Dooley out of Georgia if that job ever opens up?
Because if there isn't, this could be the Kiffin hire all over again, right?
Young coach, great recruiter, who has probably always dreamed of being the head coach of another school, Georgia.
And Georgia has a head coach, in Mark Richt, who might bolt at any moment. The worst case for Tennessee is Dooley is an absolute bust.
The second worst case?
Dooley proves he's good, gets his sea legs in the SEC, and then departs for an SEC east rival.
9. As with Chizik, the coaching staff surrounding Dooley remains key.
If Lane Kiffin truly put together the best coaching staff in college football, than everyone remains but Kiffin, Monte Kififin, and Ed Orgeron.
Of those three, who is the big loss?
Monte.
Tennessee currently has six coaches under contract. The reason Cutcliffe didn't come was because Hamilton insisted those coaches remain on staff.
Who will be the defensive coordinator? How will the rest of the staff shake out?
It was Chizik's double hires of Gus Malzahn and Trooper Taylor that helped to quell the masses.
Will the Vols pull off the same?
Dooley has a pretty good core of coaches in place around him, his additions can send the signal that he's going to be okay. Read the rest here.
By the way, as a preliminary, some people have emailed and asked about my story that went up last night, about how it comes to be so quickly. The answer is pretty simple. I've had most of that information for some time. But prior to last night I didn't have anyone who was willing to attach their name to it, and I didn't want to write an entirely anonymous piece.
It's fairly common for college athletes to be unwilling to go public with criticisms of their coaches while they're still college athletes.
Why?
Because they have no power in that situation. As soon as Lane Kiffin left, the power dynamic switched, and the story opened up.
In February of 2009, just a few months after Lane Kiffin's tenure began at the University of Tennessee, Vols senior center Josh McNeil walked into the Neyland-Thompson sports complex on the university campus. He paused alongside the Vols 1998 national championship trophy and shook his head in disbelief.
"They'd replaced our highlight video from the past season with Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, and Dwayne Jarrett from USC. I was like, 'Man, I know we were 5-7 last year, but this is Tennessee. Right beside our national title trophy? Come on, man.'"
Walking up the stairs, McNeil, a 6-foot-4 280 pound offensive lineman, says that all the televisions in the complex, at least 20, were tuned to still photos of stellar plays featuring USC athletes. In particular, McNeil paused in front of one photo of Reggie Bush diving into the end zone on a sunlit California field.
"I was thinking, 'Damn, Jamal Lewis went here. Travis Henry went here. It ain't like we never had any running backs of our own.'"
Within a day the pictures and video were down, but the message had been sent. A new era had dawned in Knoxville.
A few months later after witnessing what McNeil said he believed were affronts to the Tennessee tradition that upset him, the player confronted Kiffin. "Coach," he said, "I feel like you're intentionally not embracing UT's traditions."
Kiffin smirked. "Well, whatever Tennessee's been doing isn't working anymore, so we're coming up with something new. Get used to it."
When Kiffin said, "something new," he meant exactly what USC had already done before, McNeil told FanHouse. Multiple team sources confirmed McNeil's claims.
By Junior Day, March 2, 2009, Kiffin had his first crop of potential players, hundreds of then-high school juniors on Tennessee's campus.
The players were divided between offense and defense and placed in front of highlight videos that were designed to show them the Tennessee way of playing football.
As the offensive players sat down on the field, a video flashed on the screen with a word in bold:
DETERMINATION
McNeil watched. "I was thinking, maybe we're going to see Dan Williams block against Kentucky that got us into the SEC championship game (in 2007). That was a pretty huge play."
Instead a USC play featuring Reggie Bush opened the montage.
Another word flashed on the screen.
EXPLOSIVE
More USC highlights followed.
"All the way back to Carson Palmer," says McNeil. "I mean, really, Carson Palmer is explosive?"
At the end of the video, Lane Kiffin addressed the recruits.
"We're going to make this the USC of the South, and the USC of the East Coast," said Kiffin.
McNeil did not hide his disgust. "I was sitting right there and it broke my heart. I came to Tennessee because we were Tennessee, not because we were pretending to be somebody else."
McNeil paused.
"And you know what else? Out of all those clips there wasn't one Oakland Raider highlight. Not one. Now [the Oakland offense] is the same offense, you know? You ever think maybe it has something to do with the players?"
A drum begins slowly beating in the back of a Tennessee meeting room.
Ba-dum, ba-dum
Coach Ed Orgeron, UT's recruiting coordinator, steps to the front of the room.
"One heartbeat," he growls.
The drum beat gets louder and faster.
"I'm about to teach y'all our special team cheer," Coach Orgeron said to a gathering of Tennessee players.
Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.
"We're going to be crazy about special teams here."
"Now when these two Bushwackers run through the door, you rip your shirts off and scream as loud as you can. One side of the room yell, 'ST,' and the other side yell, 'wild boys.'"
The doors burst open, and two graduate assistants on the football team, walking like the Bushwackers from the old WWE wrestling days, arms gesticulating awkwardly in front of them, begin madly stomping about the room.
Coach Orgeron screams, "What's the first thing you do before you get in a fight?"
No answer.
"You take your shirt off!" he screams.
Then Coach Orgeron rips off his shirt in front of the team.
The drumbeat is incessant, loud. Players stare at one another.
Coach Orgeron begins to lead the cheer.
"ST!" he screams.
"ST," the team responds.
"Wild boys!" Orgeron screams.
"Wild boys," the team responds.
"Damn, I felt like an idiot with my shirt off," McNeil says. "So did lots of the older guys."
But some of the younger players believed the chant was very cool, McNeil said. It fired them up.
At least it did until they realized that the "new chant" the UT coaching staff introduced to the players was a retread.
"It was a USC thing," McNeil says, "I took an official visit there. They used to say, 'SC', and the other side would say, 'wild boys.' They came to Tennessee and they changed SC to ST for special teams. How lame is that?"
Eventually the shirtless drills fade out.
"We didn't get as hyped up as they wanted us too, Everybody would just laugh," says McNeil, "We just all kind of thought it was weird."
That year for spring practice, Lane Kiffin instituted a new rule, profanity was permissible in the songs they would play as the players stretched.
As UT players got loose and children visiting practice ran along the sidelines, hardcore rap lyrics blared alongside Kid Rock anthems.
The current players had no issue with the cursing, some liked it.
But several former UT players were offended when they brought their young children to the practice and heard the music, according to team sources interviewed by FanHouse.
Kiffin didn't care.
"He told me that's how they did it at USC," McNeil says.
As the start of a new season neared, Kiffin and crew focused on their continuing makeover of the Vols.
It was time to practice their team chants.
Kiffin said, "When we're on national TV about to come out of the tunnel, we've got to make it look good."
The entire team lined up in the end zone as part of fall camp.
One side would yell, "It's war time," while another side said, "Let's take it outside."
Tennessee players embraced the new tradition. They believed it was theirs and theirs alone.
Until one of the players found it on YouTube. (A similar video can be found here)
Another USC chant.
This time verbatim.
As the season neared, a new controversy arose: Kiffin did not want to say General Neyland's Game Maxims. The tradition, in which the Volunteer players chant the seven maxims beginning with:
With less than a minute to play and Tennessee nursing a three-point lead, freshman walk-on Skylar McBee found himself holding the basketball as the shot clock wound down. McBee, who with his floppy brown hair and shorts that appear to almost double as pants, looks like a ringer from a junior high team.
He's not supposed to be in this position. Not supposed to be draped by a defender for the No. 1 team in the country with the ball in his hands just a few months removed from playing high school basketball in tiny Rutledge, Tenn. But he's on the court because Tennessee is down to just six scholarship players and there is no one else to put in the game. He pivots right, the crowd screams as one, aware that the shot clock is winding down but not sure McBee is aware of that fact. And then, comes the magic, the reason why we all watch college basketball.
Leaning and twisting away from his defender McBee throws up a prayer a millisecond before the shot clock expires. And his three-pointer draws nothing but net to give the Vols a six-point lead with 36 seconds remaining. Amazingly, there was no doubt. The biggest win of the Bruce Pearl era was going to happen. Now, improbably, just ten days removed from the darkest stain of the Pearl era, the arrest of four players for misdemeanor gun and drug charges. With just six scholarship players, Bruce Pearl and Tennessee pulled off the improbable.
This is Bruce Pearl's fifth season. After three stellar seasons in Knoxville, last season was a totally different story. The Vols, picked by everyone to win the SEC, stumbled out of the gate, played selfishly, without smarts, even appeared disinterested at times. The team was the antithesis of everything Pearl had instilled in his first three seasons. They were scowling malcontents, offended at the very idea that they could have ever committed a foul. Put simply, they thought they were better than they were. If there's any more infuriating trait in a team, it's that one. The overconfident swagger that doesn't arrive when big baskets are needed, but reveals itself in excessive celebrations during wins over teams that didn't match the Vols' talent. Too often Tennessee could drain a series of threes when the game wasn't close, but when winning time arrived, the swagger vanished and the team turned tail.
The talent was there, but the inconsistency was so mind-boggling that many Vol fans, myself included, derived hardly any enjoyment from watching the team play last season. The Vols finished the SEC season 10-6, still won the East in a down year for basketball in the league, lost to an inferior Mississippi State team in the SEC Tourney championship and lost by two to Oklahoma State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Then came this season. The highly-ranked Vols returned everyone, but the passion didn't seem to be there. How else to explain a 22-point loss at USC when Tennessee failed to compete at all? Pearl, the Incredible Bulk as he sometimes calls himself, seemed incapable of recapturing the same passion with this group of players that he had with his first three teams.
Where was the derring-do, the thrill of competition, the swagger of a team and coach who believes that no matter the situation, they're going to triumph?
And have fun while doing it. Follow Us on Twitter Friend Us on Facebook Now, for the second year in a row, fans weren't responding to the team. It was hard to connect with the inconsistency, the mental errors were galling, at times watching the team play on DVR was less painful than watching the games live. And then something strange happened, four players, including all-SEC star Tyler Smith, were arrested, charged with drug and weapons possession, and suspended from the team.
Amazingly, in one fell swoop, the arrest turned a team of selfish underachievers into hard-working underdogs. On Wednesday, the Vols took the court for the first time without the suspended foursome, and played with a scalding passion, a fevered intensity. They didn't have as many good players, but Pearl suddenly had a team that reflected his own personality once again, a group of hard charging underdogs who had nothing to lose. Against Charlotte, Tennessee basketball had the old-time Bruce Pearl feel.
But that was against Charlotte. The question remained, what would happen against the nation's top team with a depleted roster?
And so they tipped the ball off on a frigid Sunday afternoon in Tennessee.
1. Enter the Kansas Jayhawks, 14-0, with just two of those wins by less than double digits.
The Jayhawks showed a bit of a weak chin against Cornell, won, but proved that they weren't clicking on all cylinders. Even still, early in this game it appears that Cole Aldrich is on pace for 100 rebounds. He and his Kansas teammates are grabbing every offensive miss.
Kansas appears crisper, better organized in the half-court, and able to get whatever shot they want whenever they want it.
The Jayhawks surge out to a 14-6 lead with just under 14 minutes to play.
It will be their largest lead of the game.
2. Down 16-10 early, a Tennessee forward named Renaldo Woolridge takes a pass at the top of the key.
Woolridge, son of former Notre Dame and NBA star Orlando Woolridge (and second cousin of Basketball Hall of Famer Willis Reed), stepped into Tyler Smith's starting role after his dismissal. Thus far in his Tennessee career, Woolridge has most distinguished himself by pursuing a rap career under the stage name Swiperboy.
I wish I was making that up
He's also not shy when it comes to missing three-point shots.
With a little under 10 minutes left in the first half, Swiperboy takes the pass and lets fly from the top of the key.
He miscalculates.
Badly.
The shot banks directly off the backboard and settles through the net.
It's 16-13 and the crowd exults.
In the next one minute-forty-one seconds, Woolridge fires in two more threes.
Suddenly we're tied at 19, Kansas is taking a timeout, and Woolridge is not just a rapper who plays basketball. He's a basketball player.
It's impossible to understate how important Woolridge's personal 9-0 run was, or how improbable it was based on what the sophomore had done in any game prior.
Don't believe me?
Against Memphis just 10 days ago, Swiperboy got only eight minutes on the floor.
3. Midway through the first half, Tennessee's two most experienced seniors, Wayne Chism and J.P. Prince, pick up their second fouls.
Both men are pulled from the game.
Tennessee's offense, and I'm not making this up, features the coach's son, Steven Pearl, putting the ball on the floor and trying to get to the basket.
But, to be fair, it's not like Steven Pearl hasn't been an offensive weapon before.
Okay, so that was in Israel at the Maccabi Games against only Israeli players but...
Yeah, he's not really an offensive weapon.
But Tennessee hangs tough.
4. Until Bruce Pearl inexplicably brings back in Wayne Chism with 1:55 remaining in the half.
Chism has been out of the game since picking up his second foul with 7:39 remaining.
The Vols are in decent shape, leading by a few points.
Rather than leave Chism out for the remainder of the game, Pearl rolls the dice ... and Chism picks up a blocking foul with 34 seconds left in the half.
He's now got three.
As an aside, someone needs to put together a video compilation of Wayne Chism's foul calls. If there is any big man in college basketball who gets called for more touch fouls, I want to see it.
Wayne is a walking foul magnet.
5. On offense Kansas is stifled.
The Jayhawks aren't getting great dribble penetration from Sherron Collins and their offense stagnates. The Jayhawks make just one basket from the floor for one eight-minute stretch as the half wanes.
Tennessee is pressing the passing lanes and rotating well on the perimeter to challenge the shooters while encouraging other Jayhawks to let fly from a distance.
6. In fact, on paper what looked like the biggest mismatch in the game, Kansas's Collins against Tennessee's Bobby Maze, is proving to be anything but.
Prior to this game Maze has been erratic at best.
Collins has been consistently excellent.
While Maze has been frequently beaten off the dribble and inconsistent at getting to the rim, Collins has carried Kansas on his back at times. If anything you'd expect Collins to exploit Maze and set up Kansas's offense in great situations.
You'd expect that.
But for tonight, you'd be wrong.
Collins is still getting his points, but Maze is making him work for them. What's more, Collins isn't distributing the ball that well: he'll finish with five assists but also four turnovers. He's also taking a lot of contested threes and will finish just 2-10 from outside the arc.
What's more, Maze begins to beat Collins off the dribble and get to the rim. What's more, Maze is finishing when he gets there.
7. At the half we're tied at 33-33.
With the Vols in foul trouble, you'd expect Kansas to dial up the pressure for the second half and try to tire out the undermanned Tennessee team.
But Bill Self elects not to.
In fact, for much of the second half he elects to play zone and let Tennessee rest on offense -- evidently gambling on the fact that the Vols can't make outside shots.
8. Early in the second half, Tennessee begins to pull away.
How?
Courtesy of the patented top of the key Wayne Chism three. The Vols surge ahead 46-39.
It's a huge shot that suggests the game will go down to the wire. Kansas will not be pulling away from the Vols today.
9. But then near disaster strikes. In a span of 10 seconds both Prince and Chism get their fourth fouls.
Now Pearl is forced to rely on the walk-ons for serious minutes. At one point Tennessee has three walk-ons on the floor together, Josh Bone, Skylar McBee, and Steven Pearl.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that an opponent has never beaten the No. 1 team in the country while playing three walk-ons with double-digit minutes.
That's probably a stat that's impossible to disprove, so consider it a fact.
Surely, Kansas will exert its will now.
10. But the Jayhawks can't. In fact, Tennessee's own Hamlet, Scotty Hopson, outdribbles his greatest enemy, his capacity to overthink on the court, and begins to attack the basket.
No one on Kansas can stay in front of him.
Hopson punctuates this display with a rousing baseline dunk on Kansas's Cole Aldrich that sends Thompson-Boling Arena into a frenzy.
Hopson, who memorably tripped over a referee while celebrating a big dunk last year, doesn't even react that much to this stellar play, perhaps the most explosive of his Volunteer career.
And with 10:24 left the Vols are up 9.
11. Meanwhile, Maze, who will only leave the court for seven minutes tonight, is on his way to besting Collins.
Maze makes a run at a triple-double, going for 16 points, eight assists, and seven rebounds. What's more, despite being ballhawked all night on defense, Maze only turns the ball over twice.
12. Even still, Kansas makes its run. With 6:47 left the Vols lead by eight, 62-54.
In a little over two minutes the Jayhawks tie the game at 64 on two Tyshon Taylor free throws.
13. Now comes crunch time.
The time when this Volunteer team has typically failed to make the big play, allowed defeat to be snatched from the jaws of victory.
Only not this time and not this team.
Somehow, some way, through the complicated calculus of basketball, Tennessee has subtracted four players and found its inner warrior.
14. But not without a struggle.
Up six with the ball and 1:10 remaining, Wayne Chism decides to go Harlem Globetrotters on us, and dribbles behind his back.
The ball is stripped and Kansas's Brady Morningstar drills a three.
Suddenly it's a one-possession game with an awful lot of time remaining.
As I wrote last week, there is no better way in American life to have gotten pretty wealthy in the past decade than to take the SEC team in the BCS title game. If you'd put a $1,000 on the first SEC team in the title game, Tennessee back in 1999, and kept rolling that money into the games for the next 11 years, after Alabama's 37-21 victory you'd have had $64,000. That's enough money to pay for a four year education at any in-state university in the country.
And all you had to do was pick the SEC in every title game contest.
In a game redolent of Friday Night Lights and Varsity Blues, Colt McCoy is gone from the start. Suddenly Colt McCoy/Jason Street/Lance Harbor is replaced by Garrett Gilbert/Matt Saracen/Jonathon Moxon. After a boneheaded play call from Mack Brown/Eric Taylor, the team finds themselves trailing 24-6. And then, at that exact moments, comes football magic.
Only Saracen and Moxon didn't have to come back against SEC defenses. And Gilbert did. Come along as we dive in for a 26-stop trip through the BCS championship telecast.
1. Why, oh why, did the title game begin with a poetry slam alternating between stunted Brent Musburger narrations?
Is there a more awkward pairing on Earth? I mean besides Mark May and eyeglasses. The poetry slam achieved a brief moment of popularity in 1998. Since the two months when poetry slams were cool, they've been ridiculed and lampooned by anyone with a pulse.
Evidently ABC producers never got that memo.
Or Maya Angelou is in charge of the telecast. Which completely explains the second quarter caged bird angle.
2. Back to Mark May's eyeglasses that were so darkly tinted it appeared he was broadcasting from the surface of the sun.
All season long, ESPN's in-studio show producers have to have grimaced over Lou Holtz's obscene orange tan. Then, mercifully, just in time for the championship game Holtz loses his tan. The producers had to be giving each other fist pounds all week long out in Pasadena.
Until May showed up with these glasses.
I'll ask this question, is there no one on the staff to tell him how much of an idiot he looks like? Can he not see it on the television monitor himself?
Wouldn't you?
And if you didn't, wouldn't your wife blow up your phone with text messages telling you how much of an idiot you looked like?
I'll leave you with this, unless May suffers from some sort of light sensitivity we're wholly unaware of, it's clear he has no actual friends on that studio show, because if he did, he wouldn't have been wearing those glasses.
3. Texas should be in the SEC.
There are three schools that I think fit the culture of the SEC pretty well without being in the conference. Texas, Clemson, and Florida State.
But Texas would be my pick.
And not just because of the chaps their dance team girls wear.
For the record my biggest gripe on this telecast was that those girls were only featured once.
4. An ABC/ESPN graphic credits Alabama with only seven national championships.
This is roughly 248 less than the Crimson Tide claim.
It's clear ESPN bias at work.
No doubt.
Although, as they say in Alabama, you can't spell bias without the u.
5. Nick Saban calls the fake punt from his own 24 on the first possession of the game.
This is very un-Sabanesque.
Texas picks off the pass and appears to be in business for an early score.
Only, in a devastating few plays Texas loses McCoy to an injury, has a touchdown called back for an illegal procedure, and settles for a field goal.
6. Colt McCoy's injury effectively changes the complete structure of the game.
Colt McCoy injuredImmediately I receive a text message from a friend, "The Big 12 should be ashamed. That hit takes out their best quarterback?"
Later someone will ask me whether Tim Tebow leaves a game with that injury.
The answer is no.
But there's no doubt the game changes.
How much?
Alabama only attempts 11 passes for the entire game, completing just six.
7. Remember four years ago when Matthew McConaughey made a spectacle of himself running around on the sideline in that ridiculous brown leather jacket?
He's clearly a huge Longhorns fan, right?
So I contacted his publicist three weeks beforehand to see if he wanted to talk about the game.
And his publicist e-mailed back and said, "He's not doing interviews about the game."
How many people could have possibly asked him about the game that he needed to instruct his publicist of this three weeks before the game? McConaughey doesn't even make movie decisions three weeks before they start filming.
This explains Sahara and Two For the Money.
8. Bama doesn't field a short kick and this leads to another Longhorn field goal.
This represents the black death of Alabama football beginnings. A team that has only had 10 turnovers all season has set up their opponent on two consecutive possessions.
What's more, the failure to field the short kick is a glaring error because Texas began the game by kicking off short.
Yet Alabama's defense holds and the Tide only trails 6-0.
9. Texas' back-up quarterback is someone named Garrett Gilbert.
I've never heard of him, and neither have you. I'm picturing Musburger slamming down a notepad during the first commercial break, "Figure out who his roommate is pronto, dammit, now, now! I need anecdotes."
In fact, and I honestly wonder this, what are the odds that Vince Young, who is standing on the sideline at the game, knew this guy's first and last name before the game started?
Also, would it really surprise you if the camera turned to Young on the sideline and he wasn't wearing a shirt? If so, we'd get to see one of the greatest tattoos in the history of sports, Vince Young has, and this is completely true, his name tattooed on his back "V. Young" exactly how it looks on his jersey.
That's pure genius. And insanity.
The Vincent Van Gogh self-portrait of athlete tattoos.
10. Mark Ingram scores a touchdown and his mom finally gets attention in the crowd.
In the past month, the Governor of Alabama signed a bill proclaiming it Mark Ingram day. Ingram, a native of Flint, Mich., has been in the state for about 18 months.
It took the state of Alabama several years after the federal government first celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. day to celebrate it itself.
Guess King should have played running back for the Tide.
11. Trent Richardson scores from 49 yards out to give Bama the 14-6 lead.
Richardson, it's worth noting, is a better running back than Mark Ingram, one of several backs in the country who would have won the Heisman if they'd been the starter for the Crimson Tide this season.
In fact, let's be fair, Ingram is the Gino Torretta of running backs, a person who won the award solely because of the team he played for.
12. On the other side of the ball, in the first half Tre' Newton is Texas's best offensive weapon.
He's former Cowboys' star Nate Newton's son. Ten years ago, if you wanted to give a Texas fan nightmares you would have said this, "You're going to be in the national championship game, but your entire offense is going to be predicated on getting a 355-pound offensive lineman's son into open space."
13. With seven minutes left in the first half and Alabama leading 14-6, immediately after the Javier Arenas interception, Brent Musburger calls the game. "Gilbert has no chance against this Saban defense," he says.
Does this remind anyone else of Billy Packer calling the North Carolina-Kansas basketball game a few years back with seven minutes also left in the half? At the time Kansas led 38-12.
That was the play call that led, in part, to Packer's removal from the Final Four.
I'm not saying Musburger's call was unjustified, just that it's pretty similar. And in a much closer game.
14. Mack Brown proves that he's an idiot by calling the shovel pass after taking a timeout with 15 seconds left in the first half.
I ripped Mack Brown after the way the Nebraska game ended and said his success was entirely the result of dumb luck.
Some Texas fans took offense. Others agreed.
Most Texas fans who were being honest weren't that excited about Brown matching wits with Saban.
But this call defies comprehension and effectively ended the game.
Let's think about how dumb this play call was.
A.) You just got a huge break when Nick Saban decided to take the easy three points and let you go in at halftime down only 17-6
B.) You get the ball to start the second half anyway
C.) You haven't completed a pass with your back-up quarterback all night
D.) Even if you complete the shovel pass, what's your reward?
You gain like 10 yards at best.
E.) Mack Brown actually said as he left the field, in an excellent question by Lisa Salters, that they were hoping to get to the 50 so they could throw it into the end zone.
Are you kidding me?
So if everything goes perfect on that play, you get the right to throw a Hail Mary into the end zone?
And he gets paid $5 million a year to analyze risk/reward on the sideline?
Mack Brown makes awful decisions in the heat of the moment.
Period.
What's worse than that? He made this decision out of a timeout.
15. Having said that, let's not take anything away from Marcell Dareus' interception return.
He looked better on his 28-yard interception return than any Texas running back did all night on any of their runs.
16. Pete Carroll has to be thinking over and over again: "How come Texas's starting quarterback got knocked out this year in the Rose Bowl instead of four years ago?"
Also, am I the only person who thinks that HD television makes people's hands look enormous?
There's something about the way the television captures things, the hands seems so much closer to the camera than the rest of the body.
If you haven't noticed this yet, start now, you won't be able to avoid noticing from this point forward.
It really makes you uncomfortable.
You're welcome.
17. When the quasi-streaker raced onto the field, did anyone else hope they would cut to Mack Brown?
I was convinced he'd be executing the Mack clap for the fellow.
"Good streakin', boy. Really good."
18. Just as the second half threatened to become a prolonged replay of the 1936 Rose Bowl, Jordan Shipley snagged a touchdown from 44 yards out to makes it 24-13.
Shortly thereafter, Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit proved that a white receiver can only be compared to another white receiver.
Both men said he would be another Wes Welker.
Really?
Or are both of you just being lazy and using race as a proxy for what kind of player a guy can be?
Welker is 5-foot-9 and weighs 185 pounds. Shipley is 6 feet and 195.
So Shipley is quite a bit bigger and has been infinitely more productive as a college receiver.
My point?
Even in 2010, making cross-racial comparisons is still like the Maginot Line for sportscasters; it's impossible to get them to cross over.
19. Here, Mack Brown makes a bold call, going for the onside kick.
And the onside kick slams into Alabama's front line at a speed roughly approaching the sound barrier.
Leaving me with this question, do you think the onside kick was intended to ricochet off the Alabama player?
If so, how amazing is that aim?
And how much does it suck to be the fat guy on the first line of defense who gets blamed for being hit by Nick Saban?
Saban: "Why didn't you expect that for the first time in the history of college football somebody might try and kick the ball off your fat ass!"
Bama player: Whimpers.
20. Vince Young and Colt McCoy are talking on the sideline.
Vince: I went for 467 yards and became a legend in this game.
Colt: My shoulder's sore.
21. Did Nick Saban reach a bit with the 52-yard field goal attempt?
I think so.
That was the first time where you got the feeling Saban looked up at the scoreboard and said, "Damn, this game is still in the third quarter?"
The miss gives Texas excellent field position.
22. At this point, the camera catches Mack Brown on the sideline struggling to untie his shoelace.
Has there ever been a better metaphor for a sideline coach?
In the heat of the battle, Brown can't even manage his own shoes.
23. Jordan Shipley, who is a white receiver and therefore must be compared to other white wide receivers lest the universe implode, looks just like Joe Jurevicius when he gets off the line, makes a double move, and snags a touchdown pass to suddenly make this a game.
After the two point conversion, it's 24-21 and all over the state of Alabama people are blaming the weatherman for this.
And, just like you, I'd give anything to know what Saban was truly thinking.
I'll have a column up on the title game within an hour or so of the game ending. In the meantime, read about Casey Johnson, Tila Tequila and why TMZSports will change the way sports are covered. Read the column here.
Sports is the last bastion of American society where talent is required to be a celebrity. Oh sure, we can argue about whether a particular player is actually worthy of the attention they receive, but none of us can really dispute that they're talented. Can you say the same about any other realm of popular American life? Does anyone believe that even on his worst day as a professional that Darko Milicic was worse at basketball than, say, Lindsay Lohan is at acting? Or that Tony Mandarich was a better offensive tackle than Lady Gaga is a singer? And being the offspring of a famous sports star doesn't automatically put you in the running for status as it does in many facets of modern life, such as politics. Love him or hate him, does George W. Bush ever become president if his last name is Smith?
Certainly not.
And you know what George W. Bush could have never become no matter what his last name was? First baseman for the New York Yankees. As sports fans we wouldn't have stood for it unless his talent justified the position. Put simply, who is the Paris Hilton or Tila Tequila of American sports? Someone who exists as a sports celebrity despite no discernible talent?
There isn't one ... yet.
I'm wondering about this of late because the death of Casey Johnson, the daughter of New York Jets owner Woody, has given us an entree into what the future of sports might become, a world where connections to sports make the largest stars govern media attention as opposed to a connection to a performance on the field of play. And I shudder at the thought.
So should you.
What am I talking about? Simple, the Tila Tequilization of American sports.
As a refresher, Casey Johnson was the 30-year-old daughter of Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets, and Johnson & Johnson heiress. You may have heard of her before. I had, thanks to the glossy celebrity magazines that my wife leaves laying around the house. Which, full confession, I devour while working out on my family's elliptical. (Honestly, that might be the most embarrassing sentence I've ever written in a column).
These glassy magazines have mastered the art of not just selling celebrity, but of creating the stars that they cover. Look at them from one year to the next, yes, some of the celebrities recur, but there is always a new crop of talent being developed. Always a new collection of soap-opera headlines to sensationalize. Indeed, there's a real argument to be made that the reason soap operas themselves are crumbing in the ratings is because these magazines have co-opted real life and turned them into our modern-day soap operas.
And we all pay attention.
In fact, find me a person who doesn't have an opinion of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and I'll find you a damn liar. Johnson, whose Wikipedia page lists her profession as "socialite," owed her fame to her good looks, her friendship with the likes of Paris Hilton and Tila Tequila, and her connection to the NFL through her father's billions. Most hardcore football fans have probably never heard of her. But I bet their wives or girlfriends have. And for those football fans who have heard of Casey, they've perhaps thought, like I have, "Wow, whoever ends up with that hot mess is going to be amazingly lucky. They get a hot billionaire wife and a built-in route to owning an NFL team."
And she's a bisexual with an interest in a slutty reality star?
Who announces her "engagement" while wearing her underwear and lying in bed next to another underwear-clad woman?
I mean, is she for real? That's what male fantasies are made of.
Anyway, Johnson's untimely death via "natural causes" at the age of 30 is a tragedy for her family, but it's also a boon for sites like TMZ.com. And if you say you aren't paying attention to TMZ, you're probably lying. (Further confession, I have the TMZ application loaded on my iPhone and check it five times a day.)
With the advent of the Tiger scandal, TMZ has seen that a national sports figure can drive their site traffic. And TMZ has led the parade in sports stories by focusing not at all on the sport itself. Why? Because your grandmother, mother, and girlfriend, don't care about the actual sports. Nor does your casual sports fan who might watch the Super Bowl and fill out an NCAA basketball pool.
Nope.
They care about the stories surrounding athletes, the celebrity connection to sports.
Don't believe me? Let's look at recent TMZ headlines from the past several months.
The Tiger Woods story has nothing to do with golf, he just happens to be a golfer. Chris Henry's death has nothing to do with football, he just happened to play football. Gilbert Arenas pulling a gun in the Wizards' locker room doesn't have anything to do with basketball, but it's the biggest story from the NBA this season. Think about this year in college sports, LeGarrette Blount was suspended for the year -- at least initially -- not because he did something during a game that was egregious. He was suspended because he did something after the game, punched an opponent, that made America's grandmothers eventually take note on The Today Show. Even the positive stories that capture our imaginations are usually not focused on sports. Michael Oher just happens to play football in The Blind Side, it's his story off the field that made that movie a success.
In fact, for a story to transcend the sports audience and cross over into popular discourse, it almost always, by its definition, is going to be rooted in something other than sports. Read the rest here.
As we near the always depressing end of the college football season, it's time for the blitzkrieg of anti-BCS propaganda to hit its crescendo. Columnists from across the country dust off the same columns they've filed for the past two decades, fulmination on Internet message boards crests, all the world rages against the dying of the light, and ... nothing changes.
Except for this year.
That's because the guys and gals behind PlayoffPAC have brought the world of political attack ads to the BCS. By slaughtering the BCS in just 47 seconds. It's the best possible introduction to the Starting 11 bowl edition.
The ad aired in both Boise and Fort Worth during the game last night. Well done. Keep up the good fight. For the rest of us, let's dive into the bowl games thus far via the Starting 11.
1. Les Miles, Les Miles, how can you do it again?
Is there anybody less clutch when it comes to making decisions down the stretch than Miles? Here's the situation in the Capital One Bowl for those of you not watching.
LSU has a first down at the Penn State 49 with about 49 seconds left, trailing 19-17 with no timeouts. The clock is stopped because Jordan Jefferson has just run out of bounds.
With the awful field conditions -- the landscaper of the Capital One bowl should be put in the stocks in Disney World's Pirates of the Caribbean attraction -- you probably need about 20 yards to get in realistic field-goal range.
What does Miles call?
A screen pass into the middle of the field.
Seriously, that's the LSU brain-trust decision with time to plan a play call.
LSU gains four yards, the clock continues to run, the Tigers are flagged for a bogus personal foul, penalized 15 yards, and LSU gets just two more plays off. The final hopeless play ends with no time left on the clock.
I ask this question, how in the world do you call that play in that situation?
It's an awful decision on several levels. Among them: A.) You can't throw underneath the first down marker in the middle of the field given the lack of timeouts because if you don't gain the first down you're losing 20 or more seconds B.) With everyone likely to be dropping into a zone how many yards are you likely to gain by completing a two-yard pass anyway? C.) You send your speedy wide receiver back into the muck in the center of the field where his speed is negated d. if you're going to throw under 10 yards you have to complete a pass somewhere near the sideline so at least your receiver can get out of bounds if he can't gain the first down
I could go on.
Right now LSU fans know exactly what I'm talking about. In fact, absent dumb luck how many LSU fans had confidence in Miles's decision making on this final drive?
Exactly.
You want early predictions for 2010?
Next year LSU is going 6-6 and Les Miles will be fired at the end of the season.
2. How does Northwestern not have a field-goal kicker?
I ask this question every time a rich private school fails in the kicking game and loses the game because of that failure. For years I've wondered the same thing about Vanderbilt.
I'll reiterate now: Every rich private school should be stocked with kickers.
Let's begin with this question, what percentage of the men at Northwestern played soccer growing up? I'll tell you, at least 80 percent.
It's a rich kid's sport.
My point? The majority of the undergraduate men on your campus have received some degree of training in soccer-style kicking.
Are you telling me one of those kids can't consistently make field goals of less than 40 yards?
Of course, someone can.
HIt the intramural fields to recruit and you win a bowl game.
3. Best postgame interview? How about Jeannine Edwards alongside Arkansas's Bobby Petrino after the Razorbacks beat East Carolina in overtime.
Edwards: "I know you guys wanted the SEC Championship, but now you've got the Liberty Bowl."
Bobby Petrino immediately took his sideline credential -- which he wore all game, what was someone going to come and take him off the sideline otherwise? -- and attempted to slice his wrist with it.
In Edwards' defense she might have believed that Arkansas was being rewarded with the actual Liberty Bell as opposed to the Liberty Bowl trophy.
4. Ole Miss' Dexter McCluster is the most explosive player in college football if he's healthy. And Jevan Snead is the least clutch.
McCluster gouged Oklahoma State for 184 yards rushing and 45 yards receiving. Now I'm trying to think of how McCluster could fit in the NFL if he had to play 16 weeks out of 17. And I don't think he could make it.
Why?
Because, as pointed out by my esteemed editor, the Ole Miss site lists him at 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds. This means he's probably 5-8, 160 in actuality.
Has any non-kicker of this size ever succeeded in the modern NFL? By comparison, Darren Sproles is 5-6, but 180 pounds
I don't think so.
I've said before that McCluster is Chris Johnson-esque in his speed, and he is, but Johnson is much bigger than McCluster. Put simply, McCluster can't take the beating that he would receive in the NFL. Not unless a team drafts him and limits his touches to five to eight times per game.
Anyway, McCluster's emergence helped to overshadow Snead's continuing implosion. After tossing three picks on New Year's, Snead finished with 20 interceptions in 2009.
20!
And he's talking about leaving early?
Who in their right mind would draft Jevan Snead? His best game this season came against UAB. His stats in that game: 15-of-22 for 240 yards.
This is the guy we were supposed to herald as a legitimate Heisman candidate? Snead was the seventh-best quarterback in the SEC.
5. You want pressure, Lane Kiffin is about to know a level of pressure he's never known before.
First, I think Tennessee drew the toughest match-up of any SEC team. Virginia Tech was the best team in the ACC by the end of the season and Tennessee played its best football in a three-week stretch in the middle of the season.
So betting on Virginia Tech was easy money in this game. Getting beat the way the Vols did is going to mean Lane Kiffin doesn't have an easy offseason. And you think things get easier?
Wrong.
Tennessee's first eight games in 2010 are absolutely brutal.
Don't believe me?
Try this schedule on for size.
How about Oregon and Florida back-to-back in the second and third weeks of the season? Then road games at LSU and at Georgia back -to-back. Followed by Alabama and then on the road at South Carolina.
All six of those teams will be ranked in the preseason. At least four of those teams will be preseason Top 10s.
And all of those games are played before October even ends. I defy anyone to find a tougher eight games to begin the season for anyone in America.
It's absolutely brutal.
And that's without even considering that Tennessee's team will be much worse in 2010 thanks to graduation gutting the offensive line, Jonathan Crompton and Montario Hardesty graduating and Eric Berry leaving early for the pros.
Good luck, Lane.
6. The Rose Bowl opening monologue defied comprehension with its awful pompous grandiosity.
Actual line: "This game is rooted in its meaning and shaped by its sense."
It's rare that I call for the immediate execution of writers because we all write bad paragraphs at some point.
But that sentence? Aside from how bad it is, what does that line even mean? Can the writer even explain it?
And how did someone do the voiceover for that line without saying, "Hell no, that's crap."
Execute the writer now so he doesn't have to keep living knowing he was responsible for this monstrosity.
Ruffin McNeill7. Ruffin McNeill and Mike Patrick are engaged in a relationship that's illegal in most states, certainly those South of the Mason-Dixon line.
That's the only explanation for why Mike Patrick inexplicably turned into McNeill's agent near the end of the Texas Tech-Michigan State Alamo Bowl.
It was uncomfortable to hear Patrick essentially call the Texas Tech administration cowards if they didn't offer the job to McNeill on the spot. The last time Patrick made this much noise was when he got into Britney Spears' personal life in overtime of the Alabama-Georgia game in 2007.
By the way, here's a question for the national media, how did two Tennessee girls going to a high school game and holding up a sign end up a bigger story than 12 players getting into a brawl at Michigan State? One of the real issues with there being so few national sports outlets now is that when one decides something is a story everyone else falls in line behind them without questioning the legitimate news value of a story.
8. The coin-flip graphic on Fox is absurd.
As my editor points out, do we really need this?
Does anyone not know what a coin flip looks like or how it works?
Put another way, if you're playing a video game, do you sit and wait for the coin to flip or do you hit a button to get through that graphic and start the game?
You skip it right?
So if you're interested in network television additions, wouldn't an instructive template be how people respond to graphics in video games when they can choose what to watch or not?
Anyway, this made almost as much sense as All-State sending the bearded guy from their television network around the press box to meet writers before the game started.
A real guy from commercials?
In the flesh?
Wow.
9. Does FOX realize that college football fans know the rules to college football?
I'm going to write an entire column about this, but if I have to hear one more Fox announcer explain that the clock stops on first downs, or that you're down when your knee touches the ground even if no one touches you, or that pass interference is only 15 yards in college, I'm going to scream.
Show me the demographics that prove college bowl games are watched by an entire crowd of sports fans that haven't watched a single college game all season, and I'll relent on this criticism.
Otherwise don't presume that because your network doesn't carry college football that means no one has actually watched the college games all year long.
This isn't 1964. We all have television remotes and watch more than one station.
By the time the fourth quarter of Boise State-TCU began, I was finished with cursing the BCS monopolists who gave us such a travesty of football justice by putting both TCU and Boise in the same bowl. I'd given up trying to figure out which underdog to root for -- even though TCU was favored they didn't seem like a traditional favorite -- and just settled back in my couch to watch and enjoy the game as best I could.
Even though I wanted to be rooting for TCU and Boise State against a Big Six challenger, I didn't have that opportunity because both teams had been slotted in the separate but equal bowl. As I wrote back when the match-ups were announced, this was a clear attempt to keep a BCS school from an embarrassing beatdown on national television. Nope, better to have the little schools duke it out as a sideshow that offered little in the way of danger for the BCS cartel. Win and one team was still perfect, but they'd just beaten another smaller school. They hadn't stormed the BCS castle and demanded justice.
Even still, this was the non-title game I was most looking forward to watching. Dive in for 20 observations from the televised broadcast of the Fiesta Bowl.
1. The game gets off to a rousing start with an extreme HD close-up of number 24 for TCU, Brandon Cook, rushing off the field puking.
How many people in their homes almost vomited after seeing this?
I did.
In fact, if I didn't have an incredibly subdued retch reflex thanks to changing my son's diapers for the past two years, I would have lost it here.
What an opening. The football equivalent of a nude scene in the movie Precious.
2. Remember all that talk from the experts about how no one would want to see these two teams play?
That was wrong. The stadium is packed.
And I'll reiterate the prediction I made when this game was announced, the Fiesta Bowl will be the second highest rated BCS bowl.
Book it.
3. How hot are the TCU cowboy boots and hot pants on the pom girls?
I mean, those girls are all uncomfortably hot no matter what they wear, right? But in those outfits? Good Lord. Each one a 8.5 or better. Collectively, they're smoke jumpers. (i have no idea what smoke jumpers means, but henceforth it's a term for a collection of extremely hot girls.)
And Fox goes to them time and again as they cheer.
Can you imagine how many people in the northeast are watching this and thinking, everyone of those girls is hotter than anyone in my entire city? Especially now when it's minus-52 degrees outside and been snowing for three months? Every single man, and half the married ones, in the city of Buffalo with a car is probably on his way to Texas right now.
4. Boise State's Brandyn Thompson strikes a blow for every man whose mom put a phantom y in his name and returns an interception 51 yards for a touchdown to give Boise a 7-0 lead.
He needs a dance that incorporates the Y. Or a big tattoo of the letter Y on his bicep.
5. Luke Wilson and these AT&T ads that come on after every commercial break are under-discussed.
If I'd told you that one of the funniest actors of the 2000s would inexplicably hitch his star to a cell phone company, would you have believed me?
Especially after Old School in 2003?
What's Wilson's best role besides Anchorman since that movie? 3:10 to Yuma? A multi-show appearance on That 70's Show?
Basically, who is advising Luke Wilson and why hasn't he fired them?
Also, who even thought to pitch Luke Wilson on being the AT&T spokesperson? I mean, honestly, how many names did they have to hit before they thought to call him? And then how shocked were they when he agreed to participate?
We need more details on this entire process, everyone who sees these commercials has no idea how they happened. I want to see the contract he signed.
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6. Ah, I see Fox has decided to debut the upskirt cheerleader cam starring the TCU cheerleaders.
Look, far be it from me to argue against the upskirt cam (especially given my Internet browsing history), but how awkward does this have to look if you're at the game? Some guy with a huge camera is on one knee, probably wearing shorts and knee pads, shooting straight up a cheerleader's skirt?
If you or I do that, we get tackled, put in jail, and charged with a sex crime. But if the FOX guy does it with a huge camera, it's acceptable behavior?
It pains me to say this, but I don't think so.
Anyway, props to FOX for being inventive and giving us the exact opposite moral perspective from the Tebow cam. By Thursday's game, I'm expecting for Fox to go back to Tebow, doubtless already doing ministry work in the Philippines, for a circumcision cam.
7. TCU's Andy Dalton is blindsided by Boise's Kyle Wilson on a corner blitz.
The hit is awful.
What's worse than the hit? Chris Myers reporting from the sideline that, "There's not a scratch on his red head."
As if red-headed men don't already have enough societal distaste to deal with. Hell, Chelsea Handler has made an entire career out of destroying men with red hair. Would Meyers have referenced any other hair color and made any other quarterback sound like he was 9 years old and just fell off his bike?
I don't think so.
So if you're Dalton, you get the crap knocked out of you, and then your hair color gets mocked?
At least the TCU pom squad loves you.
8. Does everyone agree that if you're male and capable of procreation you can't give the horned frog sign?
Yep, once you hit puberty you have to give the sign up. They have horn mitzvahs in Fort Worth. You go out in the backyard and metaphorically bury the horns.
The horned frogs cheer is the emoticon of fan cheering signals. You just can't do it.
9. TCU scores on a perfect pass to make it 10-7 just before the half.
Cameras cut to Myers where he is consoling Dalton for his red hair. "Come on, Big Red," Meyers says, "they have hair dye in Hollywood. Trust me, I know. How do you think my hair hasn't changed in 15 years? You can go dark."
10. Does TCU have the hottest student body on Earth?
Or did the FOX camera crew send 65 cameras to cover this game, 48 of which were to be exclusively focused on finding attractive women?
I'm picturing someone in the control booth saying, "Give me walking hotness."
And think about this, there are only 8,600 students on the entire campus. It's a private school.
Smoke jumpers, I tell you.
11. Boise State's nose tackle, No. 99, Michael Atkinson, is known as Canadian Bacon because he's 6-foot-1, weighs 332 pounds, and is from Windsor, Ontario.
That's the best nickname I've heard in years.
Maybe the best sports nickname ever.
I wish I knew a fat guy from Canada just so I could steal this nickname and pretend I'd come up with it on my own.
12. You want the exact opposite of the TCU pom squad? The girls at Boise State who are wearing some sort of orange latex sheen tops draped over one shoulder, with black choker necklaces.
They also have clear bras that are visible on the other shoulder, the one not draped in orange latex.
They look like party girls from 2084.
13. At long last, snagging offensive momentum, TCU pierces the Boise defense and surges inside the 20.
Boise is on their defensive heels, bedraggled and wiped out for the first time all game, it's time for the flying elbow from TCU to take control of this game once and for all.
So TCU goes for the jugular with ... double quarterback draws?
Seriously, double quarterback draws?
I can maybe see it once, but the double quarterback draw is inexcusable. Although, I would give anything for the transcript of the conversation that led to the double quarterback draw. You know it was grudgingly agreed too. Like when your buddy orders double whiskey shots after all of you are already wasted.
You think, "I don't know about this."
But then you get talked into it. "Come on, man, it's the perfect call. It will take us right over the edge. No more beers, I promise."
Then someone throws up immediately. Ten minutes later, one of your friends is passed out at a table and the other one is making out with one of the girls in the orange latex tops from Boise State.
That was this play call.
Predictably both quarterback draws combine to gain a yard and TCU throws underneath on third-and-nine for three more yards.
Andy Dalton is displaying an uncanny ability to throw two-yard out patterns on third-and-long. You really think those passes might be open? That the Boise defense might want you to throw the ball immediately to the first open receiver you see?
TCU kicks the field goal to tie the game at 10.
15. And then Boise is Boise. Or Chris Petersen is Chris Petersen. What a fake with nine minutes left!
On fourth-and-nine for 29 yards? With your punter throwing the pass in the face of an oncoming rush from your own 33?
Yep, Boise is so exciting they can make me use exclamation points! Petersen is the M. Night Shyamalan of the Fiesta Bowl.
You want a surprise ending? It's his signature move.
Of course it's great for now, but eventually it leads to Lady in the Water.
Anyway Boise scores on the drive to go up 17-10 with 7:21 left. On, of course, a flip into the end zone.
16. Later Boise buries TCU at the 1-yard line and intercepts another Dalton pass to end the game.
But not before Boise fans get very nervous that Dalton might find a way to tie the game.
17. How impressive has Boise's defensive coordinator, Justin Wilcox, been this season with time to prepare for Oregon and TCU?
He's held two of the nation's highest scoring offenses to eight and 10 points respectively. Oregon averaged 36 and TCU averaged 40 against everyone else. Since Oct. 17, TCU had scored 44, 38, 41, 55, 55, 45, and 51 points.
After losing its opener, no one kept Oregon under 24 in the regular season.
That's no coincidence. Boise's staff is pretty awesome, and not just Chris Petersen.
18. Time for some analysis, every offensive starter for Boise is back next year. And they averaged 44 points a game, tops in this nation, this year.
How highly does a team that has only lost one game in two years deserve to be ranked?
I think if Boise isn't ranked in the top four in the preseason, there's no point in having a poll.
In fact, I'd have them second. Right behind Alabama.
NEW ORLEANS -- On Friday afternoon, the first day of 2010, an artist named JT Maurer sits alongside Jackson Square in New Orleans's French Quarter. The skies are overcast. Sunlight occasionally spirals down on the milling tourists, illuminating the old gray stone sidewalk. Throngs of Florida and Cincinnati fans, in their requisite blue and red, swarm the old city. On the black iron bars that surround Jackson Square park, Maurer has placed his black charcoal paintings of famous figures for sale.
On the top row, from left to right, rest the following: Barack Obama, Tim Tebow, Jesus.
As the sun begins to decline over across the muddy Mississippi, and night comes on, Tim Tebow's college career still has 60 minutes left, a Sugar Bowl tilt against the Cincinnati Bearcats.
I ask Maurer how the $50 Tim Tebow paintings had been selling.
"Not that well," he says. "I haven't sold one yet. Most people are focused on drinking and they don't want to carry around a painting. Lots of people have stopped and looked, though. I think the Gators are upset about being here."
The only other football figure for sale is legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant.
"To tell you the truth," says Maurer, "I was kind of hoping Alabama was going to be here again. I was expecting it. Last year, I sold 11 Bear Bryant's to Alabama fans."
My wife stands alongside me. She speaks before I even say anything. "You are not," she says, "buying a picture of Tim Tebow."
Let me be clear, I love Tim Tebow because he is the most authentic figure in sports today. Maybe, in all of American public society. Too often our sports heroes like Tiger Woods or Mark McGwire are steeped in artificiality. The same is true of our political figures, our religious leaders, virtually everyone in the public arena today is selling us something that has nothing to do with reality. In an age when we crave authenticity more than any other trait, when our television shows seek to capture reality and when players, coaches, and everyone associated with them sells an artificial image of themselves, I love that Tebow is refreshingly honest, direct, disarming, a man in full.
I don't want to be sold a false image anymore.
And, what's more, I don't want a player to do or say something because he thinks I want to hear that. We've reached an era where player and coach answers are so cliched, they don't even realize that they're spouting cliches anymore. We've all seen athletes and coaches interviewed on television so many times that we know what's coming before it's even said; our athletes are all playing roles.
Tebow isn't playing a role.
Because his role isn't to be cool, or to be calculated, or to do anything like that, it's to be as real as real can be.
That's why no matter how many times Tim Tebow scored touchdowns against my team, no matter how many times he triumphed over other teams that I was rooting for, I don't want to see Tim Tebow leave college football.
Watching him play is too much fun.
As the Gators took the field on New Year's night 2010, come along for an italicized recap of the game interspersed with a retrospective of Tebow's career.
Call it Tebowiana.
1. Do you remember when we all watched Tebow play in the MTV reality show, Two-a-Days?
He was a top recruit then, a home-schooled lefty with a rocket arm. His team lost to Alabama's Hoover High School and a few months later Tebow spurned Mike Shula to join Urban Meyer's first full recruiting class.
Imagine how much the world of college football changes if Tebow picks Shula and Alabama. Is Shula still at Alabama?
Probably.
Forget two national titles, has Urban Meyer won a single national title at Florida?
Probably not.
The fine fault line between success and failure is exposed in that decision, the moment when Tebow first became a star.
Recall the Two-a-Days television conversation.
"Is he good?" a Hoover cheerleader asked.
"Yeah," the Hoover player said, "he's real good."
Indeed.
Kickoff arrives in New Orleans.
One play after Jeff Demps is carried off the field -- Cincinnati fans in front of me are chanting, "See you later, alligator" --Tebow hits Aaron Hernandez with the 19th touchdown pass of the season, and the 86th of this career.
Tebow is 7-for-7 on the first Gator drive.
2. Tebow and Verne Lundquist first became an item on a September night in Knoxville. A then-freshman Tebow came in for a fourth down conversion against the Vols.
The Gators trailed 20-14 in the fourth quarter. Tebow lined up under center.
Shotgun.
I was watching from a sports bar in Auburn, Ala., having just watched Auburn beat LSU 7-3.
"Are they really running him out of the shotgun?" my friend asked.
Yep, they were.
Tebow converted and celebrated on the field.
The Gators won 21-20.
Lose this game and not only do the Gators not play Ohio State for a national title, but they don't even win the SEC East.
On the second drive, Tebow uncorks an NFL-caliber pass down the seam. It's one of three more completions that Tebow has to begin 10-for-10 and give the Gators a 9-0 lead.
3. Then, later that freshman season, came the jump pass against LSU.
I was in Athens, Ga., getting ready for the night game between Georgia and Tennessee. The only thing that united Bulldog and Vol fans was rooting against SEC East foe Florida.
As Tebow threw his jump pass for a touchdown, the tailgate reaction was stunned silence.
Eventually, a Bulldog fan grabbed my arm. "Before he is done at Florida," said the Dawg, "Tim Tebow is going to be more hated in college football than Shane Battier."
In my column that debuted the term Tebow'd in October of 2006, I even wrote: "Here's a ClayNation prediction for you: By the time he's a senior [if he stays until he's a senior], Tebow is going to make J.J. Redick seem downright lovable in comparison."
But that never happened.
In fact, it never came close to happening.
Of course I also wrote then, "Urban Meyer has forbidden Tim Tebow from ever flexing both his biceps at the same time. The last time Tebow flexed, every coeds' top at the University of Florida miraculously rose at the exact same time. This caused two plane crashes, 96 fender benders and all classes were canceled at the university."
What I should have written was this, "When Tebow flexed, every coeds' top at the University of Florida miraculously rose at the exact same time ... and Tebow covered his eyes."
On the third drive, Tebow runs his streak of complete passes to 12, converts a fourth down on a shotgun draw, and tosses a perfect touchdown pass to Deonte Thompson. He's now 14-of-15 for 168 yards and two touchdowns.
4. Tebow converts on fourth down at The Swamp during Florida's 17-16 victory over South Carolina, and then heads out to The Swamp, the restaurant on University Avenue in Gainesville, for a postgame meal.
People forget once more what might have been. Lose that game against the Gamecocks and Meyer is 0-2 against Steve Spurrier.
Uneasy would lie the headset on the coaching crown.
Instead Tebow carries the Gators to victory.
That night, Tebow goes out for a post-midnight meal. Word spreads that Tebow is in The Swamp Restaurant and gives me the first indication of what it would have been like to see Elvis in his prime.
Tebow is in the building!
There's a rush to the second floor where an 19-year-old is having a meal. Or trying to have a meal. He's swarmed.
Just three months after turning 19, Tebow, wearing an oversized white shirt and jeans, is already a star.
Still more, Tebow leads the Gators to a fourth consecutive scoring drive and with seven minutes remaining the Gators are up 23-0.
Tebow's eye black? Ephesians 2:8-10
8For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9Not of works, lest any man should boast.
10For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. 5. Being e-mailed 14-million different attachments featuring Tebow wearing jorts.
It didn't matter that the picture was fake, it was everywhere.
Barry Bonds once said: If 70,000 people are willing to boo you, you must be good. Now it's time for the Tebow addendum, "If every Southern football fan has seen you photoshopped in jean shorts, you must be pretty good too." On their fifth possession of the half Tebow hits Riley Cooper for an 80-yard touchdown. Did you know that they are roommates? I'm told that Thom Brennanman shared the most overtold stat immediately on the Fox broadcast.
Somewhere Verne Lundquist chortled.
6. The next year, in early September, Tim Tebow was stopped by Ole Miss on a fourth down sneak and the Rebels stunned the Gators 31-30.
Lots of attention has come from the "promise speech" that Tebow made after the loss. That's always been secondary to me. Because I was more interested in the response across the SEC.
No one could believe that Tebow had been stopped on fourth-and-short.
What's more, the failure offered a more interesting narrative, a player challenged as opposed to a player who was always dominant. In responding to defeat, Tebow became more interesting than he ever was in victory.
Tebow goes over 300 yards passing, 320 to be exact, with three touchdowns and 28 yards rushing tossed in for good measure.
At the half.
If Florida leaves him in for the entire game, he'll pass for 500 yards.
7. The circumcision of Filipino boys is something only Tebow could pull off.
Yeah, it's absurd and funny. And something that you and I wouldn't do.
No matter what.
Why?
Because even if it's beneficial to someone, you and I aren't touching Filipino foreskin because we would get killed for it by friends.
Question: "Where'd Clay go on his vacation this year?"
Answer: "Oh, you know, he went and circumcised Filipino boys again."
Result: For the rest of my life I hear about this after any friend has more than a beer.
But Tebow?
He makes circumcising Filipino boys cool.
Okay, maybe even Tebow can't pull that off.
At the half Cincinnati has 55 total yards on 28 plays. Tebow has 348 total yards on just 31 plays.
Also at the half Ephesians 2: 8 10, what Tebow is wearing on his eyeblack, is the No. 2 search result on Google hot trends.
Travis has become enamored of several objects, phrases or events which he frequenly references in the column. Among the most frequent:
'Bama Bangs - a term coined by Travis to refer to southern men's hairstyles that feature prominent bangs for no apparent reason. Brodie Croyle and John Parker Wilson are oft-cited violators of 'Bama Bangs rules.
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When Clay Travis, acclaimed author of Dixieland Delight, decided to spend the 2008 season up close and personal with UT football, he—and every other college football aficionado—thought he was in for a rollicking ride with one of the leading contenders for the national title. After all, when the Vols kicked off the season on September 1, the defending SEC East champions were ranked 18th in the country. As head coach Phillip Fulmer prepared for the game, he reflected upon a coaching career that included an astounding 147 victories, two SEC championships, and a national title. With 34 years at UT under his belt as both a player and coach, the Tennessee native had just signed a contract extension that projected to keep him at the university long enough to become the winningest coach in program history.
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There is no college ball more passionate and competitive than football in the Southeastern Conference, where seven of the twelve schools boast stadiums bigger than any in the NFL and 6.5 million fans hit the road every year to hoot and holler their teams to victory.
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The newly favored man is not really a man at all, but a hairless, effeminate, germ-fearing, non-meat-eating, exfoliating, wristband-wearing woman of the worst order. We as men are told that we must embrace the sacred feminine in ourselves, even if it doesn't actually exist, and become the very quintessence of woman, plus penises. This situation is untenable. This trend must stop.
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Clay Travis is the only former student manager in the history of college athletics to marry an NFL cheerleader. He managed to pull this off despite an irrational affinity for the television shows Dawson's Creek and My Super Sweet 16. While being raised in Nashville, Tenn., Travis developed a healthy obsession with college sports and Alyssa Milano. As a teenager his greatest accomplishment was taking a doo-rag wearing Luke Duke (balling as Tom Wopat) to the hole at the Nashville YMCA.
In the midst of a stellar legal career during which he specialized in rewarding the unjust and punishing the oppressed, Travis began writing for CBS Sports's SPiN section in September 2005...
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