The Larry King-ish Stream of Consciousness Column for 10/5

In this edition of the LKSOC…Vince Dooley takes bad parenting to a new level, Boise State gets leapfrogged and I start to feel old:

◊ Vince Dooley, be a good father and admit you want Tennessee to kick Georgia’s ass

I found the following quotes from former Georgia coach/AD Vince Dooley regarding this week’s Tennessee-Georgia game to be very interesting:

“It’s family first, but I’m certainly not going to be pulling for my son in Sanford Stadium,” he said.

The coach acknowledged it will be strange hoping Tennessee defeats his beloved Bulldogs, although his affections have their limits.

“You don’t all of a sudden love that ugly orange,” he said. “I don’t. But I have a great appreciation for the fans.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Please Vince, spare us the politically correct, gotta-play-to-the-UGa-homers bullshit. Your S-O-N Derek is coaching the University of Tennessee. You know, the product of your loins who has a chance to carry on the family name in the sport of college football long after you’re gone.

Just why are you showing so much loyalty to the school whose president, Michael Adams, repaid all your years of service by bouncing your ass onto the street?  And besides, it’s not like you got your degree there, you’re an Auburn grad.

I bet you’re being the better man by telling the AJC that crap.  Deep down inside, you want a Tennessee team that just missed upsetting LSU to come into Sanford Stadium and stomp a mudhole in Georgia’s ass.  I know you do.

◊ Boise State gets leapfrogged sooner than I thought they would

Look, we all knew it was going to happen, that some team would put together a decent string of wins and take away that third spot in the polls from Boise State, no matter what Boise State did on the field.  I just thought it would take a few more weeks than it actually did.

Following a 52-31 win over Stanford, Oregon is the team that got enough love to bump Boise State down a notch in the polls.  You know, the same Oregon program that’s not that far removed from getting beat by Boise State (that was on September 3, 2009).

I find it a little curious that Oregon got that much credit for being Stanford.  While I love the job that Jim Harbaugh has done there by getting a lot of mileage out of a throwback style of football, at the end of the day, it’s still friggin’ Stanford.  In terms of overall talent and number of signature wins, it’s a program that’s still lacking.

What did Boise State itself do to deserve its poll demotion?  Well, pretty much nothing.   They beat WAC rival New Mexico State by a 59-0 count.  You know, the way a good team is supposed to do when faced with inferior opposition.  The Boise State naysayers can crow all they want, but I guarantee you that if the Broncos and Ducks hooked up right now, the Broncos would win by double digits…just like last season.

◊ Just a moment on baseball, because it is October, after all

Here’s another reason why the Baltimore Orioles are now commonly referred to as “the once proud Baltimore Orioles”:

Brian Roberts knocked himself out of the Baltimore Orioles’ lineup. Literally.

The veteran second baseman explained Monday that he missed the last six games of the season for concussion-like symptoms after hitting himself in the helmet with a bat.

Roberts, who missed much of the season with injuries, thinks it happened last Monday, after a ninth-inning strikeout against the Tampa Bay Rays.

“In frustration [after a strikeout], I whacked myself on the head with my bat in the ninth. I had my helmet on,” Roberts told reporters. “It’s something I’ve done a million times, but I still can’t tell you for sure if that was it. But that’s the only thing that I can point to because that night and the next morning, I just didn’t feel good. So it’s been going on since then.” (ESPN.com)

The dude gave HIMSELF a concussion, how blessed is that?  I bet he subconsciously did so to miss playing in yet another string of meaningless season ending games for Baltimore.  If Major League Baseball is a pair of Jim Palmer’s Jockey underwear, then the O’s are pretty much an ill-timed shart.

◊ The Not-So-Great Wall of Chicago

Speaking of things that can give you a concussion, how about that Chicago Bear offensive line?  In the highest rated NFL regular season prime time game in quite some time, the Bear front wall allowed New York Giant defenders to accumulate what seemed like 58 sacks (it was actually 10).

The Giants knocked Jay Cutler out of the game with a concussion and then damn near killed Todd Collins after that.  No joke, for a few seconds I thought Collins was dead.  Following the game, a revised list of America’s most dangerous occupations was released, it goes as follows:

1. Coal miner
2. U.S. soldier
3. Detroit police officer
4. Chicago Bears quarterback

That’s why I found the following tweet from former Illinois quarterback Juice Williams to be so damn funny:

If Juice does get the call and actually does see the field, he’ll get MANY chances to show off his mobility.

◊ A tweet that probably made Dickie V. crap his pants…

No announcer/analyst/studio host sticks his nose further up the backsides of more college basketball coaches than Dick Vitale.  Of course Stuart Scott is every bit the brownnoser as Dickie V., but Stu prefers the ass cracks of NBA’ers and NFL’ers.

With that in mind, here’s a tweet from Kentucky coach John Calipari that probably sent Vitale into spastic convulsions of glee.  Unlike other college coaches who pretty much roll their eyes at the guy, Calipari actually shows Vitale some love here:

As a result of this, do you have any idea how much on-air love Dickie V. will show Calipari now?  I suspect we’ll get nuggets like “NCAA titles don’t matter, baby, John Calipari is the greatest coach ever!” and “The NCAA should be ashamed of itself for the Enes Kanter witch hunt!”

◊ …while Malcolm Delaney’s tweet makes me feel so white

Staying on the Twitter vibe, I came across the following tweet from injured Virginia Tech basketball player J.T. Thompson.  First, let me provide some background: this is Thompson re-tweeting something initially posted by his teammate, Malcolm Delaney.  The “#TTTT” hash tag  refers to “To Tell the Truth Tuesday.”  Here’s Delaney dropping his truth:

I am going to be brutally honest here…it took me a few minutes to decipher what the hell his tweet meant, but I think I’ve got it.  Basically, what Delaney is saying is that no African-America male will marry a woman who was already attached when he met her.  Or something like that.

Yup, it’s days like these when I just don’t feel as hip as I used to.  I’ve reached that special age that Chris Rock spoke about, when a man really isn’t old, he’s just too old to be in the club.

◊ San Diego State is having a solid season so far

Try this one on for size: San Diego State is 3-1 and really should be 4-0.  Yup, if it hadn’t been for that monumentally boneheaded defensive screw up in the last minute at Missouri, the Aztecs would have a perfect record.

I’ll tell you what I love about the job head coach Brady Hoke is doing: his team is strong in the kicking game.  Kicker Abel Perez is the current MWC leader in kickoffs for touchback with 11 and the Aztecs lead the conference in net punting (40.8 avg.).

Also, San Diego State leads the MWC and is 7th nationally in total offense at 509.5 ypg.  A good chunk of that yardage is being put up by freshman running back Ronnie Hillman, who’s run for 532 yards and 8 touchdowns so far in what could be shaping up to be a 1,400 yard/17 touchdown type of season for him.

As SDSU prepares for its road game with BYU, what you’ve got is a pretty dramatic shift from recent history: the Aztecs are currently on the board as 5.5-point favorites.  Of course that’s a function of how far the fortunes of BYU football have fallen this season, but don’t discount SDSU.  If they take care of business in Provo, the schedule lays out well for them.  The Aztecs could be 8-1 going into a November 13 trip to TCU.

The Larry King-ish Stream of Consciousness Column for 9/28

In this edition of the LKSOC…Notre Dame can’t stop anybody, the Segway guy meets his end on a Segway and the new Terry Dean:

◊ The generosity of the Irish

Notre Dame has played three teams this season that are currently ranked (Michigan, Michigan State and Stanford). In those contests, the Irish rolled up an extremely robust 1,347 combined yards of total offense (449 ypg). What do they have to show for that fine body of offensive work? An 0-3 record in those games.

That’s because Notre Dame hasn’t come close to stopping any of the aforementioned teams. Total yards per game allowed against that trio? 471. Total yards per play given up to those same teams? A brutal 6.0 per snap.

It’s the same old same old in regard to Brian Kelly-coached teams playing ranked opposition. Last season, his Cincinnati Bearcats averaged 447.5 ypg of total offense against three ranked opponents but also yielded 472.7 ypg in those same games.  To take the next step, Kelly’s got to figure out how to slow down good teams.

◊ Who NOT to hug after a big win

Word of advice to Auburn quarterback Cameron Newton…after winning a big game, try to refrain from hugging the referee like you did as the clock ran down to 0:00 in your team’s 35-27 victory over South Carolina.  It just looks, well, sort of odd:

◊ I know why the caged Stephen Garcia sings

When does one generation end and the next one begin?  I ask this because we’re not that far removed from Steve Spurrier tossing Terry Dean aside in favor of Danny Wuerrfel.  So is it too soon to call Stephen Garcia this generation’s Terry Dean?  Or should I just call him Terry Dean Part 2?

This past Saturday, Garcia looked pretty damn masterful in leading South Carolina to a 20-7 lead over Auburn.  But after he caught a case of the fumbles that Auburn took advantage of, Spurrier yanked him in favor of true freshman Connor Shaw.  Of course Shaw proceeded to throw two interceptions, because that’s what a wet behind the ears kid does when he’s thrown into the fire that way.

The funny thing is, the move was such a head scratcher that a friend of mine who was surfing multiple games texted me to ask how Garcia got hurt.  You know, because that’s the only logical reason why a true freshman would have replaced him at that point in the game.  My reply?  “Hurt?  No, Garcia just got Terry Deaned.”

Jesus, OBC, I know you were pissed at Garcia, but in lieu of taking it out on him the way you did, why not wait until the next practice to scream at him in front of the team?  Instead, you chose to take away your team’s best chance to win a meaningful SEC road game.

I know people want to knock the production of Spurrier’s quarterbacks at South Carolina and imply that means that the studs he had at Florida were infinitely better.  While that’s true to a point, I also think defenses back in the 1990’s were slightly less evolved than they are now.  Back then, a Spurrier quarterback could just throw the skinny post at will.  Today, they just can’t, and the last person who seems to understand that is Steve Spurrier.

In regard to Dean, here’s a fascinating quote from Spurrier from 1994:

“I’ve done a lousy job coaching Terry Dean, and I felt like at this time Danny deserved a chance to be our player based on performance,” coach Steve Spurrier said Tuesday.  “I just haven’t been able to get Terry to play the way I’d like him to. I just haven’t done a very good job preparing him.” (Orlando Sentinel)

If Shaw assumes the starting quarterback job on a full-time basis, expect a very similar quote from the OBC in about a month regarding Garcia.

◊ Would this be like Burger King’s CEO choking to death on a Whopper?

Talk about a screwed up way to meet your end: Jimi Heselden, the owner of the company that manufactures Segways, died after driving his own personal Segway over a cliff.  This picture from the Daily Mail provides all the details you need to know:

◊ A big road test = a first for an awful lot of Volunteer players

As if you need any more proof that Tennessee’s football program is essentially starting over from scratch, Volunteer coach Derek Dooley dropped the following nugget concerning his team’s trip to LSU this coming Saturday:

“The bigger challenge besides that is it’s going to be the first road game for almost half of our travel squad. I think I counted about 30 guys out of the – we’ll probably travel 66 to 68 guys — 30 of them have never even been on a road trip at Tennessee. So we’ll have to talk a lot about that and how we handle it professionally and how we handle the crowd, and a hostile environment. So a lot of challenges this week.” (Chattanoogan.com)

◊ The Big 12 race is interesting again…maybe

This Thursday night’s contest between Texas A&M and Oklahoma State is mighty intriguing on a couple of levels.  First off, if you like points, this one should have plenty of them: OSU is currently first nationally in total offense (596 ypg) while Texas A&M checks in at #10 (501.3 ypg).

The second is that the Big 12 is suddenly a helluva lot more wide open than it initially appeared to be.  With Texas getting kicked in the teeth by UCLA, Oklahoma not exactly looking invincible and Nebraska looking to be very good but not quite great, who’s to say an A&M or OSU couldn’t make this thing very interesting by season’s end?  Hell, even K-State is 4-0 right now.

A road win over OSU might give Mike Sherman the in with Aggie fans that he’s so desperately wanted.  Is it just me, or have they wanted him fired since BEFORE he was actually hired?  It’s hard to tell who Aggie fans dislike more, Sherman or Mack Brown.

As for Oklahoma State, how about the season Brandon Weedon’s been having at quarterback?  I know, I know, there are 6-A schools in Texas high school football that have played a tougher schedule to this point, but try to turn your nose down for just a second and give the kid a break.  He’s averaging 325 ypg passing on 9.7 yards an attempt, and unlike Houston’s Case Keenum, Weedon doesn’t keep throwing it to the other team.

◊ Calipari’s silly excuses

Here is an excerpt of John Calipari’s interview with Jon Soloman of the Birmingham News this week:

Calipari suggested Kentucky lost to West Virginia in the Elite Eight last season in part because the Wildcats were looking ahead to Duke in the Final Four.

“Do you know how badly we wanted to play Duke?” Calipari said. “I think that’s why we played so badly against West Virginia. We wanted Duke so badly we couldn’t see straight.”

Kentucky shot 4 of 32 on 3-pointers in the loss to West Virginia. (Birmingham News)

That’s a pretty good excuse…except for the fact that at the time of his own team’s loss, Duke hadn’t played Baylor yet in its own regional final.  Kind of hard to look ahead to playing a team that hasn’t yet advanced.

◊ This and that

LSU is apparently staying with Jordan Jefferson at quarterback.  Yeah, as if there’s a more attractive option on the depth chart…Talk about a couple of teams that dodged bullets this past Saturday: UCF had Kansas State dead to rights before losing, and UAB was shoveling dirt on Tennessee’s coffin before letting that one slip away…Speaking of ones that got away, what a couple of batshit stupid 4th quarter throws by Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett in his team’s narrow loss to top ranked Alabama.  Heisman my ass…Because no intraconference play has yet to begin in the Big East, the overall records of its teams are used to sort them out in the standings.  So as of right now, Syracuse sits atop the league at 3-1 while Cincinnati is 1-3 and in last place.  It’s still VERY early, but what a difference a season makes.

Derek Dooley is playing a dangerous game with Bryce Brown

When Bryce Brown was the #1 recruit in the nation coming out of Wichita in 2009, you just knew his college ride wouldn’t be a smooth one.  Back then, his street agent Brian Butler actually implied he might advise Brown to skip college altogether and play in the Canadian Football League.  Nah, that shouldn’t have sent up red flags to anyone.

Butler’s basically a college football version of Sonny Vaccaro, meaning that he’s a slimeball of the highest order.  The guy actually sold updates of Brown’s recruitment for $59 a year.  And I’m sure he cashed in many other ways as well when he was shopping his prized blue chipper around to colleges.

Brown settled on Tennessee as his college choice, and if you pay any attention at all to college football, it’s been a pretty tumultuous year for that program.  Between the player arrests and the sudden defection of Lane Kiffin, there’s been more heartache than glee lately in Volunteer Nation.

So with the hiring of Derek Dooley as the new coach, everyone is hoping for a fresh start.  That includes Bryce Brown, but the fresh start he’s looking for is back at Kansas State.  Brown let Dooley know about his decision to transfer to Manhattan, but he did it via text message this past Tuesday night before heading back to Wichita.  Way to man up, Bryce.

Dooley has now confirmed that he hasn’t granted Brown a release and apparently doesn’t intend to do so. Here’s the rationale he provided to Austin Ward of the Knoxville News Sentinel:

Citing three main areas of evaluation, Vols coach Derek Dooley confirmed late Friday night that Brown will not be released from his scholarship - and the fact his request was made in a text message appears to have little to do with the ultimate decision.

“As with the other players who have asked for a release, I went through the same process with the same criteria with Bryce,” Dooley said. “These are the three key factors - what their personal investment into the program was, did they have their heart into it and did they give it a good, fair shot. No. 2, the harm that their departure creates for the organization. No. 3, how they handle it as a professional.

“I’ve done that with every one of these guys — with Aaron (Douglas), with Todd Campbell, with Nick Stephens, Nick Lamaison and now Bryce. So now my decision based on those three factors with Bryce is not to release him.” (Knoxville News Sentinel)

In a meeting with Dooley a few days before sending his now infamous text message, Brown apparently didn’t hint at wanting his release.  All parties involved (including Brown’s father Arthur) agree on that:

“Bryce met with Coach Dooley on Saturday for about 30 minutes and Dooley asked him not to tell anyone they talked,” Arthur Brown said. “I’m really not sure why.”

Dooley acknowleged he met with Brown on Saturday but said he was not asked for a release.

Arthur Brown also said his son, one of the nation’s top recruits entering last season, did not ask Dooley for a release at that meeting. This week Dooley said that the reason Bryce has not been released is because he “has not come to me, looked me in the eye and said, ‘I want a release.’” (ESPN.com)

I’m absolutely positive that the moves Bryce Brown has made this past week were in large part influenced by Brian Butler.  And the train wreck that has ensued says all you need to know about Butler’s ability as an adviser as well as the Brown family’s collective judgment in steering Bryce in the right direction.

Brown should have stepped up, met with his coach and politely asked for his release.  But after years of being a coddled blue chipper whose strings are being pulled by a two bit con man, I wonder if he even has the capability to do something that classy.  That might be asking too much of the kid.

On the flip side, I think Dooley’s playing a dangerous game.  Let’s not be naive, Butler was selling Brown’s services in 2009.  So when Brown ended up at Tennessee, well, I’ll let you fill in the rest.

If Kiffin and Company found out a way to make it worth Butler’s while to get Brown to become a Vol, then Dooley really should sever ties as quickly as possible.  If this drags out and Brown gets frustrated, who knows what sort of information regarding his recruitment might come to light.

If something were to surface, the NCAA won’t nail Kiffin because he’s already long gone.  And Brown?  He’ll just go about his business at K-State.  No, it’ll be Dooley who has to deal with the wreckage in Knoxville.  Smarten up, coach.