The Larry King-ish Stream of Consciousness Column for 10/26

In this edition of the LKSOC you’ll learn how to tell your ass from a hole in the ground, read about a cowbell conundrum and meet the world’s most dangerous pepper:

◊ Another season of painful irrelevance for Notre Dame

Here’s a great little factoid you can share with your friends and relatives: After last Saturday’s 35-17 victory, Navy has won 3 of the last 4 against Notre Dame after losing its previous 43 vs. the Irish dating back to 1964.

Think about that for a second.  Even in the darkest days of the Gerry friggin’ Faust regime, Notre Dame still found a way to beat Navy.  Hell, even if you include the 18-17 nail biter back in ‘84, Faust beat Navy by an average score of 30-11 in his five games against them as Notre Dame’s coach.

Now, the more knuckleheaded of you out there will probably counter that this is a pretty good Navy team under the direction of Ken Niumatalolo.  You’ll also offer up Midshipman quarterback Ricky Dobbs as one of the more under-appreciated talents currently toiling in college football.

I won’t disagree with any of that, but at the end of the day, it’s still NAVY.  An undersized team from a Service Academy shouldn’t be whipping a team that has its own television contract and recent recruiting classes that were pretty highly regarded by multiple scouting sites.  Hell, even Georgia Southern held Navy to 13 points earlier this season.

Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly is in his first year on the job, so I understand he needs to be cut a little slack.  After all, it took him a couple of years to whip Central Michigan into shape.  But did anyone think his first Irish team would be sitting at 4-4 with a pretty solid shot at finishing 6-6?   I sure didn’t.

Adding to Kelly’s woes is the fact that at least one of his players decided to be a world class a-hole during that loss to Navy.  In the video below, pay close attention to #56, Irish linebacker Kerry Neal:

Remember what an unruly douchebag Lou Holtz became back in ‘91 when Huntley Bakich started fighting with a Michigan State player after the whistle blew?  Bakich’s indiscretion didn’t just result in a personal foul penalty, it also resulted in Holtz leading him toward the bench by his facemask and giving him one of the greatest in-game dress downs ever caught on film (YouTube has most everything else, but not that one).

Kelly took no such action with Neal, maybe because he didn’t see the incident or maybe because Neal wasn’t whistled for a penalty on the play.  But if Kelly doesn’t give that kid the business this week in practice, then he and Notre Dame deserve to wallow around in the putrid stench of mediocrity that’s settled on the program.

Oh, and leave it to one of the least accomplished football writers on the interwebs to miss a dirty play even after IT’S PUT IN SLOW MOTION.  Fox’s Lisa Horne weighed in on the video above with the following:

Geez, Lisa, you can’t be a homer for both Southern Cal AND Notre Dame, that’s just insane.  But all that aside, let me help you figure out how to assess the obvious by recommending the following book:

◊ The great cowbell compromise is at an end

The SEC banned the ringing of cowbells at league stadiums way back in 1974.  But the rule really only applied to Mississippi State, where the practice had been a decades long tradition.

I can only assume the action was taken because Bear Bryant bitched about it.  I bet the ringing sound in his ears reminded him too much of the hundreds of Sunday morning hangovers he’d endured dating back to his days at Maryland.

Well, despite the rule, the practice pretty much continued on unabated until this year, when the SEC said in June, “Remember that cowbell stuff from 1974?  Let’s revisit that.”  I don’t recall the ringing of cowbells at Mississippi State home games having been a hot button issue, but who knows, maybe they had run out of things to talk about at the SEC summer meetings.

The Great Cowbell Compromise of 2010 basically said that Bulldog fans could ring them before the game, at halftime, during timeouts and after scores.  But c’mon, if you’ve gone to the trouble of sneaking a cowbell into a game, are you really going to adhere to those rules?  If it was me, I would ring it continuously as if I had a Salvation Army donation kettle next to me.

Now that Mississippi State fans have apparently violated the Great Cowbell Compromise of 2010, the league is threatening to get tough:

The Southeastern Conference has told MSU officials of violations of legislation the school introduced in June that allows cowbells to be used during certain times during games at Scott Field.

The SEC is expected to levy financial penalties against MSU at the end of the year, MSU athletic director Scott Stricklin said.

Stricklin says fans “have not managed it right to this point,” when discussing cowbell etiquette during MSU’s first two SEC home games.

The fine structure penalizes MSU $5,000 for the first offense, $25,000 for the second offense and $50,000 for the third offense. (Jackson Clarion-Ledger)

Am I the only one who finds the term “cowbell etiquette” to be absolutely hilarious?  In closing, because it’s an unwritten rule that any story related to cowbells in any way must reference a certain SNL skit, here goes:

◊ Going DEEP into the depth chart

What does a team do when it loses its top three quarterbacks to injury?  In the case of Richmond, you trot out an 18-year old true freshman who’s at the school because a former NBA player recommended it to him.

The quarterback in question is Montel White, who also played basketball last year at Surry County High School with Johnny Newman Jr.  It was the senior Newman, a Richmond grad whose NBA career spanned an impressive 16 seasons with multiple teams, who strongly recommended his alma mater to White after hearing the school was recruiting him.

Most of the other schools pursuing him backed off when White suffered a right knee injury while making a tackle as a safety.   But Richmond persisted and he signed his letter of intent with the school this past February.  With USC transfer Aaron Corp and the experienced John Laub ahead of him on the quarterback depth chart, White settled in to what appeared would be an uneventful season as a fourth stringer.

However, when the guys ahead of him started falling like flies, White was forced to start two Saturdays ago on the road at UMass. For the first 58 minutes of that contest, he attempted exactly one pass that really wasn’t a pass at all.  It came when White lateraled the ball out of bounds to avoid being sacked.

But with 1:51 left and his team down by a 10-5 count, White did what appeared to be unthinkable to that point: he completed a pass.  And then another.  By the time the drive was over, he’d found Tre Gray in the end zone for a 15-yard touchdown pass with only nine ticks remaining.  Richmond pulled out an 11-10 win on a drive in which White completed 4-of-5 passes after not having attempted a legitimate one the entire game.

This past Saturday, he got the call again and led Richmond to a 28-6 homecoming win over Towson. While his throwing stats weren’t impressive (6-of-10, 73 yards and 1 TD), the number that most matters is his 2-0 record as a starter.

It’s unclear at this point whether Richmond coach Latrell Scott will have third string quarterback Nick Hicks available for this week’s Colonial tilt with Villanova.  Hicks has been nursing a concussion since a 17-0 loss to New Hampshire on October 9.  But if White does get the call and leads Richmond to victory, he’ll pretty much become a cult hero to Spider fans.

◊ Why’d you have to throw it at THAT guy?

As a Bears fan, it pained me to no end to watch Jay Cutler throw four interceptions in that 17-14 loss to Washington this past Sunday.  But you know what made it hurt just a little more?  The fact that all of those picks went to that insufferable shit DeAngelo Hall.

I would rather be strapped to a chair Clockwork Orange style and be forced to watch Darrell Green’s punt return TD against the Bears in the ‘87 playoff loss on a continuous loop than have to watch another replay of any of Hall’s picks.  Thanks a bunch, Jay.

In case you don’t recall, Green tore rib cartilage on that return…and stayed in the game. I tend to forget what a stud that guy was.

◊ My bout against the ghost pepper will take place this week

Late in the summer, I planted some ghost pepper seeds in a container to see what the fuss is all about. Despite some cold nights, I’ve got two of these bastards that are almost ripe. But I’m still not sure if I should even try to add these to my chili recipe. Watch this and you’ll understand my trepidation:

Bobby Johnson has had it with the foozball

When a college football coach resigns less than two months before the season opener, he’s either sick, been caught doing something bad or he’s very fed up. In the case of Vanderbilt’s Bobby Johnson, who hung up his whistle today, he’s a choir boy who’s got a clean bill of health.

That leaves only one reason why Johnson called it quits out of the clear blue…the dude has had it. Can you blame him?

He was a respectable 60-36 in eight seasons at Furman, but you can pretty much flip those numbers to get his totals for the last eight years at Vanderbilt: 29-66. At this point in his career, the guy was probably as frazzled as Coach Klein was at South Central Louisiana State before Bobby Boucher showed up.

Vanderbilt’s always been the exception in the SEC, and not just by being the league’s only private institution.  They’ve made the conscious choice to stay the league’s academic flagship instead of throwing a ton of resources into athletics.  Hell, the school doesn’t even have an athletic department, all the teams operate in the division of student life.

I’m not going to knock Vanderbilt’s approach because the powers that be at the school are more than satisfied with the current setup.  Hey, whatever blows your hair back, people.

But for a football coach who has to operate with stricter academic standards than his conference brethren, the job isn’t very easy.  And I haven’t even touched on the superior facilities and legions of wealthy boosters that serve to further widen the gap between the rest of the SEC and Vandy.

For the last eight seasons, Bobby Johnson pretty much got his skull caved in by the rest of the league.  Oh, there were a few bright spots provided by guys like Jay Cutler and Earl Bennett.  But Vanderbilt never did shed its bottom feeder status under his watch.  When you work your tail off and can’t make any headway, that gets old pretty fast.

So have a great retirement, Coach Johnson.  You put eight years into one of the toughest jobs in college football.