Kiffin watch: Et tu, Barkley?

Shorter Matt Barkley:  the biggest regret about my senior season was not letting my teammates know I thought the head coach was a dick.

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The Evil Genius vs. Mickey

Boy, talk about not having a dog in this fight.  Although I imagine the suits at ESPN had a nice chuckle over Spurrier’s empty Fox Sports threat.

I’m a little disappointed that Spurrier didn’t take a shot at Junior by name, though.

Sunday morning buffet

Grab a plate and indulge yourself.

• Ted Roof is planning on running more of the same, except he’ll be doing it with Tech’s 3-4 personnel.  It’s Mike Bobo’s wet dream.
• Alabama public officials get the best of both worlds – no season ticket expenses and no secondary market premium prices, either.  Nice work if you can get it.  (And no, I doubt Alabama is only place where this happens.)
• Trust us, Jesus wants you to use this deer antler shit.
• One thing about any possible Big 12-SEC scheduling partnership – if you’re Mike Slive, it’s a nice negotiating tactic to throw out as an alternative to a ninth conference game.
• Okay, so now Junior admits he made mistakes at Tennessee.  Was that part of the plan?
• Seth Emerson looks at the recruiting services’ rankings systems and thinks the stars are aligning more properly.
• “LSU is known nationally as a football team, not as an institution of higher learning.”

Everybody haz a sad.

Just wondering – who should we feel more sorry for this morning, Manti “Lennay Kekua affected my performance in the BCS National Championship Game against Alabama” Te’o or Lane “my last season made Georgia’s 2008 season seem fulfilling by comparison” Kiffin?

Thursday morning buffet

Take a plate and keep moving.

• Groo makes some good points that in retrospect, Georgia’s schedule wasn’t as weak as many insist it was.
• John Pennington reminds us what a Vegas line really is.
• USA Today makes a projection about how much SEC revenues are about to jump.  (Hint:  a lot.)
• Did a brawl break out in Southern Cal’s locker room after the embarrassing loss to Georgia Tech?  I hope so.
• It sounds like Tajh Boyd and Aaron Murray are ready to get it on.
• Latest Harris Poll sampling sports fans favorites shows a slight downtick in support for college football.
• Believe it or not, somebody said this yesterday:  “To get a quality coach like John L. Smith, we’re very fortunate.”

Kiffin watch, math iz harrd edition

In his defense, Junior’s been dealt a hard hand to play with the effect of the NCAA sanctions on USC’s roster numbers.  But he knew the job was difficult when he fell into took it.  So nobody’s going to feel sorry for him if he gets his hand burned from being a little too aggressive massaging the offers.

Which is what’s happened.

Defensive end Kylie Fitts, a four-star recruit Rivals ranked seventh nationally at his position, was committed to USC and took extra high school classes so he could graduate early and enroll at the university in January.

Fitts talked to a couple USC coaches at the U.S. Army All-American Bowl on Jan. 5 and they said they were ready to have him on campus. But the following Monday, he received a call saying his scholarship was no longer available for the spring semester.

Fitts was supposed to be on campus on Jan. 10.

The Trojans didn’t pull his scholarship entirely, but deferred him to the fall because they didn’t have a scholarship freed up from a graduating senior like they thought they would. However, since Fitts had already graduated high school, he had nowhere to go and didn’t want to wait.

There’s something remarkable going on here.  It’s not a case of a coach pulling the plug on a marginal kid – Fitts is highly ranked, isn’t injured and doesn’t have academic concerns.  The Laner just thought Fitts was so awed by the idea of playing for him that he’d put his life on hold for a few months.  Maybe that approach would have more sway if USC was coming off a big bowl win, or an appearance in a BCS game, but unfortunately for Kiffin, a Sun Bowl loss to Georgia Tech lacks a certain cachet.

Fitts’ high school coach is even less enamored of Junior than Fitts is, judging by this:

When people are desperate, their true colors show. Take the USC coach, captain of an underachieving ship. His true color: SHADY! #goKylie—
Kurt Bruich (@CoachBruich) January 11, 2013

Hey, when Junior gets canned at USC and jumps back to an NFL head coaching slot a couple of weeks later, he’ll remind us it’s all part of the plan.

Kiffin watch: stylin’

This.

Does Lane Kiffin realize how he looks with that hood and sunglasses. Something tells me he does. #sunbowl—
frederick slominski (@norcalvol) December 31, 2012

General roundup here.

When a pompous force meets a narcissitic object…

You try to put the Laner and the Genius together in the same place, something like this seems almost inevitable.

Friday morning buffet

A little heavy on the SECCG servings, but I doubt you’ll mind.

• Scarbinsky points out that most SEC title games haven’t been particularly close.
• NCAA gives Georgia Tech a waiver so the Jackets can fight for the right to go 6-8.
• CFN goes with the upset tomorrow.
• As expected, Junior throws Daddy under the bus, which is kind of ironic since Daddy was the bus that got the Laner on the gravy train to start with.
• I’d like to know who said this and why:  “This will not be the same Georgia team in this game,” said one SEC coach.
• You gotta love the BCA’s grading system:  “Texas A&M, even though it hired Sumlin, was the only FBS school to receive an F because it did not participate in the study.”
• Too bad Alabama doesn’t blitz much.
• Gentry Estes, who has a unique perspective after spending the past few seasons as a beat writer in Tuscaloosa and Athens, compares the personalities of Nick Saban and Mark Richt in this story.

Can I just say, 2012 season, I lurve you?

I mean, skip the obvious for a minute.  How can you not love a season that has Gator fans hanging their hats on Junior and watching him inevitably come up short?  (Should I even bother to mention that a four-team playoff would have made the agony moot?  Consider it mentioned.)

The only thing that could have made it better would have been for Corch to have something to do with it.  Maybe next year.