“Yeah, it’s Tennessee. That’s the way it is sometimes.”

This explains a lot about the Vol fan base.  What else is there to add?

Why so gloomy, Gus?

Man, I’m having a harder time deciding which of these posts is a bigger buzzkill:  Matt Hinton’s requiem to the 2009 season (in Week 11!) or Paul’s early Miss Manners’ warning to the idiots in our midst.

Gee whiz, guys, don’t we poor schmucks get a chance to see how things play out?

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UPDATE: Shorter Year2 – a 2-team playoff (actually 3-team, if you count the SECCG) is reponsible for making this regular season boring, which is why we need a bigger playoff.

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I can’t wait to hear the next Li’l Wayne rap.

This should blow Junior’s street cred through the roof.

Those are some of the crown jewels from his last recruiting class, too.

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UPDATE: I guess this FanPost at Rocky Top Talk is due a new entry or two.  Nice header, though.

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UPDATE #2: Nice catch by Matt Hinton – “As of roughly 2 a.m. today, though — just hours after boasting about the Vols’ perfectly clean arrest record since his arrival…”

The punch line?

Orgeron deals a lot with team discipline.  “We’ve had zero arrests in now 11 months here.”

If Junior’s not responsible, is it still part of the plan?

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UPDATE: #3: Now that I think about it, this joke was inevitable.  (h/t Groo)

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UPDATE #4: Leave it to Bruce Feldman to tie the perfect bow on the box.

… It’s bad all around for UT. The fact that this all happened as a gas station, and involved Nuke Richardson is surreal considering it ties together two of Kiffin’s biggest off-season rants (South Carolina/Alshon Jeffrey and Florida.} It’s like Curb Your Enthusism meets Cops.

Head and Shoulders really works! At least the ads do.

Mike Bobo knows a playa when he sees one.  Even if he can’t recall (or pronounce) his name.

“Stereotypical safeties are a little bigger, but I don’t think size dictates what kind of player you are,” he said. “You look in the NFL, and there are 5-9 and 5-10 safeties. I was watching the guy (Troy Polamalu) from the Steelers the other night. I can’t pronounce his name — the one with the hair.

“If you’re a player you’re a player, and that guy is not afraid to make plays.”

Or get in touch with his softer side.

That's one badass curling iron there. (photo courtesy Head and Shoulders)

The best things in life are free.

If you haven’t been reading the series in USA Today on the escalating costs associated with coaches’ salaries, you should.  It costs money to have a winning program, and it costs more money to keep a winning program together.

When you’ve got Wake Forest – Wake Forest! – having to defend itself on what it pays Jim Grobe, that should give you an idea of where things have gotten.

The reason I mention this is because if you’re one who believes there’s substance to the rumor mongering that currently engulfs the Dawgnation regarding the fate of certain assistant coaches, you’d best realize that bringing in a high-profile assistant or assistants won’t be cheap.  And while Georgia certainly hasn’t stinted on what it pays Mark Richt, it’s fair to characterize the level of compensation directed to its assistant coaches as strictly middle of the pack by SEC standards.  There’s also Georgia’s reluctance to offer multi-year contracts to its assistants to consider, something that’s becoming commonplace elsewhere around the conference.

In other words, if changes are coming, they’re going to be sea changes in how the athletic department has done business since the dawn of time.  Do Damon Evans and Michael Adams strike you as the kind of folks who are ready to make those kinds of changes?  I’m not being snarky when I ask that – I honestly don’t know.  But be aware that it won’t be Mark Richt alone who is likely to face a tough call about where to go with the coaching staff in this offseason.

Echo chamber

Sigh.  Another national piece about problems at you-know-where.

Dumb penalties. Dropped passes. Receivers giving up on routes. Turnovers. No ranking. Four losses.

Oops.  Different you-know-where.

… Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops is largely in uncharted territory in his 11th season with the Sooners, one marred by all those problems and a rash of devastating injuries.

Like many coaches, Stoops considers discipline and hard work to be the cornerstones of his program. And he hasn’t seen enough of either one from his team to overcome the adversity.

Blame the coaches for failing to teach the players that discipline or blame the players for failing to put in the hard work.

Or, Stoops says, point fingers at both.

“Criticize us because ultimately we’ve got to get them to do it right,” Stoops said. “In the end, it’s always the two of you. End of story. It’ll be that way until they quit playing football.”

More than a failure to evaluate talent – the Sooners have still been pulling in some of the top-rated recruiting classes in the nation – Stoops admits he and his staff may have misjudged some players’ willingness to put in their best effort…

Georgia and Oklahoma have the makings of a good bowl game matchup, no?

Mike Slive, Rogers Redding and “the best officiating in the country”

Forget about the gag rule nonsense for a minute, as well as the conspiracy shuffle.  The Birmingham News’ Jon Solomon asks the question that Mike Slive ought to be asking right now – and getting answered:  Is SEC putting officials in best position to make calls?

Check out a few of the facts that Solomon drops in his piece.

For all of the justified criticism directed at instant replay official Gerald Hodges for not awarding an interception to LSU’s Patrick Peterson against Alabama, the fact is the play was originally side judge Dean Waite’s call to make… Waite is in his first year in the SEC after working in the Sun Belt last year.

Steve Shaw, who has worked six BCS bowl games and is widely considered one of the best referees in the country, has disap­peared from high-profile SEC games. So has linesman Lane Thomas, who is also well re­spected.

Most conferences, including the SEC, use retired officials on instant replay. They retired from the field for various reasons – sometimes because they’re no longer what they used to be.

The SEC office reported its 2007-08 expenses totaled $153,967,658, including payouts to all 12 schools. Of that amount, $737,904 went to officiating and umpires in all sports, down 21 per­cent from two years earlier.

It’s hard to believe that the conference can’t do better than this.

Then again, when you listen to Mike Slive’s Otter-like defense of the status quo…

“In the context of this conversation, it may sound incongruous but we do have as good officiating as there is in the country,” he said. “The difficulty is there’s a tendency to extrapolate from some highly visible calls to denigrate the entire officiating program.”

… maybe it’s not so hard.

The secret to comedy is timing.

Michael Elkon’s sarcastic header (“Notre Dame Lost! Let’s All Overreact!”) kinda resonated with me – until I read about Corwin Brown’s overreaction to Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo’s postgame comments about the Irish defensive game plan.  Those guys are losing it.

I’m officially off the fence now.  Charlie Weis must stay.  He’s working on becoming the most embarrassing hire in Notre Dame history.  And considering said history includes George O’Leary and Gerry Faust, that’s saying a lot.