Kiffin watch: Trading places

I have no idea if this report is true, but Gawd, I hope it is:

… I now wholeheartedly believe that both Jim Cheyney (sic) and Lance Thompson have received inflammatory phone calls and text messages from Lane Kiffin and Coach O. Even Monte has gotten in on the act according to one of my sources. I did some digging yesterday and was told that late last week Coach O fired off an angry profanity laced call on one of the coaches voice mails that was saved and later played for an assemblage of coaches and support staff that greeted by laughter and cheering by those in the room. What is USC so upset about. That Tennessee would have the ‘guts’ to get this ‘improperly’ recruit USC juniors and seniors.

Poor babies.

Add in a little self-pity…

Alex reported that Kiffin said to Thompson ‘how could you do this to me. I gave you a break at UT. You can’t do this to me.’

The nerve of some people.

A couple of snide questions

Two things that don’t really have any linkage, except for the snotty attitude they generated from me when I read them:

I get the point Spurrier is making here in terms of South Carolina’s ability to compete for the elusive division title…

During April’s SEC coaches conference call, Spurrier stressed that while his Gamecock rosters will never totally stack up with the conference’s powerhouses’ rosters, he only has to find 35-45 great players at the top because you can only play 11 at a time. Has Spurrier assembled his 35-45 great players?

… but can’t Florida and Georgia find just as many great players, if not more, based on how well each has recruited?  That’s an awfully thin reed for the OBC to cling to.

And here’s a cool quote from Chris Brown that will no doubt resonate with the Mike Bobo bashers out there:

In Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Purloined Letter, a character recounts a story of a young man who excels at game called “odds and evens,” known somewhat more popularly now as “matching pennies.” The game is a two-strategy version of rock-paper-scissors: Each player secretly turns their coin to heads or tails and then both reveal their choices simultaneously. If the pennies match (both heads or both tails) then one player gets a dollar; if they do not then the other gets the dollar. As told in the story, the young man quickly sizes up his opponents, gains a psychological advantage, and amasses a fortune by outguessing his opponents.

I suppose all playcallers think themselves like the young man, but most are probably more similar to the suckers. But here’s the rub: The suckers could nullify the young man’s psychological advantage. How?

By choosing randomly. If the suckers put no thought into whether they chose heads or tails, they would do better than if they tried their best to out-think him. They would break even — a fantastic result against the world’s greatest matching pennies player, an unnatural genius who, according to the story, would go through lengthy Sherlock Holmsian deductions to determine if his opponent would choose heads or tails, and of course almost always guessed correctly.

This is a breath-taking result: you can nullify anyone’s advantage by picking randomly. But it is also scary — would I be better off picking my plays entirely randomly?

One question:  how well would that work if your quarterback is tipping plays out of shotgun formation?

Tuesday morning buffet

Dig in, folks.

• CFN takes an early look at the Georgia-Tennessee game.  I like UT’s defense (if it stays healthy) more and the Vols’ offensive line a lot less than does CFN, but it’s a pretty fair assessment overall.
• Football Outsiders (which now has a college page you should definitely bookmark) has started its preseason top 25 rankings, which are based on team strength and not where they think teams will finish.  What I like about their approach is that it gives weight to how a program has trended over the past five years; it’s a useful counterbalance to a lot of the analysis we see that tends to focus on the here and now.  Georgia shows up at #19 and it’s hard to argue with any of the fine points raised there.
• A look at Hayden Fry’s concept of feng shui for the visitor’s locker room at Kinnock Stadium.
• Somehow, I get the feeling that Southern Cal will be a much sought after dance partner for schools in the next two or three seasons.
• It’s hard to make Title IX and football work together.
• Are changes coming to the SEC this season?
• Luther Campbell sure seems to know a lot about what’s going on with Miami’s program.
• Bob Stoops confirms what we already know about the Nebraska-Oklahoma game:  it ain’t happening.
• Given his track record, it’s hard to believe that any school would ignore Craig James’ advice, but he’s got an especially appealing sales pitch for Arkansas to leave the SEC and join the Big XII:  “You’re right. You’re leaving the best conference in America…”

“The BCS isn’t about money.”

I could easily devote a thousand words to Andy Staples’ latest bout of silliness, but suffice it to say that in the wake of the tsunamis that have crashed against the business shore of college athletics in the last 12-18 months – the rapid increase in television moneys, the accompanying increase in coaching salaries, the expansion of March Madness and, of course, the recent bout of conference realignment – anyone complaining that power is an end and not a means for the suits running college sports while simultaneously extolling the virtues of Joe Barton, Orrin Hatch and Obama’s Justice Department (for each of whom political power is an end) has some serious issues with impartiality.

And the irony of this quote

Barton was trying to make a Constitutional point — that the executive branch didn’t have the power to coerce a private business to make such a payment…

shouldn’t be lost on anyone.  I hope Jim Delany gets to toss that back in Barton’s face at a hearing one day.

Addicted to cupcakes

Kansas State’s Bill Snyder is so hooked on weak scheduling that he’s proposing the Big XII go to two five-school divisions with a championship game.  Read the details; they’re embarrassing.