Saturday morning buffet

There’s always something to nosh on.

• Roy Kramer proposes a plus-one format that’s built to last:  “Using Kramer’s model in a 2011 plus-one, No. 1 LSU would have played No. 10 Wisconsin and No. 2 Oklahoma State would have faced No. 3 Oregon in the semifinals. No. 2 Alabama, No. 4 Stanford, No. 6 Arkansas, No. 7 Boise State, No. 8 Kansas State and No. 9 South Carolina all failed to win their conference. “  I didn’t say it would last long.
• The Texas Supreme Court shoots down Mike Leach’s appeal of his suit against Texas Tech on grounds of sovereign immunity.  Remind me again why a head coach would want to sign a contract with a state school that evidently isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
• The NCAA narrowly – and I mean narrowly – avoids having its new rule on multi-year scholarships overturned by its membership.  There’s a fault line opening up here worth keeping an eye on.  (And note the comment about the Department of Justice.)
• Mark Richt admits he’s checked out at least one football website.
• Kevin Sumlin kept one eye on the new SEC oversigning rule as he put together his first recruiting class at Texas A&M.
• Tennessee gets short shrift at the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game.  Not that the Vols haven’t necessarily earned it:  “The schools gave up home games in the hopes of getting primetime, big boy coverage on a major network.  Instead, the Vols and Wolfpack will serve as the hors d’oeuvre to the Tigers versus Tigers main course the following day.  It makes sense for the Chick-fil-A group and for the networks, but it’s a kick in the teeth for UT…”
• This seems a little over the top, Nick.

At Auburn, offense is nobody’s business.

Can somebody explain to me exactly what Gene Chizik was looking for in his offensive coordinator search?  Because whatever it was, this doesn’t sound like it.

… Not only does Loeffler have to figure out who’s who, he also needs to figure out what’s what. As in, who’s going to play quarterback and in what offensive scheme?

Because right now, even he doesn’t know.

No one does, really.

With only one year as a college coordinator, Loeffler doesn’t have a set style — a set scheme.

He’s multiple. He’s adaptable.

As a quarterbacks coach for most of his career, he’s had to learn how to teach other people’s systems — everywhere from Michigan to the NFL’s Detroit Lions to Florida and Tim Tebow and Urban Meyer.

Now at Auburn — with it being his show — he’s got plenty of talent and options to do just about anything he wants

And he’s going to explore them all.

So much so that he’s enlisting help from every coach in the offensive meeting room.

“At the end of the day, doing the job that I’m doing, it’s about the people around you,” Loeffler said. “We’ve got great coaches here. Like we said at the beginning, this isn’t my offense. This is going to be our staff’s offense and Auburn’s offense. Everyone’s going to have input and we’re going to develop this thing to do what’s best for our football team.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to come up with a plan that is best and that’s going to be established through every mind in that office.”

You think during his interview, Loeffler looked Chizik in the eye and said, “Coach, whatever we run, it won’t be my offense”?  (If he did, you hope Chizik had enough of a sense of humor to ask whose offense he would run and whether that guy would coach at Auburn for a lower salary.)

What’s weird about all this is that Chizik’s background is on defense.  You’d figure that he’d be more comfortable hiring a defensive coordinator who wouldn’t mind some input from the head guy and a coordinator for the offense to whom he could simply hand over the keys and walk away (analogous to what we think Richt does).  But BVG doesn’t strike me as a guy who needs a kibitzing head coach and if Loeffler is being allowed to wing it after only one year as a college coordinator… well, this is shaping up as an interesting year on the Plains.

Emerging from an athletic complex

Jimmy Williamson wants to make it clear that if anyone got caught pulling this kind of stunt inside Butts-Mehre, he would be so busted.