Things are about to get a little bit tougher for Conference USA:

Old Dominion and the other 13 Conference USA schools apparently will have to make do with about $500,000 less in television revenue next season.

League TV revenue is likely to fall by about half when new contracts with Fox Sports and the CBS Sports Network take effect July 1, according to sources at three schools familiar with C-USA’s TV contract negotiations.

The two networks paid the league more than $14 million per year – about $1.17 million per school – for the past six years. Although the new contracts haven’t been finalized, negotiations are nearing completion, sources said.

This is only the third time in history that a conference has been offered a pay cut. The two previous cases, the American Athletic Conference and the WAC, involved conferences that lost their marquee teams. As was the case here. However, losing your prize teams historically has not been enough. In the early aughts, Conference USA lost Army, TCU, Louisville, Cincinnati, and South Florida only to see their TV deal increase anyway. The Big 12 has lost four programs, gained two, and is making as much as they ever have. The Mountain West Conference lost its big three programs (TCU, BYU, and Utah) and got a nice raise in their last set of negotiations.

What has, thus far, prevented conferences from losing TV money, has been a combination of bringing new schools on board with comparable value and the general escalation of college sports TV contracts. The Mountain West Conference, for instance, was coming off a contract in which their product had been seriously undervalued long-term contract. Conference USA previously had replaced the five losses with six solid additions. In each case, they probably would have made even more had they not been pilfered, but the difference was not enough to negatively effect their bottom line.

There were some indications that this might be coming down the pike. Conference USA had been the marquee product for CBS Sports Network, but since the last realignment the network seems to have been uninterested in showing their games above and beyond their contractual requirements. The Liberty Bowl, the home of Conference USA’s champion since the inception of the conference in 1996, dropped them (though it looked like that might have happened anyway). Rice started flirting with the MWC, despite the closest team to them in that conference being almost 1,000 miles away. And Marshall, which I will get to below.

So what changed for Conference USA? That’s an important question because of what it means for the other conferences.

It is entirely possible that their lost value was mostly a product of being unable to stock with better schools. That was what had happened with the WAC, for example, when it lost Fresno State, Boise State, and Nevada and only had two FCS promotions (Texas State and UTSA) to show for it. And here, Conference USA lost the upper-half of its conference. There were five programs in Conference USA that had a winning conference record, and four of them left the conference. There were six programs that had ever made it to a conference championship, and five of those were among the departures. The hope for Conference USA was that they would be able to claim in markets (by adding the San Antonio, Nashville, Charlotte, Norfolk, Miami, and Boca Raton markets) what they lost in competition. The problem is that the schools that they added were from the WAC (the same WAC that just had their TV deal cut dramatically) and the Sun Belt, which has a TV deal so bad that they lose money on it. Those programs did not suddenly become more valuable in a new conference. If that’s what’s going on.

An alternative explanation is the change in dynamics in the relationship between conferences in college football. The top five conferences (the Power Five) now have more autonomy than they used to, and the gap between how much revenue they bring in compared to their lower cousins (the Group of Five) has never been wider. The implementation of a playoff system which the G5 conferences may be locked out of has also had an effect. On the flipside, however, all of the G5 conferences have more access to major bowl games as they are (collectively) guaranteed one every year. As much as the lost programs, it was a change in status that caused the American Athletic Conference – from being considered among the “P6” at the time to now being one of the G5) to lose money on their new TV deal. While there has been no official change in designation for Conference USA, the new system may have changed their relevence.

If the G5 programs are locked out of the playoffs, what do they have to play for? In what way are they relevent to viewers? The answer is the ability to get into that good (“NY6”) bowl game. But Conference USA may be virtually locked out of that, too. There is one spot for five conference, and Conference USA is roughly third in the G5 pecking order. That may or may not be a big deal depending on the size of the gap between them and the first two (American Athletic Conference and Mountain West Conference). If 2014 was any indication, though, the gap is pretty significant. Going into Week Fifteen of that season, Marshall was 11-0 with some pretty impressive margins-of-victory. They scored more than forty points in nine of games, allowed less than twenty in nine of them, and won by three or more touchdowns in eight of them. And yet the playoff committee had them ranked below Boise State, which had two losses.

The main reason for their low ranking was Marshall’s lackluster schedule. What’s less clear is what aspect of their scheduling was hurting them. If it was their out-of-conference scheduling, that’s one thing because in the future they could try to schedule better opponents. But if it was their conference schedule, that’s not going to change any time soon and that is a burden shared by everyone in their conference, which bodes ill for all of them. If it requires more than two extra wins to get that NY6 slot than a rival in the Mountain West Conference (which, for reference sake, makes $1.7m per year per team), or presumably the American Athletic Conference (which makes $2.1m/yr/team), that would mean that they are virtually shut out not only of the playoffs, but a major bowl game. That makes it harder for the networks to get people to watch. In fact, that there are two conferences below them in the pecking order would mean that there are only two semi-relevant G5 conferences left.

Notably, the Mid-American Conference, theoretically one level below Conference USA in the pecking order, signed a TV deal with ESPN just last year worth roughly the same amount as Conference USA’s contract (a very significant upgrade from their previous contract, which was almost as bad as the Sun Belt’s). That suggests there may no longer be separation between Conference USA and the MAC, and the only separation that matters is between the the top two of the G5 and the remaining three and that TV deals are about to be flattened to reflect this. It also means that if they lose any more programs, they won’t be able to grab any MAC schools like Northern Illinois or Toledo (both of which are allegedly looking to move).

Or it could be a sign of very tough things to come not just for Conference USA, but for all of the G5 and perhaps even the P5 conferences as well. It may be the leading indicator that the bubble is bursting, and the spigot is coming off. Which, in turn, would mean that even though they have not yet faced any defections, when it comes time to renegotiate the American Athletic Conference and Mountain West Conference may be in for a rude surprise. The same could even be true of the ACC and Big 12. It is at least plausible that these gigantic TV contracts are a result of a cable model that is imploding around them. If that’s the case, that could spell trouble for almost everybody.

The AAC and MWC seem especially vulnerable, because they are not enough of a draw to produce their own network. (The same may be true of the Mountain West, but I haven’t seen them.) But that’s not going to do them a lot of good if there aren’t bidders. The major conferences, at least, can threaten to start their own networks or to push more content there. How serious that threat is will vary from conference to conference, however, and right now ESPN and Fox are paying a lot for each viewer (something on the order of twice as much as for each MWC viewer, and three times as much for each AAC viewer).

I didn’t intend to shoot two music video posts today, but given the givens, I can’t not put up this one. Especially since, after having been taken offline, it’s apparently back:

Madonna’s video for Take a Bow is one of the all-time greats:

It puts a cool spin on the story of the song. It’s sensual without being pornographic (walking the line, anyway). A more obvious take might have been Madonna as Marilyn Monroe to a politician or somesuch. Which makes this more creative and memorable.

There was a follow-up to the video featuring the same bullfighter (Emilio Munoz):

Not quite as good, but still a good companion with the first. I’m not sure about Munoz’s acting abilities, but his wooden manner worked really well for this particular part.

It’s something of a controversial topic, but I pretty much understand why college football coaches are paid what they are, as they coach athletes who are not paid money. I think it would be better for college football if it were limited in some way, but the big fish don’t want that and they get what they want. And so teams outbid one another for the best and most desirable coaches, and that makes complete sense to me.

Where I do find myself baffled, though, is when schools seem to pay coaches a lot of money because… well, for no reason that I can discern. Tennessee’s coach Butch Jones, for example, is a part of the four million dollar club. Jones isn’t a bad coach, but it wasn’t like anyone else was beating down their door to hire him. Nor did it especially look like he was thinking of retiring or taking some time off and so they had to pay him more to keep him going. Nor does it seem likely that they would not be able to replace him if he did go. But they paid him the money… just because, as near as I can tell.

Another example is in South Carolina. South Carolina had reached an arrangement with Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez that was quite generous. But Rodriguez had a job where he seemed reasonably satisfied that paid him well. He had been fielding other offers. He failed at Michigan, but succeeded at both West Virginia and Arizona. He was something of a hot commodity. Three million dollars doesn’t seem out of line. At the last minute, though, Rodriguez decided that he wanted to stay in Tucson. Hey, it happens. South Carolina immediately hired Auburn defensive coordinator and former Florida coach Will Muschamp.

What really surprises me is that they offered him the exact same deal they’d offered to Rodriguez. Unlike Rodriguez, Muschamp did not have a sitting head coaching job that he needed to be pried away from. Nor had he been mentioned for other openings. He did not succeed at the only head coaching job he’s ever had. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he is a bad choice, but it does seem to me that giving him the opportunity at another chance at being a head coach in the SEC is a form of compensation in and of itself. They’re taking a chance on him in a way that they weren’t with Rodriguez. There is no real reason that they should be paid the same. The three million dollars paid for, in part, the idea that Rodriguez was a reasonably safe hire (as far as such hires go).

Southern Tech did this as well, a hire or two back. It was an internal hire, which is fine. It was someone that hadn’t really been on anybody’s radar, though, which was questionable. But one of the thoughts I had when we hired him was “Well, at least we should be able to get by paying him less so that he can hire better assistants. Nope! We paid him about 10% less than the successful outgoing coach. He ended up hiring assistants on the cheap, and we got what we paid for.

An interesting video on misheard lyrics:

I remember the days before the Internet when you couldn’t just look lyrics up. One of the advantages to buying a CD was when you got the lyrics in the sleeve. I also remember the disappointment of buying a CD only to discover that there were no lyrics in the sleeve.

A result of that is that wrong lyrics would become etched into your brain, to the point that hearing the right lyrics makes it wrong. Indeed, sometimes I prefer the wrong lyric. When They Might Be Giants sang “Everybody dies twisted inside and that is beautiful” I thought that was a great line. Everybody dying “frustrated and sad” is… okay. I guess.

Explaining pre-Internet existence to Lain is going to be really, really difficult.

You never know how much truth there is to a story like this:

Nothing can deter Tim Tebow from his very public vow of chastity-not even a former Miss Universe.

According to New York Daily News, the Mile-High Messiah has been ditched by his girlfriend of late, the perilously alluring Olivia Culpo. While most men would kill for a shot in the dark with the 2012 Miss Universe, Tebow wasn’t fazed.

Sources say that he stuck to his guns and refused advances made by Culpo, whose taut physique and stunning face are apparently no match for the glory of abstinence. The sultry pageant winner called it quits after two months, when she realized she was fighting an unwinnable battle.

One can easily imagine that these sources are from Tebow’s PR department. He has a lot invested in his religiosity. Or it could, you know, be true. Even before I read it in the (lefty-left) comment section of Unfogged, I said to myself “I’ll bet people think he’s gay.”

Now, as a general thing, people do choose to be virgins until they’re married. Among the highly religious, as many as one in five do, compared to 3% of the general populace. Of course, many will dismiss that as a bunch of losers who couldn’t get laid if they wanted to. Whatever else one might say about him, Tebow has opportunity. To the point that if he’s not actually having sex, he’s paying an opportunity cost far in excess to the average person. So he must be running a con, right?

My guess is not. Or, if he has had sex, he is being really sparing about it. Because otherwise… I suspect we would have heard about it. Some woman somewhere along the way who felt more jilted than interested in protecting her reputation would have spilled the beans.

That was my take on AC Green, too, when that was a story. It takes a lot of gumption to loudly proclaim your virginity when there are people out there who know different.

To the extent that it is true, it’s hard not to admire his restraint. And there are reasons to wait even apart from religiosity. But it does seem to take some pretty strong religion. And even then, most fail.

I tend not to be of the mind that there are too many bowl games, but this year is really testing my patience. Even with my invitationals idea, I am not a fan of 5-7 teams having a post-season. I’m not especially in favor of 6-6 teams. It is a problem that you don’t always know how many teams are going to be bowl eligible, of course. Last year Texas State got burned and this year 5-7 teams are in. The ACC is advocating moving the cut-off to 7 wins with only enough 6-6 teams to fill remaining slots. That seems fair.

The second problem with this bowl season is that the Arizona Bowl will include two teams from the same conference and the Mountain West Conference is irate about it. Understandably so. The NCAA ruled that not only could 5-7 teams go to bowl games, but they would be able to go to their conference’s bowl games instead of being put in a “You’re lucky you’re going bowl game at all” pool. It is another instance of favoritism towards the major conferences at the expense of conferences like the MWC, though the odd thing is that the NCAA had decided not to play favorites when it came to which 5-7 teams could go bowling at all.

The bowl-conference arrangements are the biggest problem with my Invitationals idea, because the bowls have a lot riding on which teams will be showing and a 5-7 Texas is likely to make them more money than a 9-2 Toledo. Which makes doing things by merit difficult.

—

The Mountain West Conference has also made the news by contemplating an expansion, specifically with Rice and UTEP. My initial thought was that Rice seemed like a pretty decent idea for the MWC but a bad deal for Rice, but everyone is telling me that I am wrong.

I don’t think it would be a bad idea for Rice if they went with some other schools, but with only UTEP (800+ miles away) they are off on their own island. Rice has a decent brand, but relatively little following. It would be incredibly easy for them to drop off the map entirely. So while Rice would give the conference ammunition in their next TV deal and some academic prestige and adding two schools would allow the conference to put Boise State in the west, Rice would run a serious risk of sinking further into oblivion. Rice’s apparent interest, it seemed to me, was the frustration of being left behind during the last realignment when their peers (SMU, Tulsa, and Tulane) and their cross-town rival (Houston) all moved on while they were left behind. That sort of frustration can lead schools to believe that they have to do something even if that something is unwise.

However, cruising the message boards it’s pretty much the opposite. UTEP fans desperately want in (which is no surprise), Rice fans really like the idea, and MWC seem pretty staunchly against any expansion that doesn’t include either BYU or Houston. And to the extent that they are okay with expansion, they like UTEP a lot more than Rice. Which makes sense given the geography (El Paso being closer to San Diego than Houston) and history, I guess, but UTEP is a wreck right now and Rice+UTSA would actually make more sense. For Rice’s part, their fans really are desperate to escape their conference. For that matter, fans on Louisiana Tech’s message board want to go with them.

And after being told how wrong I am repeatedly, I’m coming around to the idea that it’s a good deal for Rice. So the ball would be in the MWC’s court.

—

It was sure looking like BYU was going to get the coach it wants in Navy’s Ken Niumatalolo. I’m not sure I remember the last time I’ve seen a coach speak publicly as glowingly as Niumatalolo speaks of the BYU job. But he declined. Apparently, BYU wanted him to abandon the offense that had lead to his success.

—

Bret Beliema is the worst. Over and over again, the worst.

—

Mark Richt really challenged my theory about fired coaches. As soon as Georgia canned him, his phone was seemingly ringing off the hook. The funny thing is that it wasn’t an especially curious fire. Richt had been underperforming at Georgia for years and years. On the other hand, that actually makes my theory less applicable to it. That Richt was fired for underperforming, and not for being a difficult person that the school was looking for a reason to fire instead of a reason to keep, it’s not surprising he had some good offers. None, though, as good as the one he was just fired from. It will be interesting to see how well he does at Miami, where (despite his being an alum) there may be a bit of a culture clash.

—

Former USC coach Steve Sarkisian really needs to keep his head low right now, sober up, and wait for a job to open up at Fresno State in a couple years.

—

I’m kind of jazzed about the Celebration Bowl, which will be the matchup between Alcorn State and North Carolina A&T of the SWAC and MEAC respectively, which are the two HBCU conferences. I mentioned a month ago that I wish they’d do something like this, not realizing they’d actually lined it up. (I never expect them to do what I think will be a good idea. Now I wish that the Ivy and Patriot Leagues would do something similar.

Looper says that a Krypton TV show is doomed to failure because:

1. Prequels are inherently pointless
2. We already had 10 years of a dumb Superman prequel called Smallville
3. Its connections to the DC Universe are weak, at best
4. Krypton is literally the least interesting part about Superman
5. Spoiler Alert: Krypton explodes!

I pretty strongly disagree. Given that three of the five objections are objections to prequels, though, that might be the main source of the disagreement. I think knowing where something is headed can make something more enjoyable, as you watch it unfold. It requires a different sort of storytelling, but that Krypton explodes is no more spoilery than that Oliver Queen will find his way out of his current predicament, whatever it is. The only difference is whether it is explicit about knowing the ending, and being explicit can open narrative doors. The story is how you get there, not where you get.

Is Krypton the least interesting thing about Superman? I tend to think that Superman himself is the least interesting thing about Superman. Metropolis is interesting, the Daily Planet is interesting, and even Clark Kent is interesting. Superman himself is pretty inherently dull. This is why Superman is best used as an ancillary character in someone else’s story. Krypton has the advantage of being relatively uncharted territory. It’s more of a blank slate, apart from comics.

I do think the lack of tie-in with the DC Universe can be potentially troublesome. Not because it needs to be, but because there is always the tendency of writers to try to create tie-ins. Arrow and The Flash are replete with examples of using existing other characters just because they can. Sometimes it is used to good effect, but other times it creates problems because when they later have an actual use for the character, they’ve already burned it. So when they need Black Canary, they have to start with someone that isn’t Dinah Laurel Lance.

This was a huge problem in Hawkworld, a comic book series that was meant to be a prequel to Hawkman. The story featured future Hawkman Katar Hol as a police officer on Thanagar. Except that they wanted to be able to do crossovers, so they fiddled with continuity to such a degree that they never really recovered from it. The existing Katar Hol on earth was changed to a Thanagarian spy. It was a real stretch and Hawkman became notorious as having the worst continuity this side of Power Girl.

But on the whole, I think it can work artistically if not commercially. If that’s the case, it’ll be a lot like Caprica, the prequel to Battlestar Galactica which which Krypton would share a great deal in common. Or maybe it will suck artistically, with Krypton’s fall being an over-the-top metaphor with what the writers think is wrong with the Earth. I worry about that a lot more than I do already knowing the ending.

BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall is headed to Virginia. A lot of people are surprised by this because they thought Mendenhall was a Cougar lifer, but I’m not. He’d been saying for a few years now how BYU had better get into a Power 5 Conference. People scratched their head wondering why Mendenhall thought he was in the position to tell the Power 5 conferences what to do, but I thought at the time that his comments were never directed at the P5 conferences but rather BYU officials. The “Or what?” is that he would leave. Which is what happened.

The Salt Lake Tribune has an article on Mendenhall’s potential replacements, and the prospects are kind of underwhelming:

Only one certainly exists when it comes to compiling the list of coaches in the pool to replace Bronco Mendenhall, the BYU football coach who stunningly resigned on Friday afternoon to take the head position across the country at the University of Virginia.

It’s a very short list.

Because the new coach at BYU will have to be a member in good standing of the church that owns and operates BYU, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is as shallow a candidate pool for a Division I coaching job as any in the country.

Because BYU is a private institution not subject to open-records laws, Mendenhall’s salary at BYU is not known. He signed a five-year contract with Virginia on Friday that will pay him $3.25 million annually.

Suffice it to say, the new BYU coach will make substantially less — probably in the $1 million range.

If that’s the pay range, it’s going to make a difficult search even moreso. The only really good candidate is Ken Niumatalolo of Navy. Niumatalolo was mentioned for some reasonably big openings this year (Iowa State most prominently). He either likes Navy or is was passed over, but if he likes Navy then leaving is going to need to be worth his while. He’s paid $1.7m a year at Navy. And even then, he might be more interested in a real Power 5 job, and Navy is probably a better platform from which to make that move. I could be wrong, depending on his level of devoutness, but he’s the only allstar choice.

The Mormon limitation may be understandable, but is pretty constricting. The first two names that came to my mind don’t seem to apply. The first is Washington State’s Mike Leach, who is Mormon and allegedly looking for greener pastures. But from what I’ve been able to gather, he’s… lost his temple recommend. The other, Steve Kragthorpe, is a former head coach at Tulsa and Louisville whose father was a BYU coach (and Kragthorpe is a Mormon name). Turns out, the “health problems” I remember him having that lead to him backing away from a coordinator job was Parkinsons. And he apparently left the church at some point anyway.

So now what? In addition to the Mormon limitation, BYU is a tricky job and I am pretty sure that’s a big part of why Mendenhall left. Going independent in football was a good move in some respects. They got a good TV deal worth good money and rebroadcast rights. They aren’t stuck in a conference with San Jose State and midnight games in Hawaii. But from a coach’s perspective, it has its problems.

The biggest is that it puts the team in a box. If Navy goes undefeated, they almost get invited to a New Years Six bowl game. If BYU goes undefeated, they might get that invite but it’s far from clear. There is no provision for independents. They could get an at-large bid, but only if their schedule warrants it. Unfortunately, scheduling as an independent is tough and BYU has had pretty limited success in getting games against marquee opponents. They’re doing the best they can, but after the first few weeks most programs are playing conference games and they have to go out of their way to schedule BYU. It’s so tough that even Notre Dame had to enter a scheduling agreement with their non-FB conference (BYU’s non-FB conference, the West Coast Conference, doesn’t sponsor football). By and large, their schedule is more analogous to that of an ambitious G5 program (like Boise State) than that of a power player.

Added to that, being without a conference means they have to make their own bowl arrangements. Which means that on any given year, as soon as they are bowl eligible they know where they are playing around Christmas. There are no conference or division races to look forward to. There are no conference championship games to look forward to. Win six, go to a mid-tier bowl, year in and year out. That’s their life now.

I can understand why that would dampen the enthusiasm of a coach to what is otherwise a very attractive program that draws crowds of 60,000 a game, has great television exposure, and with the exception of their conference and schedule situation are a power program. But that conference and schedule situation…

Given the dearth of Mormon candidates, maybe the impact this time around is limited. They need to start evaluating their options, though, and that means more than waiting for the P5 conference invite they are due but are not apparently going to be recieving any time soon. They left the Mountain West for a couple of reasons, one of which was the conference’s TV contract. The MWC’s new TV contract is better, and given that both the MWC and BYU contracts are handled by ESPN there may be some wiggle room. The second is the conference’s loss of prestige after the other major programs (TCU and Utah) left or were leaving. There is no easy solution to that one.

They could, at least, attempt to bolster their schedule by entering into a scheduling arrangement with one of the top two G5 conferences, the Mountain West Conference and the American Athletic Conference. The upper crest of each would probably be happy to play home-and-homes with BYU and their conference offices would probably be glad to accommodate. They should even be able to get in on their bowl packages. The Mountain West Conference is right in their regional blueprint, but there may be bad blood there (there certainly was when they left, but we may be at the bygones stage) that they don’t have with the American Athletic Conference. Either way, it should be something to consider.

It could all be moot in a few years. If the Big 12 gets raided again, BYU would be a candidate (though from what I’ve heard, the conference is more likely to expand further eastward). The American Athletic Conference could try another westward push (more on this later). The Pac-12 could get raided in a western push by the Big Ten and need to restock. But none of these are things to be relied upon. None seem especially likely, and only the first is even on the radar. But if their next coach is successful, and they want to keep him, they may have to donate almost all of the extra proceeds from their TV contract to make it happen.

-{Flags}-

A little while ago, Southern Tech played Utica in a game that came down to the final minutes. Going in to half-time, it looked like Utica was going to win but we had a blockbuster third quarter where a fluke play (a ball bouncing off one of our players and into a defender’s hands) prevented us from putting the game away.

One of the events of the third quarter were a string of Utica penalties to our benefit. Only to our marginal benefit, however. Because when you’re near the endzone, as we were, “half the distance to the goal” only does so much. So they got a pass interference penalty, followed by Utica objections, followed by more Utica objections, followed by the Utica coach coming out on the field. And an automatic The penalties, however, took the ball from the 8 to the four, the four to the two, and the two to the one. The ref was absolutely exasperated as he outlined all of the events.

Given that these (except possibly the first one) these were penalty-penalties, it seems weird to me that there’s nothing they can do but mark off some inches on fifteen yard penalties.

-{Saved!}-

So Les Miles was supposed to be fired from LSU and wasn’t. So instead of writing about how difficult it is for him to find work, I’m left writing about… what? Well, mostly why the firing didn’t occur. The main answer is fan support. The victory over Texas A&M that precipitated the reversal was good but nothing special. What was notable was the overwhelming support that seemed to be coming from LSU fans. I have some connections with the school, some people on my Twitter feed, and so on. The desire that he be kept around was nigh-universal.

The only one of the coaches I listed in the previous post who meets that criteria (including Solich and Cristobal, who I mention but don’t get into it) was Mike Leach. I scanned the Texas Tech message boards after his termination and eventually they just had to close of all conversations on the topic because Tuberville was their new coach and it was time to move on. It was starting to shape up like this was going to be one of those situations.

Despite an aversion to firing successful coaches, I was ambivalent about the direction that LSU appeared to be headed. Which is to say that I am less impressed with Miles’ performance than many Tiger fans (which perhaps affected my view of his prospects). He won championships, but he took over a championship program. And some of it was watching him back in his days at Oklahoma State, where Big 12 fans will probably always see him as the goober on the Cowboy sidelines. But it was hard to argue with his record and while his act may have worn thin with admin, the fans it certainly hasn’t with the fans.

So now instead of Miles looking for work, it looks like it might be Joe Alleva, the athletic director, who will be looking for a new job since. It’s hard to overstate the embarrassment this sort of thing causes. I had assumed, on some level, that there had been more fan discontent than existed. Which was maybe their assumption, too (or maybe not, as some reports indicate that the leaks were to try to build support for his ouster). But even if we share the assumption, it’s not my job to understand fan sentiment.

-{Rivalries}-

LSU will be hosting Texas A&M this weekend. An LSU-A&M rivalry seems like something that was meant to be, but the chances of them playing one another every Thanksgiving are remote. Why? LSU wants a home game. It’s the same situation as the University of Texas, which alternates Thanksgiving games between Texas Tech and TCU so that they can play at home every year. This is dumb. The games are what you make of them, and if you’re relegating potential rivalries to Just Another Home Game status, that’s kind of what they become.

In my mind, there is rarely an excuse not to have a designated opponent in the final week. It doesn’t even need to be your primary rival. It can be an opportunity to create a new one. Southern Tech consistently played a particular team towards the end of the season and as both teams had a good streak, it took on increased importance. Despite the schools having little in common but being in the EMC-South, a little rivalry developed (at least in my mind). That’s how it should be.

-{Awkward}-

Memphis head coach Justin Fuente has been hired by Virginia Tech. This was announced at half-time of the Memphis game. That sounds awkward. Fuente will be making less money at Virginia Tech than Memphis was prepared to offer, and he had to agree to keep the current coach’s coordinators. He must have wanted out of Memphis very, very badly.

-{BYU}-

Watching the game between BYU and Utah State, the announcers repeatedly referred to them as arch-rivals. When BYU left the Mountain West Conference to become independent, I don’t think an archrivalry with Utah State was what they had in mind.

-{Thankfully Screwed}-

I thought of this immediately after the game before seeing this article, but sometimes a blown call works in your favor. With little time left, a Notre Dame touchdown that shouldn’t have been a touchdown inexplicably wasn’t called back. In all likelihood, that saved Stanford’s game because it gave them time on the clock to score a last second field goal.

Got outflanked by a dude who eats grass and is unsure how clocks work. Happens pic.twitter.com/NNeDjV4N9l

— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) November 29, 2015