Catching up is dangerous in the locker room

Penn State has some issues: This is clearly not the worst thing that's happened at Penn State this season but is still pretty problematic:

Starting quarterback Matt McGloin was injured Saturday following practice after getting into a scuffle with wide receiver Curtis Drake at the Lasch Football Building.

Punches were thrown. McGloin slipped to the ground and hit his head after being punched by Drake, sources told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

McGloin's father, Paul, said his son suffered a seizure and has a possible concussion but was back at his apartment Saturday night after being treated at Mount Nittany Medical Center.

The fight was allegedly some sort of carryover thing from practice earlier in the day; how exactly it got to the point it did hasn't been clarified, although McGloin took responsibility Monday:

"I started it, but as a quarterback for this university, I should be held to a higher standard. It should not have happened. I should've walked away from it."

McGloin is officially listed as "questionable" for the TicketCity Bowl, which is unfortunate since he pretty well solidified himself as the starter over the last month of the season by being decent. Rob Bolden was downright awful this year (42 percent passing with a touchdown and four picks), and his recent arrest on theft charges (of a Gatorade???) might result in a bowl-game suspension. So McGloin might be hurt, Bolden might be suspended and the only other option at QB is walk-on Shane McGregor, who's thrown four career passes. Woo.

The good news: McGloin's only a redshirt junior, so he'll be back next year regardless (barring some unlikely long-term medical issue). BTW, the fact that he's basically guaranteed a starting spot for the remainder of his career says a lot more about the crater behind him on the depth chart than it does about McGloin since he was 89th in the country in pass efficiency this year. Bolden's a mess and redshirt freshman Paul Jones will supposedly be the savior but first has to dig himself out of academic ineligibility and actually, like, play a game. We'll see. Drake's status is less relevant but not meaningless since he does play some Wildcat QB and has a handful of carries and a handful of catches this year. I won't be surprised if he's gone entirely given his two previous fights that both resulted in disorderly conduct charges. Anger management FTW.

As for Penn State ... umm ... yeesh. I have to believe whatever slim chance Tom Bradley had at getting the permanent job is out the window now. The program is so toxic in every way right now that I don't think there's any plausible justification for promoting a current assistant rather than starting over and building something new. It kinda sounds like that was already the assessment anyway, although nobody's totally sure who the "starting over" guy is. The widely circulated names: Packers quarterbacks coach Tom Clements, Harvard coach Tim Murphy and Baylor associate head coach Brian Norwood (?). Remember when the Penn State job looked uber-desirable? That was two months ago.

Fresno State finds a coach: It's Tim DeRuyter, who's been Texas A&M's defensive coordinator for the last two years and made a name for himself at Air Force before that. DeRuyter was gonna get a head coaching job soon; he's been very good for the last five-ish years and has moved up at a pretty meteoric rate considering that he was Navy's secondary coach a decade ago. The meaningful portion of his resume: three years as D-coordinator at Ohio, two years as D-coordinator at Nevada, three years as D-coordinator at Air Force and two years as D-coordinator at A&M.

This year's A&M defense was pretty blah (65th in yardage, 76th in scoring), but last year's was pretty solid (55th and 34th) and looked freakin' amazing compared to the black hole of suckitude that preceded it. A&M's 2009 defense was 105th in both scoring and yardage, and the '08 defense was somehow even worse at 114th (!) in both categories. That is awful. DeRuyter's defenses at Air Force were 51st, 50th and 11th in yardage and 22nd, 43rd and 10th in scoring. That is good.

So DeRuyter can definitely run a defense. He's also only 48 and has spent most of the last decade in the Southwest-ish region, both of which were probably pluses for whoever was running the search at Fresno State. The minuses: He's never been a head coach and he's going to a place with high (maybe unreasonably high) expectations. Pat Hill slipped a little toward the end but still went 86-58 over the last decade with just two losing seasons before getting fired a couple weeks ago. In other words, just win the WAC on a fairly regular basis and you'll be fine. DeRuyter's a pretty good hire but will probably never be what Pat Hill was in his prime; just getting close would probably be sufficient to get him a BCS-conference job in the near future.

Mark Stoops is totally happy with his current job and probable raise: The rumored Mark Stoops-to-Auburn thing is apparently off:

Two sources have confirmed with the Tallahassee Democrat that Florida State defensive coordinator Mark Stoops is not planning to leave for Auburn or any other university.

That was the extent of the story as of Sunday night. Hooray for details. Stoops is making about $440,000 at Florida State and was allegedly offered about $1.1 million by Gene Chizik; the Auburn insanity apparently isn't worth an extra $600,000 a year. And yes, Stoops is probably worth it. It's easy to forget just how awful the FSU defense was a couple years ago (108th in yardage) and how fast it went from terrible to good (42nd in yardage and 20th in scoring last year) to awesome (sixth and yardage and fourth in scoring this year). That's all Stoops.

Where Auburn goes next is unknown since Stoops was the only guy publicly on the radar for the last week. I'm guessing a million bucks a year will lure somebody respectable.

I will be Pitt's coach for the next 17 minutes: Here's an amusing stat: Whoever gets hired as Pitt's next coach will be the sixth guy to hold that job in the last 12 months. Think about that. Six head coaches (!!!) in one year. The rundown: Dave Wannstedt ("resigned" on December 7 last year), Phil Bennett (interim coach for the Whatever Bowl), Mike Haywood (hired and fired in the span of a two weeks after an extremely untimely domestic assault), Todd Graham (bailed for ASU last week), Keith Patterson (current interim coach) and Unknown New Guy who will probably have a $50 billion buyout.

FYI, there are a bunch of people saying Florida International coach Mario Cristobal has been offered the job and may or may not have accepted it, although the school issued the typical "blah blah internet rabble" denial that means nothing. The other guys known to have interviewed: Luke Fickell (?) and Wisconsin O-coordinator Paul Chryst, who's interviewed for roughly 43 jobs in the past year and will probably get one eventually.

Urban Meyer is amused by recruiting-related skepticism: I mentioned last week that there's a little bit of a blogosphere debate regarding Urban Meyer and whether he's actually good at recruiting or just good at acquiring highly ranked players (there's a not-insignificant difference there). That's a question for about five years from now. As of right now, Meyer is crushing fools: Ohio State has signed two five-stars (DE Noah Spence and DT Tommy Schutt) and a four-star (DE SeVon Pittman) in the last week. Pittman was expected; the other two were not and are legitimately big-time prospects.

Ohio State will probably end up with a really good class despite all the stuff. The reason I say "probably" is the ginormous caveat: the stuff. Word on the interwebz is that the NCAA's final ruling is supposed to come out this week, and if it's bad, any/all of those highly rated commits could be gone. OSU has been selling the "we're expecting puppy dogs and rainbows" pitch to everybody in hopes that it's accurate. It might not be.

A bunch of guys be gone: Justin Blackmon, Matt Kalil, Nick Perry and Lamar Miller have all declared for the draft. Boo. LaMichael James had reportedly joined them but said Monday that he actually won't make a decision/announcement until after the Rose Bowl (MEDIA Y U LIE). So that's temporarily pleasing. RGIII is saying similar things but also has his parents interviewing agents, which yeah I can see where this is going.

Craig James hahahahaha: Craig James' murder of five hookers nationwide popularity has clearly reached a tipping point:

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- College football analyst Craig James, who starred as a tailback at Southern Methodist University and with the New England Patriots in the 1980s, left ESPN on Monday and entered the Republican race for the open U.S. Senate seat in Texas.

James, who appeared on the cable network's weekly game broadcasts, had been flirting with entering politics for more than year but has not held public office. He submitted his paperwork to the Republican Party of Texas Monday, the last day of the normal filing period.

Upshot: Everybody wins (except Texas). This explains everything.