Catching up eats Ron Zook

This will probably help: Texas will be without its best defensive player for the rest of the year:

Texas defensive end Jackson Jeffcoat suffered a right pectoral muscle rupture against Oklahoma and will have to undergo surgery to repair the damage, according to trainer Kenny Boyd. Jeffcoat has been ruled out for the season.

Ouch. Jeffcoat's awesomeness has been one of the few redeeming qualities this year for Texas' mostly awful defense; he's second on the team with four sacks (defensive end Alex Okafor has six) and first by a mile with 10.5 tackles for loss. His replacements: Reggie Wilson and Cedric Reed, who have gotten a little rotation time and have a combined one sack, that by Wilson. So that's a pretty massive drop-off.

If there's any good news it's that the overall productivity of the defense (103rd in rushing yards and 89th in pass efficiency despite Jeffcoat's backfield domination) can't get significantly worse, and the schedule lightens up a little after the Baylor game this week in terms of scorching-the-earth offenses: Texas Tech and Kansas State are both currently in the top 10 in total offense, but those rankings are buoyed by some huge early-season games that haven't been replicated much in Big 12 play. That's all I got for good news (other than David Ash declaring himself ready to play this week despite having a fractured left wrist); Texas' defense will still be shockingly bad. And Prevail and Ride will still make totally NSFW cartoons about it.

He just got the wind knocked out of him: Everett Golson passed his concussion testing Wednesday and will be good to go against BYU:

Notre Dame quarterback Everett Golson cleared the final hurdle toward getting back to the field, as the redshirt freshman successfully completed concussion testing and was cleared by team doctors to return to practice Wednesday.

Golson did not practice Tuesday after failing to pass cognitive testing Monday, two days after suffering a concussion late in Notre Dame's overtime win over Stanford.

Can't figure out 2+2 on Monday, practices on Wednesday. Awesome. Anyway, Golson will presumably start Saturday, although Tommy Rees and Andrew Hendrix are both getting some snaps in practice in the event that either Golson's brain falls apart or Notre Dame needs a touchdown in the last three minutes (doubtful against BYU).

No more Honey Badger, for serious: SI published a very interesting piece on Tyrann Mathieu the other day that was mostly about his dad's struggles with drug addiction and crime (struggles that derailed a promising football career oh hey that sounds familiar) but also included this tidbit about potential NCAA violations:

Since last January, Mathieu has allowed his image to be used on a flyer promoting an event at a local night club, appeared in several promotional videos online and, multiple sources told SI, received benefits at the club that could affect his eligibility.

 It seems pretty unlikely that Mathieu would be eligible by NCAA guidelines even if he were to get himself turned out and get reinstated to the LSU team, which would be in direct contradiction to the school's drug-test policy of "permanent ineligibility" and has never been referenced as something that could actually happen by anybody at LSU. Upshot: He's done with college football.

The story's worth a read in and of itself, BTW.

Good luck with that: A radio report out of Cleveland (I'm not sure which aspect of that phrase offers the least credibility) says that the Browns "will make a hard push" for Nick Saban this offseason. There's some logic to it seeing as how the team was just sold to Tennessee alum Jimmy Haslam, who just today encouraged Mike Holmgren to "retire" as president, potentially opening up a full-control situation for Saban or whoever else is out there come January.

There's presumably an assumption that Saban's history with the Browns (he was D-coordinator during the wildly successful Bill Belichik era) and general Ohio connections (he's a Kent State alum) will be of some benefit; the guy also has an ego the size of Charlie Weis (the guy, not Charlie Weis' ego, which might actually be bigger) and might figure he can't possibly do any worse than every other coach the Browns have had since their inception. Still, I'm skeptical that anything comes of it since (a) he's established a program that can legitimately win the national title every freakin' year, (b) he's already making a crapload of money and couldn't realistically get enough of a pay raise to account for the difference in team quality and (c) he's said repeatedly since leaving the Dolphins that he has no interest in returning to the NFL. Chances of actually happening on a scale of 1-10: 2.

Requisite embed: It's Alabama-Tennessee week, which means this guy is loving life:


I think he likes orange.

More SEC awesomeness: It's also LSU-Texas A&M week (the first one), which means it's time for THE ULTIMATE GIF-OFF:

Wow. I don't even know what to say here.

My favorite feature ever: Because who doesn't love a "Dumb Punt of the Week" analysis?

Midway through the first quarter Akron faced a daunting 4th and 3 from the Bowling Green 32 and elected to punt the ball away.

Special note goes to Randy Edsall who punted from the 48 on 4th and 2 trailing by 1 in the 4th quarter. They later went on to score and go up 5 with about 5 minutes left and then kicked the extra point, to protect against two Wake Forest field goals in the final 5 minutes. Of course Maryland missed the PAT.

Uhhh ... fourth-and-3 from the 32?!? Amazing. The Randy Edsall thing is pretty hilarious all around but has nothin' on Terry Bowden summoning his inner Ron Zook (who might actually be inside Terry Bowden at this point; I mean, has anybody seen Ron Zook recently?).

Paul Rhoads FTW: Paul Rhoads went nutso butso last week against TCU and destroyed a headset in thoroughly entertaining fashion:


So that's amusing. More amusing: That headset has since been autographed by Rhoads and is now up for auction on the Iowa State website. I'm serious.

Sometimes I wish I had a ginormous pile of gold a la Scrooge McDuck so I could buy useless things.