Catching up has an empty-corpse quality

Good-ish news for Oregon State: Sean Mannion's "indefinite" absence probably won't be a very long one:

Oregon State quarterback Sean Mannion had surgery Wednesday morning to repair damage to the meniscus in his left knee and is recovering, OSU senior associate athletic director for sports medicine Dr. Doug Aukerman said.

The surgery by Dr. Donald Pennington of Samaritan Health Services went as planned and Mannion started the early stages of rehab in the afternoon. Mannion wanted to be at practice on Wednesday, but Aukerman wouldn’t let him.

Mannion will be considered week-to-week when he returns. Normal recovery time is two to four weeks, but Aukerman wouldn’t give a timetable for Mannion.

Upshot: Expect him back within a couple weeks. It's probably worth noting that he didn't even leave the game in which he was injured, which would seem to indicate that he's capable of playing through some degree of discomfort. He also wanted to practice immediately after leaving the hospital, which ... uhhh ... no.

As for what that means for Oregon State, the upcoming schedule goes like this: at BYU, Utah, at Washington, ASU, at Stanford. The BYU game is a nonconference one and therefore means little in the big picture, and the Utah game should be a win regardless of the quarterback situation. After that is where it gets a little dicey: Washington, ASU and Stanford are all pretty good and collectively represent the competition for the Alamo Bowl, which is the realistic best-case scenario unless USC loses another conference game and then loses again to Oregon in the Pac-12 title game, in which case the BCS spot that's currently reserved for USC would be available. Anyway, the Washington game is 16 days from now; if he can make it back for that one, Oregon State should still be unbeaten in Pac-12 play and have a pretty decent shot of beating any/all of the aforementioned teams and potentially making the Civil War (which is in Corvallis this year) very interesting. To be clear, I don't think Oregon State's running the table (even up to the Oregon game) but even a one-loss Oregon State would probably have a lot to play for at that point.

Casey Pachall is getting help: What the headline-type thing says:

TCU quarterback Casey Pachall plans to enter an inpatient facility and withdraw from school, coach Gary Patterson said Tuesday.

Patterson said most of the inpatient programs such as the one Pachall will enter are 30 to 60 days. If Pachall completes the treatment, the door remains open for him to return to school and the team.

"There was only one way he was going to change the path that he was on," Patterson said. "And that was he just needed to step away from it all. I think it's the best decision for this football team and Casey Pachall."

There was never an expectation that Pachall was gonna be back this year; the guy obviously has some problems, and anything that results in a 21-year-old with multiple addiction problems getting his life together (in theory) is a good thing.

FYI, Pachall's a redshirt junior and thus has one remaining year of eligibility. TCU could probably use him next year seeing as how The Trevone Boykin Introduction went ... ummm ... not spectacularly.

Jalen Saunders is eligible? Apparently. Saunders transferred from Fresno State after an All-WAC season as a sophomore but was presumed to be a mandatory redshirt until Wednesday, when the NCAA (for some unknown reason) decided he should be eligible immediately. I dunno.

Saunders was cleared during Oklahoma's evening practice and is expected to play Saturday when the 13th-ranked Sooners face No. 15 Texas in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

"We found that out midpractice and switched him over from scout team to the 1's and 2's," coach Bob Stoops said.

Interesting. Saunders represents a not-insignificant addition to the Oklahoma offense: He had 50 catches for 1,065 yards and 12 touchdowns last year and should be pretty effective in the slot, a position that has been nominally filled by freshman Troy Metoyer but has been largely unproductive since the Ryan Broyles injury midway through last season. I won't be surprised if Saunders -- who's somewhat of a Broyles clone at 5-foot-9 but uber quick -- basically splits snaps with Metoyer this week and takes over the starting job next week against Kansas so he'll have some meaningful playing time in advance of the Notre Dame game.

Regardless, Landry Jones haz a happy.

Pfft head injuries: So ... Robert Woods apparently got knocked out (literally knocked out) last week against Utah and had to be helped off the field. He returned one play later. I'm serious. Here's the video:


USC said afterward that Woods passed his sidelines concussion tests, which would be useful info if not for (a) Woods later saying that he "probably" lost consciousness, which is a concussion (either Grade II or Grade III) by definition, and (b) Utah beat writer Brian Smith directly refuting that story:

Smith kinda retracted that tweet the next day ...

Ok, time to eat some crow (as the attacks continue). I was not able to hear every word the trainer said, and my words were too sharp for...
— Brian Smith (@UtahInsider) October 9, 2012

...what I observed. For sake of the attacks coming my way, I'll leave it at that. I hope the discussions continue generally on concussions
— Brian Smith (@UtahInsider) October 9, 2012

... but didn't retract the implication that Woods failed his tests. And even if he's wrong, Woods' admission that he got knocked out should be reason enough to fire the doctors who cleared him to go back in (I'm gonna give Lane Kiffin the benefit of the doubt here and assume that he distances himself from that decision for plausible-deniability purposes) about 40 seconds after he was clearly incapable of performing basic motorsensory tasks. HOW IS THIS STILL HAPPENING SERIOUSLY PEOPLE THINK OF THE CHILDREN ARGHGHGH.

BTW, almost the exact same thing happened last week with Michigan State's Will Gholston, who laid motionless on the field for about 30 seconds before leaving the game for one play. There is no possible way the NCAA doesn't mandate some sort of non-team-affiliated concussion specialist at every game at some point in the next three years (and with good reason).

Ouch seniors: Charlie Weis loves him some "development":

Kansas coach Charlie Weis held a Sunday practice with no seniors, and he said that while the message is harsh, it is clear.

“If you are going to develop a team that’s at the bottom of the league, development is key to becoming competitive,” Weis said. “I think the team needs to understand that there is only so much developing you can do with the seniors. They are already five games into their senior year and have seven games to go. It is what it is, and for everybody else, you got to see progress being made on a daily level if we are ever going to get any better.”

Translation: This is so awful let's just pretend it's 2013 kthx. That'd be the Ouch Seniors Moment of the Week if not for Mike Leach, whose honesty is both glorious and horrifying:

“Some of (the seniors) have had kind of this zombie-like, go through the motions, everything is like how it's always been, that's how it'll always be. Some of them quite honestly have an empty-corpse quality. That's not pleasant to say or pleasant to think about, but that's a fact."

Best use of a corpse-related adjective this season? Probably. At least the guy's retained his sense of humor:

Just doing a little extra studying of this week's opponent.#GoCougs twitter.com/Coach_Leach/st…
— Mike Leach (@Coach_Leach) October 11, 2012

I have nothing to add.

IT'S NOT FUNNY DAMMIT: Surprise: Ohio State jokes don't go over well in Columbus.

A 25-year-old Columbus State student that did not want to be identified says he took an order from the wife of Ohio State defensive coordinator Luke Fickell prior to the Ohio State-Michigan State game on Sept. 29. According to the student, he joked that Ohio State needed to tackle better before hanging up the phone, to which Amy Fickell laughed.

The next day, the student found himself without a job.

According to the pizza boy, Amy Fickell called up the restaurant and complained, which resulted in his dismissal. Ohio State refuted that claim in a statement: “The manager found out about the incident. The manager called the Fickells. Just like they did not place a call to complain, they also did not ask that anyone be fired. All they did was order pizza.”

Is that even a joke? I mean, that might actually be a useful tip for Ryan Shazier. Just sayin'.

The timeliest man in the world: Spencer Hall (of EDSBS brilliance) on Gus Malzahn, who escaped the Arkansas/Houston Nutt disaster, went to Tulsa to destroy Conference USA for Todd Graham, left for Auburn just in time to have Cam Newton fall into his lap AND avoid the Graham-at-Pitt debacle and then left the tire fire at Auburn to take over at Arkansas State, which will probably win the Sun Belt this year:

If Gus Malzahn suddenly leaves a bus you are riding, you leave with him. That bus is about to explode.

Auburn boom.

This is so awful: This video is 3 years old but had never before come to my attention, which thank God because, I mean, just watch it (or watch as much of it as you can):


The first comment on that YouTube page says it all:

Zing!