Nick Saban is McKayla Maroney

Third national title in four years? Unimpressed:

Gatorade bath from grateful players? Irritated:

Another SEC title? Bored:

That is all.

OK, we get it, Bama

Great googly moogly. Analysis is unnecessary. This is analysis (via Prevail and Ride on
November 4, which dang):

. . . . .

I spent the hours after last year's curb stomping trying to convince myself that I most definitely had not just written about how LSU probably deserved at least a share of the national title no matter what happened in the title game because of a couldn't-possibly-be-bettered resume and whatnot, which haha just kidding. Alabama has now won 17 of its last 18 games; only three games in that time have ended with the other team closer than 17 points, and neither of the last two national championship games was one of those. Actually, that means Alabama has as many three-plus-touchdown wins over top-10 teams in that time as games of any type that were effectually any closer. That's just ... like ... I don't even know, man.

Alabama is a machine. Honestly, I spent the second half of the game perusing the interwebz on my phone just because I felt a little bad watching the violent, kinda embarrassing carnage that was only briefly interrupted by A.J. McCarron and Barrett Jones turning the carnage on themselves because DAMMIT WE JUST BURNED A TIMEOUT AND WE'RE ONLY UP BY 42!!! Nick Saban reacted by yelling at the refs only to hide the smugly satisfied look that otherwise would've appeared via the recognition that his happiness-less quest for perfection has assimilated itself in all things Alabama. Srsly: He walked off the field flashing a thumbs-up and halfheartedly yelling, "Good job, guys," as his CPU initiated smile.exe, and he then spent the next two minutes trying to convince the sideline chick that he was in fact happy but only for the next two days because them's the rules. Machine.

Alabama is also a dynasty. Three national titles in four years? Yeah. Dynasty. Whatever Saban's getting paid, he deserves it. IMO, the mid-90s Nebraska dynasty-type thing was a little better inasmuch as the '95 team was probably the most dominant team in modern history, but whatever. A dynasty's a dynasty. See above: Alabama has as many three-plus-touchdown wins over top-10 teams in the last two years (and national titles in the last four years) as games of any type that were effectually any closer.

Speaking of which, I saw that Alabama-Notre Dame game once before: It was in September and Michigan was Notre Dame, and it was pretty much the worst thing ever. And I'll probably see it again next year with some other teams that are comparably good but not Alabama; nobody's Alabama since nobody else has both Nick Saban and a team full of dudes who will be starting in the NFL in three years. I mean, is there a player on Notre Dame's offense other than Tyler Eifert who would start for Alabama? Maybe Zack Martin? I don't know. ND's defense could put a few guys in Bama's front seven, I'm sure; Manti Te'o, obviously, and maybe Louis Nix and Stephon Tuitt. But having the best coach in the country (no dispute) and pretty much all the best players results in things like, you know, going 39-5 and winning three national titles in four years.

And you know what's really horrifying? Next year's version of The Best Team Ever brings back pretty much everybody of relevance other than Barrett Jones, Chance Warmack, Jesse Williams and probably Dee Milliner; that's two offensive linemen, one nose tackle and one corner. Without looking, I feel relatively comfortable saying Alabama will have a reasonably talented dude available at each of those spots since Alabama is by definition comprised entirely of reasonably talented dudes. A.J. McCarron comes back, Eddie Lacy comes back, T.J. Yeldon comes back, Amari Cooper comes back, D.J. Fluker comes back (unless he doesn't, which is possible), Cyrus Kouandijo comes back, C.J. Mosley comes back, Adrian Hubbard comes back, Ed Stinson comes back, Vinnie Sunseri comes back, Haha Clinton-Dix comes back, etc. That's probably the best team in the country even if it's filled out with crap, which it won't be. BTW, next year's schedule isn't difficult, either; the only non-joke of a nonconference game is the Something Something Classic in Atlanta against Va. Tech, and the only seemingly losable conference games are at Texas A&M and at home against LSU. I wrote this when the schedule came out a couple months ago:

Upshot: Just give Alabama the next two national titles (along with a couple broken crystal footballs and credit for about five national championships) so we can fast-forward to 2014 or whenever it is that Nick Saban gets bored and restarts his dynasty as coach at Kent State. 

Indeed. Maybe Jimmy Haslam will make out one of those really big lottery-style checks for eleventy billion dollars, at which point Saban will probably leave and things will probably be a lot more interesting for everybody who doesn't consider Bear Bryant a deity. Barring that, the only real uncertainty about next year is whether there will be more BCS title game camera time spent on A.J. McCarron's girlfriend or Nick Saban's daughter; I'm taking the latter based on new-ness.

/shakes angry fist at Pitt's kicker for ruining an Alabama-Oregon title game that probably would've been both competitive and entertaining, two things last night's game definitely was not. I mean, yeah, Notre Dame deserved to be there from an earned-it standpoint, but still. Yeesh.

Oregon-related crisis averted

What the headline says. From ESPN:

Oregon coach Chip Kelly has decided to turn down a chance to go to the NFL and instead will return to the Ducks, according to league sources.

Kelly was intrigued with the Philadelphia Eagles' head coaching job but decided he wasn't comfortable leaving the college game. The Cleveland Browns are the only other NFL team known to have interviewed Kelly.

Yay. I will now Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V most of what I wrote last year at this exact moment.

I don't root for Oregon as a fan but also have no desire to watch the most entertaining offense in the universe get yanked out from under Phil Knight's wallet and NFL-ized to the detriment of everybody who enjoys watching really fast guys do amusing things and score touchdowns on 52-second drives.

For now, Oregon is still Oregon. Whether that's still the case a year or two from now is impossible to know, especially with the NCAA looking skeptically at the Willie Lyles thing for obvious reasons. I don't doubt that Kelly will get another call or three next year; he's only 49 and isn't getting any worse at producing ridonkulous offenses, although finding an owner willing to totally commit to his system won't happen a lot. Hopefully it won't happen at all (yeah, I'm selfish).

Side note: The site firechipkelly.com exists, is run by an Oregon fan and is apparently totally serious. Actual quotes:

I have no personal vendetta against Chip. I've met him at school events and found him to be a nice enough guy, but I hold us to a higher standard than most and I think we can do better.

No National Championships.  With decent coaching, we should have 2 at this point.

Hahahahahaha. The rest of the crappily formatted single-page site is similarly hilarious and worth checking out purely for the laughs. Enjoy. 

Did anybody actually watch Oregon?

News flash: Chip Kelly is probably going to the NFL. In that regard, this post is only tangentially related to college football; it's somewhat necessary, though, to dispute some of the ignorance that exists in comment sections everywhere and apparently in Jerome Bettis, who's allegedly an expert based on being able to truck similarly large humans for many years.

This quote comes directly from Bettis via The Tim Brando Show:

"I'll tell you this: He's not going to be able institute that type of offense 100 percent," Bettis said. "It will have to be similar to the Washington Redskins. They do it sparingly; they do some things in that area. They don't do a whole lot because the problem you have is, as the Redskins found out, when your quarterback gets hurt, now the backup quarterback, if he's not familiar, you've got to change the offense.

"I don't think you're going to see that wholesale commitment to that type of offense, because if you do, that means you've got to institute your starting quarterback that way, your backup quarterback and your third-string quarterback, and that's going to be very difficult to be that one-dimensional in the NFL.

"It's such a dangerous proposition with your quarterback running the football. I don't think you can do that 100 percent of the time."

I would write this off as one guy not really knowing anything if not for (a) the alleged expert-ness and (b) the replication of this quote (but in badly misspelled form) all over the interwebs. Clearly, people haven't actually watched Oregon and therefore are just assuming that Oregon's offense = RichRod's offense = Urban Meyer's offense = every zone-read offense. Not so much.

Wanna know how many carries Oregon's starting quarterbacks have had over the last three* years? A total of 255. That's 85 a season. That's 6.4 a game. Breaking it down into percentages, Oregon's starting-ish running backs have had 1,302 carries (32.6 a game) in that time, so Oregon's quarterbacks have been getting about 16 percent of the carries. And keep in mind that those aren't sacks-excluded numbers; in reality, the carries-per-game number should be closer to 5.4 than 6.4 based on Oregon's average of about a sack allowed per game the past few years.

Wanna know how many carries RGIII had this year for the Redskins? A total of 120. That's 7.5 a game and about 24.7 percent of the team's total attempts. Wanna know how many carries Colin Kaepernick had this year for the 49ers in the five games after he took over as starter? A total of 32. That's 6.4 a game and about 21.3 percent of the team's total attempts. Wanna know how many carries Russell Wilson had for the Seahawks this year? A total of 94. That's 5.9 a game (that would be about 6.1 if not for the 58-0 obliteration of the Cardinals in which Wilson accumulated almost no stats) and about 19.2 percent of the team's total attempts. And those are sacks-excluded numbers since the NFL logically includes sack yardage in passing-yardage totals. So even "wholesale commitment to that offense" -- which there will be wherever Chip Kelly ends up since that's the point of hiring Chip Kelly -- won't result in the level of quarterback-run reliance the Redskins and 49ers had during the regular season. Woo expert analysis!

It's probably worth mentioning that the Redskins, 49ers and Seahawks were first, third and fourth in the NFL in rushing this year and finished a collective 32-15. Also, the aforementioned quarterbacks missed a collective one game. Granted, one season isn't a massive sample size, but there are three NFL teams that are doing pretty dang well right now running their quarterbacks as much as or more than Oregon has under Kelly the last few years.

And that's to say nothing of the little-noticed truth that Oregon's running game is largely built on a variation of inside zone/outside zone/power** stuff; the zone read is a component that allows for a fundamental blocking advantage (hence the usefulness of the zone read in general) at the risk of allowing this ...


... but is still secondary to Oregon's explicit spread-to-run-inside philosophy, as evidenced by the running backs getting 84 percent of the carries the last three years. In other words, the threat of the quarterback having the ball with nobody around isn't the same as the quarterback actually having the ball "100 percent of the time."

Quotes? Quotes:

"I look for a quarterback who can run and not a running back who can throw. I want a quarterback who can beat you with his arm," Kelly explained at a coaches clinic in the spring of 2011, emphatically adding, "We are not a Tim Tebow type of quarterback team. I am not going to run my quarterback 20 times on power runs."

BOOM KELLY'D. BTW, read the rest of that article now; it comes from Smart Football and therefore is filled with yummy goodness about strategory and whatnot.

*I used three years because those years were the ones in which Kelly-recruited quarterbacks were starting; Dennis Dixon and Jeremiah Masoli were guys he basically inherited when he took over as O-coordinator and therefore weren't necessarily indicative of the kind of quarterback (and accompanying offense) he prefers. For reference, those guys were both pretty consistently around nine carries a game, or only slightly more than RGIII has been getting.

**At its heart, Kelly's running game isn't strategically that much different from the 15 or so zone-blocking-based ones in the NFL; he just prefers (a) unloading the box as much as possible, (b) using a lot of shotgun zone-read action to the extent that pretty much everything (from four verts to the bubble screen to inside zone to outside zone to straight-up option) looks the same at the snap and (c) going balls out from a tempo standpoint (usually).

Catching up haggles over $90K for some reason

Editor's note: I've spent the last week collecting links and doing nothing with them because of a complete lack of motivation. Now that I have enough that there are really too many for one post, I'll attempt to cram them all into one post. Don't question me, dammit.

Let's keep scoring lots of points and stuff: USA Today got somebody at Oregon to acknowledge Thursday what everybody's assumed for the last couple years: If/when Chip Kelly bails for the NFL (probably at some point in the next few days considering that he's already got at least three interviews scheduled), O-coordinator Mark Helfrich will take over. Details:

Offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich will be promoted to head coach if Kelly jumps to the NFL, according to a person with direct knowledge of the school's plans. This person spoke to USA Today Sports on condition of anonymity because Kelly is still the Ducks' coach. ...

Boise State coach Chris Petersen, who had long been linked in speculation to the Oregon job if it ever opened, would not be a candidate, the person said.

"Conceptually, it's about continuity," the person said, adding that Helfrich could be named head coach within 72 hours of Kelly's departure.

FYI, Helfrich's been the offensive coordinator for the entirety of Chip Kelly's time as head coach but before that was at Colorado, ASU and various other places (which is to say not with Kelly). He's reportedly pretty heavily involved in Oregon's gameplanning, though, and considering what Oregon's been and done for the last four years, staying as close to that as possible going forward makes sense, even if Chris Petersen or whoever else were interested. I mean, a hypothetical Oregon that's 80 percent as prolific as that the current version of Oregon probably still goes to the Rose Bowl every other year and contends for the national title at least occasionally. So consider me not surprised; beyond that, I'm gonna hold off on writing 2,000 words on Helfrich until Kelly actually leaves.

Commitment, eh? Bill O'Brien was either really unimpressed with the various NFL front-office guys he met with or felt so bad about meeting with those guys that he couldn't even imagine actually leaving, hence this:

Bill O'Brien isn't going anywhere.

On the same night we learned the Penn State coach interviewed with the Cleveland Browns earlier this week, we also learned that O'Brien is staying with the Nittany Lions.

"I'm not a one-and-done guy," O'Brien told Pennlive.com on Thursday night. "I made a commitment to these players at Penn State, and that's what I am going to do. I'm not gonna cut and run after one year, that's for sure."

O'Brien said several NFL teams contacted him through his agent, Joe Linta, and Sirius XM Radio's Adam Caplan reported the coach also interviewed with the Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday in Massachusetts.

Hurrah for Penn State being something resembling relevant for the next five-ish years and having something to build around (that being an NFL-style passing game that was pretty good with Matt McGloin and therefore should be pretty good for the foreseeable future). I can't imagine that another coaching search at this point in the offseason given Penn State's current, um, situation would've gone particularly well.

Geographical coherence FTW: Boise State is staying in the Mountain West and paying the Big East $10 million to not be a member. This has been known for a couple days now and makes sense for everybody, even if it sucks for the Big East since what was gonna be a relatively crappy conference will now be a definitively crappy one. But what wasn't as widely known was this stuff: (a) Boise State will retain its home-game TV rights, therefore effectually doubling its TV revenue, (b) San Diego State has the option to return to the Mountain West and reportedly is interested in doing so despite all the public statements to the contrary, and (c) the Mountain West dropped its uniform regulations as part of the deal, meaning Boise can wear blue unis on blue turf. Very important.

As for the TV thing, there's also this:

The Mountain West's new contract includes equal revenue distribution among its members but also a bonus structure paid to individual members for each national television appearance it makes. If, for example, Boise State appeared on national television four times and Wyoming twice, Boise State would receive a bigger total bonus. The bonus amount for weekday or weeknight games is $300,000 and $500,000 for games played on Saturdays, according to a release from Boise State.

So there's equal revenue sharing that's not at all equal, basically. Boise oughta be doing fine for itself financially going forward regardless of the size of the Mountain West's TV package (hur hur).

As for San Diego State, the details:

The Broncos’ contract with the Mountain West state that the league “will extend an option for San Diego State University to join the MWC on terms mutually agreed between SDSU and the MWC and to join or decline before offering membership to any other institution.”

This means the Aztecs have the right to first refusal, a development that is all the more interesting when held in contrast with an ESPN report by Brett McMurphy which stated that “San Diego State wants back in the Mountain West, but the league is holding up the process as it decides whether there is a better fit than the Aztecs and if there is a school that can deliver more value.”

If San Diego State wants in, it's in. And that will presumably happen since the Mountain West is now back at 11 schools and needs one more to get to 12 and have a championship game. And with that, the Big East will have taken one more step in its inevitable journey toward becoming indistinguishable from Conference USA.

Butch Davis really needs that extra $90K: So Butch Davis was reportedly in talks to take the Florida International job (for some reason) last week before running into some contractual issues related to his North Carolina buyout. To be specific, those contractual issues were basically North Carolina wanting out of its deal if Davis were to take another job.

The dispute centers on almost $1.8 million that Davis is owed from the settlement he signed upon his dismissal as UNC's head coach in July 2011. The source said that UNC doesn't want to pay the money if Davis accepts another coaching position, which is a stumbling block that also complicated his hiring earlier this year by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Davis would earn "roughly $500,000 a season" coaching for FIU, according to Marvez's source, while his settlement from UNC would reportedly pay him $590,000 per year for the next three years -- meaning that if Davis could not force UNC to continue his payments even after taking the FIU job, he'd be taking nearly a $100,000 per-year pay cut for his efforts for the Panthers.

And that resulted in this:

"(Davis) will not be taking the FIU job," Davis' attorney, Jon Sasser, told the Miami Herald. 

OK then. If he'd really wanted the job, I can't imagine that $90K would've been a significant factor; the consensus early on was that Davis wasn't as interested in as FIU was in him, and that was probably the case. BTW, it's worth reiterating that Davis came out of the North Carolina stuff without being specifically named in any of the violations or getting any show-cause penalty or anything of that nature. He's hirable; he just hasn't been hired yet.

But Ron Turner has:

Florida International has hired former Illinois coach Ron Turner to take over its football program.

FIU director of sports and entertainment Pete Garcia says Turner signed a five-year contract Thursday night with a base salary of $500,000 annually. A news conference with Turner was being scheduled for Friday afternoon.

Turner most recently was the quarterbacks coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is a past offensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears and was Peyton Manning's position coach with the Indianapolis Colts.

Garcia says Turner is "the best quarterbacks coach in America, college or pro. So I'm very excited to get this guy."

Hahahahaha. Turner hasn't coached in college in any capacity since getting fired by Illinois in 2004 after going 35-57 and making two bowl appearances in eight years. Since then he's been roaming the NFL demonstrating his "best quarterbacks coach in America"-ness via Rex Grossman, Curtis Painter and the 2012 version of Josh Freeman, all of whom became Pro Bowlers, I'm pretty sure (no time for research!).

And that's what FIU fired Mario Cristobal for. SMH.

Ohhh boy: I didn't write anything about the Texas hotel shenanigans when they first happened because ... I mean ... what's to say? Something bad either happened or didn't happen, depending whom you choose to believe. A little background:

Texas quarterback Case McCoy and linebacker Jordan Hicks were suspended and sent home a day before the Valero Alamo Bowl for breaking team rules, a source within the school's administration told ESPN.com on Friday.

A person with knowledge of the suspensions told The Associated Press the players violated curfew.

Texas coach Mack Brown addressed the situation during a previously scheduled news conference Friday and referred to a KENS-TV report in San Antonio that police were investigating two unidentified Texas players in an alleged sexual assault at a hotel in the city, where Texas played Oregon State.

Yeah. Bad. But there's this, of course:

Hicks "vehemently asserts that all conduct that occurred during the evening of the incident was consensual by everyone involved," his lawyer said Sunday in a statement. "The allegation, if any, that a sexual assault occurred by anyone at any time is completely false."

No charges have been filed.

"No arrests have been made; (the case) is still being currently investigated," Matthew Porter of the San Antonio police said. "There is no timetable for the investigation" to be handed over to the district attorney, he said.

To my knowledge, there's been nothing new in that regard (there might never be). Neither guy played in the Alamo Bowl, obviously.

But if the allegation-type thing ever results in charges and long-term suspensions/dismissals/whatever, Hicks would be the more significant loss; he was an uber recruit back in 2010 who became a starter as a sophomore last year, then got hurt in the Ole Miss game this year and missed the rest of the season. He had 14 tackles and four tackles for loss in about two and a half games; he's a no-doubt starter if he's healthy and available and whatnot.

McCoy's loss would be more problematic from a depth perspective. David Ash is obviously the starter at this point, but McCoy did get a start against Kansas State and was sort of always on the periphery waiting for Ash to do something terrible, which he mostly avoided. Both guys were sophomores this year, BTW. Texas does have big-time recruit Tyrone Swoopes committed, but I'd think the optimal scenario would be to redshirt him, and if McCoy's gone, that becomes more difficult since Ash and currently redshirting freshman Connor Brewer would be the only quarterbacks on the roster. That said, if McCoy's third on the depth chart (which is a definite possibility), replacing him with a walk-on or whatever wouldn't be a big deal barring extreme quarterback attrition, and in that case, Swoopes would probably be needed anyway.

So we'll see. With no announcement yet from anybody in San Antonio, it's seeming more and more likely that nothing will happen from a legal standpoint, in which case anything that happens from a Texas standpoint would be minor (if extant).

Chris Ault was good and did stuff : Chris Ault retired last week for the second time; this one's probably a real retirement since the guy's now approaching 70 and has done pretty much everything that can be done at Nevada. Srsly:

Ault announced Friday he was stepping down, leaving as the winningest coach in school history, already a Hall of Famer.

Under Ault, the Wolf Pack went from Division II to I-AA to I-A, winning at every level with some of the most prolific and innovative offenses in the country.

The 66-year-old won 10 conference championships and took the Wolf Pack to the postseason 16 times, including 10 bowl games in 12 FBS seasons. He finished with a record of 233-109-1.

He went 233-109-1 at Nevada (Nevada!) and retired having gone to eight straight bowl games. In the Mountain West. At Nevada. He also was making about $500K -- roughly half the Mountain West average and something like 15 percent of what Chris Petersen made last year -- probably in part because he spent his previous coaching hiatus as athletic director and therefore understood the duality of managing a crappy budget and hiring a viable staff. As mentioned in the blockquoted portion above, he's already a Hall of Famer, and deservingly so. There's an alternate universe in which Nevada is Boise State.

Ault also invented the Pistol, which I think I saw somebody use the other day oh wait that was everybody. This Smart Football novella ...

... was published last week, literally the day before Ault announced his retirement (for those with vision even worse than mine, it's titled "How the Pistol offense is changing the NFL"). Mandatory quote:

"I'm proud that our offense has broadened the landscape of football. That's exciting," Ault said. "It's here to stay, unlike the wishbone (offense)."

Yeah. Suck it, wishbone.

As for Nevada, given the aforementioned financial situation, the next guy will most likely be either an FCS coach or an FBS assistant, maybe SMU D-coordinator Tom Mason or recently deposed Arkansas O-line coach Chris Klenakis, both of whom were coordinators under Ault in the past and could probably retain a majority of the staff.

Wisconsin has an O-coordinator: It's Andy Ludwig, most recently of San Diego State and Utah but also of various other West Coast locales. Details:

Wisconsin is expected to hire Andy Ludwig as its next offensive coordinator, according to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Ludwig, who has held the same post at San Diego State for the past two seasons, attended Wisconsin's pre-Rose Bowl practice Friday in Los Angeles. New Wisconsin head coach Gary Andersen coached with Ludwig at Utah from 2005-08, helping the Utes to a 13-0 season and a Sugar Bowl championship in 2008.

Because of Wisconsin's hiring rules for all state employees, the team can't confirm Ludwig's hiring until the job posting expires.

Ludwig has since confirmed, BTW. Answer to the obvious question: Yeah, Ludwig is basically a pro-style running-game guy. The "basically" qualifier is necessary because anecdotal evidence would seem to indicate that he prefers to spread (a little, as in three wides and one back) to run rather than manballing to run, but that may have been a personnel-based thing rather than a philosophical preference. Interestingly, Ludwig was actually one of the finalists for the Wisconsin O-coordinator job last year when Paul Chryst left; in that regard, it makes sense that Andersen would bring him in given (a) their familiarity from the Utah days and (b) Ludwig's apparent blessing from Bret Bielema/Barry Alvarez in the recent past. An excerpt from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article dated almost exactly a year ago:

When Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema initially talked about finding an offensive coordinator to replace Paul Chryst, his No. 1 goal was non-negotiable:

"We're not going to change what we're doing," he said as UW prepared for the 2012 Rose Bowl. "We're going to be a pro-style offense and continue to do the things we've been doing."

Ludwig is a candidate because of his play-calling experience. He has served as an offensive coordinator at six schools since the 1997 season, including last season with the Aztecs. Those stops included Fresno State (1998-2001), Oregon (2002-'04), Utah (2005-'08) and California (2009-'10).

Every one of those schools ran a pro-style-ish offense (although Utah was still hanging on to some Urban Meyer stuff) under Ludwig; Wisconsin obviously will do the same and thus bear some resemblance to the Wisconsin of the last 20 years, as expected. The question is whether that resemblance will be purely a stylistic one or also a results-y one.

Do this always: So the Sugar Bowl went pretty well for Florida. It went so well that nobody wanted to sign the alma mater afterward except for one guy (I'm serious): junior linebacker Darrin Kitchens, who didn't actually play in the game ...

... but was Florida's team MVP nonetheless for doing that. Darrin Kitchens for 2013 captain. Darrin Kitchens FTW.

It's a little Montana: Nick Montana -- the one who was good coming out of high school and was at Washington briefly before transferring for playing-time purposes -- is headed to Tulane, presumably due to the allure of the Big East or something. He signed his letter of intent on Friday. Some relevant info:

(Montana) comes to Tulane via the junior college ranks, where he threw for 2,652 yards and 22 touchdowns last season at Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif. Montana -- who originally signed with the University of Washington out of Oaks Christian High in 2010 -- will enroll for the spring semester, participate in spring drills and have two years of college eligibility remaining. Dating back to high school, Montana has compiled a 38-3 record as a starter (27-1 in high school, 0-1 at Washington, 11-1 at Mt. San Antonio College).

FYI, Montana did play in six games for Washington as a redshirt freshman, doing nothing of real significance, and then put up some legit numbers last year in juco ball. That said, 247 Sports (which has the only juco rankings I can find) has him listed as only the No. 156 juco prospect overall and No. 7 juco quarterback, right behind Jesse Scroggins and former Iowa backup A.J. Derby. So he's presumably still talented but not the borderline five-star everybody though he was a couple years ago (hence Tulane).

He'll definitely have a chance to play at Tulane, though (hence Tulane again): Starter Ryan Griffin and backup D.J. Ponder are both graduating, meaning the only real competition for the job will be Devin Powell, who had a touchdown and three picks in some meaningless time this year as a freshman. In other words, Montana will either be the starter next year or irrelevant forever.

So many wings: The Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl apparently has a wing-eating contest for the affiliated teams, which ... I mean ... you know where this is going:

On Wednesday night, Michigan State and TCU combined to eat a ridiculous 7,330 wings at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Tempe in preparation for the bowl game on Saturday at Sun Devil Stadium. The Spartans won the competition by averaging 33 wings per player, while the Horned Frogs averaged just 20 per person. MSU’s team total got a pretty nice boost from offensive tackle Shawn Kamm, who came close to eating 65 wings, according to QB Andrew Maxwell.

I don't even WUT 65 WINGS LOL WWWHHEEEEE!!! Shawn Kamm's wing-eating ability apparently is rivaled only by his mustache-growing ability:

Yesssss.

Jadeveon Clowney holy hell: I know: Jadeveon Clowney kills people. And by "people" I obviously mean "160-pound Michigan running backs":


It's science. Also science:

You win, Wikipedia-editing guy. BTW, that hit was only made possible by literally the worst call in the history of worst calls. No joke; attempted explanations are futile.

Of course he is: A.J. McCarron is dating Miss Alabama. Of course.

@10ajmccarron 😘 twitter.com/_KatherineWebb…
— Katherine Webb (@_KatherineWebb) December 24, 2012

Except not of course because Miss Alabama is actually an Auburn alum, which OMG:

“I’m not trying to sabotage Alabama,” Webb said.

Some might consider it a necessary disclaimer, since she’s an Auburn University graduate. ... With the intense rivalry between the two schools, are Auburn-Alabama romances ever OK?

"Honestly, it's just a game," she said of the football rivalry.

Webb said her time as Miss Alabama taught her how to put some allegiances in perspective.

“When you’re a representative of the whole state, you have to kind of bypass your own feelings and love everyone,” she said.

/Paul Finebaum dies

Duke amazingness: I randomly came across this stat on Twitter the other day:

Since Duke's last bowl win in 1960, Duke has won 94 NCAA Tournament hoops games.

I have nothing to add.

Happy New Year from creepy baby Les Miles

It's only appropriate that LSU just got done doing something entertaining since ... ummm ... I don't really have a good segue here. Just enjoy my now-annual New Year's Day offering:

Yes, that's Les Miles photoshopped into a diaper and a top hat. No, I don't have an explanation.

USC is having a real good time

So there was some rabble rabble a couple weeks back when USC safety Tony Burnett sent a bunch of tweets (which have since been deleted) about the Sun Bowl being pretty much the worst thing in the history of ever. The Sun Bowl's executive director unsurprisingly took the high road, responding like so:

“It doesn’t bother us what people are saying before they get here. It’s what they say after they leave, after they experience El Paso (and) after they experience the hospitality.”

USC has now experienced El Paso. Or El Paso has experienced USC. Or something.

A tweet from El Paso writer Duke Keith at the official Sun Bowl dinner:

Bad form #USC. Hour late for Sheriff's Posse Dinner. #GaTech coach Paul Johnson took team & left. Can't blame him. twitter.com/dukekeith/stat…
— Duke Keith (@dukekeith) December 27, 2012

Errrrr yeah. The USC Rivals site claimed it was all because of a half-hour flight delay earlier in the day; that'd seem reasonable except, according to Keith, Georgia Tech actually got to El Paso two hours after USC and still found time to practice, shower and show up for the dinner almost a half-hour early (hence the hour between Georgia Tech's arrival and departure with no sign of anybody from USC, which Rivals reported was only a half-hour late). And if USC had "kept the Sun Bowl officials apprised all the way," wouldn't somebody have, I dunno, mentioned something to Georgia Tech instead of letting it turn into a huge thing?

Actually, it still wouldn't have been a huge thing if not for the aforementioned tweets from Burnett and then this since-deleted tweet from defensive end Leonard Williams ...

... that amazingly was sent the day after the dinner shenanigans and therefore almost two weeks after Burnett had to apologize for doing pretty much the exact same thing. USC!

I don't even know whether I'm more amazed by USC's terrible-ness at public relations or the fact that USC is still favored by either, 9, 9.5 or 10 points, depending on your Vegas locale; I'm leaning toward the latter. Srsly. Just look at Lane Kiffin's face in the photo at the top of this post; at this point, I'd throw down $20 on USC not even showing up.