It’s like watching Spy versus Spy play out in front of your eyes: Mitch Mustain, whose high school coach was hired by Arkansas at coincidentally the same time as he was being recruited heavily by the Razorbacks, is now leaving Arkansas for Tulsa and following his former head coach, who left after coach Houston Nutt reduced said high school coach into a third-down only football coach.

Gus Malzahn is being poached away by new Tulsa coach Tim Graham, who set a new standard for program buccaneering by signing with Tulsa three days into his contract extension and taking the fine china (most of the coaching staff) with him in short order.

Again: everyone gets bitten in a tank full of sharks. This life lesson is brought to you by the creators of Univision’s smash sports drama, Las Cronicas Locas de Boss Hawg. De nada.

Adios, Senorita Mustain.

Eeen ze sea, zair izz no cruelty, onlee ze continual struggle to surviiiiiive. And een la blogosphere, zair izz no cruelty, onleee zee continual aggregation of information. Ze name we give eet izz Blogtoberfest. Salut!

–Whiny-ass Glen Mason’s replacement at Minnesota: Broncos TE coach Tim Brewster. Brewster comes from the Mack Brown school of recruiting, which means there’s serious potential in the handshakes and mom-greasing department. (Mm. Mom greasing.)

Also likely is a contined dedication to the semi-cut-block system employed at Minnesota, whose offensive line schemes already look very similar to the Broncos with plenty of zone blocking, stretch plays, and daredevil lowblocks. D-lines of the Big Ten, continue to watch your precious knees.

Tim Brewster: does he look good at mom-greasing? Wait, don’t answer that.

–Despite a sexy and promising hot tub beginning, Carroll to the Dolphins is dead, dead, dead for now. This leaves an NFL coaching spot open and, in proof that dumb people can find piles of money, too, a potential job opening for Chan Gailey to leave Georgia Tech for a pro job. Gailey’s got a second interview scheduled for the job. Tech fans busy screaming something about a briar patch, and not wanting to be thrown in it.

Mark Bradley blames the complete lack of affection or desire by Tech to keep Gailey on Chan’s inability to properly apply lips to the right asses at Tech while mentioning his loyalty to Reggie Ball as a secondary reason for the change. We’d like to think not beating Georgia ever would be as good a reason as any, or perhaps the overall air of malaise surrounding the program from day one, or his disastrous depth chart choice of Reggie Ball as a four-year starter. (Still the worst four-year starter at a major program we’ve ever seen.)

Drink this for four years and see how you like it.

–Gary Crowton leaves Oregon to fill the vacant OC spot at LSU. Not the first name you’d associate with LSU, sure, but finding an offensive coordinator by the name of Snakebite Robicheaux is pretty difficult these days.

–We’ve decided to love Jim Donnan for a few very sound reasons. First, his hair’s always askew and gradiosely fucked-up; as a lifelong sufferer of the same disorder, we have to appreciate his success in life. Second, ESPN staffers avow that his coolness in person is unsurpassed. Three, he hates, hates, hates Rule 3-2-5-e and is using the WWL’s bully pulpit to say so. We tip our Molly Hatchet ‘83 mesh baseball cap to you, sir.

–Former Penn State player Lavon Chisley will be arrested in connection with the stabbing death of Langston Carraway. The body was stabbed 93 times in the attack.

–Early odds are on USC for next year according to the Wiz. Rick Neuheisel will give you eight to one if you get your bets into his pool before Friday–operators standing by!

–Finally, Andy Staples says four of the five underclassmen at Florida making decisions regarding the draft made especially sound ones, especially Andre Caldwell, whose draft status would have been immersed in the wave of quality wideouts coming out HOLY HELL IT’S CALVIN JOHNSON SOMEONE HOLD KIPER’S LEASH TIGHT, DAMMIT!!!!

A little too excited about Calvin Johnson.

Some OSU fan feels pretty stupid for making this right about now.

HT: KD Godfrey.

Although not as stupid as Ginn’s teammates for crippling him.

For those combing through their respective bowl games frame-by-frame, there’s always little tidbits of joy you missed. A gnarly block; a particularly amusing expression on a play; or even a USC Song Girl’s bare ass on television for a blink’s worth of softcore cheesecake.

(Nothing in this category beats what we spied in the stands during the NFL playoffs this weekend: a drunk blonde woman in New Orleans who, for a full five wondrous seconds, showed off her “FUCK DA EAGLES” t-shirt center frame before Fox hurriedly switched shots. Which they most certainly did not show on purpose. Rememember: Fox hates you, which is why they’re debuting Ow! My Balls! on Thursday night. You can’t–and won’t–miss it.)

One of those nuggets for Gator fans has been this moment of delight, where we find out that any and all guilt associated with giving Ohio State a grievous and overdone death roll on national television evaporates in the viewing of a single gesture. Watch #55 Curtis Terry at the end of the play here. He should be easy to find– he’s the one elbowing Tebow in the head.

There’s a Zapruder style and sadly unembeddable copy here. The incident illustrates just how off OSU’s scouting reports on the Gators were, since scientists concur that blunt force trauma only makes Tim Tebow stronger and larger–as Andy James Lauranaitis, the BEST LINEBACKER IN THE WORLD1111 found out in the same game.

Curiously enough, an angry Tim Tebow also emits pheramones that smell of cinnamon buns to his friends, and of burning metal, cordite, and sorrow to his enemies.

Mmm…cinnamon buns.

Are you ready? It’s going to leave your network wiping its sweet cheeks with hundreds and farting twenties. Imagine…a football coach just off the big time at a program where everyone’s got their eye on what he eats for breakfast. A big-time recruit, fawned over by the teeming hordes of locals convinced he’s the next football Jesus, pursued passionately by the big coach. An up and coming assistant coach, ambitious, young, and striving for more, and holding the hand of the young qb. All of them set up on a collision course on the gridiron hacienda in a way they’re powerless to prevent.

It’s hot. It’s edgy. It’s heartland for the red-staters and camp for the blue-staters. It’s Ugly Betty meets Dos Mujeres, Un Camino, and Friday Night Lights all at once. We call it:

Las Cronicas Locas De Boss Hawg!!!

The latest chapter written in the smash hit is that Gus Malzahn–the gaucho on the horse up there–has left the Arkansas program for a position coordinating the offense at Tulsa. This comes with no appreciable pay raise, since he’ll be making the same money he made at Arkansas. The new position includes no heartwarming sentimental bonus as Malzahn has no historical connection to the Tulsa program, and has been a football coach in Arkansas for his entire professional life.

The speculative bonus for Malzahn here–facts are for weenies and socialists, sir–comes with a freer reign over the offense, something Nutt never seemed to allow Malzahn to have over the course of the year. The offense seemed to regress over the course of the year, actually, with fewer and fewer of Malzahn’s spread sets used and more and more of Boss Hawg’s cromag offense creeping back in at crucial moments. Towards the end, Malzahn was being paid six figures to call wacky double reverse passes, a job we frankly envy.

The numbers, she don’t lie.

2005 Arkansas Offense

PPG: 25.7
Rushing offense: 216.9 ypg, First in SEC
Passing offense: 143.7 ypg, 11th in SEC

2006 Arkansas Offense

PPG: 28.9
Rushing offense: 228.5 ypg, First in SEC
Passing offense: 149.5 ypg, 11th in SEC

Malzahn’s offense looked only marginally different in terms of effect that Nutt’s, meaning that either Malzahn picked up a sudden affinity for devolved RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN offenses straight off the pages of a 1982 Coaching Monthly magazine, or Nutt did what many suspected all along: hired Malzahn to get VHT blue-chipper Mitch Mustain and a few other Springdale recruits on board before wresting control of the offense back from Malzahn and running things the way he felt most comfortable; that is, by running.

With Malzahn gone, Nutt will have complete control again, likely quashing the parental uprising Boss Hawg faced just after the close of the season from the parents of the aforementioned Springdale parents. (Presumably, the parents assumed Malzahn had some influence over what happened at the program. Obviously not watchers of Las Cronicas Locas de Boss Hawg. For shame!)

You say, the saga is over then? Never! The passion never ends in the world of telenovelas, amigos. Perhaps Nutt will seduce another recruit by hiring his coach, or pull another bait-and-switch by hiring the unemployed father of a potential gamebreaker as his driver. You don’t get to be Don of the Hacienda by being stupid, no? As always, the only certainty on the haciendais…PASSION!