Major negotiations equal major drama whoa major puns! Major Applewhite is interviewing today with Mack Brown at Texas for a coaching role of undefined scope and import. We say that because Texas currently has an offensive coordinator, Greg Davis, whose loyalty to Brown (and vice-versa) has endured all of the stress of Brown’s long tenure at Texas. Applewhite was an up-and-down fan favorite qb at Texas, losing his job to shiny young thing Chris Simms before regaining it once it turned out Simms was merely good at his best, and not very good as Applewhite could be in stretches.

Applewhite now has coached two different football teams as offensive coordinator (Rice and Alabama) in two years, and with mixed results in both years. Rice was an unqualified success: the number one offense in school history (350 points), scads of passing yards (4,486), and a bounce to the Alabama job. Alabama produced different results for Applewhite’s offense: middle of the conference rankings all around, and several performances beyond explanation, like…ahem:

Burnt Orange Nation seems equivocal but perhaps happy about this:

If we frame the question in terms of evaluating Major’s performance record, we’re probably barking up the wrong tree. He’s not God’s second child, as some Texas fans would like to believe. But he’s bright enough to be where he is right now, which lends ample support that there’s plenty to like about his potential.

What I keep coming back to, though, is that he’s a young, fresh, eager offensive coach interviewing to step in and assist an offensive staff which – everyone agrees – has long been in need of an injection.

An injection of what is the question. Canny finishing microsentence BABALITY!

We interviewed Don Yaeger yesterday on SN about the Reggie Bush book. A message to young athletes looking to renege on deals with agents in back-channel, pre-grad arrangements: if we’ve learned nothing from three years of blogging, it’s that…

1. Don’t take money from Israeli gangsters, either before or after you graduate. There’s a one for one correlation of this not working very well.

2. Make sure you build hush money into the agreement as Reggie Bush did.

That’s West Virginia paperwork you’re messin’ with! Rich Rodriguez may have destroyed paperwork on players during his departure from the job, according to The Charleston Gazette. The paperwork included:

While the files in Rodriguez’s office held a wide range of information, those that were discovered missing from the weight room office were more specific. Those included every aspect of strength and conditioning progress made by players under former strength and conditioning coordinator Mike Barwis, who along with most of his immediate staff followed Rodriguez to Michigan after the Fiesta Bowl. Those files included the progression made by each player in every specific area, from bench-press totals to 40-yard dash times. The files even included pictures of the players at different points in their careers.

This would have been so much easier if they’d been leaving Michigan for West Virginia, since the conditioning notes would have been condensed into a single picture.


Michigan’s strength and conditioning program notes under Lloyd Carr.

Denials are flying all over the place, so it must be true: Ryan Mallett, Razorback.

Trev Lives! We miss your musk, Trev.