Pittsburgh’s football offices, 8:35 a.m. An assistant runs into Dave Wannstedt’s offices.

Assistant: Coach! Guess who’s going pro?

Wannstedt: [pauses] (more…)

As we are most years, we sit shocked at how good most of the bowls have been. They don’t have to be; on odds, we’d bet that most teams relegated to meaningless exhibition would take what we regard to be the logical path of least resistance for 18-22 year old men doing things for vague, poorly defined reasons, which would be slacking off, drinking, and mumming through their assigned task with something less than rigor.

This is the second image result for “Sun Bowl Pitt.” Harumph.

This only seems to have been the case in one bowl game thus far, an execrable exercise in football called the Sun Bowl. The Sun Bowl takes place in El Paso, Texas, and this may explain it as the dystopian Disneyworld of Juarez, Mexico is but a trot across a body-filled gutter away. Only a night of smoking Mexican Crunk Broccoli and guzzling paint thinner with the locals would explain how, oh how Pittsburgh and Oregon State managed to show up for four quarters and score exactly one field goal for a whole fucking game.

Oregon State had excuses, sure: the loss of the Rodgers brothers to injury was a substantial one, while the wind–blowing in hellgusts at up to 40 miles an hour during the first half–made even Lyle Moevao’s one-speed passing difficult. (Lyle Moevao only throws one kind of ball: directly through your chest, even on screens.) They had reasons, and at least apologized by scoring.

Pitt, slyly sliding in the door in the clothes of a competent team, immediately disrobed and revealed themselves to be a team coached by that Dave Wannstedt: the one who lets his offensive coordinator call passes on 4th and 1 with LeSean McCoy in the backfield, the one who sits with his hands on his hips and wrinkles his upper lip in theatrical bafflement, the one whose game management has passed unimproved and unimpeded through the ranks of the NFL and now college football for over fifteen years as a head coach. If you’d like to go blind, please see Bill Stull’s line: 7/24, 54 yards, and one INT. The box score is a fucking desert. Go ahead and look at it. We dare you. Vomit does not come out of computer keyboards easily.

It was agony, and when Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson said things like “Well, Pitt’s going for it here,” we know what they really meant. “Please, death. Swing your sweet scythe through our willing flesh before we see the end of this game. Screw you, Sun Bowl, for even existing this year. Next year, just stage a shot contest between the coaches and a donkey show for the remaining two hours of the broadcast. Repellent as that would be–especially if Dennis Erickson’s ASU team goes–watching Pitt lob 30 yard fades into gale-force winds was far, far worse.

Football is so easy for Tim Tebow he has played the entire season under a different name for Cincinnati on the offensive line:

(HT: Kevin and William.) This is most likely some giggle-worthy prankdom by Fox staffers, though Samuel Huntington would say that this is actually the Muslim Tebow, and that the two must meet and clash to determine the path of the 21st century because, um…because he said so. Also, if Tebow has been playing offensive line for Cincy and qb for Florida, we know why: his undivided attention would result in a 12 men in the huddle penalty on every play even though there’s only 11 men on the field. It’s just a matter of necessity, really.

Skip Holtz (spelling correct; no lisp) is not going to be the next coach at Syracuse according to ESPN, a “source close to the situation” told Joe Schad, a man so blessed with “sources close to the situation” it’s not unreasonable to propose his status as a shape shifter capable of looking like any AD’s secretary at the snap of fingers. If you are ever at an ESPN party, beware, as that pretty lady you’re macking on MAY BE JOE SCHAD.

Joe Schad comes in a thousand forms. All of them can type 120 words a minute and are familiar with Microsoft Excel.

If Holtz is not a candidate at Syracuse, then Turner Gill remains on their list. Gill already coaches in the Northeast and is familiar with the territory and the job at hand (rebuilding a near-dead program.) Gill is also on Auburn’s list, a job where you aren’t sure who can fire you, who you answer to, or how many times you can lose to Alabama before you are shown the door unceremoniously. Um, we mean retire.

The possibility of Gill being the lead candidate there now presents a number of appalling conditions for Auburn. One, they might not get Gill even if they extended him an offer, and two, that Syracuse might get the jump on Auburn in a coaching search, a race lost for the school comparable to losing a race for the last donut with a 450 pound asthmatic in a Lark. (Yes, those things are fast, but the only thing that moves quickly with a 450 pound person on it is an airplane with them inside it crashing to the ground.)

Bill Stewart: “We’ve got enough coal to heat the world. We’ve got enough oil in this state to lubricate the world.”

If you doubt he actually said it:

So, attention bears, twinks, circuit boys, fluffers, power bottoms, greasers, dry-runners, barebackers, dogs-in-the-bath freaks, poofters, and those struggling with Dry Clam Syndrome around the nation: Bill Stewart says West Virginia can not only help you out, but keep you warm in the process. Albeit, you may have black lung when you finish whatever it is you plan to do with that oil, but sickness of the lungs and pneumatic system makes one lusty in a Doc Holliday kind of way.

Louisville was down 49 at the half to Rutgers last night. If you missed the first half as we did, you tuned into the second half and fully expected Steve Kragthorpe to read his death poem into his headset, kneel, plunge his tanto into his side, and commit ritual suicide on the sidelines.

Unfortunately for Kragthorpe-san, it’s hard to commit suicide when Davon Sharp and the rest of the Rutgers team is doing the job for you:

Louisville is standing by their man for now, but Louisville’s pile of hot fail is accumulating like so many yellowed toenails stuck in the shag carpet of mediocrity. They went 1-5 in the Big East, yielding one of those to newly-fired GERG and Syracuse. They suffered through a macabre series of injuries this year, yes–they only took 25 players to Rutgers, and presumably expected the worst–but their late collapse was well short of a Thermopylae-style last stand. The Cardinals have looked mediocre to awful at times under Kragthorpe, and your trend graph is flowing ever-downward at this rate for his overall performance at the school.

You know a game is bad when ESPN keeps showing shots of the Lincoln Tunnel on commercial outros. You also know your defense had no shot when you let Mike Teel throw for seven touchdowns in his last game as a Scarlet Knight. On the upside, the slack time in the second half allowed for Chris Fowler to admit he’d never been to a local greasy spoon before midnight or sober, basically, and that was almost worth the agony of watching the second half.

From the Bearcats’ CSTV site, a piece of nut-grabbing bravado:

Egads, that’s awesome, or stupid, or stupidly awesome. We support all three on this website, so you go on with your foolish badassness, Bearcats. You don’t have to play the Buckeyes until 2012, so woof on all you like.

Is USF Coach Jim Leavitt aware you can’t give game balls to journalists? Is the journo in question aware Jim Leavitt may extend his arm to you not to shake your hand, but to rip your shoulder out of socket and the joint and thus teach you a lesson in taking nothing for granted, because though you may be maimed you still have full range of motion in one arm, and isn’t life about making the best of your current situation? Is Leavitt wearing pants?

This really is nothing when it comes to Jim Leavitt being animated in front of a camera, since you don’t build something from nothing without the ability to at least scare everyone in a 1000 foot radius with a glance. Leavitt’s man-fear-smell-emitting glands may have had as much of an effect on attendance as USF’s disappointing 7-4 season: attendance was down this year for the Bulls overall. Expect to see Leavitt standing on the corner of Dale Mabry with a sign advertising tickets…while selling a few Sunday St. Pete Times, too. Leavitt’s a hustler like that.

(HT: The Wiz.)

…is brought to you by WBGV, who opines on the bizarre offensive mutations of the formerly unstoppable Firecouchbone:

Do we not scout? Do we not have a gameplan? Do we not know what the other team is going to do and how to react? Do we not practice during the week and prepare?

West Virginia’s fans are prepared, at least.

Ahh, the undeniable cri de coueur of a fan stuck in post-greatness coaching comedown. The fun for West Virginia fans looking for statistical poo to throw at their coaches is only starting: with Pat White, Dorrell Jalloh, and Jock Sanders, the offense has gone from the 15th in total offense in the nation to 72nd and fallen from 3rd nationally in 2007 to 14th overall in rushing offense.

The big emphasis on the pass Stewart mentioned before the season? Like-a-this?

“I think you’ll see a more diversified Pat White,” Stewart said. “He’s a very good passer. The guy’s got touch. He’s going to be even more exciting for the game of college football.”

The West Virginia passing offense ranked 114th in 2007. The emphasis on the pass has improved them to 106th in the nation, or ahead of only Syracuse in the Big East in that department.

Wisconsin @ #21 Michigan State

ORSON, QUASI-RATIONAL: It would be intellectual dishonesty to say that these are anything but two perfectly average teams playing perfectly average football: numbers do not lie in either case. Wisconsin in particular has little to say about suddenly changing a game in either direction; they don’t pick off passes, they don’t change games with special teams, and they can be dick-deficient in the passing game. Michigan State is at home, and therefore will likely win in a game reminding you of everything bad about Big Ten Football (to wit: ACC football, but colder.)
HOLLY, IRRATIONAL: My streak of picking coaches for their perfectly trapezoid-shaped heads ends with you, Bieleieleielma. Spartans.

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