CURIOUS INDEX, 4/3/2008

Joe Tiller is tired when he didn't used to be. Oatmeal, Joe! Oatmeal!

"I feel my energy level slipping a little bit," Tiller said Monday after Purdue's workout at the Mollenkopf Athletic Center. "I still feel like I have energy, and I look forward to these practices and coming out here, but I don't mind going home anymore. I used to want to stay up all night, watching tape. So if that's slipping, then that's me.

Notice he doesn't say what kind of tapes, mind you. We take Joe to be a John Ford fan over a Howard Hawks guy, with a special affection for the gritty existentialism of The Searchers. (You were expecting a porno joke there well TOO BAD. He's not Tommy Bowden, man.) This will be Tiller's last season, which Joe plans to celebrate by going 7-0, then losing five in a row to finish at 7-5. He will be replaced by Danny Hope, the former Eastern Kentucky coach who's in the Dauphin spot to succeed Tiller next year.

We spoke with a jail official in Lincoln County, Tennessee, and the story here is completely true: they really are wearing pink uniforms instead of orange so as not to blend in with all the Tennessee Vol orange on the street in Lincoln County. (HT: Ethan.)

Thank God Houston Nutt's pink jerseys never took a practice session in Lincoln County, lest they be arrested on the spot and pepper-sprayed within an inch of their lives.

Alabama's flipping a few guys around, which happens when you're still having depth chart/personnel issues. If you're the kind of person who likes stuffing an open container of milk deep in the file cabinet when leaving a miserable job and you happen to be a head coach some day, do this: recruit terribly in your last two years in the job, and then get fired. Watch the fun as your successor loses years off their life! (Last year, at the end of the season, you could see the outline of Nick Saban's skull under his skin. He looked dessicated by the strain.)

Segue: Iowa football! Feel it! 15 of the 39 players signed from 2005 to 2006 have left the program, meaning Iowa's APR score next round will be somewhere between zero and FAAAAAHHHHCK!

James Johnson, wide receiver for Georgia Tech, has quit the team because he's sick of football. According to Paul Johnson, he quit once before, was talked into returning, and is now just done with the whole thing. Somehow, we don't think he'll suffer the pangs of regret like a John Ed Bradley--the afterglow of the Chan Gailey era won't quite raise the goosebumps like that.