CURIOUS INDEX, 9/25/2008

Well, we didn't like that poll question anyway. Jimmy Clausen was to keep the "Little Throw Peep" 'do until Notre Dame lost. Notre Dame lost to Michigan State Saturday, so Clausen showed up to this week's press conference with a near buzz-cut, thus ending the short but glorious reign of Prince Valiant.

Now you may only mock him for everything else.

Alternate career choices include: murder. Thunder Collins, who at one time was the next unstoppable I-back out of Nebraska and had the nickname to match, is facing murder charges.

It's a trap! Wannstache reached deep in the bag of motivational tricks and pulled out a diabolically brilliant way to let his players know that this week's matchup with Syracuse...IT'S A TRAP!

Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt placed mousetraps around the Duratz Athletic Complex this week, as a motivation tool for the Panthers (2-1) to avoid falling into the "trap" of looking past Saturday's visit to Syracuse (1-2) with the ESPN televised Oct. 2 game at No. 12 South Florida (4-0) looming. "You need to get your feet back on the ground and make sure we get the focus back on what we've got to do and not get caught up in records," Wannstedt said.

This being Pitt football, running back LeSean McCoy will step in one and fracture his toe in the next 12 hours.

Ron Prince, master recruiter. The K-State coach is getting hammered on in-state recruiting by Kansas, who have 4 out of the top ten recruits in the state. The Wildcats currently have zero of them, and Chris Harper--a former Wichita Northwestern qb currently attempting to survive the injury plague ravaging the five-deep at Oregon--said things were..."weird."

“My family felt something was weird,” Harper said. “We didn’t trust him. Something was off. We couldn’t pinpoint it.”

Perhaps it was the goatee. Or losing, too--that will do it every time.

Mark Richt izz kleverr. Coaches never watch Youtube, they never read blogs, they never hear anything from the press, being hermetically sealed into their film rooms as they are, hard at work securing the next generation of greatness for the year's recruiting, spying tiny but crucial flaws in the opponent's schemes...

Richt walked into the team-meeting room for his post-practice briefing Wednesday wearing a black hat, black shirt and black shorts. “I’m going to a funeral,” he said with a mischievous grin.

Naturally, a reporter asked if he was responding to the Alabama video.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he quipped.

To repeat: Richt has been immensely more fun since his Martian encounter with the Mysterons changed his personality and made him walk around unshaven all the time.