CURIOUS INDEX, 6/8/09

I did that on purpose, too. Let's all walk out on a very charitable limb together this morning. It has to suck to be Lane Kiffin in one sense: he has to learn his job on-the-job in front of millions of people. Please note that we're not assuming stupidity here. We'll just assume he's young, which he is for his profession, for being a CEO, for being in charge of a multimillion dollar enterprise, for being responsible for so many people's salaries, talent development, and career trajectory. We will also assume he is human, and thus subject to doubt. (He says he's not, but whatever: you breathe, or you doubt, or you really are so unfathomably stupid that you may invalidate the typed words preceding this as a mere academic exercise. If true: he's beyond hope.)

So what do you do when you're insecure and simmering in the boiling broth of your own uncertainty? You lean hard on certainty, on planning, on how this is all part of the plan . In fact, you overexaggerate your sphere of control to include even your mistakes. In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus has a phrase for this: "A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."

Hey, look! Another portal to discovery!

Go watch the gaffe in question here. The point of Stephen Dedalus saying things like this is that he's bluffing, and only has bluster and bluffing to cover up his insecurity, doubt, and his being completely full of shit and devoid of experience. So is Lane Kiffin at this point. (And now we crawl back from our exposed position on a limb, and resume assuming that he is [NAME REDACTED] with Tourette's.)

HE SPEAKS. About non-BCS things for precisely 24 minutes among other topics: Phil Steele and 40 solid minutes of rapid data download on the In the Bleachers podcast.

Oh, this isn't the play I thought it was. No, sir. This is not a play about hairy gay men, and if you want to stay and watch you will have to put a towel down, because assless chaps and our theater's seats shall never meet.

Ty Willingham thinks you are a rank amateur. He is not collecting two paychecks for nothing, and is therefore behind Willingham, but Ron Turner will still collect $235,000 from Illinois five years after he was fired. The payment is the last installment in the settlement reached when he was fired, and is 83% as shameless as Jeff Bowden's balls-out brazen theft from Florida State in 2006.

Metaphor! Get it! We're building things by building things by building things by building things! Slut for exclamation points! Obvious metaphors!

Camping: it's like being homeless, but fun and temporary. June is for recruitniks, meaning you should just go to the beach, crack out the highlighter on your Phil Steele, and listen for the faint hissing sound of Tom Lemming inflating Notre Dame's recruiting class rank as you watch a lovely seaside sunset.

We disargee completly. A truly brilliant comment on college football failing its student-athletes from Philly.com. (First comment by reader "stank.")

How many college football players can't not read or write at a 'high school' level? Listen to their intervues, they can not even communicate well in english!