COLLEGE FOOTBALL'S ELEVEN OUT OF TEN

Miami Hurricanes fans find themselves as the latest atop program-lifeblood-vampire Charles Robinson's hit list. With the 'Canes purportedly square in the crosshairs of the so-called "10-for-10" potential serious NCAA violation scandal Robinson's indicated has been simmering for some time now, one can't help but wonder if college football scandals simply aren't what they used to be.

If we've regressed as a society from a golden age where college football scandals went all the way up to the state's governor and high school All-American running backs bathing in crude oil (black gold, y'all) then it's time for the Y! Sports-es of the world to up their game and dig for the real potential game-changing program killers.

The EDSBS staff holds no qualms about tipping our caps and revealing what we've heard. Even the most seemingly far fetched rumor is primed to print, because, as any good investigative reporter with a "*HOT CLICKZ*" section will attest, if there's smoke, there's an 1871 Chicago'esque blaze afoot. Take heed, Wetzel, et al; this true game changer's a freebee.

A not too distant future?

1. ESPN's Norby Williamson knows the perfect crime necessitates a plot so nefarious that only the most dedicated search engine investigative reporting unit could unearth its beginnings. Ergo, the network puts the wheels in motion on a complicated power play by completing a complicated multinational wire transfer to ensure former Pitt coach Mike Haywood would receive more than the value of his entire contract at the university should he be terminated.

2. In exchange, Haywood stages an elaborate but believable domestic assault charge which would necessitate his arrest in South Bend…the very same South Bend police force who acts as the private hand of Brian Kelly's national crime syndicate. With the world thinking he was behind bars, Haywood is free to hop a private plane to Morgantown to meet up with noted killer for hire, West Virginia offensive coordinator (and eventual head coach) Dana Holgorsen.

3. The two meet brazenly in a casino with Holgorsen giving onlookers the impression he was sloshing down double gin & gingers like they were carbonated waters. Knowing a local beat writer's penchant for the slots ensured such behavior would be leaked to jealous then-head-coach Bill Stewart, the bait is taken.  With Haywood having relayed the World Wide Leader in elaborate assassination plots' instructions, Holgorsen takes a recruiting trip to Chicago with one rather prominent target in mind: Big Ten commissioner and Fox stalwart Jim Delany... Or did he?

4. Holgo, pulling a bit of bait and switch, trails the fleeing Haywood back to Kelly in northwest Indiana. He finds Notre Dame coach Kelly applying Tom Hammond's protective layer of fetal stem cell cream in Kelly's contractually required weekly Hammond-massage session. Knowing the inherent value there in, Holgorsen takes a series of pictures for blackmail. When a rogue camera flash accidentally tips off the omni-aware 6000 year old daywalker Hammond's senses, Holgorsen is forced to scramble with the balloon-headed Sultan of Saturday Football Cliche in hot pursuit. Sadly, Hammond's comedically swollen head gets lodged in Kelly's office door, trapping everyone involved inside and unfortunately for the Notre Dame contingent set up professional killer Holgo with the opportunity for an easy triple kill. With the C4 ready to go and the evidence primed for erasing, Holgorsen decides to do the only other thing logical: turn the tables back on ESPN and call noted news parrot Joe Schad to the scene.

5. With Schad compliant in the wrongful termination of Holgorsen's football (and murder) mentor Mike Leach, here emerges the chance to kill two birds with one stone and send a message to Schad's employers in the process. Due to Schad's raging inability to communicate with anyone in any means other than via cellphone, Holgorsen has his agent relay the story to Schad, standing a mere five feet from him in South Bend. Schad's instinctive overexcitement and proclivity to bullshit ultimately lead to his on-air reporting that SC's Lane Kiffin had been feeding on coed's bone marrow for sustenance. The bad news for Schad, his employers, and Holgorsen?  The one man game of telephone is all too true.

6. ESPN pulls the plug on the SportsCenter special report from ever airing live or hitting the internet, but Lane Kiffin has nothing better to do than sleep in a Spider Man sleeping bag in ESPN's production hub in Bristol (his father and defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin had told him this is where all the best recruits were to get him out of the way) and has already heard too much. Kiffin knows the only response to the news is to confess, and then out the one man who'd taught him how to fight the ravages of aging with savory human bone marrow, a life-nectar obtained by the harvesting of female corpses from an unknown and sinister source.

7. Norby WIlliamson knows there was no way this information, and the identity of the bone marrow source, could ever see the light of day. This is especially true after going to such great lengths to protect the man, the dark highway traveler whose beaming smile was in fact the gleaming teeth of a predator hunting in the night. He might be known by a thousand names: the Truckee River Killer, the Puget Sound Foot Clipper, The Furious Five Finger Discount Killer, the Pony Murder Express, the Juarez Wolf, The New England Hooker Cooker, The Dallas Ditch Digger, the San Diego Fillet-As-You-Go, the Lobo of Lovers' Lane, Mr. Brooks Of Dowling's Nook, The Phoenix Night Ripper. But he was also an ESPN employee, and a loyal one, and that mattered more than anything.

So in response, ESPN just airs some old bowling without explanation, suspends a random hard-working beatwriter for nothing, and hopes no one would notice.

There's your fictional but entirely plausible 10, Charles Robinson. Just follow the money, as Deep Throat would say. (And the trail of bones, we guess.)