Some random thoughts on a college football Saturday afternoon

Lane Kiffin, former USC Offensive coordinator and ex-Raider head coach is reportedly headed to Tennessee after Phil Fulmer steps down at the end of the season. He was the hot candidate for the job and while the conventional wisdom is that he will have to immediately get up to speed on recruiting in the hyper-competitive SEC, we see things a little differently. Yes, he will need some immediate assistance in recruiting in the Southeast but as we noted previously, Tennessee is unique in that they are a football crazy school in a state that is not necessarily football crazy as opposed to the other traditional powers in that conference: Alabama, Georgia and Florida. As such, a national recruiting stategy has always been imperative and Kiffin’s west coast ties allows for the continuation of this strategy once he takes over there at Rocky Top.

We wish to thank the football television scheduling powers-that-be for putting the Civil War (Oregon/Oregon St.), USC/Notre Dame and Oklahoma/Oklahoma St., games all with huge BCS ramifications, on at essentially the same time today in the late afternoon/early evening time slot. The remote will be getting a workout.

Kirk Herbstreit, on College Game Day this morning, said that any upset loss involving the teams above USC (‘Bama, Florida, Oklahoma) today will result in USC getting to the BCS championship game. That’s an awful lot of leap-frogging for 5th-ranked SC but we have seen stranger things happen… like a 2-loss team appearing and winning last year against a team that played its last regular season game before Thanksgiving and which was ranked #5 in the BCS, slipping into a turkey coma and then finding themselves with a shot at the title upon awakening again in December.

Take a look at the top of current BCS standings, here… and get used to it. Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, USC, Texas, Georgia and possibly Ohio State: traditional football powers that have the full backing of their respective universities and which are led by relatively young, ambitious and excellent head coaches that know how to recruit. Of course, all bets are off if the NFL comes calling (yes, we’re looking at you, Nick Saban) but by and large, all these head coaching jobs are “destination” jobs and are considered “great jobs” within the collegiate ranks. So expect musical chairs at the top of the rankings for next 5 – 7 years between these mega-programs.