Help me out here, how many stages of grief are there?  Upon hearing about the Jeep Hunter dismissal, the editorial staff at TRC probably blew through them all in short order.  We went from #1 Groggy Comprehension (Huh, who?  Hey, I was asleep – don’t call me right after lunch!), to #2 Curious Googling (Oh, THAT Jeep Hunter), to #3 Bargaining (Look, I’ll buy you a beer if you will STOP talking about Jeep Hunter) to #4 Acceptance (Hey, Whaddyagonnado?) in the short span of a half work day.

With that now behind us (and a long weekend to drink off the other, more upsetting, news that decrepit Madonna is providing the Super Bowl halftime show) we here at TRC are now mentally prepared to give you our rundown of the top ten DB coaching candidates, with unassailable reasons why they will all-ALL, MIND YOU- be considered by the HBC:

10.  Willie Martinez.  Former Defensive Coordinator for UGa, Martinez is well-known for having roomed with Mark Richt during their mutual time on the University of Miami’s football team.  Think about that for a minute:  he survived rooming with the most boring man in all of sport.  That alone is a strong testimony to his will and self-determination.

9.  Charlize Theron.  Well, more accurately the character she played in Three Days in the Valley.  Or maybe that Sci-Fi flick where she jumped around in the black unitard.  Hot as hell in both those movies, and I’d pay some serious scratch to watch her prowl the sweaty sidelines at the WB.

8. Charlize Theron in all the other movies she did.  Except Monster – that was gross.

7.  Troy Douglas.  Formerly of UNCarolina, Mr. Douglas has a solid reputation of joining programs on the verge of NCAA probation, and then reconstructing a serviceable pass defense despite the eligibility Armageddon.  Not saying that is about to happen here BUT OH MY GOD WHAT IF WE GET HAMMERED FOR WHITNEYGATE I HATE YOU JOE PERSON!!!

6.  Dr. T. Berry Brazelton.  You may or may not remember him, but his “touchpoints” approach to defense got me through a rough ten years or so of dealing with young people.

5.  Duce Staley/ Terry Cousins/ Chris Rumph/ Steve Taneyhill/ Mark Dantonio.  Because this is the internet, and that is the sort of nonsense we are required to discuss.

4.  Vic Koenning.  He is available still, right?  Got let go with the Zooker up at Illinois, I think.  He should be considered just because it would royally hack off Mr. Dabo Cornelius Swinney.  That’s right, I’ve invented a middle name for Dabo.  Tweet that.

3.  Brad Scott.  Just to make him run around a little.  Hey, I’m concerned for his health, and it looks like he makes the CTU guys carry him around all the time.

2.  A Pellini.  Don’t care which one.  Hire one just for the faces they make.

1.  Steven Orr Spurrier.  You figure he would call an all-out double zero coverage blitz on EVERY snap.  Guaranteed to get the ball back one way or the other, right?

Think that should cover it.

Signing Day Adam being, of course, the day before Signing Day Eve.

Feel free to use that one, and you’re welcome.

That to the side, longtime followers of TRC will remember  that I profess absolutely no interest in recruiting.  This representation of ambivalence is carefully crafted with an eye toward giving me an aloof detachment from the entire dirty process.

But it’s all a lie – I absolutely DO follow recruiting – just not the daily ebb and flow of commitments, decommits, bags of cash doled out at the local Mcdonalds (that’s a CTU fan conspiracy favorite from back in the Squeaky Watson days), etc.  Instead of getting wrapped up in all the drama, I prefer to take a million-mile view based on the final class rank.

I then sit back and wait a year or two and see who from the class actually enrolled and whether or not they actually contribute to the team.

To illustrate by contrast: this morning on WCCP’s Mickey Plyler Show, the co-host (name escapes me but he sounds young and over-eager) was waxing enthusiastic about all things recruiting and remembering what he described as the “most free publicity Clemson has ever received until the big winning streak this year in football” (quick aside here – no idea what winning streak he is talking about, so it must not-a-been much).  That event, he opined, was the signing day press conference from 2008, where Jamie Harper, Daquan Bowers, and Kyle Parker all inked with the Tigers as a part of the supposed #2 class in the country.

How’d that work out for them?  Counting, of course, the redshirt year for some of the signees, I guess that great class did win the coastal division and the ACC championship, but it also lost three straight to the Gamecocks, lost a Charlotte Bowl to South Freakin Florida, and set the all-time NCAA record for a lopsided bowl loss.

They couldn’t see that coming in the 2008 press conference, could they?

My point here is this:  enjoy signing day, but don’t stress out about it.  It will all work out in the end, and signing day braggadocio notwithstanding, all of our football programs will be about where they were before all the ink hit all the Wednesday paperwork.

One prediction – there’s gonna be a big surprise or three.  I base this entirely upon the following: its been quiet in the southeast this recruiting cycle.  Too Quiet.  All of the pundits are talking about how the recruiting game has changed and is now pretty straightforward, standardized, and boring.  This guarantees, of course, that recruiting Armageddon will arrive on Wednesday.  So prepare yourself accordingly.

Not that any of it really matters.

Reports are out there that Carolina Runningbacks Tight Ends Safeties Spurs Coach Jeep Hunter is no longer a part of the coaching staff.

We here at TRC are saddened by this news for many reasons, not the least of which is the fun that can be had by googling “Jeep Hunter.”

Witness:

 

 

 

The word ‘parvenu’ might not be the most common of english usages, but it nevertheless conveys a meaning that any of us would readily understand.  It’s “new money”, but with a decidedly pejorative connotation.  Think The Great Gatsby, trying to overcompensate for a meager upbringing by lavishly spending new-found wealth.  Garish fortune notwithstanding, the erstwhile tycoon still struggled for acceptance among the elites.

Confused?  Let me illustrate:

Once upon a time, there was a relatively minor football program at a state agricultural college that was tucked away in an undeveloped backwater of a small southern town.  This program was not considered a threat by any of the football elites, in fact it was only marginally competitive with other regional schools.  This school blatantly lifted its athletic traditions from other, more successful, programs and ultimately offered repeated and desperate protestations that it deserved to be treated with the same respect.

But the school had a problem, and the problem was money.

Such were the school’s financial woes that its head coach created a new concept:  a non-alumni booster organization.  This group would raise much-needed capital from the modest working folks that surrounded the school.  A relatively meager amount was required to join – only ten dollars a year.  But the idea worked, and quite well.  “I Pay Ten a Year” became a slogan for those farmers and factory workers who had no hope of a college education, but could still identify with the upstart college program up the road.

Money poured in.

When the product on the field didn’t match either the aspirations of the desperate program or the expectations of the locals, questions began to be asked.  Difficult questions about how all that money was being spent.  The powerful within the department soon made a decision:  they would take their newfound cash, and use it to both purchase the national legitimacy they so desperately desired, and also placate their yeoman supporters.

They were gonna buy their way to success.

Initially, it seemed to work.    An unheard of accomplishment, the Mythical National Championship was obtained.  But then disaster struck, as the sport’s governing organization recognized the blatant shenanigans and slapped the eager upstarts with the worst penalties ever handed down at the time, and the second worst penalties still to date.

A second probation would soon follow, as more pay-for-play allegations swirled. But with new-found TV dollars added to the pile, the chance to cash in only grew.

These rumors continue until this day, although the school’s relatively low profile, remote location, and penchant for offering compliance officers ridiculously high salaries have thus far allowed them to escape NCAA notice.  Examples nevertheless abound, such as a star running back spurning the NFL and returning to school after discovering that the free use of a local lake house would vanish with the expiration of his amateur status.  Recruits were repeatedly (I mean, repeatedly, oh, and repeatedly) seen posing with large amounts of cash, and one in Marlboro County even widely claimed to have won the lottery on national signing day.  One recruit allegedly had his entire family comp’ed at a luxury hotel for weeks leading up to signing day.  Another player even admitted on air that the NFL wouldn’t be able to pay him as much as this school could.

Beyond paying players, this school demonstrates its desperate search for attention and importance in other ways.  It is currently paying the salary of its last head coach, last defensive coordinator, and last offensive coordinator, and all of them are working elsewhere.  At the same time, it is paying its current head coach an amount that could liquidate the local Dollar General, and just announced that it will pay its two current coordinators the highest joint salary of any school in NCAA history.

Our word of the day relates to this school because of the absolute glee with which its supporters celebrate these spending sprees.  Whether for coaches, facilities, or for players outright, the fanbase of this school is so hungry for acceptance, and so haunted by feelings of inferiority to their collegiate neighbors, that they will celebrate being first in anything, even if it’s just being  first in lavishly wasting money.

Someone who wildly spends money to try to obtain long-dreamed heights of social status, allthewhile only reinforcing their own undesirableness – that’s a parvenu.

You’re welcome.

Oh, and this picture, just because:

So word has finally leaked that USC and UNC are deep in talks about a proposed 5 game series in football.  No one on our side of the border is talking yet, but note reports such as this are prevalent:

With the info now out there, we here at TRC feel comfortable releasing our own intel on the topic, which we’ve been holding close for some time now.  Our own crack investigative team has uncovered intra-office memos detailing the Gamecock AD’s approach to the negotiations.  Don’t ask us how we came across the info (OK, Gman is a janitor in the AD’s Office), and please do NOT forward or disseminate publicly:

Really, it has thousands of potential uses:

Scanning the interwebs for West Virginia based smack on The Seventyocalypse:

Tweet.