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Football
The Week that Was
By Tony Gerdeman

Conference media days are finally here as the SEC kicked off their preview gala, and the topic du jour obviously centered around the evil agents who have been taking advantage of the innocent and simpleton-ish college football players (who, don't forget, are still apparently smart enough to actually be surviving a college education) and putting those players' eligibility—and the coaches' win/loss records—in jeopardy. But first the biggest news of the week...

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.Tyrone Willingham has retired from coaching,. Given the fact that both myself and Willingham have probably had about the same amount of interest directed our way from athletic directors looking for a head coach, I guess that makes me retired too.

To be honest, this is all a bit sudden for me. Coaches always want to go out on their own terms, and even though I've never been fired, I still don't feel like I'm retiring on my own terms. But then I don't really have anybody to blame but myself. Well, that's not true—I guess I could blame the athletic directors out there and their ridiculous standards.

I guess this means I'm also retired from astronauting, aeronauting, cosmonauting and barbonauting (barbecuing in space).

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Here's an underhanded recruiting story that surprisingly has nothing to do with the SEC. It surrounds a quarterback that committed to Connecticut, spurning a hopeful Boston College.

Michael Nebrich was the first player to commit to UConn's 2011 recruiting class. But that didn't prevent a Boston College assistant coach from sending an e-mail to Nebrich asking the 6-foot-1, 190-pound quarterback to attend a one-day skills clinic. The BC assistant also told Nebrich there would be a new UConn coaching staff by January.

"I got an e-mail from one of the BC assistant coaches who wasn't too happy about my commitment," Nebrich said Wednesday morning.

"He told me stuff like the UConn coaching staff isn't going to be there in January. I called up Coach [Joe] Moorhead [UConn's offensive coordinator] and Coach Edsall and told them about it and asked them and they told me that was absolutely ridiculous and reassured me they'd be there. It definitely surprised me coming from another school, especially the asinine way they did it."

“The e-mail had a suffix of bc.edu after the coach's e-mail address. The message was brief.”

"Mike: We are hosting a one-day skill clinic on July 8. Would love to see you there. I know you're committed to UConn but You will have a new coaching staff there by next January. You have a plan for that?"

Classy stuff, eh. So while coaches will go on railing against evil agents for the next three weeks, let's not pretend that everybody in the coaching profession is as pristine as the undriven snow on top of a mountain of baby duck feathers.

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Speaking of which, did you see that USC is giving back their copy of Reggie Bush's Heisman trophy, as well as removing any mention of Bush wherever there may still be mention. I hear Snoop even has to alter some lyrics. I do wonder, however, if Bush's mom and stepdad will have to remove the family name that they wrote in the cement at their ill-gotten house. But since that name isn't “Bush”, maybe they're safe.

Here's a little snippet from the article that should make you smile.

“While the lobby of USC's athletic department now lacks one very prominent Heisman Trophy, the media guide for next season's football team will include something extra.”

“Asterisks. Lots of them

“The university must qualify every winning score, every statistic and every mention of former tailback Reggie Bush that pertain to the two-year period covered by recent NCAA sanctions

“All those asterisks will be followed by some form of the phrase 'later vacated due to NCAA penalty.

"'The media guide will have about 100 asterisks in it,' said Tim Tessalone, a department spokesman who prepares the annual publication.”

And now with Lane Kiffin in charge, maybe the new records should come with an asterisk followed by some form of the phrase 'eventually to be vacated due to NCAA penalty'.

You do have to feel a bit sorry for Kiffin, however. Had he known he wouldn't be able to get away with as much as the previous regime did, don't you think he would have just stayed in the SEC, which is basically the Wild West of college football minus the lack of a parson now that Tim Tebow is in Denver.

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Before we start talking about the SEC, I wanted to pass along this story about the Big XII miscounting the media's votes regarding preseason accolades. The conference announced that Nebraska had been the unanimous choice as the Big XII North's pick, but then this guy came out saying that he voted for Missouri for some reason. Of course, he then went on to say this:

“I didn't pick the Cornhuskers, although given that Missouri plays at Nebraska I probably should have and probably would now.”

So basically he picked Missouri because he wanted to be different and stand out, and then when it wasn't noted that somebody didn't vote for the Huskers, he had to make sure it WAS known so that he could stand out, even though he agreed that he should have voted for Nebraska to begin with.

This is like the boy who cried wolf, but instead of crying wolf, he was going to go ahead and let the wolf maul him so that he could go back home and say, “Look at what this wolf did to me!” and hungrily consume the attention that it brought him. But the wolf never showed, so then he had to go looking for said wolf and he ended up finding a whole pack of them—and then they mauled him something fierce. And then when he got home, he didn't shout and say, “Look at what these wolves did to me!”, he instead said, “On second thought, I probably shouldn't have gotten mauled by those wolves.”

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If you're going to do an off-season college football column covering the weekly goings-on around the sport, then you're undoubtedly going to be dealing with the SEC quite a bit. It would be like doing a weekly column about sitcoms featuring old ladies living in Miami and not mentioning The Golden Girls.

So buckle in and let's talk some SEC media days!

By now you've undoubtedly heard about the handful of SEC schools being investigated by the NCAA regarding improper benefits coming from agents and all of the denials floating around from everybody.

As you would expect, this has been the main topic of discussion from the SEC media days, and it's left us with some pretty interesting quotes.

Nick Saban talked quite a bit about the agents and his program, and before he got to his now famous pimp analogy, he said this about former offensive tackle Andre Smith:

“We had an issue a couple years ago with Smitty who got suspended for the Sugar Bowl. You know, we probably could have prosecuted the guy. But in prosecuting the guy that did wrong, we would have put our institution in jeopardy - possibly - from an NCAA standpoint. We didn't do it. But then the same guy is standing in line trying to give our players money this past year and nothing gets done about it. It's not a good situation.”

I'm a bit confused here. Back in late 2008, after suspending Smith for the Tide's bowl game, Saban labeled the situation as an “institutional matter” and “not an NCAA matter”. Now he's saying that had they chosen to prosecute the agent involved, things could have been exposed that could have put Alabama—a school that is currently on probation for another two years—“in jeopardy”? But I thought it wasn't “an NCAA matter”? Does this mean the university covered things up, or just decided not to report them? Either way, it seems a bit hinky.

Okay, now we're going to get to the “pimp part”, but when you read what Saban says, I want you to imagine he's talking about oversigning and when he says “agents”, replace that with “coaches”.

“It's something that is affecting college football in a negative way. It's affecting college football fans. It's affecting a lot of people.”

“I mean, the consequences are negative for them [the players] and their future. They'll probably not get drafted as high as they could have got drafted if they played and participated.”

“I don't think it's anything but greed that is creating it right now on behalf of the agents. Agents that do this, I hate to say this, but how are they any better than a pimp? I have no respect for people who do that to young people, none. I mean, none. How would you feel if they did it to your child?”

Pretty interesting, eh?

I absolutely love the irony of Nick Saban calling agents pimps for the way they treat the players. This is the same guy who is famous for oversigning recruits every single year because he knows that by the time the next fall camp starts, he'll have kicked his lowest earners to the curb to make room for better looking prospects.

Hearing Saban complain about the runners for these agents who try to entice these players reminds me of coaches who hire high school coaches of prospective recruits to help out at their camps. You know, kind of like Nick Saban does. For instance, why on earth would Saban need a high school coach from Springfield, Ohio to help out at his camp. Is there some specific technique that only he knows how to coach? Wouldn't it be cheaper just to have somebody local do it? Don't they have enough coaches in the south to help out? And was it just a coincidence that Saban is targeting a highly-recruited linebacker from that same Springfield school?

I'm not saying these high school coaches are runners (not all of them, at least), but I highly doubt they go back with negative things to say when prompted by their players.

Basically, Saban calling agents pimps is more ironic than Houston Nutt making fun of somebody else's accent.

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Did you see what Urban Meyer said about Tennessee's new coach Derek Dooley?

Q. “The relationship last year with Tennessee was pretty well-documented. Do you expect those things to improve now?”

COACH MEYER: “I have a lot of respect for the new coach on Tennessee. I spent a lot of time talking to him. You can tell he has everything in order. He's a high-character guy. That's nice to see. I have a lot of respect for that coach.”

Yes, it's nice to see that there's finally a high-character guy at Tennessee who has everything in order.

I love that it's open season on Lane Kiffin every day in the SEC.

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Finally, here are some quotes from America's newest and favoritest interim head coach, Vanderbilt's Robbie Caldwell.

On his family's reaction when they heard about Bobby Johnson's retirement: “My family was in a panic. All they heard was 'retirement'. You know all the speculation that goes on as well as anybody. They were all in an uproar, crying, carrying on. They never heard about the part about me getting to be interim head coach.”

“When I get home, there's no congratulations. There's a panic. It's, 'What are we going to do? Are we out of a job?' You can imagine how we all settled down and got to celebrate the situation.”

“I can still walk in places and nobody knows me. Last night I was opening the door for people and they gave me a tip. I thought, 'hey, that's great'. How can you get it any better than that?”

Q. “What was it like growing up in Pageland, South Carolina?”

COACH CALDWELL: “You had to like hunting and fishing. Frog gigging. I was scared to death of girls, so that didn't interest me.

“My first hourly paying job was on the turkey farm. I don't know if I could tell you what my job was, but I was on the inseminating crew. That's a fact. I worked my way to the top. That's a fact, man. If you don't believe it, call Nicolas. Of course, I think they're defunct now. Best job I ever had, got paid by the hour for the first time. That was about '68, '69. That's what we did every afternoon.”

Q. “Just wondering if your duties on the turkey farm in any way affected your ability to enjoy Thanksgiving?”

COACH CALDWELL: (Pulling his jacket out and showing his large stomach.) “No, it hasn't. You can tell by looking at me. I done it all, too. If I told some of these ladies what they put in that lipstick right there, oh my goodness, because I de-beaked, blood tested, vaccinated. I done it all. It was pretty special."

Q. “Culturally speaking, was there an adjustment when you went to Vanderbilt?”

COACH CALDWELL: “I think it was a big adjustment for Vanderbilt with my culture (smiling).”

When Caldwell was finished, he understandably left to a standing ovation, though he did fail to mention the standard “don't forget to tip your waitresses” line.

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