Tuesday nights are not for breaking news, but this was the call I got tonight as I was enjoying a dinner out;
Me: Hey, what's up?
Timmy C: Guess who USC hired!
Me: Who?
Timmy C: LANEMOTHERFUCKINKIFFIN!
Me: HAHAHAHAHAHA
And there was Lane Kiffin looking like a seven year old as he tried to flee Knoxville under the cover of darkness. Give credit to the Tennessee students for rising up and defending the honor of their school.
Kiffin is only the most recent head coach to become a huge story as we can't seem to quit college football. Mike Leach, Jim Leavitt, Pete Carroll have all made their mark on the offseason. Those guys and Kiffin make Urban Meyer's leave of absence seem quaint. At least Urban didn't leave in the middle of the night or hit a player.
The way those coaches have been covered is a big change in how we follow college football. The Senior Bowl, National Signing Day and the NFL Draft are supposed to be blips on the radar, not huge events to look forward to. The NFL realizes this shift and will broadcast the first round, for the first time ever, in Thursday primetime, the most watched night of the week. In a sense, College Football's Hot Stove is bad, because after January it is basketball season. But more knowledge is better than less.
The next big story will be who Tennessee hires and if they hire a current coach, who that abandoned school hires and so on. It will be National Signing Day by the time that's all done. After that, we will be analyzing Tim Tebow's motion, 40 times, bench presses and the bum shoulders of Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy. Then it's the NFL Draft and spring practice. So maybe we can finally end the season around Memorial Day.