A college beau of mine who ended up working with The Second City for a number of years once did a paean to the late famous Ohio State coach Woody Hayes, sung to the tune of “Purple Haze” and featuring the lyric “scuse me while I punch your eye!”

I’ve seen this movie before.

I did post-grad work at IU-Bloomington, Land of Bobby Knight. This was my first time at a school where sports was more important than anything. Knight could have interrupted a game, sacrificed 12 virgins on the court, eaten their hearts and thousands of rich and influential people would have rushed to his defense and IU would have issued an apology to Bob for questioning his right to engage in human sacrifice.

How the current contretemps shake out will depend solely on the coaches’ win record.

Not for nothing, but Leach is in trouble for allegedly punishing James for declining to practice with a concussion, and Mangino’s verbal abuse reportedly consisted of telling one player from Oakland he was going to kick him off the team and he could “go back to the hood and get shot like [his] brother,” who actually did get shot to death.

I can’t figure out what’s true and what’s not in the Mike Leach/Texas Tech story.  In the end, we’ve sort of come to the conclusion that they’re maybe all at fall.

Adam James seems to be lazy and a whiner and Daddy James was waaaaaay over the helicopter parenting line (calling school administrators to complain over your kid’s playing time can in no way be acceptable parenting).  But, it’s also relatively clear that Mike Leach is kind of an ass.  But who can blame him?  Tech officials have been letting him get away with crap for years because he was building a winning program there.  So he has had no incentives to curb his behavior.

We know a lot more about the seriousness of concussions and other football injuries.  For instance, Dad’s knees are shot from his years of college ball.  I think paying a little more attention to injuries and looking for ways to keep people from being completely lamed by the time they’re 50 is probably a good thing.

Not at fall, but at fault.

I tend to think there’s probably something to the story, if for no other reason than I don’t see where Texas Tech has any reason to run Leach out on a rail.

You nailed it,Betty. Bunch of woosies manipulating the game anymore. Smash mouth football, integrity and operating a team with passion,no matter how misdirected, (but toward an end) are a thing of the past.

Way too much money involved in all of this. It distorts the coaching and the playing. My take is this: If a college coach can’t coach without verbally, physically, and/or emotionally abusing players, then he’s a lousy coach. Period.

If he has players who have intractable attitude problems, then cut them from the team. If he has players with chronic academic problems, then cut them from the team. (And you have to question the scouting if a team winds up with a lot of basket cases.) If he has players who have physical injuries, then let them heal. See—it’s not all that complicated.

Betty, as I have confessed. I grew up in the shadow of the Bear and the Talladega 500 and a suffering Jesus who carries a special notepad in his back pocket to tick off my sins one by one every live long second of the day. So, a sad lot but there it is. Having said that these fucking pussy ass “tongue up the savior’s ass Tebow fuck faces” can go fuck themselves. Cheers, Happy New Years All, J.

Ok. Doug has said that Tebow is the Jesus Christ of football so I need to retract my last irreligious statement. Also, Doug thinks Tebow is a stud. So, decide for yourself who to believe.

As a KU grad, I can tell you that Mangino wouldn’t have been kicked if the Jayhawks were doing as well as last year. The university shelled out a lot of cash to improve the football grounds on the grounds that the historically shitty KU football team would do as well as they did the previous season. That hasn’t turned out. Plus, the KU sports culture has been really messed up lately, what with a number of full-on brawls between the football and basketball teams. I imagine the university wanted a scapegoat.

In my irreligious opinion football could disappear from the face of the earth and the earth would never notice it was gone. ;-)

I’m wondering if Bear Bryant would make it in today’s college football emo-fest.

I lived in AL around the time he was winding down his career, and the short answer is, Yes, but then he was the nearest thing to a demigod they had.

I’ve never seen popcorn tins(you know, like they just had for Christmas) imprinted with a coaches’ image like they had for “Bear” in AL grocery stores when I lived there, they might sell them still, for all I know.

It’s not that Leach locked a kid in a shed that got him fired. It’s that he fought tooth and nail against bending even the smallest bit when he got called on the carpet about it.