The college football season has sort of snuck up on me this week, although I did get ESPNHD active in time to see South Carolina manhandle State on Thursday night. Today’s games have been moderately entertaining, including seeing overrated Cal get exposed by a newly-reinvigorated (although I’m not sure I’m willing to say “improved” before they face somebody decent in the SEC) Volunteer squad.

All this, of course, is an appetizer for Ole Miss-Memphis tomorrow afternoon; Frequent Commenter Alfie predicted (in a text message I got last Sunday) the Rebels will win 21–10, which seems plausible enough to me, so we’ll make that the official Signifying Nothing guesstimate of the week.

I now have an appointment to see Brent Schaeffer demolish the Missouri Tigers on September 9th. That is, if Brent can manage to be eligible to play by then…

Update: As Alfie notes in the comments, the Brent Schaeffer era has now commenced in Oxford.

I can’t believe I picked up a copy of NCAA Football 07 at Circuit City ($39.99, with the strategy guide gratis) and am simply too tired to play it.

I blame the heat. Or the hour I spent in Costco waiting for my car tires to be rotated and balanced. Or exhaustion from just watching people climb Alpe d’Huez on bikes.

EDSBS links a New York Times piece from yesterday detailing some rather creative use of independent study classes by a professor in the Auburn sociology department who was apparently in cahoots with an athletic tutor to give Tiger jocks cheap A’s. The money quote in my book:

[Carnell “Cadillac”] Williams said one of the two directed-reading courses he took with Professor [Thomas] Petee during the spring of 2005 was a statistics class.

Asked if that course, considered the most difficult in the sociology major, was available to regular students as a directed reading, Professor Petee said, “No, not usually.”

Mr. Williams described the class this way: “You’re just studying different kinds of math. It’s one of those things where you write a report about the different theories and things like that.”

The NCAA is, as they say, investigating, although I ultimately expect little more than a wrist-slap for Tommy Tuberville’s rogue program down on the Plains, in large part because this (and similar) petty corruption is widespread in college football. One example: I have it on good authority that at least one NFL star who was an Ole Miss criminal justice major was as dumb as a post yet somehow managed to maintain his eligibility through softball-lobbing instructors and professors, with generous assists from the athletic tutors. Most people who’ve spent any time around Division I schools can probably tell similar stories—particularly if they’ve been in or near what Prof. Karlson artfully refers to as the Division of Cooling Out the Mark.

That said, directed readings courses may be the soft underbelly of grade inflation more generally for athlete and non-athlete alike; certainly it’s hard to give out many C’s and D’s when you really have no other students to compare a directed readings student to, although in theory professors shouldn’t be letting bad students in independent study courses in the first place (so there may be a selection bias issue here).

Perhaps those of my former colleagues at Millsaps who mocked the administration’s investment in our on-campus football field will think again; a growing trend, particularly at Division III schools, is to recruit male students by starting, reactivating, or reinvigorating varsity football teams.

While I am mildly sympathetic with the argument that there are times when scholar-athletes spend too much time emphasizing the latter half of the hyphenate, I have to say that I’ve never had a problem with the athletes in my classes either at Division I-A schools like Duke and Ole Miss or at D-3 Millsaps. That said, the merits of achieving a 50–50 gender balance on campus are debatable at best, even at places where the admissions game is a bit less zero-sum than at the elite colleges and universities.

I talk Ole Miss football and the legend of the Orgeron with Orson Swindle in Part 2 of the “Dirty South” roundup, the latest installment of the EDSBS Podcast.

It’s amazing how reading the Athlon SEC preview and my football conversation last month with Frequent Commenter Alfie can make me sound semi-expert on the topic.

Will Collier is rightly perturbed at ESPN’s plans for college football telecasts this coming year, which USA Today’s Michael Heistand reports include the odious and senile Lou Holtz on color commentary for mid-week games, the useless Dan Fouts as a play-by-play man on ABC regional coverage, and—most tragically—the demotion of Ron Franklin (who Will refers to as “the best play-by-play man in the business today,” a sentiment I am in complete agreement with) to the primetime slot on the Deuce.

More fodder for the “Ed Orgeron could sell snow to eskimos” file: the scoop on how Coach O got blue-chip QB Brent Schaeffer to come to Oxford, passing up more prominent programs like Wisconsin and NC State.

This sort of recruiting prowess puts the Ed Orgeron hummer ad in a whole new light… maybe it sells more H3s than I’d have thought it would.

þ: EDSBS.

Me, just over nine months ago:

It wouldn’t be particularly surprising to see [Mike] DuBose move up to head coach [at Millsaps] sooner rather than later, as rumors of current head coach David Saunders moving on to a I-A assistant coaching job have been circling for a while—recently, he was rumored to be on the shortlist for Ed Orgeron’s staff at Ole Miss.

The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, yesterday:

Former Alabama coach Mike DuBose is running his own football program in the NCAA again.

DuBose was promoted Friday at Jackson’s Millsaps College, a Division III school, to replace David Saunders. DuBose was Millsaps’ defensive coordinator last season.

Saunders left Millsaps after three seasons to take over as linebackers coach at Ole Miss [working for Ed Orgeron - ed]. The departure created the opening for DuBose to move into his first college head coaching position since 2000, when he was forced out after four tumultuous seasons in Tuscaloosa.

It’s almost a shame I couldn’t predict my own career prospects at Millsaps so easily…

EDSBS links to the news that legendary Ole Miss coach Johnny Vaught has passed at the age of 96. His 190–61-12 record (.757 winning percentage) over 25 years will almost certainly never be bested by a Rebel coach.

Today’s Duke Chronicle reports on the results of Ted Roof’s latest efforts to dupe impressionable 18-year-olds into coming to Durham to play a sport other than basketball rebuild Duke’s football program on the recruiting trail, said efforts yielding (of all things) a pair of Swedes. As in kids from Sweden. I shit you not. I didn’t realize Malmö was such a hotbed of gridiron talent…

Meanwhile the best football player on campus is still pursuing the revenue sport Duke doesn’t suck at. Go figure.

The Rebels picked up commitments from former UT quarterback Brent Schaeffer and Meridian High running back Cordera Eason on Friday, putting an exclamation point on what already was a top-15 recruiting class for Ed “You Need A Hummer” Orgeron. Say what you will about the guy on the sidelines or the practice field, but he at least seems like he can recruit players…

Daniel in comments at EDSBS:

Bush’s announcement tomorrow is a lose-lose proposition for USC. If Bush declares for the draft, they lose Bush, of course. Should he announce he is staying, it would demonstrate that someone could spend three years in school at USC and still be the dumbest guy in the country.

Of course, with LenDale White’s draft declaration today, if Bush stayed he would at least have a chance to move up to be indisputably his team’s best rusher…

Former Miami offensive coordinator Dan Werner is now OC for the Ole Miss Rebels, with fellow ex-Miamian Art Kehoe likely to follow as the new offensive line coach in Oxford. The Rebels will also have Robert Lane back in the backfield, likely back at quarterback (even though Lane’s performance at fullback was one of the few bright spots on offense in the latter half of the season).

þ: Fanblogs and EDSBS.

Just when you thought Marcus Vick couldn’t sink to any further lows, he manages to plumb new depths of idiocy by allegedly pulling a piece during an argument with some high school kids in Virginia. Between Virginia Tech and Miami (aka “The U,” whose football lineups are often confused with the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List), one wonders if the schools’ administrations thought “ACC” stood for “All-Criminals Conference” when they ditched the Big Least.

Marcus Vick, younger brother of Atlanta Falcons QB Michael “Ron Mexico” Vick, has been kicked off the Virginia Tech football team after his latest transgressions: an unprovoked on-field spiking of Louisville defensive end Elvis Dumervil in the Gator Bowl, and being ticketed for speeding and driving on a revoked license in Virginia. ESPN.com columnist Ivan Maisel has more.

þ: EDSBS.

So, when do I get my apology from ESPN for their declarations over the past month that this year’s University of Southern California team is the greatest in the history of college football?

Oh, and huzzah and kudos to the Texas Longhorns on the occasion of their victory.

I’m safe and sound in the Hotel Intercontinental Buckhead, which may be the first conference hotel I’ve ever been at that’s actually worth what I’m paying for the room (you’re paying for the lobby at the Palmer House in Chicago; the rooms aren’t anything special).

As is the nature of the small universe that political scientists inhabit, the first person I saw in the lobby, other than the receptionist, was Bill Jacoby.

Now I’ll be incommunicado while watching the Rose Bowl. If it’s anything like the other BCS games have been, this will be a real barnburner.

Ethan Flatt, the on-again, off-again starting quarterback of your Ole Miss Rebels, has decided to take his bachelor’s degree and run rather than return for his senior season, a move that had been widely speculated in the media. More likely than not, this will mean a return under center for Robert Lane (most recently seen at fullback), as he’s the only QB left on the depth chart with any playing time whatsoever.

Steven Taylor asks:

[I]s the Heisman ceremony boring and, well, lame?

Yes, and, um, yes. I’d also add anticlimatic.

I’m pretty sure dressing like this young woman (NSFW) would get you kicked out of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. And Lafayette County.

Geaux to hell, LSU, geaux to hell! Losing to Georgia is at least a nice start…

You know, if I were an Ole Miss chancellor looking for a pretext to can Coach O, the evidence of his apparent attempt to poach players from Tulane’s football team might be a good place to start. The allegations at this point seem to contain a lot more smoke than fire—there’s no evidence, for example, that Orgeron or his subordinates actually contacted any Green Wave players—but nonetheless the whole episode appears rather unseemly.

Well, that sucked.

Update: More thoughts from BigJim. Is it a “gots-to-go situation” for Coach O? Probably not immediately, but with disgruntled players continuing to bolt and ineptitude that goes well beyond the parts of the game under the control of the allegedly-already-fired OC Noel Mazzone, the Orgeron honeymoon is going to be shortlived. That may be bad for Orgeron’s career prospects in Oxford, since it’s likely his legendary recruiting prowess won’t even yield substantial dividends on the field until the 2007 season due to redshirting.

And the $64,000 “what-if” questions surrounding the firing of ex-coach David Cutcliffe probably aren’t going away either. Would QB “guru” Cut have gotten more out of Spurlock, Flatt, and Lane? I don’t know, but if things turn around in Knoxville next year (and, realistically, they probably will; a team with UT’s talent almost never goes under .500 in college, no matter how poorly they are coached) a lot of the credit will go to Cutcliffe.

One final thought: a lot of the Rebel’s woes can be traced to two positions on the field: place kicker and punter. Thirty-yard punts and regularly missed field goals don’t add up to scoring or good field position. Kicking may be the Rebels’ most glaring deficiency, even if it seems to be lost in the discussions over the revolving door at QB.

The Noel Mazzone era at Ole Miss is apparently over, although no official announcement has appeared as of yet. Mazzone, who previously served as offensive coordinator on Tommy Tuberville’s staff before the latter’s departure for Auburn, apparently never was a good fit with Ed Orgeron’s plans to implement a USC-style offense in Oxford.