Recruiting Links

So, like me, you're all probably frantically checking your team's blogs, message boards, and debating whether to pay for services like Rivals to get daily updates on your team's 2009 recruiting class. Coaches are making their final pitches before National Signing Day, which with verbal committments, decommittments, and RichRod's "snake oil," is slowly turning into a day with as much drama as the first round of the NFL Draft. While I am not one of those people who is going to take off work to watching signing day on ESPNU (cough cough, Hoogs' employers), I am following closely to see if Michigan holds onto DT Pearlie Graves, or can pick up "atheletic" QB Denard Robinson or speedy WR Je'Ron Stokes.

This also leads to the annual debate amongst the media of how important National Signing Day really is. What matters more at the college level, coaching or talent? And just how reliable is high school/all star game film and analysis in judging who will translate into a great player at the D1 level? Personally, I'm very conflicted on NSD, so I will spare you from most of the columns on the merits of NSD, at least for now. Instead, Scout did a great piece on looking back at the 5 star "Can't Miss" recruits of the class of 2005. Out of the top 50, there were a lot of sucesses. Naturally, there were also even more misses. Stewart Mandel did a similar piece on just the Top 25 QB recruits of 2005. Interesting stuff, and puts NSD in perspective both in its importance (how did LSU fare this year without a stud QB?) and its insignificance (FSU did not exactly light it up with all those prospects).

Another interesting development coming through is that new Washington coach Steve Sarkisian has been caught committing his second recruiting violation by the UW Athletic Department. This is just impressive if it's true. He's only been on the job, what, three months? And already he's broken the rules twice at a school that is still bitter about that whole Rick Nehuisal fiasco? While it is certainly too early to make any real judgements, my immediate reaction is that this draws a fair amount of light onto the recruiting tactics at USC. There have been rumors for years, bascially since Reggie Bush emerged as an elite player and Matt Leinhart moved in with Nick Lachey to help him recover from "Newlyweds" getting cancelled by MTV, that USC has been invovled in shady recruiting strategies. If one of your top recruiters is already cheating at his new job, what does that say about the way he was taught to recruit at his previous job? Personally, this just adds more smoke surrounding USC and makes me think much less of Sarkisian as a coach and a person.

Ari Gold Lives!

I recieved this email a little over a month ago from a close friend in Richmond. She is from Alabama-crazed family, and two years ago passed on an internet rumor about the hiring of Nick Saban that was fantastic (it summarized what actually went on behind close doors in Tuscaloosa and Miami to bring Saban back to the SEC). In December, she sent me this email, containing details of what supposedly went on behind the scenes at Auburn that led to Tommy Tuberville quitting and Gene Chizik taking over War Eagle. Here is the text:

"I got these facts from a buddy of mine who is not in the habit of telling tall tales. I'll just call him "Benny". Here's the tale:

Some Auburn relatives were over this past weekend, some of whom are fairly well connected to the program at Auburn and their boosters. The night Alabama drilled Auburn 36-0, a prominent Auburn booster (not the usual bank-owning one but one who sells pressure-treated wood and wears a yellow hat) made a phone call. This may have been a $5.1 million phone call. Since he knows most of the SEC coaches on a first-name basis and shoots ads with many of them, he has their personal private phone numbers. So he calls Houston Nutt over in Mississippi and asks what it might take to have Houston change his address again to Auburn. Apparently, Auburn has a nasty habit of stealing coaches from Ole Miss, but Nutt tells old Yella Fella that he can't take the hit on the credibility scale right now for that kind of move, but thanks.

What many people may not know or may have forgotten is the infamous "Jet Gate" scandal. That was where Bobby Lowder boarded a jet and flew to Louisville to offer then Head Coach Bobby Petrino the head coaching job at Auburn. Trouble was, Auburn had a head coach who was doing a fairly good job and when word leaked out, the fans and much of administration rallied so strongly that Tuberville was bulletproof. He was now able to snub his nose to Lowder, Pat Dye, and the administration-and boosters that wanted him gone. These were not men who took a snubbing well. They bade their time until they felt the fans would no longer be a factor. Surely Auburn missing a bowl game, being drilled by Alabama, and the whole Tony Franklin fiasco took all the aces out of Tuberville's hand.

Now here's where it gets interesting. Following "Jet Gate", Tommy had a Unique non-interference clause put in his last contract. Auburn pledged that neither the school president nor athletics director or anyone acting under their authority "shall discuss or negotiate directly or indirectly Auburn's prospective employment of any other person as Head Football Coach of Auburn" without giving Tuberville prior notice. In non-lawyerese, it basically means that if Auburn got caught monkeying Around with a new coach behind Tommy's back again he gets paid-a lot. Unfortunately for Auburn, Nutt's agent is Jimmy Sexton and that just happens to be Tuberville's agent too. Nutt drops this little nugget to Sexton and Tommy walks in the following Monday discussing his intentions to resign and wants his money now that he knows his contract has been breached. Now Tuberville can get the money AND leave and coach elsewhere, in effect getting double pay for the next three years! A nice retirement package indeed. Plus, he gets to have the last laugh and snub the backstabbers one more time. So maybe Auburn was right, maybe Tuberville really did resign. Why wouldn't he? Multi-day discussions ensued, and I'm sure there were lawyers involved. I'm sure it was painfully explained that old Yella Fella could and would be legally held to be an "official booster" much to the dismay of Auburn and the bad boy boosters. In the end, we see Tuberville's official resignation on December 3 and Auburn paying him the buyout anyway because according to Auburn, it "is the right thing to do." Yes, it's the right thing under the contract. Otherwise, who pays buyouts for resignations, right?

Now, guess who Gene Chizik's agent is? Ding Ding Ding! You are right if you guessed Jimmy Sexton. Now, how does Auburn keep "Jet Gate II" from hitting the front of ESPN in an embarrassing manner? The fans would simply go mad. Hmmm, perhaps by hiring a Sexton client who needs to get out of his Personal football coaching hell known as Iowa State? How else is he going to go Anywhere with that 5-19 record? So, Tuberville walks away with $5.1 million and change and the right to Sign another big contract with another team, Nutt gets a nice salary bump and An extension when Ole Miss gets wind of their coach being dangled some bait, and Chiznik gets a big salary increase and a chance from jump a sinking ship into a head coaching job at a big time SEC school. And Sexton makes almost a million dollars in new commissions off the three new deals.

This seems to explain the inexplicable way in which this all went down. Will we ever know? Not until Jimmy Sexton writes his tell all book, "Tales of the Super Sports Agent." But it's the best version I've heard so far."

Like the email ends, we will probably never know if this is true or not. But regardless, I have learned an important lesson from this email: Jimmy Sexton, you are my new agent. I have never read something so outlandish as to make Ari Gold look like a hack, but honestly, this guy has to be amazing at his job. He swindles three new contracts in the span of two weeks, all based on one phone call that he wasn't even a part of? I swear to god, if he shouts hysterical lines like "Gotta run, it's anal sex night at the Gold House" or "Well, what is it you're supposed to know, do you think? What the fuck do we pay you for? To get your agency card laminated so you can go to Shelter and try to fuck Mischa Barton?," then I will give him half of my astounding salary. Yeah, I'm a teacher. But after I show up next spring with Jimmy "I'm a God Among Men" Sexton, I'll be the highest f-ing paid teacher in the country.

Tired of Crashing the Party?

Sometimes, you realize that you aren't Vince Vaughn. No matter how smooth you are, you will not be a "Wedding Crasher." Maybe once you can pull it off, but at some point, you might as well get invited to the party if you really want to have fun. This is why I'm not particularly surprised to read that the Mountain West is petitioning the BCS for an automatic bid to the major bowls next season.

While I have no doubt that this will not happen, it's a very intriguing idea that I think could work in the long run. After all, we've seen Utah, Boise State, and Utah again all win BCS bowl games against BCS apponents in the past five years, and TCU has shown that under Gary Patterson it can compete with most teams in the nation. What we have to be careful about, as Stewart Mandel points out to SEC lovers and Big 10 haters constantly in his mailbags, is that conference dominance is cyclical. 5 years is a small window to justify admittance into the BCS-- are they on a good run or are they a permanent power in college football?

Personally, I think that the Mountain West is showing the potential to be a decade to decade power in the future. What stands out to me most is that both Utah and TCU have given their coaches million plus dollar a year contracts to stay away from the recent high profile job openings. It shows that the schools in this conference are on good ground financially (well, for now) and are committed to creating legitimate programs.

If I was the BCS, I would tell the Mountain West not now, but that they will be allowed an automatic bid if they get Boise State to join the conference. That would give the Mountain West three legitimate top 25 teams with talented coaches. It would head off most of the complaints from non-BCS teams looking for an at-large birth every year, while still leaving 3 at-large births for the second place teams in the SEC, Big 12, Big 10, and, well, let's be honest there isn't going to be a second team from the Pac 10, Big East or ACC anytime soon. Sorry, Pac 10, Washington State isn't quite there yet. They could guarantee the winner go to the Fiesta Bowl every year as well, that way it would be easy for the Mountain West champion to sell it's allotted seats. While not a good idea for 2010, it would make sense for the BCS and the Mountain West (plus Boise State) in the future.

ED: I forgot to also include BYU, who has a national title in the modern era and it's own talented coach in Bronco Mendenhall, and regular bowl qualifiers in Air Force and Colorado State. I apologize for leaving them out, but they only further support my claim that the Mountain West is legit and only one team away from BCS quality--Brooks

Dreams and a Better Reality

Every couple of months or so, usually when a friend of ours breaks up with a girlfriend/fiance/mistress, the guys in my pledge class bring up our dream vacation: to rent out a fraternity house for a month. It would be a dream for all of us, representing the chance to relive our sophomore year of college with (marginally at best) better game, more income, and complete disregard for social standing since we aren't really students.

Normally, the fantasy centers on renting our old fraternity house to fully re-create the experience. Lately, we have also thought about making this dream even more fantastic. Instead of going back to our small, liberal arts college that we already know is filled with girls too smart to fall for our awful lines like "want to see my DVD collection?," why not rent a place at one of the more notorious party schools? I love my alma mater, but if I'm truly going to try and make my life like the movie "Old School" on this trip, why not do it at Arizona or Florida State? I love classy women, but let's be honest, the whole point of the fantasy is I can become friends with a guy like Blue and see that even he gets laid. We want skanky women. Like, really skanky. Not Christina Aguilera skanky, I mean like one bad semester in sociology away from porn skanky. So better cross off those two schools, and just go straight to Arizona Sate.

Why do I bring this up? Simple, it's a great dream. It would be an amazing month. But I'm also realistic, career driven, and 26 years old. It won't happen. Even if it did happen, I'm willing to bet all those 19 year old coeds wouldn't be impressed that we quit our jobs and blew our savings on one month in academic Gomorrah. More likely, they'd say, "Get away from me, perv, I'm only into sweet guys that have classy barb wire tatoos and wear Affliction shirts. PS- you're old and gross. OMG LOL LMAO!" Oh well, screw her. None of us wanted chlamydia anyway.

The sportswriters, bloggers, and casual football fans that talk about a "playoff" every year need to talk a look at what I've written, because my month as a Frat Guy is eerily similar to the dream of a college football playoff. First of all, it won't happen. There's too much money out there in the bowl system so a playoff won't make fiscal sense (And if you think it does, fine, show me the TV network willing to cut the BCS a check for $800 million to have a playoff. That's what the current Rose Bowl deal is ($300 mil) and the new BCS deal ($500 mil) is worth. Yeah, not seeing a lot of hands going up to top that number). Even if it did happen, like my dream, it probably won't work out the way you want it to. You'll have crappy teams that aren't intriguing in the National Title game, like George Mason in the Final Four. Oh yeah, what a great story, George Mason was awesome, which is why the ratings actually went down for the Final Four that year.

So, with that being said, I think the BCS does need some changes to enhance the sport. In my opinion, here are four changes that would make the BCS and college football better.

1. Stop Counting of 1-AA Games-- This is one of the most infuriating parts of college football. I hate watching Ohio State play Youngstown State, Florida play the Citadel, or Georgia playing Georgia State. They are stupid. Yes, App State once beat Michigan. That's one win in what, 1,000 games? It's ridiculous that the BCS counts these games, especially late in the season. What they should tell teams is that you are more than welcome to play these teams, but they will not factor into their rankings. Florida went 12-1 this year, but it would only count as 11-1 due to their win against The Citadel (Apparently, VMI was previously scheduled and unwilling to fly out of the Roanoke Airport). It would make the schedules better and enhance the competitiveness of the sport week to week.

2. Mandate Legitimate Match Ups-- Speaking of scheduling, let's take this one step further. I would love to see the BCS require every team in the BCS conferences to schedule one opponent from another BCS conference. Too many coaches take cupcake non-conference games to get bowl eligible-- I'm looking you as an alum, Indiana. Think how much attention the USC-Ohio State and Texas-Ohio State games in recent years have drawn. These games are awesome to watch early on and get people into the season from the start. They will also make the bowls better, since bowl managers will have a better idea of how the conferences stack up and they can choose better match ups. A lot of schools like USC, Ohio State, Texas, and Michigan do this already, but let's get every school on board.

Quick caveat: Notre Dame would count as a BCS game for teams like Michigan State, Michigan, and USC that play them every year.

3. Standardize the Conference Championship Game-- This whole idea that three conferences play one extra game, while the other three do not is stupid. Either all 6 BCS conferences should play the 13th game, or no one should. It's unfair that the Big 12, SEC, and perhaps someday the ACC, have to win an extra game to qualify for the National Title game. Likewise, since the NCAA restricts the number of practices a team can have between the end of the season and the bowl, it's unfair for teams in the Big 10 to have to wait an extra two weeks for their bowl to start each year. If everyone plays the same number of games and ends the same weekend, it will again generate more interest in the sport at the end of the year and make the bowl games more competitive.

I'm interested to hear what tweaks to the system you all would like to see. If you want to turn this into a playoff debate, that's fine, but you might as well argue which Hollywood star you like to have sex with more. I'm not going to judge your fantasies

Preseason Rankings Releases

The following is courtesy of Rivals.com and has not been approved by the Utah State Supreme Court:


1. Florida The buzz: Quarterback Tim Tebow's return – and the return of the entire defensive two-deep – means the Gators will head into the season at the top of the polls.

2. Texas The buzz: Quarterback Colt McCoy will be at the controls of what should be a powerful offense. And the Longhorns should have the best defense in the Big 12, too.

3. Oklahoma The buzz: Quarterback Sam Bradford, TE Jermaine Gresham, OT Trent Williams and DT Gerald McCoy return, which is good news for coach Bob Stoops. But the Sooners must replace four starters on the offensive line.

4. USC The buzz: Mark Sanchez's departure causes at least a little bit of concern about the offense. But the defense should be mighty stout again.

5. LSU The buzz: Brandon LaFell's decision to stay in school is a boost for the offense, and a revamped defensive coaching staff should get better results. The line, especially, must play better.

6. Virginia Tech The buzz: The Hokies look to be the class of the ACC. As usual, the defense will lead the way. Quarterback Tyrod Taylor must become a better passer.

7. Ohio State The buzz: The early loss of tailback Chris Wells hurts, and the back seven on defense must be rebuilt. The good news is that quarterback Terrelle Pryor will be going into his second season as the starter.

8. Alabama The buzz: The Tide need to find a new quarterback and have some work to do on the offensive line. But the defense will be strong again, and there will be better depth across the board.

9. Boise State The buzz: The Broncos have a legit chance to go unbeaten if they can win at home against Oregon in September. Quarterback Kellen Moore should post big numbers.

10. Oklahoma State The buzz: The offense will be fine behind quarterback Zac Robinson, tailback Kendall Hunter and wide receiver Dez Bryant. The defense needs work, though, and it's up to new coordinator Bill Young to make that unit a lot better.

11. Georgia Tech The buzz: It'll be the second year for the Yellow Jackets in coach Paul Johnson's offense, which could mean big numbers. Rebuilding the front four is the No. 1 priority on defense.

12. Ole Miss The buzz: Quarterback Jevan Snead heads what should be a potent offense. The defense was underrated nationally, and most of the key guys return. If defensive end Greg Hardy can stay healthy and out of the doghouse, he could have a monster senior season.

13. California The buzz: The Golden Bears could have some issues at linebacker. But tailback Jahvid Best has a legitimate chance to lead the nation in rushing, and the passing attack should be improved as well.

14. Florida State The buzz: After a few seasons as the weak link, the offensive line actually could be a team strength. Quarterback Christian Ponder needs to improve as a passer, and some playmakers must emerge on defense.

15. Penn State The buzz: The Nittany Lions will have to rebuild their offensive and defensive lines, their secondary and their receiving corps. At least quarterback Daryll Clark and tailback Evan Royster return, and linebacker Sean Lee is expected back from an injury that cost him the 2008 season.

16. Kansas The buzz: The Jayhawks look as if they will be the best team in the Big 12 North. Quarterback Todd Reesing and wide receiver Desmond Briscoe should form a potent passing duo. The defense will be fine if three new starting linebackers emerge.

17. Oregon The buzz: The Ducks lose their best linemen on both sides of the ball and the secondary needs some work. But the offense should again provide a lot of points.

18. Georgia The buzz: The Bulldogs lost three key players early – quarterback Matthew Stafford, running back Knowshon Moreno and cornerback Asher Allen. Still, this is a program with a lot of talent, and the three defections mean the Bulldogs might actually be under the radar a bit this fall.

19. Iowa The buzz: Star running back Shonn Greene is gone, but the Hawkeyes still will be a run-oriented team, thanks to a solid line. The defense should be fine.

20. TCU The buzz: The Horned Frogs need to replace more than half of their starting defense, but it has gotten to the point where coordinator Dick Bumpas can plug in a new guy and not worry that much. The offense needs to be a bit more dynamic.

21. USF The buzz: With Pitt losing star running back LeSean McCoy to the NFL, the Bulls should go into the season as the preseason favorite in the Big East. Quarterback Matt Grothe must develop some consistency; it would help his cause if a feature back emerges.

22. Utah The buzz: The Utes lost two key defenders to the draft – end Paul Kruger and cornerback Sean Smith. Quarterback Brian Johnson and both coordinators are gone, too. Still, the defense will be a strength and the running game should be strong. But to expect another undefeated season is asking way too much.

23. Notre Dame The buzz: The schedule isn't that taxing, the passing attack should be quite good and the defense has the makings of a solid unit. There's no doubt that Charlie Weis will be coaching for his job.

24. Oregon StateThe buzz: The Beavers annually seem to be underrated. But with the return of the Rodgers brothers, the offense has two big-time playmakers. The defense should be fine.

25. North Carolina The buzz: The Tar Heels made a big jump this past season in their second year under coach Butch Davis. Expect more improvement in 2009, when the Heels should contend for the ACC title.

Ending the Coaching Carousel

One of the great things about college football is there are four seasons within any calendar year. It starts with Bowl Season around New Years, then you have Recruiting Season on National Signing Day in early February, then the actual season in the fall that we all live for. Finally, at the end of every season but before bowl season, we have the annual circus that revolves around coaches getting fired and coaches leaving jobs. Ironically, the coaching carousel gets fans as worked up as any other part of the season. Last season, it was WVU fans losing it over RichRod leaving for Michigan. This year, we had Lane Kiffin to Tennessee and Gene Chizik to Auburn as the two high profile coaching jobs, along with the drama of whether Charlie Weis would be kept on at Notre Dame. But, then we had BC suddenly enter into this mix last week when coach Jeff Jagodzinski was fired for interviewing with the New York Jets.

Now, I'm not going to blame either side for causing the coaching carousel. In colleges, there is a clear hierarchy. Some schools get better students, some schools get better faculty members. In academia, money follows prestiege in endowment, facilities, and salaries. You'd never fault a professor for leaving his tenured position at Minnesota for a job opening at Harvard, it's clear which job is better. This holds true for coaching jobs as well. BCS schools get better athletes because they have more money and better facilities, so coaches leave jobs in the MAC and CUSA for BCS jobs all the time. Coaches also leave some BCS jobs for the really "big" jobs-- Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, USC-- because they have the combination of money, history, prestige, facilities and fan bases, or if they leave for the NFL. When coaches jump ship for "bigger" jobs, it's no different than faculty members jumping. It's part of the business, and I don't fault the coaches for jumping from one job to another.

Now, I also don't blame BC AD Gene DeDeFillipo for taking a stand with Jagodzinski. If I was the AD at a school like BC, and I was only two years removed from losing coach Tom O'Brien to a parallel coaching move to NC State, I'd be fed up as well. The thing is, structurally, something has to change in the hiring process to prevent the carousel from staying at the ridiculous levels it's been the past couple of seasons.

Let me tell you a story. My parent's recently got a new kitten named Biscuit, who while adorable, has drawn the ire of our current cat Maizey. Maizey is emotionally fragile, as she was already taking feline anti-depressants (not joking) and had survived a wild dog attack (not joking), so having a new cat did not go over well with her. Biscuit was found in a dumpster, so she's got a bit of street fighter in her as well. Well, one day when my mom came home from work, she found Maizey waiting for her at the door, looking absolutely disgusted. It turns out that Biscuit had grown tired of Maizey's bullying, so she got revenge: she pissed in the cat's communal water dish. It then became a prisoner's dilemma. Both cats were in a contest to see who could piss in the dish first, since neither could trust the other not to do it.

This is what has happened with the coaching business-- it's become a pissing contest. AD's aren't willing to give coaches 5 years anymore to build a program with their own recruits. It's win now or fired (see: RichRod next December if Michigan goes 6-6). With coaches, they want the prestige jobs with big money, and they also know that you may only get one chance to land one of those jobs so they leave as soon as they are offered. The hope on both parts was the "buyouts" in the contract would prevent the carousel. Buyouts are a percentage of the contract that either side has to pay if they leave before the contract ends. RichRod's at WVU was $4.5 mil, so he had to pay it when he left early. Tommy Tuberville's at Auburn was $5.1 for "resigning," which Auburn had to pay for not letting him finish the contract. Good ideas, but obviously it's not working.

So how do we stop the pissing contest? Simple. Guarantee the coaching contracts. Eliminate the buyout and put all the money on the table. If you get fired 3 years into a 5 year, $10 mil contract, the AD owes you a $4 mil check. If a coach pulls a Bobby Petrino and leaves after one year of a 5 year, $15 mil deal, the coach owes the school $12 mil. It makes the economics of the whole thing a lot more realistic. It will force schools to give coaches the chance to actually build a program, while also forcing school to wait for the right promotion, and not to jump at the first one they get out of fear it'll be the only one they get.

Gladwell breaks down the 2008 Longhorns

Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of Blink, Tipping Point, Outliers, and -- most recently -- Context: History's Kingmaker, spends a chapter in Context discussing the 2008 Longhorns football team. An excerpt from that chapter is reprinted below.

At first glance, seeing the tradition and resource rich Texas Longhorns ranked in the top five at season's end hardly seems a surprise. Texas under head coach Mack Brown has finished seasons ranked sixth or better five times this decade, won five straight bowl games (including three BCS Bowls), and a national championship. The Longhorns' recruiting classes annually rank among the nation's very best and their training facilities are second to none. Of course they finished ranked in the top five, right? To borrow a famous college football catchphrase: Not so fast my friend.

What if I told you that Texas began the season ranked outside the top ten and was predicted to finish fourth in their conference? Or that they were regrouping under their fifth defensive coordinator in five seasons? What about the fact that the Texas hadn't defeated the lowly Aggies since their superstar QB Vince Young turned pro? Would you still say the 2008 Longhorns were predestined for top five success?

Probably not, and to understand why Mack Brown for the first time in his Texas career exceeded expectations, we have to dig deeper. We need what I call... context.

1.
The casual fan will peddle a surface-level explanation for Texas' success by pointing to the arrival of defensive guru Will Muschamp. That's not untrue, but to appreciate fully what that actually means we need to look much closer at the events that led to his being hired at UT.
If you weren't paying attention, you might think Will Muschamp just parachuted into Austin as if gifted by a stork. But that is not at all what actually happened. Will Muschamp's arrival in Austin was the last step in a long chain of events that began many years ago, every one of which a critical link in the chain. Let's start from the beginning.

[Discussion of Big Bang and rise of civilization omitted for length.]

From the key developments during the Paleolithic Period to the terror of the early 20th century Russian gulags, the very course of history shaped this story. Take away any of it and Mr. and Mrs. Muschamp never birth that child in their rural Georgia home. Context.

And what of Muschamp's predecessors in Austin? Was it predestined that both Gene Chizik and Duane Akina would be intellectually incapable of grasping the stupidity in trying to defend pass spread offenses with three bulky, slow linebackers? Of course not. To understand why Robert Killebrew was allowed to start over Rodderick Muckelroy, you'd need to know just how good Killebrew's salmon soufflet really was. And to understand that we'd have to go back to the time in Kill's childhood when his grandmother decided to sew him his first apron.

Remember the dog that chased the cat that caught the mouse that ate the cheese.... Context.

2.
Anybody who watched Texas this year knew that their offense struggled mightily in two critical regards: rushing the football and completing long downfield passes. Deficient in both, Texas only chance at being offensively explosive lay in executing the short passing game to absolute perfection. That is precisely what they did, as junior quarterback Colt McCoy broke the NCAA record for completion percentage in a season.

Was Texas simply fortunate to have on hand the right quarterback for the right season?

Perhaps... but perhaps not. Let's again dig a little deeper.

In 2002 a group of Swedish social scientists studied quarterbacks from small towns (2,500 or fewer residents) as part of their effort to estimate the chances one of their countrymen could make it to the National Football League as a passer. What they discovered is that there exists a direct inverse relationship between a quarterback's accuracy as measured by completion percentage and the size of his hometown as measured by population. Think about how astounding that is: The smaller your hometown, the better your accuracy throwing a football.

What is going on here?

The answer lies in behavioral economics. There are several relevant handicaps for a quarterback who grows up in a very small town. First, there are far fewer children around who are his age. Second, because job prospects are more modest in small towns, he is more likely to be economically disadvantaged. Third, and relatedly, the schools in his small town are less likely to have the resources and facilities that kids from bigger cities typically enjoy. Taken together, the small town kid who grows up wanting to be a quarterback has to train differently than he would in a bigger town. Most importantly, he will spend more time playing by himself. Without enough kids with whom he can practice and play -- not to mention a lack of training/practice facilities he can access year-round -- the rural quarterback hopeful winds up practicing drills on his own.

Without money for anything fancy, he throws the football through a tireswing. Or he creates imaginary receivers who run imaginary routes, rewarding himself by imaginary rules that require he toss the football in just the right spot.

While other quarterback hopefuls are playing sloppy games of neighborhood ball, the rural player is forced to find fun in exercises that are, at root, accuracy drills. Context.

Soon after the Swedish academics published their study in the obscure Journal Of Socioeconomic Rural Studies, a 23-year old Ph.D. candidate in economics happened across it during the course of his dissertation research on the intersection of football and religion in rural America. Can you guess the university in which he was enrolled? You're right -- it was the University of Texas-Austin. And his name? It was Chris Jesse. His relationship to Mack Brown? He is the Texas coach's stepson. Context.

As Mack Brown tells it, Jesse's discovery of the Swedish study wound up having a huge impact on Texas' recruiting strategy during 2004-05. "Late in the 2004 recruiting season I got this call from Chris and he's talking so fast I can barely understand him," Brown explains. "Chris is a pretty impulsive and excitable fella, so I didn't think much of it, but I told him to come to my office the next day and explain whatever it was that had him all riled up."

Jesse met with Brown over lunch and laid out what he'd learned. "The enormity of the implications of what Chris was telling me were immediately apparent," Brown continues. "When he was through explaining it we both sort of looked at each other and said simultaneously: Colt McCoy."

Colt McCoy -- a senior quarterback prospect from Tuscola, Texas, population 714. Colt McCoy, who grew up throwing footballs through a tire swing because there weren't enough kids with whom he could play. Colt McCoy, who quarterbacked his tiny 2A team to a state title but received only the scantest of attention from recruiting services like Rivals and Scout.

"As I recall, we'd just lost John Brantley to Florida," Brown says wistfully. "And suddenly we're presented with this evidence that small town quarterbacks are born and bred to throw darts. I'm not sure who was more surprised when we made Colt a scholarship offer -- McCoy himself, or our fanbase. Nobody had any clue who he was or why we wanted him."

Four years later, McCoy now owns most of the passing records at the University of Texas, along with the new national benchmark for completion percentage. The two-star quarterback from Nowhere, Texas was the perfect fit for the 2008 Longhorns. But how did Brown know he'd need McCoy's specific talents?

Mack Brown chuckles as he recalls the decision-making process. "Early in 2006 I'd sat down with Greg Davis and we looked carefully at what the roster was likely to be for the next two, three, and four years. The first thing that stood out is that we didn't have much confidence we were going to be able to figure out how to thrive passing and running the ball together at the same time. Outside Vince's senior year, I'm not sure Greg and I have ever been able to do that," Brown laments. "And the second thing we noticed was that we were going to have a downfield problem with our receivers. I asked Greg if Malcolm Williams, who we were recruiting at the time, would be ready by '08 and he said definitely not. And so we sort of came around to the idea that the hyper-accurate, underneath passing game was where we were headed."

When the coaches explained this to the other quarterback prospect on the roster, true freshman Jevan Snead, he saw the writing on the wall and wound up transferring to Ole Miss. And with that, everything was set for McCoy's run to the record books.

Remember the dog that chased the cat that ate the cheese...

Context.