SPORTS: College Coaching Chaos Theory

It’s been a little over a week since the college football season ended, but for some reason the sports world is still stuck on the subject — and it’s all thanks one of the largest coaching shake-ups in recent memory.

The big moves in coaching started with Brian Kelley bolting Cincinnati for Notre Dame and Mark Mangino “leaving” Kansas. However, if there is anyone to blame is this situation, it’s Texas Tech wide receiver Adam James. This entitled punk couldn’t handle some good ol’ fashioned punishment from Mike Leach and complained to his famous daddy. Daddy complained to Tech and luckily the administration wanted Leach out too. James’ whining gave Tech the perfect excuse to can Leach and get out of paying his $800,000 bonus.

This one simple act of immaturity set the college football world in motion. Don’t believe me? Let’s walk through it together.

As soon as Tech fired Leach on such short notice, Pete Carroll over at USC started to think about his future. He began to wonder if NCAA officials would catch up to him and punish him for the gifts he arranged for his buds Reggie Bush and Joe McKnight. It didn’t help that McKnight claimed the car he was driving belonged to his “baby momma’s boss.” If that’s not a legitimate excuse, I don’t know what is.

That being said, Pete was looking for any way out of USC, so much that he jumped at the chance to coach one of the least talented teams in the NFL, the Seattle Seahawks. (I just discovered the only difference between Seattle and settle is an A. Chew on that for a bit.)

After Carroll bolted USC, Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin found himself with a perfect opportunity to return to SoCal (where he belongs), leaving the Vols with a vacant head coaching position. Some think things will settle down once the Volunteers find a new coach, but that is absurd. This is just the beginning of what I am predicting to be the wildest and zaniest college football offseason ever. If I had it my way, this is how it would all go down:

Tennessee’s athletic director promised to have a new coach hired by the weekend and there is no better man for the job than Mike Leach. The Vols make a hard play for the swashbuckling pirate-lover, but he has already been snatched up by a real pirate — Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis. Turns out the Raider Nation was also in search of a coach after the firing of Tom Cable (hasn’t really happened yet, but will soon) and Leach’s antics will pale in comparison to what has happened in Oakland previously.

Tennessee couldn’t get their first man but, in a whirlwind miracle, they land Alabama coach Nick Saban. How exactly did that work? Well, the Buffalo Bills offered Saban their head coaching position the night after the national championship game — and he accepted. He flew up to Buffalo the next day and got stuck in a snow storm, ultimately realizing he has made the biggest mistake ever. He rushes back down to Alabama only to find the Tide have heard about his alleged deal with Buffalo and promoted Kirby Smart to head coach, leaving Saban with no other option but to go to Tennessee.

After all that is cleared up, things will seem to settle down — until another shockwave hits! After the Arizona Cardinals win the Super Bowl lose in the second round of the playoffs, head coach Ken Whisenhunt will decide to “go Urban Meyer” and leave the game for a few years. Kurt Warner follows his lead and retires, leaving Matt Leinart with the starting job.

After the Cardinals go searching for a head coach, Leinart goes to the front office and requests they hire the man who was his offensive coordinator at USC when he won the Heisman. That’s right — none other than Lane Kiffin! Seeing how Kiffin is undoubtedly spineless and greasy, he gleefully takes the job and ends his four-week tenure at USC. Do we doubt this would actually happen? Never.

Lane tries to get his dad, Monte, to come along and be the Cardinals’ defensive coordinator, but he is ashamed of his son’s relentless backstabbing and refuses to the job. Instead he stays at USC as the defensive coordinator under new head coach Jack Del Rio — who initially said he wanted to stay in Jacksonville, but after this fiasco he will return to USC.

So now this leaves an opening in Jacksonville. Who becomes the coach there? Funny you should ask. Everyone thinks Florida coach Urban Meyer has been taking time off to recover from his health issues this whole time — when in reality it’s a ploy to sneak out of Gainesville! This might seem out of character, but he became an egomaniac just from spending one year in the same conference as Lane Kiffin. (Also, it’s no secret that Meyer’s personal mission in life is to prove to the world that Tim Tebow can play quarterback at the next level. By taking the Jacksonville job, he is now able to draft Tebow and implement his offensive system.)

That’s pretty much what happens with the big guns at this point. I didn’t mention John Gruden going back to his alma mater (Dayton) or what will happen when Rich Rodriguez gets fired three games into the 2010 season, but that’s small potatoes. The biggest question of all is who will take over when Joe Paterno dies on the sideline in a “freak accident” that reeks of Bobby Bowden? That’s beyond even my predictive abilities.

Well, I guess we will just have to wait and see if this plays out the way I’ve planned. Either way, it’s going to be very entertaining.

Jake Welch is a regular sports correspondent for Rhombus. He also appears on the magazine’s sports podcast, the PB&J Report.