groovin' ... on a Thursday afternoon

I hope to have slightly more on the Brett Favre situation later, after the only cheeseheads I know — The Rogue Booster and his lovely wife — email me with their opinions. In the meantime, I have links related to football, but not No. 4.

— With the news of Dennis Franchione's new employment, The Druid envisions how his first broadcast is likely to sound.

Barnett: *a tone of nervousness in his voice* Well… uh, so let’s talk about your former school, the University of Alabama. Nick Saban is in his second year as the Tide coach, bringing in a highly praised recruiting class. Of course, he has some depth concerns, and will probably have to play a bit of a balancing act in knowing when and when not to play his freshmen. How difficult can that be for a coach?
Fran: Oh, it can be fairly difficult. Of course, it depends on the situation of your program, such as the actual talent of your older players. You don’t want to just pull a solid player out to appease fans by replacing him with the likes of Julio….. *avoids a flaming Fran bobble-head doll*… Julio Jones or Jerrell Harris, but you do need to play them eventually if they have a clear athletic advantage over the older player.
Barnett: This is getting crazy. *flips open cell phone* Honey? Hey, it’s Dave. Listen, I was wondering when my new life insurance policy is effective. Do you have the papers nearby? What’s that? Oh, no reason. Ok…. Ok. Sure, I’ll meet you for dinner with Tony and Martha on Monday if I can. Love you too…. *gulps* bye.

— The Sporting Blog has the story on the famed 'Bama stabbing in Auburn from 2005. What disturbs you more ...
• That a trained cage fighter carrying a knife picked a fight with an entire fraternity for no good reason ...
• That he won and won easily ...
• That he convinced a retarded guy to take the fall?
It's a toss-up, right?

— The headline of this story nearly made me throw up:

Bama safety makes impression by tackling children

Dammit! Stupid off-the-field incident (grumble, grumble) lack of discipline (yak yak) what's wrong with these ...

's troubles

Oh. Well, that's cool.

— Inspired by this Ray Melick column about bullying, Capstone takes a look at coaches and the media. Speaking of coaches, Track 'Em released a list of coaches they hate the most, and guess who's at the top?

1. Bobby Petrino (Arkansas) - Is there a bigger scumbag in any level of coaching than the weasel from Montana? Not only did he quit on his former team, but he treated grown men like children. And let's not forget what he did to Tommy Tuberville. The guy has no integrity or loyalty.
2. Nick Saban (Alabama) - If you could buy him for what he's worth and sell him for what Alabama fans think he's worth, we could all retire to Aruba.

I must quarrel only with the clause "what Alabama fans think he's worth." What exactly is that? First the problem is that Alabama fans are unreasonably hard on their coaches (Mike Shula) and get them fired for no good reason — now it's a problem they believe in the man at the top and his ability to coach the team?
I realize that asking the guys at Track 'Em for rational arguments based in reason is a little like asking Nick Saban to take a reporter to dinner. But even for them, this is a little specious.

— SMQ examines the viability of a playoff. I actually picked the Roundtable edition containing the playoff question to let Whit handle things, and never really have addressed the issue (except briefly on the old LJ). But the last two seasons have outlined, for me, the need for some sort of playoff to balance the scales. For the past two seasons, Ohio State has cruised through an astonishingly easy schedule — and really, the toughest game they've played in either of those two years has been Texas on the road — and ridden that to a berth in the national championship game, simply because other teams played themselves out of it. In '07, LSU lost by 6 at Kentucky, and by 2 vs. Arkansas ... and if not for an incredible chain of events, would've been left out of the national title discussion despite being clearly better than any other team. How is that fair? If Ohio State '07 had played the schedule LSU had played, what would have been its January destination? Nashville? Shreveport? The weight room?
Anyway, hopefully it's coming down the road. And it'll be fun. Trust me.

— Finally, in my continual effort to shamelessly promote myself, here's my column about Skip Caray. Because I'm like that.

wlh