Monday links, with outrage

Today promises to be one that's full of ... well, work. Even though there's apparently a holiday today. Beagle Smallz even celebrated the morning by having a full-on asthma attack. He's fired up, like the rest of us.

Anyway, here's a quick roundup of the weekend, in links.
-- First, 'Bama football: what would any week during the offseason be without a completely made up scandal that's barely related to reality? Thankfully, Ron Higgins of the Commercial-Appeal -- a really funny guy who sat next to me in the press box during the '07 LSU-Bama game -- is there with our ready-made "scandal." Pete Holiday is quick to dress him down, while Rapaport has what appears to be the real story.
This is just life in the big-time, I'm afraid -- we've barely gone two weeks without something to stoke our "outrage" during the offseason ever since Nick Saban arrived on the scene. It's the price you pay for being high-profile.
-- While we're on the subject of football: even UT fans are getting tired of Lane Kiffin at this point.

Kiffin has an obligation to know the rules, and he even bragged to Spurrier about only missing one question on his recruiting test. (&$@!!!) Then he comes out and accuses Urban Meyer of a mythical recruiting violation while breaking the SEC code of ethics in the process, gets two secondary violations for kids on campus, and now this? I mean, I’ve been behind Lane from the beginning, but he’s really making it hard to defend him.
Ghost and I agree that we want him to just be quiet and coach football. PLEASE QUIT TALKING, CLK. Even then, is that enough? Is the guy just going to pop off and say something stupid when the season starts? He can’t exactly just keep his mouth shut forever, so I don’t know that this is a problem that will go away.

-- A few more football links: Dr. S mourns the death of A-11; Peter King gives us more on the real story of Brett Favre.

-- It's probably wrong to continue torturing those of us in the blogosphere with stories about 'Bama basketball, but we did put up a pretty good effort Saturday against one of the better teams in the SEC East, so at least you know our guys haven't quit on the season (curiously, the heartbreaker against Carolina was occurring almost simultaneously as the other depressed team in the conference, UGA, was gutting out an upset of Eastern co-leader, Florida). Naturally, the loss lent itself to some pretty fun headlines (which I can't print here, because apparently my mom reads this blog). In the aftermath of the loss, Cecil (naturally) says the new coach must change the culture. Interestingly, Cecil is willing to implicitly indict the previous head coach for no semblance of a back-up plan, in the absence of the team's best player.

College basketball is a point guard’s game in much the same way that college football is a quarterback’s game. If you have a great player who constantly has the ball in his hands, you can make outstanding things happen.
If you don’t, though, there are other ways to win. You find the best option you can and teach him to minimize mistakes. You play great defense. You rely on being more physical than the other team. (There is at least one successful head coach in the immediate area who has used just that formula.) Alabama’s basketball team doesn’t really do any of those things very well, which is not to say that Pearson doesn’t realize that his (interim) team needs to do them. It just isn’t this team’s identity. It’s unlikely to forge such an identity in its six remaining league games, no matter how hard Pearson tries.

While we're talking hoop, it seems Tim Floyd is not a fan of the officials and may need the president to get involved.

-- Elsewhere in sports: Ray Melick laments the sad end of the Daytona 500; Chop Talk discusses the Braves' battery going into spring training.