​Lost amidst the hoopla of the upcoming NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament was the release on Tuesday of the football schedules of the Houston Cougars and the Rice Owls. And knowing Cougar fans the way I do, I'm sure they're already starting to form their excuses for failing to sell out the stadium for this upcoming season's games.

The Cougar home schedule doesn't feature a prestige name like Texas Tech, so there are fans who will claim they won't buy tickets for an inferior product. And the home schedule contains two Friday night games -- one currently scheduled for a 9:15 kickoff -- which means we'll hear the same old crap about an unsafe neighborhood. Finally, there's the old "the stadium sucks" excuse.

But overall, the Cougars are playing a schedule somewhat equal to last season's and which puts the Cougars in prime position for climbing, once again, high up into the national rankings.

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It's no secret football coaches curse, but now, thanks to the Texas Open Records Act, you get video proof of the artistry involved.

The website orangebloods.com filed an Open Records Act request for a video shot by a Texas Tech crew after the Red Raiders barely beat Baylor.

Then-coach Mike Leach is not happy. He never shouts, but he is eloquent in his deployment of the f-word, which is used approximately 5,934 times in the six-minute, 40-second video.

Leach retraces Tech's season, including an analysis that they lost to UH because they had gotten cocky by almost beating Texas.

At the end, he promises to switch roommate assignments around, because some people are only "pulling mediocrity" out of one another.

Enjoy.

Photo courtesy A&M Commerce

​Baylor football fans don't exactly get teary-eyed while reminiscing about the Guy Morriss era; in five seasons ending in 2007 he "led" the Bears to an 18-40 record. Even by Baylor football standards, that's nothing to write home about.

Morriss was replaced by former UH coach Art Briles, and has since landed -- we have very, very recently learned -- as the football coach at Texas A&M Commerce. Someone has to do it, we guess.

The A&M Battalion reports that some of Morriss' players were upset when the Commerce campus newspaper printed a story about one of them being arrested for in a drug bust. They went around campus gathering up all the newspapers and taking them away.

The campus police's incident report makes for some fun reading.

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​Up until about a week ago in football-crazed Katy, Nick Georgandis was kind of a big deal. The 36-year-old sportswriter covered Katy high school sports for over ten years at the Katy Times, and was described in a post on Ultimatekaty.com that has since apparently been taken down as "practically a household name." As of early last week, he served as both the sports editor and interim publisher for the Katy Times.

And now he has been abruptly fired.

Last Thursday, law enforcement officials in Katy seized his computers, searching for lewd pictures they say Georgandis received from young women who thought they were communicating with former Katy gridiron heroes Aundre Dean and Trent Hunter. (Dean is now at TCU; Hunter at Georgandis's alma mater Texas A&M) More >>

Photo by krisandapril

​Lost amidst the news of a tuition increase and the "leave of absence" granted to associate basketball coach Marvin Haralson last week at the University of Houston was some big news coming out of the athletic department. That news was the school's retaining of Fortune 500 company AECOM to the study the proposals that have been made regarding Robertson Stadium and Hofheinz Pavilion. The study process is going to take 90-120 days, and it will cost the athletic department $300,000.  

And it's a study process that begins today.

"We'll have an all-day meeting with them, and they'll come back for three more of them," Houston Cougar Athletic Director Mack Rhoades told Hair Balls on Saturday. "On Tuesday we'll begin to talk about just about all of the different ideas we have -- potential renovation of stadium or new stadium, as well as Hofheinz, what we'd like to see done there. Certainly they'll ask a lot of questions. We'll ask them a lot of questions. And we'll talk about different ideas, different concepts. What about premium seating in Robertson Stadium. Is it suites? It is suites in the club level. There's new concepts like loge boxes. What are maybe the different -- what do we like about each of the different sites. It'll really be an exploratory session, a discovery session. So we're excited to get that going. We really are."

There are six proposals to be studied for Robertson Stadium, and two proposals that have been submitted for the renovation of Hofheinz. This will be an important process for the school and the athletic department as it's felt that one of the things working against the school when it comes to scheduling and recruiting is the state of the athletic facilities. And it's ultimately a process that will probably end up costing the department between $30-60 million.

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​Well, it's about to happen again. Collegiate athletics are getting that "seven year itch," more specifically college football, which let's face it, is the petroleum that makes the whole athletics engine go. For it was in 2003 that the last real salvo of college football realignment was fired when the Atlantic Coast Conference invaded Big East country and made converts out of the University of Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College. (And roughly seven years before that, it was the Big Eight invading the Southwest Conference.)

The goal of that 2003 realignment was ostensibly to give the ACC twelve schools so that they could stage a conference title game for football, even if it did take the conference's rich basketball tradition and soil it by eliminating things like "each team playing every other team home and away" and adding trips to Chestnut Hill in February. The unspoken goal, however,
was simple -- survival. The ACC saw how the game was going to be played over the next handful of decades, and as Gordon Gekko says "If you're not inside, you're outside!"

The Big East was fortunate enough to survive as a BCS entity on the heels of the mass defections, largely through already being one of the "six families" of the BCS mob and the swift reaction by commissioner Mike Tranghese to pilfer Louisville, Cincinnati, and South Florida from Conference USA (and Marquette and DePaul for basketball). Still, at the end of the day, with only eight teams, the Big East stands to be cherry-picked again when the next round of realignment comes around.

And this brings us to this week. While the storm clouds of realignment haven't quite formed yet, you sure can smell the rain. The mathematics of the whole thing are simple. With the SEC, ACC, and Big XII already at twelve teams and staging conference title games, the Pac-10 and Big Ten (and its eleven teams) are beginning to move the first chess pieces to make sure they're not left on the outside looking in.

Up until now, talk of the Pac-10 expanding has always centered around Mountain West heavyweights like Utah or BYU, or perhaps Boise State out of the WAC. The Big Ten made an offer to Notre Dame back in 1999 that the Irish rebuffed, and since then discussions for their seemingly inevitable expansion have largely centered on plucking Pitt or Rutgers from the Big East.  In other words, for the most part, like any good period of mob peace, the leading families are not waging war on each other and, if they are, it's Fredo Corleone (the Big East) getting picked on....

....that is until this week's rumors of the Big Ten and the University of Texas having "preliminary exchanges" between one another.

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​It's all a matter of how you look at it -- if you're a diehard college football fan, then today is December 25. You woke up this morning and ran over to your computer to pull up ESPN's Recruit Tracker the same way you ran downstairs to see what was under the Christmas tree when you were a kid. ("Please, please, please Santa...bring me that Seantrel Henderson that I asked for!!") On the other hand, if you are a sane person with a life, then today is a showcase for the unseemly, borderline creepy side of college football -- a day where grown men let the whims of 18-year old-kids completely govern their emotional well being for the next several weeks, at least.

Unfortunately for me, I fall into the former category, and therefore set the alarm for 7 this morning (which for an afternoon radio host is tantamount to waking up at 3 a.m.) and fired up the laptop and a Venom energy drink to ready myself for College Letter of Intent National Signing Day. It's GO TIME!

Now, in addition to being a college football addict, I have the equal misfortune of being a fan and alumnus of the University of Notre Dame. I say "misfortune" only in a temporary sense; I truly feel the school finally perfected its coaching-search skills (they've certainly had more than enough practice) and they finally got it right with Brian Kelly. If there's one thing Kelly's predecessor Charlie Weis could do it was recruit, but the nature of the beast is such that a coaching change, even a mammoth upgrade from Weis to Kelly, yields fallout from prior commitments and a slew of grab-bagging for table-scrap recruits.

So while the first Wednesday in February had always been Weis' finest hour, this is one of those years where I sit down at the laptop, pull up the Recruit Tracker, and sit there fearful of what I'm going to see. In short, opening the Recruit Tracker today is a little like getting that e-mail from that one friend who thinks it's funny to send links to bestiality porn to all of your buddies under the guise of "Whoa! Check this out!  It's HOT!!" You know it's not going to be good, and yet you end up clicking anyway because today it may actually be the lost Jessica Alba Video. Today, for me, Seantrel Henderson is Jessica Alba.

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​Today is the most important off-season day in college football, a momentous and staggeringly significant event that is known as National Signing Day.

Today 18-year-olds declare where they will accept scholarships to play football. No other thing that happens today, barring an alien invasion, will be as newsworthy.

Five things to remember about the day:

1. The Hat Dance
The best players announcing today have been treated as god-like messiahs since the seventh grade, their every move praised, their every whim coddled. For the past year, frantic fans and reporters for recruiting websites (in some cases, that's a combined position) have been hanging breathlessly for any hint of where the player might go.

So today, in a noble effort to stop feeding the Ego Monster, national networks will broadcast live the kid's announcement, where he will line up three (or four or five or six) hats from the proud institutions of learning seeking his nod; he will then playfully pretend to pick up one or two (or four or five) before finally putting one on his head.

You could get upset at this. On the other hand, you could just sit back and enjoy the fact that across the country, lawyers, executives and other high-priced alumni are wasting their day praying this kid picks up their hat.
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​Every year around this time, NFL prospects gather in Mobile, Alabama for the beginning of what amounts to a three-month job interview, complete with numerous forty-yard dashes, questions about their upbringing, and requests to "cough while I stick my fingers right...HERE!" It's a fascinating time for the diehard NFL fan, especially nowadays with coverage on the NFL Network, as you get to watch the soap opera of "can he or can't he play in the NFL?" play out right on your TV screen.

Every year, there are a few upstarts who make their mark and realize their improbable dream, and every year there are just as many whose hopes are shattered amidst assessments of a "slow release" or the inability to take a snap under center. You can see where I'm going with this....

The 2010 Senior Bowl has essentially been rendered the NFL's version of 24, with Tim Tebow playing the role of Jack Bauer. Unfortunately thus far for Tebow, if Jack Bauer were as shitty at foiling crime as Tebow has been at simple NFL quarterback drills, we would all now be speaking Chinese or Russian or the official language of the unnamed Middle Eastern country that we are always at odds with on that show.

As amazing as it sounds, we all kind of saw this coming, didn't we? Urban Meyer's spread offense combined with ungodly talent around him (and to be fair, his own ungodly talent as well) were always enough to make up for whatever mechanical deficiencies Tebow had in his throwing motion and make up for the fact that he hasn't had to take a snap from under center since before puberty.

Unfortunately, the NFL requires its quarterbacks to execute simple things like accepting a snap under center, dropping back without falling over, and then delivering a pass in less than, oh, say four seconds. Drills at the Senior Bowl thus far have shown Tebow is struggling at grasping all of these skills.

For Tebow fans there's no reason to panic; the "taking a snap" and "dropping back" skills are things that will come with repetition. The slow release is what it is. But right now, watching Tebow go through drills in Mobile is like watching Clark Kent/Superman get his ass kicked by that trucker in the diner in Superman II. You remember after Superman gave up all of his super powers so he could marry Lois Lane (EASILY the most one-sided rout that pussywhippedness has inflicted on the males species ever)? And right after that, he tried to go all "Superman" on some old dirtbag that was hitting on Lois in a greasy spoon and Clark wound up bloodied and on his back? It was surreal watching the Man of Steel get handled so easily by a ham-and-egger like Perverted Trucker Guy. Well, right now for Tebow, taking a snap under center and going into a simple five-step drop is his Perverted Trucker Guy.

So until Tebow can handle routine quarterback tasks that are being handled easily by high school freshmen who aren't playing in a spread offense, let's come up with a few other reasons for NFL fans to stay dialed into the happenings in Mobile this week, shall we? What else is there? Well, I'll tell you....

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Photo courtesy UH

​Let's hear it for UH Athletic Director Mack Rhoades. He got one of the nation's hottest coaches, Kevin Sumlin, to put his signature to a new six-year contract which is a rather a good deal for the Sumlin and the Cougars. The deal is for six years and $6.8 million with another $1 million in deferred compensation if he stays through 2012 and another $1 million if he stays through 2015. And if Sumlin should decide to depart before January 2, 2013, he will have to pay the university $600,000.

But now that Rhoades has done his part, it's time for the Cougar fans to start doing their bit. It's time for them to actually to start buying tickets and showing up for football games.

There's no justifiable reason why a Top 25-ranked team should play a home game before a stadium that's not sold out. Yet the Cougars sold out only one home game last season, and for that, they needed the assistance of Texas Tech fans to make the sell-out happen.

I've spoken with Mack Rhoades on several occasions since I've been covering the Cougars. He's a guy who has big plans for the Houston Cougars. He got a stadium at Akron, and he wants to get one at Houston. But his wishing isn't going to make it happen.

And I've got to question his desire for that stadium. Sure, it would be nice for the football team to finally play in a modern facility -- it would be nice to sit inside a press box with some elbow room -- but if the team's so-called fans can't be bothered to show up for the games, then why even bother?

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