Deontay Greenberry: No way of telling

​There was a time not too long ago when the last-minute defection of wide receiver Deontay Greenberry from my alma mater Notre Dame to the University of Houston would have sent me into a mental funk that would have taken me a week from which to recover. After all, Greenberry is a dynamic "four star recruit" who "almost got a fifth star from Rivals.com."

And if that previous sentence and all of its mentions of these mythical stars makes no sense to you, consider yourself lucky.

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​There's the hat trick, where Mr. College Football Recruit (who often turns out to be a bust) tries to do the fake-out thing with which hat he'll put on his dome; the flip-flopper who can't make up his mind; and, if you happen to choose the Georgia Bulldogs, the token puppy.

Today (a.k.a. the first Wednesday of February), ESPNU will devote hours of coverage to National Signing Day, where highly rated high-school seniors will stage press conferences that usually turn out to be nauseating displays, much like these five video examples.

Watch at your own risk.

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Jerry Sandusky

​On Sunday morning at 9:25 a.m. EST, legendary Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno was pronounced dead at the age of 85 after losing a swift battle with lung cancer.

As you all know, Paterno had spent the waning moments of his existence as one of the more polarizing figures in sports as college football fans everywhere struggled to balance a lifetime of generosity and good works with one colossal mistake, that being Paterno's failure to take action following an eyewitness account of his longtime assistant coach Jerry Sandusky's molesting a young boy in the showers of Paterno's football facility.

Predictably, the criticism of Paterno took a hiatus this weekend as many luminaries in the college football world were asked their thoughts about the man who basically built Penn State University as we know it.

I didn't know Paterno, so given the complexity of his body of work, I'll leave the eulogy to those experts. One person who should have done likewise?

Jerry Sandusky.

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You can't spell "elite" without E-L-I. Really, you can't

​We interrupt this Texans-grieving for an update on the Alabama tea bagger and my AFC and NFC title game picks! (I'm pretty sure when my parents sent me off to college, they didn't think I'd be typing that sentence in my job.)

The main culprit in the video from Wednesday's post is identified on Deadspin as Brian Downing, a now former manager of a Hibbett Sports Store in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, not to be confused with former California Angels catcher Brian Downing who Dave Parker threw out at home plate in the 1979 MLB All-Star Game.

Downing has turned himself in to New Orleans police, presumably sober and with his sack secured inside his pants.

Now onto this weekend's picks...

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SEC football fans, ballin' up.

​With each day, the pain of Sunday's loss to the Ravens continues to dissipate. However, it still hasn't subsided to the point where we shouldn't be taking pleasure in the acute pain of others.

In fact, in the spirit of yesterday's post, the pain hasn't subsided to the point where we shouldn't be taking pleasure specifically in the acute pain of people from Louisiana.

To that end, if you're reading this at work, you'd be best served to close the office door or have your body blocking your computer screen as you watch the video below.

You've been warned.

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Ha-ha!

​Forty-eight hours have come and gone since Sunday, and the Texans' loss to the Baltimore Ravens is still maddening and painful.

How does one process the anguish coming out of a sporting event in which your team had every chance to win the game and put themselves one step away from the ultimate destination? Can you go through the same five stages of grieving that you would if you were to lose a loved one? Do denial, anger, fear, bargaining and acceptance get the job done?

Well, while Elisabeth Kübler-Ross may think so, to me that five-step process just takes too long. It's much easier to simply take pleasure in the pain of others.

Schadenfreude is a nice short cut to healing. So to that end, let's turn our attention east.

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Bobby Hebert ain't happy, cher.

​Predictably, the BCS National Title game was, to use my good friend Jim Ross's phrase, "bowling-shoe ugly." Monday's game between Alabama and top-ranked LSU featured lots of hard hitting on defense, lots of mistakes on offense, and a few field goals. In fact, until Trent Richardson scored a touchdown late in the game, we were a few minutes away from seeing these two teams go 120 minutes of football time without putting the ball in the end zone.

The difference between this game and the first game this season between the two back on November 5 was that this time around, the game was completely one-sided. In manhandling LSU 21-0, Alabama held the Tigers to 92 total yards of offense and five first downs. In fact, LSU didn't cross midfield until there were eight minutes left in the game.

Needless to say, most of that goodwill from the LSU faithful banked by Les Miles during this season, including his escape from Nick Saban's shadow, was all forfeited by the end of the night.

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JJ Watt, scoring machine.

​All right, this is starting to get ridiculous, football gods.

First, you knock out Arian Foster for the first three games of the season with a hamstring injury. Then you rob us of Andre Johnson not once but twice with injuries to each hamstring, forcing him to miss most of the season. Then you rip Mario Williams from us with a torn pectoral muscle. And finally, you drop Albert Haynesworth on top of Matt Schaub's foot, ending his season, and then, for good measure, knock out Schaub's backup (Matt Leinart) in less than one half of action as the new starter.

And those are just SOME of the Texans you've wreaked your havoc upon. I haven't even mentioned James Casey, Danieal Manning, Mike Briesel, Bret Hartmann or Wade Phillips. But alas, none of those obstacles could keep the Texans down.

So you had to go crying to Mother Nature and just flood the entire city. Lazy, unoriginal, destructive retaliation, football gods. But like our Texans, we will forge on.

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THIS is how you repay me for childbirth?!?

​On Monday night, LSU will face Alabama for the second time this season for the whole ball of wax, the BCS national title. While it's unprecedented for the two teams to face each other twice in the same season on the field, they battle each other multiple times daily in the world of high school recruiting.

While Les Miles has done a good job of building the proverbial fence around Louisiana, from time to time, a blue chip recruit from in state will decide to take his talents elsewhere.

The latest to do so? Geismar, Louisiana, safety (and perhaps the top safety in the country) Landon Collins.

Much to the chagrin of his mother.

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​Even if you were watching closely as UH dominated Penn State in the Ticketcity.com Bowl Monday, you might not have noticed one attendee.

The notorious Pedobear, an Internet meme embodying child molesters, was not only there, not only carrying a sign with the Penn State symbol saying "Keep Quiet and Don't Tell Anyone," but he showed up on the JumboTron, as the above picture from Deadspin shows.

Deadspin says the Shaggy Bevo UT message board took credit.

We're sure Cotton Bowl security simply thought he was a Houston Cougar (or a Nittany Lion?), but we're hoping there are no pictures of him making the Cougar hand signal.