Crazy coach carousel

Is there a full moon hitting major college football coaches?

It's always a crazy, coaching-carousel time after the regular season and around bowl games, as coaches jump to greener pastures or jockey to fill the void left by coaches jumping to greener pastures. Or coaches do crazy things -- perhaps under the pressure of winning to placate the big-bucks boosters at their respective universities -- like order players locked in closets, or motivate players with a halftime grab and slap.

I always feel sorry for the college players, especially the freshmen and redshirt freshmen, when a head coach bolts for another school right around the bowl season.

Those coaches can pick up and leave, and pick up a much bigger, multi-million dollar paycheck at a new school (see Lane Kiffin, Tennessee to USC). Coach usually has a payoff written into his contract by his employing school, calling for a stiff $ penalty if he departs before his contract is up. But that fine, more often than not, is paid by his new employer.

The players can also pick up and leave, but they have to also pay a huge price -- sitting out a year at their new school.

I'm all for improving your lot in life, and usually the zeroes on the contract dollar amount for those moving coaches are a lot of a better lot. But it would be nice to see the head coaches of those schools have a little loyalty. Kiffin stayed at Tennessee for what, 14 months? Not even enough time to get in trouble with the NCAA (or was it?).

Like I said, I'm sure Coach Kiffin made promises to UT recruits that he would build a solid program in the coming years with those kids coming aboard to help in that success -- only to see Kiffin flying away to the west coast.

Coaches have also departed in recent weeks by a much tougher method -- fired at Texas Tech (Mike Leach) and South Florida (Jim Leavitt) for alleged transgressions involving treatment of players at the respective schools. Both coaches are suing their former employers. It will be interesting to see how these soap operas play out.

There was a report, if I heard this right, that the James kid at Tech allegedly went into the storage room voluntarily and filmed the incident on the cell phone to help put Leach in a bad light. Can't wait for the facts to surface on this one.

Local hoops ... Hope to see a big crowd at the Senior High gym tonight to cheer on the McCook basketball teams, and at True Hall gym Saturday for some exciting college basketball action involving the local MCC Indians squads and Southeast C.C.