Urban Meyer won't miss this guy

A lot of people were stunned by the news Tommy Tuberville is out at Auburn. The word earlier in the week had been to expect a lot of staff changes on offense, but for Tuberville to make it. The more I look at this, the smarter I think Tuberville is. One way he would have had to try and assemble a staff of quality guys, with all of them knowing they could be one year employees, implement a new offense and deal with the resurgent Bama. This way he's going to sit out a year, maybe do some TV work, and enjoy his five million "go away" dollars. Next year he'll be the immediate obvious candidate (a la Spurrier and Butch Davis when they took their years off) for any SEC, ACC or Big Twelve job. Auburn's already been touch with Mike Leach, who I think is a very poor fit personality wise for that job. Just a hunch, but I think Louisiana Tech's Derek Dooley (remember, Vince is an Auburn alum) may wind up being the answer here.

So Tuberville's out of a job, but somehow Virginia's Al Groh is not. Groh is the classic bad college football coach. His teams never impress you as being particularly well prepared, nor do they ever win significant games. Groh's had losing seasons two of the past three years, has a son as offensive coordinator who would and should be fired if not for the nepotism, and is incredibly arrogant to boot - another Bill Parcells trained NFL "genius". They did not roll over his deal, meaning it ends in 2011. Even in the mediocre ACC, it will actually end in 2009.

Some people might be surprised that undefeated Ball State would turn down the chance to play undefeated Boise State in the Humanitarian Bowl. Nothing wrong with the undefeated Cinderellas settling things on the field, right? Not really. Boise would have home field advantage and it would be incredibly inconvenient for the Ball State fanbase to get to the game. There won't be many years like this for Ball State, and I'm glad to see they're trying to do the right thing for their team and fans rather than what would have gotten them the most national attention.

I almost never watch network television shows. I did when I was a kid, but once I got to college I just stopped watching almost any television other than news and sports programming. The last show I watched with regularity on any of the networks was Homicide: Life On the Street. It was a terrific show, one that NBC never really committed to promoting and unfortunately stashed in the viewer unfriendly Friday night at 10 PM time slot. Too bad Homicide isn't running now, because it might live forever. NBC is out of programming. I know companies are tightening their budgets everywhere, but how does a TV network not get around to producing, you know, TV SHOWS?!