Jay Mariotti Ncaa Football

If it's true that Kansas football coach Mark Mangino, upon seeing a receiver named Raymond Brown drop a pass, launched into a hideous tirade that concluded with a racially tinged threat -- "If you don't shut up, I'm going to send you back to St. Louis so you can get shot with your homies" -- then the university should dismiss Mangino immediately. If it's true Mangino told receiver Marcus Herford that he'd send him "back to the street corner where you came from,'' then keeping the coach would be a Rock Chalk Crock.

And if it's also true that another Kansas player, who had told the team that he dreamed of becoming a lawyer and that his father was an alcoholic, was subjected to this insensitive, vicious onslaught from Mangino -- "Are you going to be a lawyer or do you want to become an alcoholic like your Dad?'' -- then we might have to strap Mangino in a straitjacket and haul him away.

For he is a madman.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Welcome to the heartland, home of the Big Ten, a league that doesn't deserve its own TV network and should respectfully reject a Rose Bowl bid on the basis of stodginess and cowardice. Ever wonder why the best talent routinely heads southward and westward? You should have seen the final minutes of the conference's unofficial title game Saturday evening, when two prominent head coaches laid down, played for overtime and reminded us why college football in these parts is maddeningly prehistoric.

There was Ohio State's Jim Tressel, the sweater-vested genius who writes self-help books about life, unable to help himself. Armed with a two-touchdown lead with 11:32 remaining in regulation, he watched the Buckeyes allow a 99-yard kickoff return for a score and have their own interception and touchdown return nullified by an offsides call. So what did Tressel do with 2:37 left and the score tied at 24-24? He shut down all creativity, went ultra-conservative in his own end and punted. In the process, he didn't utilize the running and passing talents of Terrelle Pryor, who might be one of the dynamic weapons in the college game if Tressel wasn't stuck in the 20th century and had a clue how to develop and utilize a two-way quarterback.

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I'm not sure who's more hopelessly out of place: Charlie Weis on the Notre Dame sideline or Jon Gruden in the "Monday Night Football'' broadcast booth. But two wrongs easily can be righted in one spectacular swoop. The Domers need to swallow hard again, reach down for that big wallet, send away Weis with his $18 million buyout and hire Gruden as their next coach.

Because Navy just sank the USS Charlie.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- It really depends on what a Notre Dame fan wants these days, a Domer's self-satisfaction quotient. If you're thrilled to stage a startling comeback, only to lose on three straight incompletions from the USC 4, then you're settling for an existence far beneath the national titles and Heisman Trophies of yesteryear. But if you're disgusted to lose, especially when the Irish used to win such games and were given one last play after NBC and everybody else thought the game was over, then you won't like Charlie Weis' take after the 34-27 defeat.

In his world, he was proud that the FIghting Irish fought Saturday, even if the nickname connotes that the Irish are supposed to fight.

Meaning, we have crept into moral-victory territory under the Golden Dome, which is more a perpetuation of Rockne Bottom, in my mind, than any wondrous progress made by Weis in Year 5 of his wobbly $40 million project. Anyone who truly cares about Notre Dame football and what it once symbolized should have been spitting cuss words afterward, as Jimmy Clausen was. The Weis Guy? He was giving an inspirational speech that, somehow, isn't what Knute Rockne had in mind.

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To the swarms of Charlie Weis bashers searching for any and all indicting angles, here's another: sleep deprivation. The man rarely gets much shut-eye, reaching his office each morning when it's still dark at Notre Dame, where the ghosts and demons always are awake and plotting to ruin the life of the football coach in residence. Except one can argue that Weis, who was given a $40-million contract and at least five seasons to become a hero, has loused up the program all by himself.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- He survived a heated pre-game incident at midfield, where Florida players jawed with LSU players in a 100-man staredown that fortunately didn't erupt into a beatdown. He survived screeching crowd noise that must have made his recently concussed head feel like it was inside a margarita shaker. He survived a corner blitz by Patrick Peterson, who drilled him in the midsection with such force that his head bounced off the turf. He survived a nasty face-mask twist that earned Lazarius Levingston a personal foul.

But there was one particular sequence Saturday night that provided assurance that Tim Tebow's tender, vulnerable skull ultimately would be OK ... for a game, anyway. That's when he threw a 24-yard scoring pass to an embarrassingly open Riley Cooper, located the nearest teammate with whom to celebrate and didn't care that it was 6-6, 340-pound left tackle Carl Johnson. With typical boyish exuberance, Tebow rushed over and hurled himself full-frontal into Johnson's meaty body, not caring that such a hit could have done more damage than any other.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- He's quite the drama king, this Tim Tebow lad, always involved in some sort of swirl that prompts debate, wonderment and humor. No one knows if he'll make it in the NFL, despite a career as storied as any in college football history. He's an avowed virgin even as coeds clamor to have his babies, including one who stopped him at Radio Shack, asked him to pose for a picture and lifted her shirt as her proud mother took the shot. While other Florida students go to South Beach or Cancun for spring break, he heads to prisons and speaks to inmates.

Or flies off to a poverty-stricken village in the Phillippines and helps circumsize children.

He should be chiseled in granite atop anyone's Mount Sportsmore. Dadgum it, I'll definitely give you that much about Bobby Bowden, who belongs in the college football section right up there with Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno, Knute Rockne and, if I may gaze into the future, Urban Meyer. America is protective of the Florida State legend a lot like a lovable Uncle Bob, remembering how he good-old-boyed us in the 1980s and '90s while finishing in the national top 4 for a mind-numbing 14 straight years.

The problem, unfortunately, is that we're not in the 20th century anymore. And just because Bowden is an icon in his sport doesn't mean he still knows how to coach in 2009, a month from his 80th birthday. He may look fairly cool for an old guy in that wide-brim straw hat and he may rank second in all-time victories with 384, only three behind JoePa, but he hasn't won a national title in 10 years and really hasn't competed for one since, going 25-19 the last 3 1/2 seasons as a member of the mushy Atlantic Coast Conference. All you need to know is that FSU, once the best program in the land, now isn't even third-best in its state, ranking behind Meyer's Florida juggernaut, the Miami revival and -- gulp -- South Florida.

My approach every college football season is to root for confusion, chaos, relentless mumbo-jumbo. That way, maybe the goofs in charge someday will realize why the absence of a postseason tournament is the biggest void in sports. I love it when Boise State, an interloper that plays home games on a blue field, invades the top five. I love it when Ole Miss, Penn State, California and Miami lose on the same weekend, throwing the top 10 into an Octagon heap. I love it when Lou Holtz is so flabbergasted in the ESPN studio, he can't spit out a sentence and sounds like Foghorn Leghorn.

And, yes, I love it when Tim Tebow throws up all over America's collective living room.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- It pains me to say that Lane Kiffin, the rockhead of Rocky Top, won the grudge match. He and Tennessee may have lost the football game, 23-13, but by limiting Florida's freakishly potent offense to 323 yards and forcing two rare turnovers from The Perfect Human Being (Tim Tebow), Kiffin didn't suffer nearly as much as he should have after the punkish cheap shots and low-class accusations he directed at Urban Meyer and the country's pre-eminent college program.

He was supposed to be road kill Saturday, a coaching pinata. Instead, he was wielding the stick again, irritating and even scaring Florida folks who were left to half-heartedly sing at the end, "Rocky Top, you'll always be, second in the SEC.'' No, this was not the party music that anyone had in mind, and when it was over, Kiffin left town with his limbs intact and a content look on his boyish, Dennis the Menace face. He even received a brief post-game handshake at midfield from Meyer, which was more a reflection of his rival's professionalism and dignity than any respect he might have gained for Kiffin.

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