Tightwad Hill

THIS POST HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LAWSUIT

So the trolls can just ignore it.

* Barring any last minute surprises, Cal's just about done for the year in recruiting. The last two recruits to verbal are Dorsey LB Robert Mullins and Chandler, Arizona DE Cameron Jordan. We'll cover both of them in more detail once Cal actually has their LOIs. Suffice to say they're both intriguing prospects for very different reasons. Jordan gives us three DEs, with Ernest Owusu still on the radar screen. Some have thought that Jordan could bulk up and move inside since speed is not his strong suit, but there's no indication that this is the plan for him.

* Christian Tupou will not be coming, which is just OK by us.

* Speaking of bad off-seasons: Arizona has lost six coaches in the last 2.5 months. Count with us: OC Mike Canales quit (ONE): RB coach Kasey Dunn left for Baylor (TWO); WR coach Charlie Williams took a job at North Carolina (THREE); the Minnesota Gophers snatched up recruiting coordinator Dan Berekowitz and asst. strength coach Mark Hill (FOUR, FIVE); and OL coach Eric Wolford just joined Ron Zook's staff at Illinois (SIX).

Some Cats fans are explaining this as a welcome wholesale change of the offensive scheme, but that doesn't explain why it's good to lose your recruiting coordinator a couple of weeks before LOI day. Call it 60% a wholesale change on offense and 40% coaches who are tired of Mike Stoops yelling at them.

* UCLA, looking for a coordinator to shake up their boring, vanilla west-coast-offense, has hired the unfortunately-named Jay Norvell, who helped Bill Callahan install a boring vanilla west-coast offense at Nebraska. Inspired choice. Husker fans aren't exactly on suicide watch over this one. Dorrell also "lost" O-line coach Jim Colletto to the Detroit Lions yesterday.

* We really hope that Pete Carroll hiring his kid to succeed Lane Kiffin as recruiting coordinator is a sign of the impending demise of the Trojan Empire - sort of like how the class system and rampant nepotism helped doom post-Victorian Britain by centralizing power in an incestuous network of mediocre nobles. Of course, we hope for a lot of things on this blog, and very few come true.

* Congratulations, Lute! You've gone from out of touch has-been to re-focused master coach making one last title run back to out of touch has-been in less than twelve months.

* Oregon still doesn't have an OC. The Portland Tribune says that Bellotti is going to interview from as many as ten candidates at the end of a love letter article about the Ducks' recruiting class. Ten candidates seems like way too many, but who are we to judge? After all, we think you shouldn't dress like sissies and pamper your players, but it seems to work for them. Well, usually it does.

posted by Tightwad @ 1:30 PM