You may have heard that former star Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett was wanted by Ohio police earlier this week for his alleged participation in a robbery.
Well, according to this NY Times article, Clarett had a particularly compelling reason to delay turning himself in to police for a couple of days:

Clarett declined to answer most questions from reporters, but he did reveal that he watched Ohio State beat Notre Dame on Monday night before turning himself in to the police. Clarett, who had been wanted for almost two days, apparently wanted to see his former teammates play in the Fiesta Bowl, the same game in which he achieved stardom and helped capture the 2002 national championship for the Buckeyes. Asked about Ohio State’s 34-20 victory over the Irish, Clarett cracked a half-smile and said:

“Glad we won.”

As Texans prepare for the long-awaited Rose Bowl matchup tonight between the Texas Longhorns and the USC Trojans, this Ray Buck/Ft. Worth Star Telegram article does a good job of telling how Longhorn coach Mack Brown’s relationship with legendary former Texas coach Darrell Royal has been an important part of Brown’s success in bringing UT back to the top tier of major college football.
As noted in this earlier post, Texas won two undisputed national championships under Coach Royal, one in 1963 and the other in 1969. But after Royal retired in 1975, the Longhorns got close in 1977 and 1983 and then gradually faded from the top tier of big-time college football. By the time Brown was hired seven seasons ago, the Horns were not even a national championship contender. The article contains a number of interesting observations from Coach Royal, not the least of which is the following:

When asked if his presence might be a source of motivation for the Longhorns, Royal had one more answer for everyone:

“If they need any kind of motivation,” Royal said, “they’re in the wrong game.”

Meanwhile, this interesting Alex Barra/W$J article on the development of big-time college football players over the past 20 years includes the following observation from Clear Thinkers favorites, Dan Jenkins:

“Comparing the best college teams of the past five or so years to legendary champions of the past is like comparing supersonic jet fighters to propeller-driven World War II planes. The game has really changed that quickly. Most of the players I see on top teams today look like they were manufactured in laboratories.”

By the way, the best line that I’ve heard in the run-up to the Rose Bowl was the following:

When [former USC wide receiver] Mike Williams lost his court challenge to the NFL underclassman rule and was not allowed to return to college football, did he still count against USC’s salary cap?

As you sit back today to watch any number of the six college bowl games, you might come across Chronicle sportswriter John Lopez’s column from yesterday in which he characterizes this past Saturday’s EV1.net Houston Bowl as the “Apathy Bowl” because of the low turnout from local football fans and renews the call for an NFL-style playoff system to determine a national champion in NCAA Division I-A college football.
Lopez’s opinion is a common one, arguably even the majority view of most folks who follow college football passionately. However, it is wrong for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the health of college football as we know it.
Lopez’s view is that the BCS system — which has set up Wednesday’s USC-Texas Rose Bowl matchup for the national championship and will have a championship game next season a week after four major New Year’s Day bowl games — is killing the bowl system, anyway. He cites the low attendance figures for lesser bowl games that do not figure in the national championship equation as dispositive evidence that the bowl system is flawed and that a playoff system would generate far more interest (i.e., money). Lopez predicts that peripheral bowls will die off as sponsors ditch games for lack of interest in the face of the more popular BCS bowl games.

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49er’s 20 Texans 17

The Reggie Bush Bowl came to a successful conclusion for the 2-14 Texans as a field goal with 5 minutes left in overtime lifted the 4-12 49er’s to the victory. The Texans can now get on with the inevitable firing of head coach Dom Capers and his coaching staff, and the latest rumor is that Texans GM Charlie Casserly will be retained in some personnel-related capacity, although it remains unclear whether he will remain general manager of the team.
One could reasonably speculate that the Texans did not try to win the game much. QB David Carr (elbow), star receiver Andre Johnson (ankle) and leading pass rusher Shantee Orr (back) all retired to the sideline after a couple of series with injuries. They joined running backs Domanick Davis (knee) and Jonathan Wells (thigh) and defensive end Gary Walker (tricep), who all went on injured reserve last week. Moreover, kicker Kris Brown missed another chip-shot field goal with six minutes to go that would have won the game in regulation for the Texans, and the Texans’ offense continued to distinguish itself as one of the worst in recent NFL history — the unit not only failed again to exceed 300 yards of total offense, but also set up the 49er’s tying and winning scores.
By the way, one of the stranger observations on the game and the season was in this Megan Manfull/Chronicle article:

“The Texans have rallied around [Texan head coach Dom] Capers all season.”

If the Texans have rallied around Capers this season, then how bad would the Texans have been had they actually tanked on their coach? Texans announcer Mark Vandermeer summed it up with his call at the end of the game:

“Here’s the snap. The kick is good. The game is over. The season is over as the Texans lose to San Francisco 20-17. They lock up the worst record in the National Football league at 2 and 14, and the nightmare that was the 2005 campaign finally comes to an end.”

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Jaguars 38 Texans 20

The 2-13 Texans got a leg up on the 3-12 49er’s in next weekend’s Reggie Bush Bowl in San Francisco as the Jags scorched them for 21 points in the final quarter to put this one on ice. The local media was agog over Texans QB David Carr throwing for 295 yards on 29 attempts with a couple of reasonably long TD passes, but he also threw his obligatory tipped-pass-at-the-line-of-scrimmage (largely the result of Carr’s defective throwing motion) for an interception, which set up one of the Jags’ fourth quarter TD’s. Assuming that the Texans don’t blow the first pick in the 2006 NFL Draft by beating the 49er’s on New Year’s Day, the team not only has to decide whether to draft Bush (an easy decision, in my view), but whether to pick up what appears to be a fairly expensive $8 million option on Carr. My sense is that the Texans will probably do so, although the market for free agent QB’s will likely have an impact on the decision. Nevertheless, two things remain clear about Carr — the Texans made a mistake in making him the no. 1 draft pick in team history and he is not good enough to make an offense with a deficient line even average in the NFL.

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When the University of Texas plays USC for the BCS National Football Championship in the Rose Bowl on January 4, 2006, the Longhorn football team will be attempting to win its first undisputed national football title since 1969, which happened to be the last all-white college football team to win the national football championship.
This NY Times article tells the story about the integration of the Texas football program, including the not well-known story of how former Major League Baseball player and manager Don Baylor almost became the first black football player at the University of Texas in the mid-1960’s, how former President Lyndon Johnson used to help recruit football players for UT, and the interesting story of Julius Whittier, the first black student-athlete to play football at the University of Texas.

Texans 30 Cardinals 19

Now that we know that the Texans’ draft picks are not all that bad, the Texans (2-12) went out and set up a January 1st “Reggie Bush Bowl” in San Francisco against the 49ers by beating the equally hapless Arizona Cardinals (4-10) on Sunday afternoon at Reliant Stadium. The Cardinals QB Kurt Warner was hurt early in this one and the team’s second team QB (Josh McCown) came down with the flu during the game. So, the Texans were able to play most of the game against the Cardinals third-team QB John Navarre and were able to pull this one out despite gaining 63 yards in the second half. Texans fourth year QB David Carr continues to look basically clueless as he threw for a total of 134 yards passing on 33 attempts while coughing up two turnovers, which was basically the only possible way the Texans could lose this game. Oh well, at least the win makes the Texans’ season-ender against the 49er’s — who will probably also have only two wins as of that game — something to watch on New Year’s Day.
By the way, I know the Texans’ management blew it badly by having the roof open at Reliant Stadium for the Steelers game earlier this season, but who one earth decided to close the roof for the Cardinals game on a gorgeous late autumn afternoon in Houston?

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Over the years, I have been blessed to have had the opportunity to represent several professional and major college football coaches in their contract negotiations and related legal matters. Through that experience, I have become friends with quite a few coaches and personnel experts in both professional and major college football.
As noted in this earlier post, I have been disappointed in the local sports media’s (with the notable exceptions of the Chronicle’s John Lopez and talk radio host Charlie Pallilo) lack of evaluation of the Texan GM Charlie Casserly‘s personnel decisions, I decided to ask a friend with extensive experience in evaluating college and NFL players to review and assess Casserly’s Texan draft picks. My friend graciously agreed to do so, and his final evaluation contains some surprising and interesting observations.

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It’s no secret in these parts that Texas A&M head football coach Dennis Franchione had a bad season, not something to take lightly in terms of job security in the football-dominated culture of College Station, Texas. So, after Franchione fired his defensive coordinator at the end of the season, the conventional wisdom was that Franchione would hire a big name coach as the new A&M defensive coordinator, particularly given A&M’s willingness to pay top dollar for an assistant coach who would revive the long-dormant Wrecking Crew defense.
Well, suffice it to say that Franchione’s hire — his old friend and oft-fired coach Gary Darnell — is not exactly what most Aggie fans had in mind as the solution to revive the flagging A&M program. Darnell has been out of football entirely the past year after being fired as head coach at Western Michigan. Moreover, Darnell was previously the source of much angst among Texas Longhorn fans when his unaggressive “read and react” defense that he instituted while serving as Longhorn defensive coordinator from 1994-96 was one of the primary reasons that former Longhorn coach John Mackovic was fired after the 1997 season and remains one of the most unpopular Texas football coaches in history. Darnell’s tenure as Texas defensive coordinator included the Horns’ defense giving up over 30 points five times in 1994, as well as such embarrassments as the 55-27 pasting that Notre Dame laid on the Horns in 1995 and the lopsided 38-15 Longhorn defeat to Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl after the 1996 season. Just to put the icing on the cake, Darnell was also the college coach of currently underachieving Houston Texans linebacker Jason Babin, on whom the team wasted a first round draft choice.
Thus, with that backdrop, it was not particularly surprising that I received a phone call yesterday from a friend who is an ardent Longhorn fan. While chortling about Franchione’s hiring of Darnell, he passed along the following :

Q: “What does ‘Franchione’ mean in English?”
A: “Mackovic.”

Titans 13 Texans 10

Texans kicker Kris Brown made his contribution to the Reggie Bush sweepstakes today as he missed not one, but two, field goals in the closing minutes to ensure that the Texans (1-12) remain in position to have the worst record in the NFL this season and have the first draft choice in the 2006 NFL Draft. This was another particularly ugly game that pitted two bad teams playing in front of a half-filled stadium in Nashville on a cold, gray day. The Texans’ offense amassed a paltry 234 yards, including 82 through the air as Texans QB David Carr was sacked six times and hit or hurried countless other times — the Texans’ pass offense is the worst in the NFL this season and one of the worst in the NFL over the past several seasons. The Texans play Arizona and Jacksonville over the next two weeks at Reliant Stadium before mercifully finishing their abysmal season in San Francisco on New Year’s Day.

Cowboys 31 Kansas City 28

In the type of hugely entertaining game that Texans fans thought they were going to be seeing this season, the Cowboys (8-5) survived a wild last 22 seconds in this one to remain a game back of the Giants in the NFC East. After offensive line problems had constricted the Pokes’ offense over the past several games, the Cowboys burst out for 445 yards of total offense as QB Drew Bledsoe threw for three TD’s, including the game winner. Given the Cowboys remaining schedule (at Washington, at Carolina, and St. Louis at home), I’ve got my doubts that they can win all three, but this team is feisty and has played every game close this season. If the Pokes make the playoffs, no team is going to want to play them.

In other local football-related news, Texas Longhorn QB Vince Young, who hails from Houston Madison High School, came in second to Bush in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy. In most years, Young would have been a run-away winner of the award, which is college football’s most prestigious. However, Bush is a once-in-a-decade type of player and his exploits late in season for USC sealed the award for him.