Paul Johnson's flexbone will never work. Mike Leach is too eccentric to succeed. The spread option will be a bust in the SEC.

Skepticism is a fine philosophy, but think if it as just one essential spice in the full rack of seasonings you need as a football fan. It is not bad in itself to be skeptical; that's why contracts have buyout clauses, and why you run background checks on employees before you hire them, and why we have contracts in the first place. Correction: that's why we have contracts to begin with, and unless you're Joe Paterno sealing the deal with a handshake as you have for the past 5,000 years as head coach of Penn State, you sign them for the benefit of everyone involved.

The bad kind of fear of the new in football stems from a mix of well-advised skepticism and stodgy loyalty to dying or dead ideas well past their prime. The Tennessee coaching search began with one of college football's stodgiest of traditionalists, Phil Fulmer, and the gradual decline of the Tennessee program. Tennessee did little new over the course of their long, slow slide from a national title Everest; in fact, they did what you are in many cases supposed to do, which is fix nothing that is not broken.

By rule, that is the skeptical thing to do: keep plugging away with what got you there.

It also runs counter to another important element in your arsenal: pragmatism. When devout communist Deng Xiaoping began to introduce elements of capitalism into the Maoist economy he inherited as Premier Leader of China, he was asked if this did not go contradictory to everything he had worked for in the Chinese Revolution. His answer: "It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.”

There's a mixed record on this in college football. Typically, big programs let mid-sized programs take the risks for them in hiring innovative coaches with "new" or "exotic" ways of doing things. West Virginia placed the first substantial bet on Rich Rodriguez. Utah plucked Urban Meyer out of the MAC and catapulted him into major program majordomo. Paul Johnson coached in D-2 for years before taking a service academy job where he was so successful with so little that he had be hired by a major program somewhere. Texas Tech, with nothing to lose, signed the architect of the offenses that pulled both Kentucky and Oklahoma from the mire of their respective conferences.

In each of these unconventional case studies in success, there are a few common threads.

Each of their systems is at root fundamentally sound, and based on very, very old concepts. Johnson's flexbone is an evolved version of several iterations of the old triple option and wishbone. Ditto for Rodriguez's system, which takes the option and spreads it wide across the entire field. Meyer's system is Rodriguez's system with some run 'n shoot passing and empty backfield thrown in, while the Red Raider air game morphs certain elements of the old Lavell Edwards/Norm Chow passing game with wide offensive line splits and a whiplash draw run game.

Every one of them depends on simplicity and variation. Oh, and practice. Each of the coaches mentioned is notorious for being sticklers on execution. None of them will perform Holtzian magic tricks in pep talks, but watch each of their offenses at their finest and note the precision that turns potentially dangerous offenses into the lethal variety. Exotic frippery of the schemes aside, they are all at their core about precision and execution, and the evidence comes in an even simpler form of documented success at multiple stops in their coaching careers.

Georgia Tech's gamble paid off to the tune of 472 yards rushing against Miami Thursday night. The Hurricanes entered the game as the 19th ranked rushing defense in the nation. They left Bobby Dodd Stadium as the 62nd ranked rush D in these United States. The Yellow Jackets, often condemned by many as doomed to struggle against schools without similar academic constraints, destroyed a team made up of the cream of South Florida's recruiting crop. They are ahead of schedule in their rebuild, and Paul Johnson's attention to detail and stern ethos are to credit, funky flexbone whiteboard schemes and all. GT's gamble, for the moment, has worked out in way making skepticism of the flexbone a more difficult position to hold by the day.

Bringing us to Tennessee, a place so long on skepticism it may be an insult to call them conservative as a program. The leading candidate according to all concerned is Cincinnati's Brian Kelly, a fine coach with his own track record of winning at many different levels. Kelly is an adequate and very conventional choice. So is Mike Leach, the bandito behind Texas Tech's program. Kelly will likely nail the interview, look like a coach, sound like a coach, and promise everything the Vols would like to hear. Leach will look wrong in a suit and tie, possibly give some eyebrow-raising answers to the questions they ask him, and indeed could be too honest for his own good. (From some accounts, his interviews are sometimes bizarre and uncomfortable experiences.)

It would be a shame, though, if Tennessee ignored the need to season the mix with some pragmatism. Black cat, white cat ... Leach still catches mice, and if Tennessee doesn't nab him this year, someone else eventually will. Winning is a fundamental that never goes out of style, and one that wins over even the most hardened skeptic. Success for the gifted but eccentric is the easy part; not wearing the musical tie to the interview is the hard part for those who can't help but scare the normals a bit too much for their own good.

Appreciate Miami fans for what they are: college football's gleefully tasteless and charity-free barbarians. They admit no defeat, as exemplified by the Miami fan who, down by 21 last night, very seriously bellowed into the air "That's all right, we've got 'em right where we want 'em!" They address anyone and everyone around them in opposing teams' colors in an ... overly familiar fashion. ("Hey, Tech fan. Your white out sucks. You're gonna die.") They shave the "U" logo into their back hair and have been known to get creative with dying other body hair, too.

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The BCS is confusing, filled with clauses, subclauses, and countless other frills and doodads built into it. Please consult our handy Sporting Blog chart of how the BCS will play out in 2008. Remember: this is an official Sporting Blog product, and therefore infallibly correct. Click the chart to see it full-size.

Ball State survived the wrath of Central Michigan and the Dark Lord Zombo last night to remain undefeated. When your friend who knows nothing about college football approaches you and says, "So is Ball State gonna play for the national championship YOUR SPORT IS SCREWED UP," you may confidently answer "no." Here's why.

Ball State now sits at No. 17 in the BCS standings. Only conference champions earn the automatic bids to the BCS bowls, meaning a few teams ahead of Ball State -- Georgia, for example -- can't win their conferences, and essentially move Ball State up a few spots and closer to the crucial 12-spot in the BCS rankings. If Ball State finishes in the top 12, they're in under BCS rules as an undefeated from the non-BCS ranks.

As with anything, though, there is a catch. Ahem:

No more than one such team from Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt Conference, and the Western Athletic Conference shall earn an automatic [BCS] berth in any year. (Note: a second team may be eligible for at-large eligibility as noted below.)

Only one undefeated non-BCS conference team gets an automatic ticket to fat gift bags and BCS glory, and at the moment both Boise Sate and Utah are ranked higher than Ball State. Both would have to lose to get Ball State an automatic bid. Ball State would still be eligible for an at-large bid at what Emmitt Smith would call "the bowl's discrepancy", which will not happen with large, cash-tossing fanbases like Ohio State or Georgia possibly lurking out there.

But hey, Notre Dame may be the first five-loss team to ever get a Gator Bowl bid! Perhaps your friend who knows nothing about college football has a point.

Why not let an abashed hater of another team call your game? You know announcers have biases, but that does not mean they won't call the game accurately. It also means the game could be infinitely more entertaining, if Italian soccer coverage is any indication of the fun to be had when you let an unabashed homer like Tiziano Crudeli loose in the booth.
This runs counter to the thinking of Yahoo's Doc Saturday, who sees this statement by Chris Spielman as reason for him to be kept as far away f