* Is it just me, or has this already been the most insane football offseason ever? The always-excellent Dr Saturday blog breaks it all down.
* AS360's Jim Harris wrote an excellent post about why hiring a football coach isn't as easy as it once was.
* Adding to that topic, consider the example of Tennessee. That proud program was turned down by a defensive coordinator (albeit a really good one), the Air Force coach and the Duke coach, among others, before hiring a coach from a mid-tier WAC school with losing career record. Now, Derek Dooley may be the second coming of, um, Vince Dooley, but that had to be an excruciating process for Vol fans. My heart goes out to them...wait, no it doesn't.
* New offensive line coach Chris Klenakis comes to us from Nevada, which used the "pistol" formation to rack up gaudy offensive numbers (ex. an average of 344 rushing yards per game in 2009). For people who love X's & O's, here's a great writeup of how the pistol formation works.
* Dialing back the hype just a bit: unlike his counterpart at ESPN.com, SI.com's Andy Staples couldn't find a place for the Hogs in his preseason top 25.
* One thing we learned from the entire Lane Kiffin/UT/USC saga is that Bobby Petrino is still pretty much the worst person ever.