I’ve not been following the apparent drama in Boston. BC football coach Jeff Jagodzinski is reportedly about to be fired for reportedly taking an interview with the NY Jets about their head coaching vacancy. The first I heard about, all I gleaned was that it was in Jag’s contract that he’d be dismissed if he interviewed for other jobs. But now as I read the articles, things seem less clear cut.

[BC athletic director] DeFilippo would not discuss the specifics of Jagodzinski’s contract but did say the two had a mutual understanding when Jagodzinski took the BC job just a little more than two years ago that he would be the Eagles’ coach beyond the 2008 season.

“We certainly expected it would be more than two years before he would look or accept an interview [with another team],” DeFilippo said. “All contracts are different, as well as the spirit and intent of the contract.”

Jagodzinski has three years left on his contract. Were BC to fire him, sources said, the university would be on the hook for the remainder of his salary.

So maybe Jag’s contract says he’s supposed to get fired or maybe it doesn’t. But here’s what I don’t get: why would you have such a clause/intent/understanding without any financial penalty for the coach? In all seriousness, if your boss came up to you and said, “Hey, you’re doing a great job, but remember, if you go interview with anyone else you’ll force me to fire you and give you 3 years of pay,” wouldn’t you strongly consider taking him up on the offer even if you hadn’t been considering it before?

Aside from the changes in the coaching staff, the season kind of ended how it began, didn’t it? The offense was largely stagnant and the defense just wasn’t good enough. Sure we didn’t get beat as badly by Nebraska as we did by Alabama, but Nebraska isn’t as good as Alabama, either.

Per ESPN, the offense mustered

14 1st Downs
3-16 on 3rd down
1-3 on 4th down
210 Total Yards
206 Passing Yards
17-37 Comp-Att
4 Rushing Yards
26 Rushing Attempts
2 Turnovers
25:49 Time of Possession

Four goddamn rushing yards!

Now, since the rushing total against Alabama was only zero, the relative improvement is infinite, but still, FOUR GODDAMN YARDS!

If I were the AD, I’d watching the Orange Bowl right now and thinking to myself, “maybe I can still get that Cincinnati coach for next year.”

In just over 8 days I’ve been on 8 flights and to 8 different airports. While I should have taken pictures at Dulles, Las Vegas, Reno, Oakland, Spokane, Seattle, Portland, and Midway, I did not. I suck. I apologize. But boy is it good to be back home.

Given the light amount of blogging going on here, the least I can do is direct you to Clemson basketball blog The OP, which is doing a pretty bang-up job of keeping tabs on the current season.

Sorry, no picture this time. But I just made it here from Reno, sharing the plane with some guys from the Nevada football team. I think they’re heading to Boise (not sure why they’re going through Oakland because my other choice out of Reno was Boise). But I hope they kick the crap out of Maryland. God I hate Maryland.

Thanks to wonderful weather in the Pacific northwest, I was stuck in Reno for the night, unfortunately without time to take advantage of all that Reno has to offer. (It’s 4:30AM local time, I can’t sleep, and I have to make it back to the airport soon.)

While all that sucks, it was nice to see that Clemson Tiger basketball pretty much destroyed Miami last night. The final score was 91-72 and it was Miami, not Clemson, that was horrible from the charity stripe shooting only 12-27.

UPDATE: It’s now 10:10AM local time and I’m stuck at the airport riding the standby wave. I may easily be here until Wednesday; there’s a strong chance I won’t make it to my destination at all.

On the upside, it looks like Reno is a pretty fun place to be stuck in. And I’d like to add that I’m now a big fan of the Atlantis Hotel/Casino, as I reserved a room for $30 and was upgraded to a two-room suite with LCD screen, bar, and a slightly-sketchy in-bedroom jacuzzi tub. It’s definitely the best $30 hotel room I’ve ever stayed in. I just hope that if I get stuck here for another couple nights that I end up in the same room and that I don’t lose too much money gambling.

Being a bit of a Redskins fan, and being as I live right in the middle of the Redskins markets, I hear a lot about the ‘Skins and have heard a lot about their new coach this year. The fan base is just like every other fan base in the country: a single win lifts the expectations for the whole season, a single loss destroys those expectations.

If you haven’t been paying attention, the ‘Skins have a new coach this year, Jim Zorn. Zorn, before this year, had never been an offensive coordinator in the NFL, nor had he ever been a head coach. The ‘Skins jumped out this year to a 4-1 start, which became a 6-2 start. After 8 games, everybody loved Jim Zorn. Zorny was the guy who turned things around. Zorny was the guy who was going to return them to greatness. Jim Zorn was a genius.

Notice my use of the past tense.

The ‘Skins have since gone 1-5, which includes a loss to the Bengals, who had managed only one other win this season. The conventional wisdom is that earlier in the season, opponents were just not sure how to properly prepare for someone of whom they had no tape. Halfway through the season, however, the available data set had grown and the opposition has learned what it needs to know to win. Suffice it to say that the fan base is much less excited about their new head coach than they were 2 months and 6 games ago.

I bring this up because of the somewhat similar situations between Zorn and Dabo. As I’ve mentioned before, I fear that Dabo will coach differently now that he faces dramatically different incentives. But I now also fear that he’s in the midst of the Zorn effect; he’s good because he’s new. He had room to take risks; and they worked out. In the future those same risks will bite him in the ass, so he either steps in for another round of Russian Roulette, or he becomes one of the boring coaches who tries to survive by minimizing risk.

Of course I hope that I’m wrong in my comparison. And it should be said that I would be worried about any other coach we might have hired because past performance is just such a shitty indicator of the future. For now, however, I’m just not that optimistic about next season.

Strelow is reporting that once doctors got inside Willy Korn’s shoulder, they found that there were more problems than they had initially realized, and that his shoulder had been messed up ever since he broke his collarbone.

But when doctors went in to clean up the injury, they discovered the labrum had been frayed in two more locations. Loose bone fragments were removed, and it was also discovered that a minor procedure was needed on his rotator cuff stemming from the fractured collarbone Korn suffered as a freshman.

“To be honest, it had never felt the same since that injury,” Korn said.

The collarbone injury had been treated with ice and rehabilitation instead of surgery.

This brings up an interesting point, at least in my mind. I recognize and realize that most college football players don’t want to be on the sidelines recovering from surgeries. Nor do coaches want their players to be making constant trips to the doctor to have every ache and pain looked into. So at what point then does a coach have to say, “forget about being tough, I need you to be healthy.”

Speaking of healthy, SportingGnomes’ favorite Rendrick Taylor is back at practice.

He is still trying to shed at least 15 pounds from his current 260, and since his return to practice, coaches have worked him at both running back and tight end.

Tight end … wow, what a novel concept for someone who had so apparently outgrown the receiver position.

At 245, we may have to downgrade him to just Manbear, or perhaps Manpig. Either way, here’s to hoping that he can he can have a healthy and productive ‘09 season.

Before Clemson’s regular season was over, and before the final decision about the head coach for 2009 was made, I tried to argue that it was a bad idea to hire a coordinator from a successful program that was rife with talent. The point of that argument was that it was hard to determine if Will Muschamp was actually a good coach, or whether he was just lucky enough to be in charge of outstanding talent that makes him look good. To be more specific and truthful, I was stealing an idea from The Blind Side that defensive success is determined almost entirely by talent and almost not at all by the coordinator. From what I can tell, Vic Koenning agrees:

The whole thing about stopping these offenses is to get better players than they have and win the one-on-one battles. Right now, their Jimmies are better than your Joes. … A lot of great coaches are taking it to the next level. No one can stop it, but slowing it down is possible with better or comparable players.

Look, Vic deserves some respect. But if even he says that success is driven by talent, then unless he was primarily responsible for the recruiting of the defense (and he may be, I refuse to follow recruiting), then his resignation/dismissal is largely superfluous.