December 4, 2002

Well, we all got to see an exciting Thanksgiving weekend. I'd have to say that my favorite moment was when I outwrestled my good friend Lee Corso for the wishbone.

Lee may have thought he had the edge in any wishbone situation, being a former QB, but he was knocked cold when I enveloped him with my neck. Corso didn't have a chance, heck, Jesus C Watts himself couldn't have escaped (and how did JC get a Puerto Rican name anyway?).

After wrestling for the wishbone, my good friend Mike Tirico said something about "the bone" and about some blonde ESPN intern. I really don't understand what Mike's talking about sometimes.

My other favorite moment last weekend was when the forces of good, represented by the very religious Nutt boys in Fayetteville, had a last-second triumph over LSU.

Almost as amazing as that exciting TD pass was the replay of Coach Nick Satan watching Arkansas win the game as his head did a 360 degree spin.

Following the Notre Dame vs. USC game I made some comments on ESPN about USC's quarterback. A bunch of you wrote in to say that I was incorrect to refer to him as "Casey Palmer".

I checked it out and you were right, I got the name wrong and I apologize.

USC's quarterback is actually TV star Carson Daly. Carson goes to practice in Westwood in the afternoons and gets ready to play QB before changing clothes and doing his TV show.

Following a disease scare Carson has wised up. After practice he keeps his USC maximum protection Trojan outfit on and goes to host his TV show while staying safe from germ-ridden future porn stars like Christina Tuiasosopo.

December is the time of year when schools start to fire and hire their coaches. Only yesterday we all learned that Texas A&M had axed long-time coach R C Slocum. R C didn't take the news too well and barricaded himself in the A&M practice facility with 40 of his players and there's now a siege underway.

I just hope this Texas stand-off doesn't end as badly as the famous one in Waco a few years back. You'll recall the death and destruction that followed the end of the siege of the Waco compound when the Feds moved in.

We sure were all wrong back then when we expected former Baylor coach Grant Teaff would go quietly. The Baylor people still hold a memorial service in memory of the tragedy every Ash Wednesday.

Way back when schools were less hesitant to fire coaches, even the best coaches got fired a lot. But sometimes a new guy would come in and do badly, so the school would recognize their error and rehire the guy.

Famed coach Fielding Yost was forced out by Michigan in the early 1920s because it was thought the game had left him behind, but he was rehired when his replacement proved to be even worse. You can even see this in the coaching records, Yost coached Michigan from 1901-1923, then was fired, then came back in 1925-26 before getting fired again.

But Yost wasn't the only famous case of a coach repeatedly getting hired and fired. Notre Dame hired the legendary Frank Leahy after he got fired by Boston University in 1940.

Frank did a fine job, even winning the national title in 1943, before unexpectedly getting the pink slip. After a couple of lousy seasons under interim coach, the much-traveled Lou Satan, Frank was rehired and had eight great seasons before being fired for the last time.

The coach who got fired and rehired the most was Tennessee legend, Admiral Bob Neyland.

You can tell just by a look at the records that Bob got fired and rehired twice (fired after 1934 and rehired in 1936, then fired after 1940 and rehired in 1946, before Tennessee fired him for good in 1952).

Nowadays schools usually fire a coach once and for all, with no chance of being rehired, though I understand that if Ty Dillingham screws up, Bob Davis and Gerry Faust are still holding out hope for a phone call from South Bend.

Next week I'll be taking some time to work on Beeno's Bowel Preview, where I'll reach in and dissect all the Bowels. See you then!

See Beeno's 2002 Bowel Preview