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The NFL Network has footage that shows Taylor Mays beating Trindon Holliday at the Combine.

No big deal, right? Mays is a specimen, so that’s no suprise… is it?

Well, Mays ran an official 4.43. Holliday ran an official 4.34.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The problem likely traces in part to the fact that the timing commences not upon the firing of a gun but on the first motion of the player.  So the easy fix is to make this faux track meet more like a real track meet, and to tie the timing to the gun or the whistle or whatever.

That makes sense, and shows that even automatic timing has its flaws.

Sam Bradford?

Yep, that’s what Adam Schefter says.

My guess is that if Bradford really is taken first, the Bucs will take either Gerald McCoy or Ndamukong Suh third instead of taking Eric Berry like almost every mock draft has at this moment.

And with Bradford being taken first, the Redskins draft strategy–at this moment–changes dramatically, which may lead them to take an offensive tackle instead of Bradford. (Or if the Jason Campbell for Donte Whitner deal has any truth, maybe the Redskins draft Berry)

Ah hell, the only thing that’s certain is that the draft talk will heat up over the Combine this weekend.

Four Oregon football players have had trouble with the law in the offseason, and now wide receiver Jamere Holland is a former Oregon football player for reacting to Kristian Kiko Alonso’s DUI arrest on facebook.

It’s pretty obvious that Holland isn’t the brightest bulb based off of the postings to his facebook page, but what may be even dumber than the postings is the fact that Holland hasn’t locked down his facebook page since getting kicked off, letting anyone and everyone interested in what he had said easily find it. (You can make a convincing argument that he should have had his profile on private anyway)

Oregon AD Mike Bellotti was quoted as saying that Holland had many chances, so this was obviously the last straw. But multiple chances aside, he’s being stupid on facebook. As bad as that may reflect on Holland and the university, he’s not out possibly driving drunk or being accused of beating up his girlfriend.

It’s unknown what Holland’s past transgressions are, but if they were of the criminal nature, we’d probably already know about them. Therefore if LaMichael James and/or Alonso are found guilty and remain on the team, Bellotti and head coach Chip Kelly will have established a nice double standard.

(Of course, you can also argue that the double standard has already been set with the LeGarrette Blount incident, but I don’t want to break the site)

Seriously.

This is ridiculous. My immediate reaction is to blame Lane Kiffin, but this sounds like USC had been recruiting Sills for a while, so Pete Carroll can’t immediately be absolved either.

I realize that this has happened in college basketball before, but this has got to stop. However, given that these are verbal commitments, I don’t know what you could do to really enforce any regulations.

Tebow.

Focus on the Family.

Need I say more?

While some will applaud Tebow for standing up for what he believes in, others will find it awful.

Myself? Well, I won’t get into that on the front page, but I will say that I really don’t want to see Tebow during the Super Bowl unless he’s fortunate enough to ever get to one as a player.

There, I said it.

Mike Leach is getting absolutely killed during tonight’s broadcast of the Alamo Bowl. Mike Patrick–Craig James’s usual broadcast partner–has become a de-facto advocate for Adam James and Bob Davie, who spent much more time preparing for the Texas Bowl, is using his status as James’s replacement to play off of Patrick. It’s like a bad buddy-cop movie broadcasting a football game.

The worst part might have been near the end of the first half when Davie said that it must be hard for Leach to realize that it’s over and that he was watching his own football team on television. Yes, that’s probably pretty hard to take, but my guess is that when Davie said that, Leach was in the bathroom puking in disgust from all of the James fellatio that had previously occurred.

ESPN did a great job of ignoring the topic in the first part of the broadcast, and I’m sure that the overtime Liberty Bowl helped. But once the second quarter was underway, it was open season on Mike Leach.

At the very least, ESPN could have clarified on numerous occasions that Craig James worked for the network. Instead, it acted as if that point was known by the viewing audience, while also acting like none of the details–with plenty of pro-Adam James commentary and sidebars–of the past week were known by viewers.

Despicable.

…(you hold each other so tenderly).

So, no big surprise, a UC team that got blown up by the offenses of UConn and Pitt among others got blown up by Florida’s offense. To all Notre Dame fans still happy about the Brian Kelly hire, do know that he is not exactly brining a defensive pedigree with him…

As for any lessons from last night’s beatdown? None to hang on to. I still want a playoff. Most everyone does. The Big East’s best remain a significant step below the best the SEC can run out there. Then again, that goes for the Big 10 as well. And Pac 10. And pretty much everyone else. And given what Florida is losing to gradution and guys heading pro early, that may have been their last stand for awhile. And no one still seems to have a handle on just what is up with Urban Meyer.

In the meantime, the interminible bowl season grinds on. The people who genuinely care could fit in something that used to be known as a phone booth.

It seems that there are too many stories about former stud athletes getting in trouble with the law after they can’t reach that level of success in the pros. Hell, there’s too many stories about professionals getting in trouble too.

This one is different.

But at the same time, I can’t help but wonder if it really is different from all of the other stories . Or it’s different because it’s the only one that I’ve been close to.

I first encountered Tony Temple when we were in sixth grade at a basketball tournament over Christmas. His grade school was playing mine, and even then people knew of his athletic ability. There was a rumor that he could dunk already, and while he never dunked that day, I met… ok, I guarded him. The mismatch of a fat and slow white kid who only wanted to shoot three pointers on a kid more athletic than many high schoolers was apparently lost on my coach. That’s what I get for going to an unathletic school.

Back then I had no idea where I was going to high school or that our paths would cross again and I don’t think I had thought of Tony until I arrived at Rockhurst that summer of my freshman year for football weightlifting and testing and people were talking all during 40 yard dash testing of this Tony Temple kid who allegedly ran a 4.4.

I ran a 5.9.

Soon, Tony became the darling of Kansas City. He was the first freshman to ever play varsity for Tony Severino, the hugely successful Rockhurst coach. Rockhurst is the most storied football program in Kansas City. If you’re a stud at Rockhurst, you’re pretty good. But Tony was a stud as a freshman, therefore he was great.

Tony didn’t start at all that year, but he split time with the senior who started and broke a 30 yard run in the state championship game that sealed the title.

He had arrived to the rest of the state of Missouri.

Tony was on the cover of the Kansas City Star’s football preview at the beginning of his sophomore year in a picture of blue poker chips falling all over him. You can make that connection yourself.

(The Star and local media had an obsession with Tony that was far stronger than it was when Darren Sproles or Ladell Betts were playing high school ball. Tony was different. He was the chosen one.)

That sophomore season Tony was nicked up and missed some time. Rockhurst didn’t win state.

Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it wasn’t. Expectations were tempered a bit for his junior season, but again, he was expected to run all over the city.

And that’s what he did. Tony stayed healthy, Rockhurst won the state championship and Tony was staring down the prospect of winning three championships in four years.

Expectations were back to where they were before Tony’s sophomore season. Hell, maybe they were higher.

On his next carry, Temple breaks an 85-yard touchdown run around the left side. At one point, he looks behind him, almost in disbelief at how easy it was.

On Rockhurst’s next series, Severino calls Temple’s number again. Temple busts through the middle this time, driving through a few tacklers on his way to the end zone. It’s a 78-yard run, his fourth touchdown of the half.

“Welcome to the Tony Temple Show, starring Tony Temple, directed by Tony Temple and produced by Tony Temple,” says Marcus Spears, a Chiefs player working a live television broadcast. “This guy’s the best running back in the country.”

And Tony certainly lived up to them in the first game of the season.

But Tony dislocated his shoulder blocking a punt in the second game. The shoulder essentially ended his season

Those scholarship offers that the second linked article mentions? Well, the popular theory is that they all disappeared once that shoulder popped out of socket.

There were always whispers about his work ethic, both in and out of the classroom. To many, Tony got by with a lot. A lot more than other non-athletes would have.

There were a lot of other whispers too. That Rockhurst was paying for his education and about that rumored 25 year old girlfriend with two kids. That was the least believable of them all. And it was true.

When Tony announced his decision–live on the Kansas City sports channel, of course–there were four or five hats on the desk in the studio, with USC and Miami among them. Everyone knew where Tony was going. It was Missouri. As the aforementioned popular theory stated, they were the only school that had a scholarship still on the table.

So yes, that meant another four years of school with Tony Temple.

When I mentioned that I went to Rockhurst that first semester (and beyond for that matter) I was almost inevitably asked if I knew Tony. Apparently he was a big deal in other places too.

(Tony and I got along, although we were never friends. We always acknowledged each other and he immediately recognized me and was great to me when I covered the team.)

Tony’s career at Missouri was just like high school. There were instantaneous expectations, flashes of brilliance, but overall, because of those expectations, for many, it left something to be desired.

Unlike high school, he went out with a bang, setting a Cotton Bowl record with 281 rushing yards against Arkansas when the Hogs decided that Tony was a lesser evil than Chase Daniel. And the year before, Temple almost set a Sun Bowl record with 194 rushing yards.

But before that Sun Bowl season, Tony got in trouble with the law for the first time. And yes, that too involved his girlfriend.

Even after that Cotton Bowl performance, Tony went undrafted. He spent some time with the Cleveland Browns, but was cut during the summer. No longer was he the next big thing. He was now not good enough.

Expectations stink. Sure, they’re great when you live up to them or exceed them, but they’re an incredible bitch when you fall short, even if those expectations aren’t of your own. It wasn’t his fault that he was the one labeled the next big thing, a can’t miss prospect that for the most part, missed.

For almost everyone, two state titles, a Cotton Bowl record, a 1,000 yard season in the Big XII and a cup of coffee with a NFL team would be a great career. But for Tony, it seems like a failure.

Last I heard, he was working somewhere at a 24 Hour Fitness as a personal trainer. His facebook page is basically inactive, and outside of the random “Meet Tiger legend Tony Temple!” at Missouri-themed stores, he largely fell off the map.

This was now that normal life that Tony said that he wanted as a senior.

Yet I can’t help but wonder if the constant stigma of the last nine years plays a part in what looks like a disturbing trend of anger issues for Tony.

It was obvious that he was having trouble dealing with those expectations in high school, and now it looks like he’s having trouble dealing with the result of those expectations now. Sure, love can make you do crazy things, but with other factors and some built up frustration, that’s an explosive combination.

I hope he can get things straightened out and his life pointed forward. Tony was never a bad guy, just one who had a constant spotlight and couldn’t do anything to get rid of it. Not to mention, it’s pretty hard to be a real estate agent or a stockbroker with a felony on your record.

Yeah, he’s quirky. And weird, by coaching standards. But he also graduated closer to the top than the bottom in his law class at Pepperdine, so, stupid isn’t exactly near the top of the list of adjectives you would assign to erstwhile Texas Tech coach Mike Leach. And with Craig James having ESPN at his disposal, Leach is wasting no time starting to get his story out. Enter this must read interview published in the New York Times which sure provides more pieces to the puzzle. And that perhaps this wasn’t anywhere near what Adam James and his father have alleged. A snippet:

Leach said that Craig James called the assistant coach Lincoln Riley so often to lobby for playing time that they had a meeting with Adam James. They played him two of the messages and asked, “How would you feel if we went in there to the meeting room and we stuck speakers up and we played these two messages for the team?” Leach added: “After that we didn’t get any more phone calls from Craig, but he did proceed to call administrators.” Leach said that Craig James felt his son was not getting a fair shot and threatened to call the administration about it.

“He made it clear that he had a business relationship with our chancellor or certainly was in conversation about such things,” Leach said. “He made it clear that he was announcing this game or that. He always felt like we were leaving the best receiver on the team on the bench. It’s inconceivable that we’d ever want to do that or consider doing it.” The Texas Tech head football trainer, Steve Pincock, supported Leach’s claims that he did not mistreat Adam James after his concussion.

For the details on what was done for (or to) James, read the article. It apparently was NOT locked-in-an-electrical-closet stuff, unless James himself went into said closet. And the idea that the James gang had an agenda here is all too believeable.

There has been plenty of rather interesting discussion about this as it has unfolded here in the (new) Swamp. Register and drop by with a thought or two.

Ok, yeah, bad joke. How many copy desk workers are going to use a pirate captain reference for the headlines for Mike Leach’s suspension? Gotta be quite a few.

Anyway, if this is true–and I stress that I think this is a big if–this is bizarre given the attention to concussions recently, and the player abuse allegations against Mark Mangino, Leach’s roommate when they started their coaching careers.

Dave Matter, the Missouri beat writer for the Columbia Tribune–and one of the best college-town beat writers around–has an interesting theory:

if Leach allegations are true, I’m convinced he wanted to get fired. He’s too smart to think he’d get away with this after the Mangino deal.

Leach may be batshit crazy, but he’s no dummy. (If you can get access to the feature on Leach in March’s Texas Monthly. It’s well worth your time. It’s an extremely long article, but one of the best magazine articles I’ve read all year)

But at the same time, why the heck would Leach want to get fired? He just signed a five year extension at Tech and at the time of the alleged incident, there were no primo college football jobs open. (Mike Leach to South Bend? That would go over well) Where would Leach go? Would he rather be an offensive coordinator in the NFL? I don’t think that the zone read scheme that Leach runs at Tech would be terribly effective in the NFL without Peyton Manning at quarterback.

Whatever this is, my guess is that it’s somewhere between what Leach and Adam James say. But if the resolution to this situation is Texas Tech and Leach parting ways, then Tech may very well toss its relevance on the national college football landscape out the window as well.

(Kudos to ESPN for taking Craig James off of the broadcast of Saturday’s game)

EDIT: Great piece by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.