Accent on defense? - Struggling Eastern Michigan hired Louisville defensive coordinator Ron English to take over a program that hasn't had a winning season since 1995.  Excuse us, but didn't we see poor-tackling Louisville give up 49 of 63 points in the first half of their season finale at Rutgers in their 63-14 loss?  It was not pretty.  We don't care what anybody says about decimating injuries, Louisville could not tackle.  They allowed 358 points at the end of their 5-7 record.  If EMU turns things around under English, we'll be surprised.  Louisville was probably looking to clean house under Kragthorpe any way.  He probably has a year to make things happen there or he's out.

Nice work if you can get it - Quit your job and collect $5.1M!!!  Believe that one and I'll tell you another, but that's what Auburn wants everybody to believe.  The begged Tommy Tuberville to stay and he said no.  What nice guys at Auburn.  Rich Rodriguez left the wrong program.  Speaking of WVU and Auburn who we saw face each other this year as WVU clubbed the SEC visitors, 34-17, our Auburn sources that weekend told us Tommy Tuberville was already gone if he didn't beat Alabama.  Well, no such luck against Alabama after 6 straight wins in the Iron Bowl and a 5-7 finish ended Tuberville's stint at Auburn.   Seems like AU's concern that Nick Saban's upstart Alabama teams was stealing the thunder and recruits of the "village on the Plains."  As we thought back then, who would the replace him with - Vince Lombardi?

Fast Forward - December 13 - Gene Chizik?  That's Auburn's answer to Nick Saban?  Granted he was a successful defensive coordinator at Auburn and at Texas, but he hasn't show any capability to turn things around as a head coach at Iowa State.  Granted ISU has a long way to go, but in the second season, you need to show some improvement to warrant a step up to a program like Auburn.  In two seasons, his Cyclone team went 3-9 and 2-10 respectively.  His defense ranked 65th in the nation his first season and fell to 111th in the next!  We think AU blew a great opportunity with Turner Gill who's going to make some big program very happy in the near future.

The Buffalo Bills of D-2 - NW Missouri State fell in the D-2 championship for the fourth year in a row to upstart Minneosta-Duluth, 21-14.  UM-D won only four games the previous season.

Alma Mater Dear - Juniata College's Darrel Alt resigned as Head Coach after posting a record of 5-45 over five years.  Carmen Felus steps in from UT-Chattanooga where he was offensive coordinator for three years.  Prior to that, he successfully ran the offense at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in D-2's PSAC where his teams ran up a 49-16 record that included five PSAC West titles and three trips to the D-2 play-offs.  With strong ties to Central Pennsylvania, We hope Coach Felus can return the Eagles of Chuck Knox, the 1956 Tangerine Bowl, and the1973 Stagg Bowl back to past levels of football prominence in the Centennial Conference of D-3 football.

2008 All Americans - ESPN.com's All-American team was announced and we saw our share of college football talent according to their selections.  In most cases, however, we saw most of them play in 2007 including QB and Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford of Oklahoma.  Also named to the offensive team were other standouts we watched play in 2007:  Michael Crabtree WR Texas Tech; Jermaine Gresham TE Oklahoma; and Duke Robinson G Oklahoma.  This year and last year, we saw C A.Q. Shipley of Penn State.  G Craig Kurbik of Wisconsin and RB Donald Brown of UConn played on our schedule this season.  Defensively, we watched OLB Aaron Curry, Butkus Award Winner, and CB Alphonso Smith play for Wake forest this year and last year to stop Navy's vaunted triple option offense both times.  In 2005 and in 2006, we watched this years PK Louie Sakoda of Utah perform at North Carolina and at UCLA when we added the Utes to our Goal!  And speaking of The Goal, the punter selected was TJ Conley of the Idaho Vandals.  Conley and team helped us finalize the Goal when we saw his team visit Nevada at Reno in 2007.  He's deserving not only for the amount of punts he's taken for the hapless Vandals, but he also led the nation with a 47.4 average. One wonders how much playing in the Kibbie Dome helps though. 

Weighing in on Weis - I graduated from Boonton (N.J.) High School in 1974.  Five years later, Charlie Weis started his football coaching career there and lasted only one year.  Anyone I've met who was there when he started - players, coaches, teachers - says that he wasn't well liked.  He might have proven over the years to be a great X's and O's guy, but if you can't attract and motivate people to play for you, that could be his problem. It's hard to understand how he won his first two years primarily with players recruited by Tyrone Willingham.  Yet, when he started attracting High School All-Americans, his coaching capabilities seem to have gone downhill.  It could be his people skills doing him in.

What's wrong with college football - The great sport is bringing itself down when opinions and computers undo what happens where it counts - on the filed.  Texas beats Oklahoma by ten and loses by one point on  a last play for their only loss to another undefeated team at the time, and Oklahoma gets the title shot - not Texas?  Wrong!  The BCS is screwed up.  Read our Playoff Proposal.  We wrote it up several years ago, and we're sticking to it!

 Landing on his feet  - Dave Clawson left as Head Coach at the University of Richmond after guiding the 2007  Spiders to the national FCS semi-finals where his team fell to Appalachian State, the eventual national champion.  Tennessee's Phil Fulmer offered Clawson the chance to take the over at offensive coordinator vacated by David Cutcliffe who left for Duke.  He jumped at the chance to step up into the SEC probably looking at it as a stepping stone to a head coaching position at a BCS school.  Despite the demise of the Vols in 2008 to 5-7 and the expulsion of Fulmer from UT, Bowling Green noted his talents where he turned around FCS programs at both Richmond and Fordham.  We saw Clawson's Fordham Rams win a 1AA playoff at Northeastern, 29-24, in 2002. We'll keep an eye on how he gets the Falcons of BGSU flying over the next couple of years.  The guy's a winner.

"Back to the future" - In 1980, John Massimilla got us tickets for our second game at Penn State that season where we saw the Lions, headed to a No. 8 ranking, hold off the NC State WolfPack, 21-13.  The Head Coach in his first season guiding the Pack to a 6-5 record was Monte Kiffin.  Next season, we plan to see Tennessee open their season at Neyland Stadium (a first time for us) under new Head Coach Lane Kiffin.  In 1980, Lane was five years old when Monte led the WolfPack.  When Lane and the Vols host Western Kentucky to become our 120th team in keeping up with the Goal.  Monte, coming in from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will be the defensive coordinator for his son's new team.  Who's been doing this too long -Monte or us?

CFF Ten years ago - On September 6, 1998, Laurie and the kids, Alex, age 5, and Eric, age 3, joined me at State College where I added Southern Mississippi for the first and only time.  Southern Miss  came in ranked in the pre-season Top 25 in the openers for both squads.  I only had two tickets so the kids would each join me for one half as the other would stay outside with Laurie "tailgating".  At halftime, we would meet by one of the gates to switch kids.  We all set out together before the game to walk to the stadium.  It was the first time I had parked in a lot usually used by the Agricultural school.  It must have been a first for this lot because the large lot had been evidently just been cleaned out and a slight rain the day before made some of the freshly made piles "muddy".  By the exit on the way to the road to the stadium, we passed a crowd of people lined up for the line of port-a-johns as we tip-toed through some unavoidable "muck".  I swear I heard her say it before it actually came out of her mouth: Five-year old Alex exclaimed, "Boy, Dad!  There sure is a lot of COW POOP around here!" The quiet lines pondering outside the port-a-potties burst into laughter!  Out of the mouths of babes!  Not only was she stating the evident that many adults were trying to ignore, but her words were prophetic. That's the way the Golden Eagles from So Miss played that day.  PSU prevailed with no problem, 34-6.

FCS playoff excitement - Congratulations to Richmond for their 24-7 win over Montana in the 2008 FCS Championship.  We originally planned to see the Spiders in their game against Hofstra this past season but opted for a more competitive D-3 game between Montclair and Rowan.  We called that right, but missed out on seeing the eventual FCS national champs play.  Maybe we'll get them on next year's schedule as defending National Champs.  Go Spiders!

Tales from the Tailgate - Many people have asked if we will possibly write a book about this adventure.  Click here to read Excerpts from our upcoming book, Tales from the Tailgate, or how I got to see every 1A football team play at least once in person ! Read the Introduction and three chapters.  It's coming along pretty good.  We hope it will become one of the Classics!

Watch for more Salvo updates throughout the season! 

- Steve Koreivo, ed.