Excuse Pete Carroll While He Slips Into Something A Little More Comfortable

In a move that had been rumored for many months, Pete Carroll and Rick Neuheisel have come to an agreement which will allow both teams to wear their home jerseys in their rivalry game this Saturday. The change in attire will honor the days when both the Bruins and Trojans shared the Los Angeles Coliseum and also will allow USC to further embrace their rich heritage:



Rick Neuheisel has also suggested that as long as the two teams are honoring their traditions, they should go all the way back to beginning of the rivalry and have both teams lineup in the single wing formation all game. In fact, Neuheisel has promised not to allow Kevin Craft to throw a single pass if Carroll will do the same with Mark Sanchez.

It was originally feared that the teams would not be able to restore the jersey tradition because NCAA rules mandated that the offending team be charged with two timeouts during the course of the game. But in a last minute decision, the NCAA capitulated to one of its cash cows storied institutions and minimized the penalty to only one first half timeout. However in an effort to not appear biased towards USC, the NCAA has enacted another new rule whereby any interception thrown by Kevin Craft that is not returned for a touchdown will instead be ruled as an incompletion.

In other college football news, Oregon coach Mike Bellotti has named Chip Kelly the head coach in-waiting, but has yet to set a date for when that might be. Kelly now joins Jimbo Fisher at Florida State and Will Muschamp at Texas as the coaching equivalent of a mistress who stays with a married man because he tells her that he's going to break it off eventually. He just needs to wait for the right moment. These things take time, baby. Meanwhile, they don't get any younger, their wrinkles start to show, and their desirability to other suitors begins to wane. So they better hope this gig works out, because there might not be time for any others (certainly not for Fisher).

This Thursday, the Raiders-Chargers game will be televised in 3-D in select theaters in Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. 3ality Digital feels this game will be a great opportunity to showcase their new technology; and as an added bonus, they are able to reduce costs as this game will not require them to put any cameras in the endzone.

I'm no marketing major, but my feeling is the best way to make sure the 3D experiment is a success would be to make sure there are some cameras on the San Diego sidelines to capture all the dimensions of:



But if viewers in an Imax theater end up seeing Norv Turner's facial craters or Al Davis' animated skeleton in 3D, then 3ality Digital is going to need a GM sized bailout by the end of the game.


NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has suspended Sean Avery indefinitely for referring to this puck bunny:




as "sloppy seconds." Bettman had to invoke the suspension for the good of the game, as Cuthbert is the only fan the league had left. Bettman will meet Avery soon to discuss the duration of the suspension and to make certain that Avery is aware that this particular term will not be tolerated and should instead be replaced by, "a drop pass into the crease," "a rebound through the five-hole," or simply "bacon scraps."

Lost in Thought After a Busy Day in Sports

The Chargers named Norv Turner as their head coach and The Hater Nation is not very pleased with the move. But I think he's being too hard on Turner's ability to lead the Chargers. Norv is taking over for a team that went 14-2. All he has to do is duplicate that record for the next two seasons and he'll be a .500 coach for his career.

NFL Adam's stance that Norv Turner is a horrible coach is hardly a minority opinion. Many people believe that Turner is good as an offensive coordinator but lacks the qualities to be an effective head coach. Among those people is former wide receiver and tango dancer, Jerry Rice. In Rice's new book, Rice says that Turner, "was never really head coach material ... He couldn't control the players and guys like Charles Woodson walked all over him." I'll give him a pass on Woodson- nobody has been able to turn him into anything resembling an NFL player. But one thing Turner did have some control over however was Rice's streak of consecutive games with a catch, which ended while Norv was his head coach in Oakland. So while I don't doubt that Turner was never exactly a taskmaster with the Raiders, I'm also certain that Rice harbors some serious resentment towards Norv for letting that streak come to an end.

It was also announced today that Ted Cottrell and Ron Rivera will be joining the Chargers as their defensive coordinator and linebacker coach, respectively. For Ron Rivera, going from the defensive coordinator of a Super Bowl team to the LB coach of an also-ran could be seen as a demotion; but if so, it's a rather soft landing. At Chicago, he had Lance Briggs and Brian Urlacher at his disposal. Now with the Chargers, it will be his job to coach Shawne Merriman- not exactly the most difficult assignment. As long as Merriman doesn't get suspended again or pull a hamstring doing his Lights Out dance, Rivera should once more look like a defensive mastermind and be a viable candidate for head coach opportunities in the 2008 offseason.

The Colts slapped the franchise tag on Dwight Freeney, thereby guaranteeing that he will be wearing the horseshoe for at least one more year. While Freeney is obviously very talented, I'm surprised by this move. I would have thought that Tony Dungy would have allowed Freeney to go free, knowing in his heart that Freeney would re-sign with the Colts if it was all part of God's plan.

Tom Brady is going to be the father of Bridget Moynahan's baby. I guess Brady wasn't using his five layers of protection that night. Maybe Brady didn't think it was necessary. He probably assumed that if his boys were anything like everyone else associated with the Patriots, they'd never be able to run the right route in a pressure moment.

I know the rankings are a "what have you done for me lately" system, but it's absurd that Ohio State is #1 in the Coaches/ESPN poll. I'm trying to figure out what it was that impressed the voters so much. Was it their loss to Wisconsin, their losing trip to North Carolina, or their 26 point beating from Florida that convinced everyone that the Buckeyes were the best team in the nation?

Alex Rodriguez confirmed that his relationship with Derek Jeter isn't as close as it once was:
"The reality is there's been a change in the relationship over 14 years and, hopefully, we can just put it behind us," he went on. "You go from sleeping over at somebody's house five days a week, and now you don't sleep over." ARod might feel a tad hurt by this development, but of course he's not going to sleep over anymore. When the choices for Jeter are ARod or: Mariah Carey, Lara Dutta, Jordanna Brewster, Vanessa Minnillo, Gabrielle Union, Jessica Alba, or Scarlett Johansson, chances are slim that he's going to be inviting ARod in to play with the XBox and drink Keystone Light all night.