Mark Hasty Posts

In case you're wondering, here is the complete list of outrageous things Lane Kiffin has not done since becoming head coach at Tennessee:

1. Paint himself orange and skydive naked into Bryant-Denny Stadium.
2. Ask what Urban Meyer has done that's so great.
3. Consult with the UT astronomy department to see whether the universe would be annihilated if his ego was ever in the same room as Bruce Pearl's.
4. Coach in, and win, a football game.

For a moment, I had to cross off "make an outrageous scholarship offer to a middle schooler" because, well, there were reports that he just did that. Evan Berry, 13-year-old son of former Vol running back James Berry and brother of current Vol Eric Berry, has officially committed to the Vols. Or so said Rivals.com and ESPN, sort of.

Just how hurt is Rafael Nadal, anyway? He's not defending his Wimbledon title because his knees weren't at 100 percent. Now Nadal has been left off of Spain's Davis Cup team for next month's matches.

Spanish coach Albert Costa says Nadal "is not well." This was obvious to anyone who watched his exhibition match with Stanislas Wawrinka, a match which Nadal lost. There is no real shame in losing to Warwrinka, who just gave Andy Murray all he could handle in one of Wimbledon's best matches this year. Nadal, however, is (as of now) the world's No. 1 ranked player and thus isn't supposed to lose to anybody.

Nadal is suffering from tendinitis of the knees. As anyone with tendinitis knows, it's slow to get better, and that's assuming it ever does, said the writer, three seconds before he shook out his aching hand. Will Nadal ever get better? And what if he doesn't?

If there's a recession in college football, it has yet to reach the coaching ranks. Well, not the head-coaching ranks, anyway. In the past week, three head coaches, Bob Stoops, Pat Fitzgerald, and Brian Kelly, have signed contract extensions that will keep them at their present jobs for a while longer.

We start at Oklahoma, where Bob Stoops is now signed through the 2015 season. Despite several big-bowl bloopers, the people in and around the Oklahoma program are happy with their head coach, and who can blame them? In addition to the extension, Stoops also gets a $250,000 raise to $3.675 million a year, plus $700,000 each July if he remains at OU. If he doesn't stay, they are so defriending him.

The University of Minnesota's Board of Regents has decided to go dry. The Board acted Wednesday to ban alcohol sales at all its on-campus venues, including the soon-to-open TCF Bank Stadium.

"Acted" might be a bit of stretch, actually. "Reacted" is closer to the truth, as the Minnesota State Legislature recently enacted a law mandating that if some fans would be able to buy alcohol at University sporting events, all fans of legal age had to be allowed to.

That seems like a silly law until you consider that the U of M planned to sell alcohol to people in TCF Bank Stadium's luxury boxes while making it unavailable in the cheap seats. I'm sure the Board had its reasons, but the Legislature stuck up for the little guy for once.

Of course, all this move does is correct a quirk that made the Metrodome (pictured) doubly unique among Big Ten football stadiums.

Barry Alvarez (pictured right), the former head football coach and current athletic director at the University of Wisconsin, is definitely a glass-half-full guy. Most athletic directors would be sweating if their season ticket renewals fell from 99% of current ticket holders to 94% in a single season, which is what has happened, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

From the outside it might seem like the football team's recent squishiness might have something to do with this sudden dropoff in renewals. The Badgers have stepped back a bit every year under head coach Bret Bielema, with last year's squad barely breaking .500 and getting stomped flat by a toothless Florida State team, 42-13, in the Champs Sports Bowl.

Nope, says Alvarez. Taking a page from Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign manual, he says it's the economy, stupid. That's why more than 3,000 season ticket holders aren't going to re-up to watch the 2009 Badgers.

It's 111 miles from Iowa City to Parkersburg, Iowa, but sometimes the two places seem a lot closer. Today there's no distance whatsoever. Ed Thomas, legendary coach of the Aplington-Parkersburg High School Falcons, was shot and killed by one of his former players Wednesday morning.

While Thomas sent his players to a wide variety of colleges and other walks of life, the connections between Aplington-Parkersburg and the University of Iowa go deep. Countless Falcons have gone on to become Hawkeyes; several of those players have made the leap to the NFL. The list includes Green Bay's Aaron Kampman, Detroit's Jared DeVries, and Denver's Casey Wiegmann. That's not bad for a pair of towns whose population adds up to less than 3,000 people.

As might be expected, many of Coach Thomas's former players feel a great loss. Some of Thomas's best-known players have shared their feelings -- as best as they can -- with the world.

Another day, another big pile of Euros: Roger Federer had little trouble beating Spain's Guillermo Garcia-Lopez at Wimbledon on Wednesday, dispatching the Spaniard in straight sets, 6-2, 6-2, 6-4. Federer is through to the third round and still well on track to play for a record 15th major title. Federer currently shares the record of 14 majors with Pete Sampras.

Of course, in the internet age, there are always people who can see the cloud behind every silver lining. Reading message boards and article comments, it's clear that more than a few tennis fans feel that Federer should get an asterisk next to his record if he wins out at Wimbledon. Why? Because if he wins and sets the new record, he will not have beaten Rafael Nadal to do so. Since Nadal is the top-ranked player in the world, it would seem that any title which doesn't pass through him is tainted.

OK, so maybe your cousin who's on the 12-year undergraduate plan isn't such a slacker after all. Former UCLA and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman finally graduated from UCLA on Saturday, more than two decades after he left for the NFL.

Aikman is already a member of the Pro and College Football Halls of Fame. Though he is a native Californian, Aikman attended high school in Oklahoma and started out playing for Barry Switzer's Oklahoma Sooners. Aikman proved to be ill-suited for Switzer's run-oriented offense, however, and Switzer helped Aikman transfer to UCLA after he lost his starting job to Jamelle Holieway. At UCLA, Aikman won the 1988 Davey O'Brien Award.

When Houston Nutt signed 37 players to football scholarships at Ole Miss back in February, he knew several would not qualify academically. After all, the NCAA only allows a maximum of 25 scholarship players in any one recruiting class. Thus it was no surprise last week when SEC Commissioner Mike Slive told his coaches they would only be allowed to sign 28 prospects to letters of intent from now on.

This puts the Tennessee Volunteers in a bit of tight spot. The website Gridironstuds.com has counted up and found that Lane Kiffin (above) and his staff have already made scholarship offers to a few more prospects than that. And by "a few" I mean "a metric boatload." The Vols have 187 offers out there for the class of 2010.

Insert your own "doesn't Tennessee have a math department?" joke here. Kiffin went to Fresno State anyway. But what are the Vols going to do?

Even though by Lord Voldemort Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany has already shot down the idea, Penn State coach Joe Paterno still thinks the league should add a twelfth teams and a championship game. JoePa added a twist on Wednesday, saying who he doesn't want to see added to the conference: Notre Dame.

Stating the Irish have "had their chance," Paterno wants the league to look east, as in Big East. He recommends adding Syracuse, Pitt, or Rutgers to the conference. Paterno wants to see the Big Ten pick up the New York market, which would argue against Pitt. Rutgers has to like its chances in the Big East more than in in the Big Ten. As for Syracuse, well, at this point, you couldn't blame them if they decided to join Temple in the MAC. So there's no school out there that makes sense as a twelfth Big Ten Team, right?