FanHouse MikeLocksley

New Mexico football coach Mike Locksley was suspended for one game and will be on unpaid leave for 10 days for his role in an altercation with an assistant coach last month, the school announced Tuesday afternoon.

Locksley will be suspended for the Oct. 24 game against UNLV and will not be allowed to have anything to do with the team in the week leading up to the Mountain West game. The suspension brings to an end the off-the-field turmoil surrounding Locksley and the 0-6 Lobos for weeks.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- In a game of inches, none may mean more to Mike Locksley than the ones he didn't take Sept. 20. The first-year New Mexico coach was all but out the door following a heated altercation with wide receivers coach J.B. Gerald, when, he said, he "sort of lost it."

Those inches may wind up costing him everything.

"If I had that moment back ... ," Locksley said to FanHouse in his office Tuesday night. "I was literally walking out the door because I knew I was getting heated and it kept going back and forth. I'm walking out the door and I look over and another word was said and it was set off."

In that moment, he grabbed Gerald, an assistant who had followed him halfway across the country from Illinois. An altercation ensued. When the dust cleared all that was certain was that Gerald had a split lip. And two coaching careers were beginning to unravel, the coda to an argument from earlier in the day, an argument with a decade of history.

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If you, like me, think that Ben Roethlisberger is the perfect athlete to host WWE Raw, then it's time to back a whole truckload of justification up to the Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and dump it on the classy Steelers fans who will be streaming in to watch fake wrestling next Monday.

Because, yup, Roethlisberger is indeed the guest host of Raw (via Camel Clutch).

Yeah, I know what you're thinking, smart guy. You're thinking this post should be one letter long, and that letter should be 'F.' It's true that the Big Ten did little to advance its reputation during the season, and even less during the postseason. In spite of it all, there are still a few diamonds among the, um, whatever else it is the diamonds are scattered among.

They're scattered among things like 35-3, a 1-6 bowl game record, the fall of the Michigan dynasty, a tragically unwarranted and completely unjustified preseason overrating, several regressions to the mean, and the worst sendoff since the last episode of "Seinfeld."

So we'll go through the league team by team, painful as that is, to build up the successes and try to understand the failures of Big Ten football in 2008. Yes, I used "success" and "Big Ten football" in the same sentence without the connecting phrase "lack of." Deal with it, Buck. Every team gets an overall grade and a quick look at its prognosis for the 2009 season. For you Big Ten fans, I promise you it's not all bad news; for you Big Ten haters, I promise you it's not all good.

If you follow the coaching carousel at all, you already know the name Mike Locksley. He's been on everybody's "coordinators to watch" list for a couple seasons now, and he's been connected with almost as many jobs as Lane Kiffin and Will Muschamp.

Well, Ron Zook's offensive coordinator is headed to the Southwest. Monday, the University of New Mexico named him as their new head football coach. Locksley was due for a head coaching gig. While Illinois football this year had all the consistency of failed custard, the Illini offense got the job done. Locksley is also known as a top-notch recruiter, which had to please Paul Krebs, the Lobos' sheriff.

Locksley's hiring increases the number of African American head coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision from three to four. To put that in perspective, before yesterday one-fortieth of FBS programs had an African American head coach; now, one-thirtieth of them do. That's progress, but it's still a drop from the start of this past season, when we were all the way up to one-twentieth.

Time will tell how this move works out for the Lobos, but Locksley has a solid resume. The real question, however, is "What does this mean for Illinois?"

Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten tries to describe football action in the conference everyone else calls "overrated."

RIGHT: The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, which won't be missed by very many people in the Big Ten.

And so it has come to this, the ultimate weekend of the penultimate season when Big Ten football ends before Thanksgiving. Starting in 2010, the Turkey Day tables will be a little less crowded as everyone's season extends to the last weekend of November. But that's two years from now. This weekend we say goodbye to the conference's second-longest serving coach, and bid a fond farewell to its least-loved stadium. Along the way we sort out who's going where when, and how all the teams will be positioned for next year.

Before we get on to the games, a note about the Big Ten's bowl selection process. The conference does not require bowls to select teams in order of their finish, but requires that a selected team have no more than one fewer win than the remaining team with the best record. Thus, a seven-win team can be picked before an eight-win team, but not a nine-win team. Oh, and if the league gets two teams into the BCS, some of the non-BCS bowls get to ignore all the rules.

Doesn't it seem like this thing should have been over a long time ago? Before he who must not be named got on a plane for Ann Arbor, Terry Bowden was calling the West Virginia coaching position his dream job. But fate smiled on West Virginia and Bowden was not hired right away. John "Doc" Holiday, the associate and safeties coach at Florida seemed to be the early leader.

But not willing to let the process continue, Bobby Bowden apparently contacted West Virginia governor Joe Manchin to step in and give his son another look. And a decision was postponed until a latter date that we are still waiting on. But instead of Bowden, Florida State offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher became the lead candidate right before Christmas. He would turn the job down down, however, and leave West Virginia right where they started.

The good news for the Mountaineers is that they have the right man in place to hold things together in Bill Stewart, the interim head coach. Whether he is the right man for the job permanently is a question mark. If he isn't, this is one man that should always have a job at West Virginia for the job he is doing. While most of Mountaineer nation has in been in permanent meltdown mode, Stewart has been able to keep the team focused. And apparently liking the change.

"Coach Stew is a great coach. I think we feel more comfortable with him,'' Devine said. "When we had Coach Rod there was a lot of yelling and all that. Coach Stew's more laid back. Everybody can do what they do and use their skills on the field without getting yelled at.''

Sometimes going from a disciplinarian to a players coach can be a good thing and sometimes not so much. See this years Cowboys and Chargers, although the Chargers will make the playoffs thanks to a weak division. But from all indications Stewart is not being seriously considered. The names that are being considered after the jump.

It's not going to grab the headlines like the coaching vacancies at Michigan, Nebraska, or Arkansas, but Northern Illinois will be starting a search for a new head coach today as well. Joe Novak has retired as head coach of the Huskies.

"People have always said you'll know when it's time and I promise you, I know it's time," Novak said at a news conference. "Selfishly, it's time for my wife and I. It's been a great, great ride but it's time."

I'm sure a 2-10 record isn't how Novak wanted to go out, but it's not what he'll be remembered for. Novak took over as head coach of the Huskies 12 years ago, and during his tenure he turned a perennial doormat into an actual program.

The Huskies had seven consecutive winning seasons under Novak from 2000 to 2006, and also made two bowl appearances, going 1-1 in those two games. They were also ranked as high as #12 in the AP poll back in 2003 after consecutive wins against ranked opponents Maryland and Alabama.

As of now the leading candidates to take over for Novak in DeKalb are current Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Haywood, Illinois offensive coordinator Mike Locksley, and former Cincinnati head coach and defensive coordinator at Notre Dame, Rick Minter.