FanHouse Rooney Rule

Every week during college football's endless offseason, The FanHouse Walk will put last week's stories to bed and deliver the essentials to bridge that agonizing space between now and September.

Championship! -- Texas Tech coach Mike Leach gets credit for taking on the NFL's accepted wisdom when it comes to quarterbacks, and now there's some interesting data out there that found its way to ESPN college football writer Bruce Feldman's blog via former coach Jim Donnan. Its an interesting look into the surprisingly vast offensive divide between college football and the manufactured entertainment that is the NFL.

A member of the Oregon legislature plans to introduce a bill that would require the state's public universities, including Oregon and Oregon State, to interview at least one minority before hiring a head football coach.

The law would be modeled on the NFL's "Rooney Rule," which has been in place for six years and has coincided with an increase in African-American head coaches in the NFL.

The Kansas City Chiefs fired head coach Herm Edwards today, and they could be close to bringing in a big name to replace him: Mike Shanahan.

The Rooney Rule is well-intentioned.

It's designed to assure that minority coaching candidates get their fair shot at jobs. It's a jab at the "good ol' boy" network, as you can't just hire some random retread who has a .450 win percentage but led a team to a 9-7 season once. Well, you can hire that guy, but not before you go through an actual interview process.

Anyway, the St. Louis Rams tried to -- in essence -- sneak past the Rooney Rule. They fired Scott Linehan, named defensive coordinator Jim Haslett the interim coach, and then gave Haslett a contract that calls for him to be named the full-time head coach automatically if he leads the Rams to six wins.

PFT reported that this provision caused Dan Rooney, owner of the Steelers and namesake of the rule, to lob a phone call to the league office.

Now, CBSSports.com's Pete Prisco (via PFT) reports the league has voided Haslett's contract.