Mish-mosh

Brian Kelly talks about playing at Yankee Stadium and lets Army in on some of his gameday prep.

How do you feel about playing Army at Yankee Stadium?

"I'm very excited about it. It commemorates a very important time in Notre Dame's football history, where they went out to the East Coast, and played anywhere, anytime, anyone. This kind of reflects that historical development of this program back in the early 1900s. It's going to be exciting from a historical standpoint and then, obviously, being in Yankee Stadium. They say that the two toughest jobs in the country are the head coach of Notre Dame and the manager of the Yankees."

You think maybe you and Joe Girardi can get together and talk shop about your pressure-filled jobs?

"If (Girardi) lets me use Jeter on third down, I'm definitely going to have a conversation with him."

Growing up a Red Sox fan, will you bury a David Ortiz jersey at the stadium after the game, or something like that?

"I'm just going to wear my Red Sox underwear."

(emphasis added)

I personally feel 2010 will Army's best football team in 13 years, so I can understand the importance of underwear selection for the 2010 opposition.

Oregon's Chip Kelly and Army head man Rich Ellerson will head overseas on a USO tour.

Due to security measures, the exact dates of the tour were not announced, but the coaches are scheduled to visit at least eight countries in nine days.

Ellerson, Ron Zook (Illinois), Tommy Tuberville (Texas Tech), Chip Kelly (Oregon) and Tim Murphy (Harvard) will have the opportunity to meet and interact with nearly 20,000 service members.

“It’s an honor for me to have the opportunity to spend some time with our young men and women serving overseas, who get up every day and fight for the rights of others,” Ellerson said. “The men and women of our U.S. Armed Forces embody the true spirit of heroism.”

One thing I hate is using war as a metaphor for sport. The analogy is never accurate, it's always forced and I don't think it's cute. My news filter catches all news that involves Army Football so I come across this metaphor from time to time.

The article deals with the popular subject of Big Ten expansion. Beyond the out of order metaphor, this one tries to shoehorn teams into four (4) balanced conferences for the benefit of a national playoff.

Imagine that college football is a war, not in terms of the "fields of friendly strife" analogy but rather from an organizational perspective. Extend the analogy so that each conference is a branch of the military: the SEC could be the U.S. Army, the Pac-10 the Navy, the Big Ten the Marines ("Hoo-ah!") and the Big 12 the Air Force. Notre Dame, as an independent contractor earning exponentially more while accomplishing less on the field of battle and inviting resentment from the other branches, would of course be Halliburton.

Anyway, the idea is that each branch of the military answers to a higher authority. The Navy cannot just abscond with 300 planes from the Air Force to fortify its air-craft carriers. Nor can the Army re-conscript an entire company of Marines as army infantry simply to absorb its own losses. Not, at least, without the approval of a higher authority, i.e, the Secretary of Defense, whose own boss is the Commander in Chief.

If every branch of the service acted only in its own best interests without regard to the overall mission, chaos would ensue.

To date, that is the most ridiculous use of my least favorite metaphor.


Finally, Army football also lost a player to transfer.

Army freshman slotback Lonnie Liggins is transferring to Division I-AA Towson, a team source confirmed.

Liggins was a player Army coaches were high on coming out of prep school. But Liggins battled injuries and rushed just nine times for 43 yards in 2009. He scored his first college touchdown on a 17-yard run against Rutgers.

I remember that run, pretty nice... best of luck for a healthy stretch at Towson.