A weeklong grade book for the offseason coaching hires. Previously: Grading the Up-and-Comers. … Grading the Climbers. Today: New head coaches coming from formative years in the NFL.

CURTIS JOHNSON • Tulane
Age: 50 Alma Mater: Idaho.
Replacing: Bob Toledo, who went out last October as the tenth of Tulane's eleven head coaches over the last 60 years to leave with a losing record, a victim list that includes a young Mack Brown. (The only exception: Tommy Bowden, who arrived with innovative offensive coordinator Rich Rodriguez in 1997, turned in what must be the most improbable undefeated season in NCAA history in 1998 and booked the first seat on the first plane to Clemson before the bowl game.) Toledo turned in his resignation on the heels of a 44-7 loss to UTEP that marked the Green Wave's fourth consecutive defeat and brought Toledo's overall record in New Orleans to 15-40 in four-and-a-half years; the Green Wave went on to lose six straight after that to finish 2-10.

Previously On: Johnson spent a decade bouncing around various Western campuses (Idaho, San Diego State, SMU, California) before landing on Butch Davis' staff at Miami in 1996, where he'd go on to coach three soon-to-be household names — Andre Johnson, Santana Moss and Reggie Wayne — and pick up a national championship ring as the Hurricanes' wide receivers coach. From there, he caught on as receivers coach with the New Orleans Saints in 2006, the same year Drew Brees arrived in New Orleans as a free agent, and has spent the last six years riding the wave (no pun intended) of one of the most prolific passing games in NFL history.

[ Related: Grading the up-and-coming coaches ]

Best Resumé Line: Johnson has been associated with a lot of big names, none of them bigger than fellow New Orleanians/future Hall-of-Famers Marshall Faulk and Ed Reed, both of whom Johnson is credited with recruiting to San Diego State and Miami, respectively. The simple fact that he's a Big Easy native and knows how to find and connect with local players could open up recruiting channels that Tulane has never exploited before.
Biggest Drawback: At six different stops over 25 years, Johnson has only held one title: Wide receivers coach. He has no experience as a head coach or coordinator.

Grade B: Johnson has national championship and Super Bowl rings, he can recruit New Orleans and he knows full well that the Tulane job is a Bermuda Triangle for head coaches. He also comes aboard just as the university is making a genuine commitment to football for the first time in ages in the form of a new, $60 million on-campus stadium expected to take the Green Wave out of the echoing canyon that is the Superdome by the fall of 2014. Thirty-thousand mostly filled seats in the Garden District is a dramatically better scenario than 50,000 empty seats downtown, and if Johnson can hang on that long, his prospects will be significantly less hopeless.

BILL O'BRIEN • Penn State
Age: 42 Alma Mater: Brown.
Replacing: Joe Paterno, whose unmatched, 46-year tenure at Penn State needs no introduction. In five decades on the job, JoePa set Division I records for wins (409) and bowl games (37), as well as 29 consensus All-Americans, 22 top-10 finishes, five undefeated seasons, three Big Ten championships and two national championships, while also cultivating a reputation as the embodiment of building an elite program while maintaining an emphasis on education, community and fidelity to NCAA rules. His controversial ouster and subsequent death of lung cancer in a span of three months has left deep scars that will probably remain visible throughout O'Brien's tenure and beyond.

One of the recurring themes this offseason (the recurring theme, so far) is the renewed fight for the soul of the BCS, an even higher-stakes game than usual this year for two reasons. One: The growing consensus in favor of a limited playoff, thereby opening the door to a more expansive version that obliterates the traditional system of crowning a national champion as college football has known it for the last eight decades. And two: Whatever comes from the current round of revisions had better be good, because it may very well be serving two terms in office. From the Wall Street Journal:

Leaders of major-college football's national-title group are aiming for a TV deal for eight years or longer. A lengthier deal would mean less-frequent negotiations about the Bowl Championship Series format, which annually comes under intense scrutiny and debate from fans and media. A longer contract also could help stem the recent rush of conference-jumping.

Pac-12 Conference commissioner Larry Scott said he would advocate for considering a longer-term deal. "I've been troubled by some of the jockeying for position in terms of conference alignment before the BCS discussions," he said. "I think that's been an unintended consequence and not a healthy one."

BCS executive director Bill Hancock said a longer TV deal has been discussed among BCS members but that nothing has been decided. An ESPN spokesman said "a longer term would benefit all involved."

As an aside, I'd really like to know what former commissioner Dan Beebe and the rest of the Big 12 think about Larry Scott's sudden concern for the "unintended consequences" of conference realignment, after Scott made it his first priority as Pac-10 commissioner in 2010 to attempt to annex the entire Big 12 South, a Machiavellian stroke that nearly destroyed the Big 12 — twice — and ultimately cost Beebe his job. I suspect Mountain West officials have spent more than a few nights wondering their conference would be right now if Scott's conference hadn't poached Utah, too, triggering the eventual departures of BYU, TCU and Boise State. But I digress.

As to the matter at hand: The current BCS contract has two more years to go; whatever the power brokers settle on this year will be formally adopted for the next contract, which takes effect in 2014. In other words, an eight-year deal means the decisions being formed right now will still be in effect a decade from now, after most of the men (they are all men) making them have shuffled off the scene. All the more reason to get this round right.

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Matt Hinton is on Facebook and Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

First, let's get one thing clear right up front: Jordan Jefferson is not complaining about the play-calling in LSU's zero-point, 91-yard flop against Alabama in the BCS Championship Game. Play-calling is the coaches' job, not the quarterback's, and he didn't exactly execute what Les Miles and offensive coordinator Greg Studrawa dialed up for him.

It's just that, as he told WCNN in Atlanta earlier this week, if he had been calling the plays against Alabama, he would have gone about it entirely differently:

Do you second guess yourself on doing things differently?:
"I think we should've spread them out a little bit more, put the ball in different passing areas, use our talent on the receiving side. We had that in as far as play-calling, we just didn't get to it. It's a learning situation for us, a learning situation for the LSU football team and I definitely expect to see us back in the championship next year."

Is that something you realize during the game but you can't really do anything because you're not calling the plays?:
"Yeah it definitely always comes to mind and it comes to mind to our receivers and tight ends. We have great guys in those areas and sometimes we just wonder why we don't use those guys. But we're not the one calling the plays. We still have to go out and execute what the coaches and coordinators are calling. We can't complain as players, but sometimes we do question that."

Could you change those plays and audible on the field?:
"Only in certain plays and certain formations, not all the time. … If it was any way where I can change it, I probably would've changed some of them."

Jefferson doesn't have as much to say about his three fumbles or the ghastly interception he served up in the third quarter.

Making the morning rounds.

• Free at last. The Big 12 is expected to release its 2012 schedule at some point today, and all indications are that West Virginia will be on it: After months of legal dueling, multiple outlets reported late Thursday night that WVU has reached an undisclosed settlement with the Big East that will allow the Mountaineers to start play in their new conference this fall. (Most reports set the exit fee at $20 million, some significant portion of which may be picked up by the Big 12.) "I can't confirm the numbers," an anonymous West Virginia source told the Charleston Gazette, "but the Big East has accepted our offer."

With the Big 12 made whole for the foreseeable future, then, the question shifts to the hole left by the Mountaineers' exit from the Big East. As it stands, the league is moving forward with just seven teams in the fold for 2012 — Cincinnati, Connecticut, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, South Florida and Syracuse — and looks like it will be stuck with that number barring the unexpected, short-notice arrival of one of the six teams — Boise State, Central Florida, Houston, Memphis, San Diego State and SMU — set to join the conference in 2013. The Big East has pushed hard this week to convince Boise State to make the leap a year early, to no apparent avail, although that could still change if the Broncos' non-football sports are able to find a new home in their old stomping grounds, the WAC. [Charleston Gazette, Orangebloods.com, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Idaho Statesman]

• Safety first. Acting on data suggesting injuries are more likely on kickoffs than any other phase of the game, the NCAA football rules committee has proposed a new rule that would move kickoffs from the 30-yard line to the 35 and limit the running start by players on the kicking team to five yards. The NFL made the same change last year, resulting in much preseason consternation and a dramatic increase in touchbacks.

Other safety-related proposals on the agenda: Requiring a player who loses his helmet during a play to sit out the following play and prohibiting blocking below the waist on punt returns. All new rules must be approved by the rules oversight panel, which meets on Feb. 21. [Associated Press]

Like it or not, dialogue over the viability of a playoff in major college football has finally bypassed the if phase, and it's beginning to look like an answer for what may not be too far off: Now that the Big Ten is warming up to the idea, some variety of four-team playoff has moved to the front burner and could be in the works by the start of next season. Once it's decided, we know the when: 2014, the first year under the next four-year BCS contract.

The only lingering question now — and the one most likely to throw a wrench into the entire operation — is how. If there is a mandate for a four-team bracket, exactly what is going to look like? I submit a few ideas for consideration:

• Keep some version of the BCS standings. That's probably worth a spit-take for regular readers, who are used to me trashing the basic premise of the BCS at every available opportunity. And the idea of plucking just two teams from a handful of deserving candidates remains fundamentally flawed; the idea of plucking just four teams only slightly less so.

A weeklong grade book for the offseason coaching hires. Previusly: Grading the Up-and-Comers. Today: Small-school head coaches moving into their first big-time jobs.

KEVIN SUMLIN • Texas A&M
Age: 49 Alma Mater: Purdue.
Replacing: Mike Sherman, whose trajectory at A&M was the model for former NFL head coaches slumming it in their first college gig: Four years, zero conference championships, ending with a minor breakthrough (9-4 in 2010) immediately followed by a disappointing return to mediocrity. His final season began with the Aggies basking in a pending defection to the SEC and their highest expectations in a decade, and ended with Sherman being led to the guillotine on the heels of a 6-6 campaign defined by a string of blown opportunities, drawing the curtain on a near-perfect ode to mediocrity encompassing 25 wins and 25 losses over his entire tenure.

Previously On: If Sumlin knows anything, it's throwing the ball all over the field, all day long. He was wide receivers coach at his

Making the morning rounds.

• They said it couldn't happen here. The Georgia-Auburn series has survived the turning of two centuries and two world wars. But it may not survive conference expansion, according to UGA athletic director Greg McGarity, who said Wednesday that the addition of Missouri and Texas A&M to the SEC lineup — thereby reducing the number of cross-divisional games per year from three to two — may end the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry" as an annual institution. The tradition could be preserved if the SEC decided to follow the other major conferences' lead by adopting a nine-game conference schedule, but that's not going to happen anytime soon, and anyway, a nine-game SEC slate could threaten traditional non-conference rivalries like Florida-Florida State, Georgia-Georgia Tech and South Carolina-Clemson. Because you don't honestly expect them to drop those dates with The Citadel and UT-Chattanooga, do you?

"I think if you ask Alabama and Tennessee, like us and Auburn, we'd like to retain the games," McGarity told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "But does that work? What do the other 10 schools think? Those four schools like having those games but there's no other East-West match-up that has that piece of history to it. So I don't where that fits in. … With 14 teams, not everybody will be happy." [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

• We can sleep tonight knowing you're on that wall, Nate. Speaking of traditional non-conference rivalries: A proposal in the South Carolina legislature that would have mandated the annual Clemson-South Carolina game by state law was unanimously shot down Wednesday by a House subcommittee, which voted 7-0 in opposition. The Tigers and Gamecocks have played every year since 1909, the second-oldest continuous streak in the FBS (behind only Minnesota and Wisconsin, which have played every year since 1890), and both universities insist there is no realistic threat to the series.

"I still think there's the possibility in the future that the game could be in jeopardy," said Rep. Nathan Ballentine, who introduced the measure. "If that happens, I stand ready to help if the situation changes." [The State]

In the long term, it may not even make the footnotes in the marathon game of musical chairs that has consumed the major conferences over the last two years, but the tense, 72-hour tug-of-war between Louisville and West Virginia for the final invitation to the Big 12 last October has left one enduring legacy: A pair of sitting U.S. senators at each other's throats.

Not that Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin don't have enough to bicker over from opposite sides of the partisan ice wall currently dividing Capitol Hill. According to the website Politico, though, things got truly nasty when McConnell — a Louisville alum and regular at home football games — attempted to lobby on his alma mater's behalf for the coveted Big 12 bid, prompting Manchin — a former West Virginia quarterback turned governor and well-known meddler in Mountaineer football — to call for an ethics investigation over the Minority Leader's role in having WVU's invitation blocked.