Like any good system for sorting and classifying large amounts of information, the NFL's scouting process begins with a template — a broad set of probabilities that form baseline assumptions — and revises as necessary in specific cases. One of the basic templates for pro quarterbacks, for example, is "tall": Only five QBs currently listed on an NFL roster are listed at 6-feet or shorter, and only two (Drew Brees and Michael Vick) are starters. Only one (Cleveland backup Seneca Wallace) is listed at 5-foot-11, and he brings the added value of being able to line up at wide receiver.

No one is about to mistake Kellen Moore for a potential receiver. But as the Idaho Statesman writes today, after measuring in a hair under six feet this week at the Senior Bowl, the winningest quarterback in the history of big-time college football has a little convincing to do:

"It's one of those deals where I've been this height probably since I was a freshman in high school. I went through it from high school to college and I'll go through it again," Moore said, "and if someone says I'm too short, smile at 'em and maybe remember the name. … If you can move the ball down the field, they'll let you play."
[…]
Coaches from the Redskins and Minnesota Vikings, who are leading the two Senior Bowl teams, agree with Moore.

But they also say height has its advantages — and it takes a player with special skills to overcome a deficiency there.

For almost all of the 6-foot-or-shorter signal-callers drafted since 2000, the "special skill" that (theoretically) allowed them compensate for their height was mobility, which has proven to be the case for Vick and Wallace and will likely be the deciding factor if the pedestrian Moore is passed over in April for Wisconsin's Russell Wilson, who came in at just 5-10 at the Senior Bowl but makes up for it with demonstrable athleticism that Moore demonstrably lacks. Even Drew Brees was considered fairly mobile coming out of Purdue, and clearly had a big-league arm that Moore also seems to lack. The "eyeball test" alone is likely to drop him into the sixth or seventh round, behind a handful of prototypical pocket slingers — Nick Foles, Brock Osweiler, Ryan Lindley, Kirk Cousins — whose college resumés are just a shadow of Moore's.

But then, we've heard that before. The skills that Moore shares with Brees are the hardest to measure, the hardest to explain and probably the most important: He's smart, he's accurate and he has a kind of sixth sense in the pocket that helped him finish as one of the least-sacked quarterbacks in the nation four years in a row. (I can't separate Moore's numbers, individually, but as a team Boise State allowed 33 sacks in 1,829 pass attempts from 2008-11, or roughly one for every 55 dropbacks.) He has the same elusive Jedi quality that's going to put Brees in the Hall of Fame.

Most scouts assume Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson's future is at wide receiver. The President of the United States has some other ideas:

"Where's Denard?" Obama asked. "I hear Denard Robinson's in the house. I hear you're coming back, man. That is a good deal for Michigan."

Robinson was indeed present, and Obama had some further words directed toward the QB. "They're trying to draft you for President. He's gotta graduate before he runs for President."

Well, he doesn't have to — George Washington and Abraham Lincoln had almost no formal education whatsoever — but sure, it probably helps. (Denard wouldn't be the first Wolverine All-American to hold the highest office, either, although he would be the first who was elected after surviving a scandal on Twitter.) In the meantime, there's nothing in the Constitution stopping Obama from appointing "Shoelace" his Chief Adviser for Dreadlocks and Casual Footwear. Michigan is a swing state, after all.

And as always, Mr. President, if

Making the morning rounds.

• Take two. Signing day is still a few days away, but Oklahoma reinforced its formidable stockpile of offensive firepower Thursday with word that Trey Metoyer — a former five-star recruit who was cast into prep school purgatory when he failed to make his grades last summer — has been academically cleared and expects to enroll for the spring semester next week. Rivals ranked Metoyer as the No. 2 wide receiver and No. 12 overall player in the 2011 recruiting class, with explicit comparisons to Dez Bryant. Alongside emerging stars Kenny Stills and Jaz Reynolds, though, he's just one more weapon in a receiving corps that still ranks as the deepest in the nation. [Norman Transcript]

• There was some nodding, a handshake, maybe a little champagne. But I never said "yes." Contrary to multiple reports earlier this week that he'd initially accepted an offer to become head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Oregon coach Chip Kelly told a local radio station Thursday that he only listened to the Bucs' offer and never agreed to anything. "The only decision I ever made was to not accept the job," Kelly told KUGN in Eugene. "I never changed my mind. I never committed to the job and then flip-flopped." To be fair, he's probably obligated to say that, but here's guessing whoever was leaking information to the press on Sunday night still begs to differ. [Eugene Register-Guard, KUGN]

Greg Schiano (Jeff Zelevansky/Getty)

Greg Schiano's decision to bolt from Rutgers to Tampa Bay comes at quite possibly the worst time for Scarlet Knights with National Signing Day just six days away. Rutgers was poised just 24 hours ago to finish with their best recruiting class in their history. Rivals.com has the Scarlet Knights with 17 verbal commitments and the No. 32 class in the nation.

But already, there are signs of unrest in the Rutgers camp. One program source, which spoke to Yahoo! Sports on the condition of anonymity, said several recruits who were expected to sign their Letters of Intent next week are beginning to waiver.

"It's already beginning to happen," the source said.

One of my favorite moments in sports is, against all odds, the "deuce" in tennis. Not for the physical act of hitting a fluorescent ball over a net, which I find about as exciting as a city zoning meeting, but for the competitive purity of the concept. You can't win the game until you've won it decisively, by two points — no flukes, no games determined by a bad call or a single sketchy bounce. A one-point difference may be a lucky coincidence. A two-point difference leaves no doubt.

Not only is that kind of certainty practically impossible in almost any other sport; in practice, it's often directly contradicted, sometimes in the most fundamental, big-picture ways. Which is how, as an unabashed playoff advocate in a sport that is finally on the verge of making a playoff a reality, I find myself once again grappling with the problem of the thoroughly mediocre New York Giants in the Super Bowl.

Yes, I do mean problem, from the perspective of ever getting a functional playoff up and running on the college level. The BCS and its apologists have trotted out a chorus line of excuses over the years for keeping an FBS playoff at bay — it makes the season too long, it interferes with finals, it requires too much travel, etc. — all of them easily refuted by the ongoing success of playoffs in literally every other team sport on every level of American athletics, including college football on the FCS, Division II and Division III levels. Only one defense has managed to stick: The notion that, when there is no playoff after the regular season, the regular season itself is a playoff. At this point, the BCS' existence — or at least its ability to justify its existence — is so dependent on this idea that it's adopted the cliché "Every Game Counts" as a kind of unofficial creed.

It's a patently ridiculous creed, as proven (again) by the mulligan Alabama was just granted after losing its winner-take-all showdown against LSU last November. (To be clear, it would have been equally ridiculous if the mulligan had been granted to Oklahoma State after its loss at Iowa State, the point being that a mulligan for anyone obviously refutes the claim that "every game counts.") But for the second time in five years, the New York Giants' presence in the Super Bowl is an anti-playoff argument incarnate: Here is a 9-7 mediocrity that spent the entire regular season barely treading water, was outscored over the course of the season and finished behind 28 percent of the league in terms of final record.  And this is your potential champion?

Brock Berglund is finally free to get back to football.

For the past nine months, he had been fighting third-degree assault charges in his home state of Colorado and on Wednesday, the charges were dropped without prejudice.

For the first time since the incident occurred on April 9, 2011, Berglund spoke to Dr. Saturday about the events of that night that caused him to miss his first collegiate season at Kansas.

According to the police report, Berglund was charged with second-degree assault — assault resulting in a serious injury — after he punched another man in the side of the head while defending his girlfriend, who was being harassed.

But Berglund, who hadn't been able to speak because the case was still ongoing, cleared up some misconceptions about the story.

What's the old saying? If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Or, in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' case, if at first you whiff on a college coach from one coast, go to the opposite coast for another: The Bucs have reached a deal with Rutgers' Greg Schiano today to replace Raheem Morris in its top job, finally luring one of the nation's most sought-after college bosses out of his home state and plunging Rutgers football into an existential crisis.

First things first: While Schiano may not have Chip Kelly's record or trophy case, but as a potential NFL candidate, he makes exponentially more sense. For one thing, he has actual NFL inexperience (albeit briefly) as an assistant with the Chicago Bears from 1996-98. Secondly, his schemes at Rutgers are generically "pro style" — that is, unlike Kelly, he doesn't specialize in a certain type of scheme that may not translate to the pro game. It can't hurt, either, that Schiano also oversaw an alarming concentration of future NFL mainstays — Ed Reed, Phillip Buchanon, Dan Morgan, Damione Lewis, Nate Webster — as Miami's defensive coordinator in 1999 and 2000, or that he was reportedly endorsed by one Bill Belichick, whose son walked on at Rutgers last year, and who (I'm guessing) leaves tiny stamped imprints of all three Super Bowl rings beneath his signature on letters of recommendation.

Most importantly, the man knows how to take on a challenge: This is the guy who built a reliable winner at Rutgers. When Schiano was hired in December 2000, he inherited a traditional afterthought coming off one of the worst decades of any program in Division I. At that point, the Scarlet Knights had finished last or next-to-last in the Big East standings in eight of their first nine years in the conference, and dead last two years in a row. Eleven years later, Schiano has led them to six bowls in bowls in seven years since 2005 and produced as many draft picks (17) as Rutgers had produced in the previous 30 years combined, including Pro Bowl running back Ray Rice in 2008 and the first three first-rounders in school history (Kenny Britt, Anthony Davis and Devin McCourty) in 2009 and 2010.

But even wins and losses and a handful of star players can't quite encapsulate how thoroughly Schiano transformed the culture in Piscataway.

Quarterback recruit Chad Kelly wants to make sure everyone knows - especially backup quarterback Cole Stoudt - that he's not coming to Clemson this fall to sit on the bench.

Kelly, a four-star dual-threat from St. Joseph's in Buffalo, N.Y., and nephew of Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly, has been committed to Clemson since last June and is visiting campus this weekend. In preparation for his visit and likely run-in with Stoudt, Kelly tweeted Wednesday, "Your on the bench for a reason. And i come soon! Just letting you know."

While the taunt was explicitly directed at Stoudt, Stoudt decided to respond anyway, "I hate those that talk like their the [expletive] when they haven't done anything yet."

Aside from both players needing rudimentary grammar lessons, I can't imagine this is a good way for Kelly to make friends at a new school. But this isn't the first time Kelly has challenged Stoudt, who completed 12 of 21 passes for 115 yards in backup time behind incumbent starter Tajh Boyd last season. In an interview with TigerIllustrated.com earlier this month, Kelly said he should be the one to push Boyd come fall camp in August.

"I know [offensive coordinator Chad] Morris likes me because I'm really their only dual-threat guy, so I can come in for certain packages to run since that's the best thing I do, really," Kelly said. "Plus Cole doesn't have that oomph right now and Tajh needs that every day ... for someone to push him and keep him working so he gets better."