Pitino, College Football and The Olympics

-Apparently, Rick Pitino's people have started to put out feelers for him to be the next coach of the New Jersey Nets. He is denying it, which means it absolutely happened. I can understand why he wants to get out of Louisville (been there a while, had some "off-court issues", doesn't want to share a state with Calipari) but I can't imagine he really wants to go back to the pros. He had some success with the Knicks, but that was so long ago that no player would remember that. All they will remember is him bombing with the Celtics. He would be better off looking for another college-level position. (Sure seems like the UConn job may be open after this year.) But, of course, as a Celtics fan I would love to see this happen. I can think of nothing better than keeping the Nets rebuilding for 10 more years and getting the chance to boo Pitino twice a year at the Fleetcenter.

-Now that college football is over, several major college conferences are starting to look at expansion. You see, the big money in college football comes from Conference Championships. But, to have a Conference Championship you need to have at least 12 teams in your conference. As a result, the Big 10 Conference (which has 11 teams despite its name, by the way) is looking to add another team and the Pac-10 (which does have 10 teams) are both looking to expand, and both have set their eyes on the University of Texas. I can see why, as Texas has great athletics throughout the university, famous alums and rabid subway fans. But, the Big Ten is mostly made up of teams from the Midwest and the Pac-10 is all Pacific Coast teams. Texas moving to either conference makes as much sense as Boston College being in the ACC (in other words, it would happen only because of a crapload of money). Leave Texas alone. Here's what I propose instead: Utah and BYU move to the Pac-10 and Missouri moves to the Big 10 and Boise State jumps to the Big 12. Everyone wins.

-I watched a lot more of the Olympics than I intended to this weekend. I don't really like the Olympics because with several sports I can never tell what is going on and no idea who wins, as every run looks pretty much the same. But, I will say this - the fields are clearly very equal. I was blown away watching the cross-country skiing and see that the difference from first place to DFL was around 3 minutes. Best guy in the world was a Britney Spears song away from being the worst in his sport. It just reminded me of this Jerry Seinfeld bit: