Only Les Miles could get called for delay of game on a fourth-and-nine, then call a timeout.

And only Les Miles could get bailed out by the other team having 12 men on the field on the final play.

LSU survived at home against a pitiful Tennessee team today, remaining one of the more unimpressive undefeated teams in the country. The Tigers won 16-14 and scored from a yard out as time expired after a Tennessee penalty gave them second life.

Had LSU lost this game, I’m assuming the LSU faithful would have forcibly removed Miles from his position. I understand that winning in the SEC is a tough thing to do each week. And I understand that a lot of teams get lucky in their wins. But Les Miles is setting records for luck and incompetence all at the same time. Yet he still has a job and still is pulling in good recruiting classes.

LSU has four losses left on its schedule, but will 8-4 be enough to get rid of Miles? Or even worse, if he lucks his way into a couple of wins against Florida, Auburn, Alabama or Arkansas, do they extend his contract? He might be the only many lucky enough to fall into that situation.

Under the direction of Mike Stoops, Arizona has won some very big games. The Wildcats knocked off a top 10 team three years in a row from 2005-07, with UCLA, California and Oregon all being their victims. This past year, Arizona even knocked off the Pac 10′s Goliath in USC.

But those wins all came late in the season, when Arizona had already piled up a handful of losses. One thing the Wildcats — who seem to perennially be thought of as a sleeper team — have not done, is capitalize on any preseason hype with a big-time early-season win.

They have the chance to do that tonight, though, when they play host to No. 9 Iowa. A win moves the Wildcats to 3-0 and gives them some serious national respect. It would also be a huge victory for the Pac 10, which is trying to assert itself as a top conference, even with a lethargic, and penalized, USC.

Can Stoops and Arizona pull it off? Click through for that prediction, and more from today’s games.

Last week I was a Dayne Crist eye injury away from going 5-0, so clearly there was something strange in the air. Let’s see if I can’t repeat — or beat — that this week.

No. 12 Arkansas at Georgia, noon: This is the first real test of the season for Ryan Mallett and the Razorbacks’ offense, and I’d expect that to show, at least early on. The problem for Georgia will be staying on the field offensively, as again they’re without A.J. Green, who is still serving an NCAA suspension. That means freshman Aaron Murray is going to have to find a way to get it done in the passing game without him, which he was unable to do consistently a week ago. I’d expect the Razorbacks to load up the line of scrimmage and force Murray to beat them. At least if they’re smart, because I don’t think he can out-gun Mallett, even with a defensive advantage. Pick: Arkansas 23-17.

No. 8 Nebraska at Washington, 3:30 p.m.: The good news for Washington is that it’s at home, and Steve Sarkisian has already proven he can pull off a big upset in his own building. The bad news is Nebraska has faced Western Kentucky and Idaho so far, and gets South Dakota State next week. I’d venture a guess that the Cornhuskers have spent a little bit of time over the past few weeks working in a gameplan to stop Jake Locker. Ndamukong Suh might be gone, but the Huskers still have one of the more dominant defenses in the country. Add that to the fact Locker still doesn’t have the weapons necessary to beat a team like that, and really hasn’t looked all that sharp to begin with (which hasn’t stopped Todd McShay from camping out outside of his apartment, however), and I think it might be a tough day for the Huskies. Pick: Nebraska 20-14.

No. 10 Florida at Tennessee, 3:30 p.m.: There’s a rule when you write a college football picks column/blog/diary/manifesto that you have to pick the Florida/Tennessee game. It’s unwritten, but it’s still there. So even in a year where Tennessee looks light years away from competing in the SEC again, and Florida’s offense is actually tougher to watch than its perp walk, I’m forced to pick a winner. The key to this game is whether or not John Brantley can get over the Neyland Stadium crowd. Tennessee is far less talented, but will come out strong (kind of like it did against Oregon, but I’d expect even more passion in a huge rivalry). The Gators defense should be enough to stomp out any emotional fires in the early going, but that’s if Brantley can at least manage the game during that time. If he struggles and turns the ball over, we could have a ballgame on our hands. If he takes care of it, Florida should roll. I’ll go with some combination of both (if that’s even possible). Pick: Florida 24-13.

Notre Dame at Michigan State, 8 p.m.: Since I’m from the Midwest, I’ve got to give the region some love this weekend. If history tells us anything, this will be one heck of a game, and it probably won’t be decided until the final whistle. I live about an hour and a half away from East Lansing, and I have no clue what to expect from Michigan State. I have multiple friends who are either going to school there or have graduated from there that don’t know either. That’s what happens when a team opens with Western Michigan and Florida Atlantic (in an away game, in Detroit). The Spartans look to still be a little soft defensively, especially in coverage. Offensively, their run game has been great, and the pass game has been pretty vanilla. Notre Dame, meanwhile, is just happy it doesn’t have to see Denard Robinson for another year. And offensively, looks alright when Crist can see out of both of his eyes. It’s tough to predict the unpredictable (which this game often is), but I’ll go with what I think I know, and that’s Notre Dame is a better overall team. Pick: Notre Dame 34-30.

No. 9 Iowa at No. 24 Arizona, 10:30 p.m.: This is easily the game of the night (at least on paper). As I mentioned earlier, Arizona has a chance to put itself into the national conversation, while Iowa can solidify itself as a serious title contender with a tough road win. The Hawkeyes have looked sharp to start this season, and that starts with their quarterback, Ricky Stanzi. He earned a reputation a year ago for orchestrating late comebacks, but a lot of that was necessary because of the 15 interceptions he threw. If he’s over that, Arizona is in trouble, and so is the rest of the Big Ten. Arizona has a solid signal-caller of its own in Nick Foles, but he’s going to be dealing with a very good Iowa defensive front all night, led by Adrian Clayborn. I think that defensive front makes the difference in a very tight game. Pick: Iowa 23-20.

I’ve always wanted to see the expression on the guy’s face that volunteered to burn his mattress when he woke up the next morning and didn’t have a bed anymore.

“Troy…Troy!”

“What?”

“What the hell happened to my bed man? It’s gone!”

“Dude, you burned it in the protest last night. Don’t you remember?”

“F**k no I don’t remember! What the hell, man!”

“Yeah, you wanted to do it to protest Lane Kiffin’s departure.”

“Lane Kiffin’s gone, too?!”

According to a report by ESPN.com, Tennessee is under investigation for using recruiting “hostesses” to help lure high school football prospects to come to the university.

The NCAA appears to be strongly interested in Tennessee’s use of hostesses — students who are part of a university group that hosts prospective students on campus visits, including athletes. It was not clear whether the university sent the hostesses to visit the football players, the newspaper reported.

In one case, hostesses traveled nearly 200 miles to attend a football game at James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., one of the nation’s best high school football programs, where at least three potential Tennessee recruits were playing, according to the report.
Two of Lattimore’s high school teammates, Brandon Willis and Corey Miller, have orally committed to Tennessee. Lattimore said the hostesses were “real pretty, real nice and just real cool” and thinks they had “a lot” of influence in his teammates making oral commitments, according to the report.

“I haven’t seen no other schools do that,” Lattimore said, according to the report. “It’s crazy.”

According to the article, Tennessee has committed at least six secondary NCAA violations since Lane Kiffin took over as head coach.

It might be hard to gather evidence in this situation outside of talking to the young recruits, but considering Tennessee has committed six violations one would assume that the NCAA is going to take their time investigating these “hostess” allegations.

Not a good start for Kiffin at UT.

Tennessee men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl is in some hot water after making an inappropriate joke at a recent speaking engagement.

Tennessee men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl is apologizing for an off-the-cuff joke he made about a rural area of the state at a charity fundraiser Thursday, calling it “inappropriate.”

Pearl, speaking without notes, was addressing Tennessee Valley Authority employees about the challenges he and his staff face in getting players from diverse backgrounds to play as a team.

“I’ve got a tough job. I’ve got to put these guys from different worlds together, right?’ Pearl said. “I’ve got guys from Chicago, Detroit … I’m talking about the ‘hood! And I’ve got guys from Grainger County, where they wear the hood.”

Ouch. Making light of the KKK is not only offensive to the (non-racist) folks of Grainger County, but it’s also offensive to the black community.

He’s a successful coach, but I’ve never been a big fan of Pearl’s style and it dates back to 1995, when I was in college at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. My team won the D3 National Championship that year and the following season we traveled up to Fairbanks, Alaska, to play in the Tournament of Champions, which included the D2, NAIA and D3 champions from the previous season.

We were non-scholarship, so after we “upset” the host team, Alaska-Fairbanks, in the first round, we played Pearl’s D2 Southern Indiana team in the tourney championship. They jumped out to a 20-plus point lead, but after we went on a run in the second half to cut into the lead, he yelled on the sideline — “Do I have to call a timeout? Do I really have to call a timeout?”

I remember thinking: Is this guy for real? His all-scholarship team was playing our non-scholarship D3 school and he’s over there mocking us on the sideline to make a point to his team?

Since then, I’ve always thought that Pearl was a loudmouth who didn’t often think before he spoke, and he’s done nothing to disprove that notion in his tenure at Tennessee.

According to a report by ESPN.com, Tennessee quarterback Jonathan Crompton received death threats last season in the wake of the Volunteers losing seven games for only the second time in the program’s history.

Crompton received at least two e-mailed death threats during his junior season, the player told the Knoxville News Sentinel.

The problem was brought to his parents’ attention after a package they received had slanderous messages scrawled on the box.

“That’s when my parents started talking about it,” Crompton said, according to the newspaper.
Crompton said he never reported the threats to the school.

He also stayed quiet when he began to receive harassing phone calls after his cell number was made public on the Internet.

“It was tough, I’m not going to lie,” he said. “When you’re faced with adversity, your true character comes out — as a person, as a student, as a Christian.
“It tested me.”

People seem to lose the sense of reality when it comes to sports sometimes. Crompton is only 21 years old – he’s still a kid. He’s a student athlete trying not only to succeed at sports, but also in the classroom so that he can excel in a career field when he’s done playing football. He doesn’t deserve to have his life threatened because of what he does or doesn’t do on the field – no one does.

I know we’re talking about Tennessee football here, but relax people – it’s just a game.