You may recall one of Dan Akroyd’s characters from Saturday Night Live back in the 1970’s, Fred Garvin: Male Prostitute.

To honor college football’s finest male prostitutes, we have the Male Prostitute Hall-of-Shame. 

To qualify for selection to the Male Prostitute Hall-of-Shame, college coaches must display the following characteristics over their careers:

• Short stops (2-3 years) at a school
• Accept coaching positions that either moves them from Division 1AA or a lesser Division 1A program to successively bigger Division 1A programs, culminating in a job at a BCS school or as a coach of an NFL team.
• Each stop along the way significantly improves their financial compensation package.
• They utter statements such as, “I’m here to stay” or denying rumors in the media by repeatedly denying the rumors adamantly stating "I'm not going to be the XXXX coach.”
• Taking their next job after their current teams makes it to a bowl game, but before the bowl game is actually played.  
• Be involved in controversy (recruiting violations, discipline problems, secret newsletters, NCAA probation, etc).
• Succeeded at the collegiate level but failed in the NFL.

These coaches are the antithesis of coaches such as Bobby Bowden (31 years) and Joe Paterno (42 years) who are known for longevity as their schools.  Though some fans may feel that these two coaches may have overstayed their welcome, these are two gentlemen who put their college football programs on the map and became synonymous with their schools.  

Wouldn’t you rather be known as “Coach Z" who built the program at the "U of X”?  Or would you rather be the coach at a major program where you will probably never live up to the legend of some coach who was there before you?  

So, without further adieu, here is the Class of 2007 in reverse order: 

5.  Urban Meyer – Coach Meyer barely qualifies for the Hall, but since 5 sounded like a good number, he’s included here to complete the set.  Makes one wonder if he could have built the Utes into a MWC powerhouse.  

Football Teams - Bowling Green (2 years), Utah (2 years), Florida (3 years)

4.  Dennis Franchione – Coach Fran is eminently qualified for the Hall.  Just ask any Alabama fan.  Plus, with that newsletter of his, he’s no stranger to controversy.

Football Teams - Southwest Texas State (1AA) (2 years), New Mexico (6 years), TCU (3 years), Alabama (2 years), Texas A&M (5 years) 

3.  Steve Spurrier – The “Old Ball Coach” was a touch choice, as we’ll never really know if it was money or boredom that led to his departure from Florida.

Football Teams -Tampa Bay Bandits (USFL) (3 years), Duke (3 years), Florida (12 years), Washington Redskins (NFL) (2 years), South Carolina (3 years)  

2.  Nick Saban – Though his stays at schools have gotten longer (5 years at MSU and LSU), Coach Saban took the money and ran for the NFL.  Failing at that, he high-tailed it back to the college ranks to restore some of the luster to the anemic Crimson Tide program.  This is one coach who is no stranger to controversy!

Football Teams - Toledo (1 year), Michigan State (5 years), LSU (5 years), Miami Dolphins (NFL) (2 years), Alabama (1 year)

1.  Dennis Erickson – The King of the Male Prostitutes.  Erickson readily admitted (during his tenure at OSU) to prostituting himself in his earlier days.  However, when the opportunity arose, he left OSU and returned to the NFL.  He really had to see if he was a better pro coach then his earlier stop in Seattle demonstrated.  Failing for a second time in the NFL, he took a year off before returning to the University of Idaho, only to leave after one year when Arizona State showered him with $$$$. 

Football Teams - Idaho (1AA) (4 years), Wyoming (1 year), Washington State (2 years), Miami (6 years), Seattle Seahawks (NFL) (3 years), Oregon State (4 years), San Francisco 49ers (NFL) (2 years), Idaho (1 year), Arizona State (1 year)

 NOTE:  Only Division 1AA/1A and professional coaching jobs are listed.

The goals of every BCS conference team at the start of the season are two-fold.  First, win your conference and second, make it to the national championship game.  Once the season begins, a side goal is to lose early if you do lose, so as to setup a better ranking at the end of the season.  Three of the six BCS conferences have a championship game and three do not, so the question is whether conference championship games are good or bad for the parties involved.  

Conference championship games are in fact a dangerous thing, especially when one division winner is strong and the other is 8-3 or 7-4. The underdog always seems to have the advantage (just look at what happens in the Big 12 and SEC now & then) in that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Not a good place to be for a top 5 team to be when your opponent is hungry!  

Past history in the Big 12 shows the following:  

1996 – Texas (7-4) defeated #3 Nebraska (10-1) 37-27  

1998 – #10 Texas A&M (10-2) defeated #2 Kansas State (11-0) 36-33 in 2OT  

2001 – #9 Colorado (9-2) defeated #3 Texas (10-1) 39-37  

2003 – #15 Kansas State (10-3) defeated #1 Oklahoma (13-0) 35-7  

So, four out of eleven years, the underdog has pulled an upset four times.  In the SEC, the underdog pulled off the upset four times in fifteen years.  

1994 – #6 Florida (9-1-1) defeated #3 Alabama (11-0) 24-23  

1999 – #7 Alabama (9-2) defeated #5 Florida (9-2) 34-7  

2001 – #21 LSU (8-3) defeated #2 Tennessee (10-1) 31-20 

2005 – #13 Georgia (9-2) defeated #3 LSU (10-1) 34-14  

And finally, in the ACC, we have  

2005 - #22 Florida State (7-4) defeated #5 Virginia Tech (10-1) 27-22  

The underdog winning one out of the two years the championship game was played.  

NOTE:  Records shown were the team’s record at the time of the championship game.  

So what does this tell us?  They tell us that there is no reward without risk in these particular conferences, as the “extra” game leaves open the possibility for a major impact to a team’s bowl placement.  Win and you're in.  Lose and you're most likely out. 

And playing a team you’ve already beaten once that season doesn’t increase your odds of winning a second time, though the team you've beaten will be up for the game to settle the score! 

Me, I'd rather play in a conference like the PAC 10 where every team plays each other, round-robin fashion, where the one with the best in-conference record crowned the champion.  Since teams in twelve-team conferences don't play all the other teams in conference, there really isn't a good way to judge which team is the best.  Just look at Kansas this year.  Had they played Oklahoma or Texas, they might have been exposed early on as a pretender instead of a contender!

The truth of the matter is that it is better to come in second in your division with an early loss to your division's winner. By the end of the season, say your record is 10-1 or 11-1. That alone should have you ranked in the top 15 let alone even in the top 5.

Look at the Big 12 this year which prior to last week had 3 teams in the top 5. It's really too bad that Missouri and Kansas had to play each other in the last game of the season. Looking at it hypothetically, had those two teams played at the start of conference play, and say Missouri had won, they would have identical one-loss records going into the Big 12 championship game. Missouri, having won the head to head match-up, would play OU in the championship game, while Kansas stayed home. But, either OU or Mizzou would lose, so surely Kansas would move up in the rankings without having played a game and would be a preferable selection for a BCS game not having suffered a loss in the championship game. 

The same scenario would work when the other division winner is 7-4. If that 7-4 team won the championship game, they get the automatic BCS bowl birth for the conference. However, the one-loss second place team in the division would most likely be ranked higher than the 10-1 or 9-2 division winner who lost the conference championship game.  This year, Kansas in the Big 12 and Georgia in the SEC have the best shot at being the second team from their respective conferences to make a BCS game.  Georgia may even be lucky enough to move up high enough to play in the national championship game if enough teams ahead of it lose this weekend.   

Surprisingly, Oklahoma is the one exception to a conference championship game loser not making it to the BCS.  Having lost the Big 12 championship game in 2003 to Kansas Sate, OU only fell to #2 in the final BCS rankings and still managed to play in the title game.  Bottom line, it pays to be a traditional national power!

For those teams that finish second in the conference and don’t get to play in the conference championship, a BCS berth is most likely, and a national championship berth is a possibility, depending on where the team ends up in the final BCS standings. Of course, the best way to make it to the national championship is to be a BCS conference member that wins out while playing a strong-schedule.