SAN DIEGO — As mighty Texan Big Ed Bookman might say in Dan Jenkins' remarkable "Semi-Tough:" "The bidness of college football is bidness."
Never has it been more evident than this past week, when the dominoes didn't just fall, they exploded. Domino dynamics dynamited.
Bombshells were dropped, but, really, how much damage did they do? They probably did more good than harm.
Surprises, yes.
Lincoln Riley, young (38) and successful, left a primo head coaching job at Oklahoma for USC, a storied program with a bad ending lately.
Then Notre Dame — THE most storied program, with mostly good-as-could-be-expected results lately — lost head coach Brian Kelly, who left for LSU, where many thought Riley was headed.
Let's concentrate on those two, but there have been others — Florida, Washington, Washington State, to name a few, all of them filled now. Others haven't as yet. Miami may even be looking.
Is it all about hundreds of millions of George Washingtons? Of course dough is a big part of it, but in the curious cases of Riley and Kelly, there's more to it.
Reports are sketchy, but safe to say Riley has been given Hope and Crosby money and property. But he was extremely well paid in Norman and could have gotten much more.
Lincoln knows SC has been a monster in hibernation since the Reggie Bush craziness — when Pete Carroll, toast of L.A., bailed out like DB Cooper — and couldn't get out of harm's way with Lane Kiffin, Ed Orgeron, Steve Sarkisian and especially Clay Helton, who couldn't bring in top recruits in an area where there are so many you trip over them on Hollywood Blvd.
Riley already is receiving verbals from five-star players who decommitted from Oklahoma. There will be more. Under the new rules, Trojans players may soon be starring in the Hollywood remake of "Helen of Troy."
Plus, Oklahoma is headed for the SEC, and should be successful, but it's not the football-impaired Pac-12 (Utah — Utah! — is going to the Rose Bowl), where there's an infinitely better chance for USC to be loaded and get back on the grid. I have no idea what the hell Helton was doing.
As for Kelly, 60, he realizes he has a much better chance of winning a national championship at a place like LSU than Notre Dame, which has become more academic factory than football manufacturer while still managing very well — but not quite good enough — on the field.
Fans have to get over it. Oklahoma and Notre Dame are going to be just fine. The Irish already have hired their very popular defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman. The Sooners aren't bringing in a stiff.
If the new coaches don't work out, they'll get a lovely green parachute and land softly somewhere else.
What made this so unique was so many top jobs coming open at once. Remember, football coaches are beyond different breeds of cats. But at least most of them know that, if they can't recruit good players, they're not winning.
And if they're not winning, they're packing.
