Lane Kiffin's staff at Tennessee is taking shape. At first glance,  it's looking pretty good.

First he got his dad, Monte, to be the D-Coordinator. Monte has been the well respected D-Coordinator for the Tampa Bay Bucs the last decade or so. He is considered by many to be one of the smartest defensive minds in football.

Next Lane got Ed Orgeron from the New Orleans Saints. Orgeron was the Ole Miss head coach for a few years and before that he was recruiting coordinator at USC were he helped bring in guys like Reggie Bush.

Also added was former St. Louis Rams Tight Ends coach John Chaney. Chaney was Offensive Coordinator for Purdue from 1998-2005. During the time that Drew Brees and Kyle Orton were there.

It's pretty obvious that Kiffin has assembled an all star staff on paper. The question now is can they recruit and coach kids to an SEC title.

It's the old saying, 'Where there's smoke there's fire'. ESPN made sure of that. When the BCS match ups were announced it was pretty obvious to Las Vegas that the BCS would, once again, be filled with blowouts. 3 of the 5 biggest point spreads were in the BCS (Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl).

The biggest sham of them all? Like usual, the Rose Bowl. USC beat Penn State by 14 and it wasn't even that close. At Halftime the score was 31-7 in favor of USC.

This makes it the 4th time that USC has annihilated a Big Ten team since 2004. Somewhere in there they lost to Texas in the National Title game by 4 points in one of the closet championship games in recent memory. 6 of the last 8 Rose Bowl's have been decided by double digits.

Why is there smoke? Unless you were a Penn St fan or didn't follow college football then you knew USC would take Penn St behind the proverbial woodshed.

Yet Disney (Owners of ESPN and ABC which broadcast the game) went on an all out PR campaign to try and give the illusion that Penn St had a shot in hell. Ivan Maisel wrote an article to try to give some statistical analysis to support this idea. That didn't work either.

Here are the facts, ESPN just spent a boat load of money for the BCS series. Their well respected college football pre game show said little if anything about the need for a playoff system all year (ESPN was negotiating the contract at the time) and they over hyped a football game they knew would be a blowout.

Guys, this was the only game on. It was either that or let the woman have the remote.

My disappointment comes from the conferences, ESPN, and the bowls. When I was young there would be something like 9 bowl games on New Years Day. In 2009 there was 5. And only one of those came down to the last minute. In the afternoon and evening their is a game apiece. Both were decided by double digits.

So maybe some of these match ups couldn't have been helped? Maybe, if the Big Ten wasn't involved...at all.

At this point the Big Ten is 1-5. 4 of those losses are by double digits. The only team that could go and compete in the SEC, PAC-10,and BIG 12 is Ohio Stand they are a TD dog to Texas in the Fiesta Bowl. 

Oh yeah, they've been run out the building the last two national title games by an SEC team.

Am I the only one who's annoyed with video on the web?

Hosts who all try to be Jon Stewart or Stephan Colbert. Dude, you're not funny nor are you witty. Quit It!

The everyday person now seems more concerned about recording the actual moment than actually living it. Taking a picture or blogging about it while it's happening so that everyone else can know about right now. Including the person standing next to you.

The NFL, NBA,NASCAR, and MLB Interactive* have all cut jobs. The NHL and MLB have hiring freezes in place while MLB went a step further and cut vacation time.

The Arena Football League has gone even further by canceling the 2009 season citing financial difficulties and the need for a new business model.

Believe it or not the AFL has been around for 22 seasons. The owners sound optimistic about being able to play in 2010 however others are not.

The interesting part is that the AFL seemed to be gaining some traction. Attendance and ratings have been up with a year old ESPN deal yet some teams, like the New Orleans Voodoo had already folded before the announcement of the cancellation.

Being with a sports organization, what intrigues me about these layoffs, hiring freezes and canceled seasons is what's going.

The NBA only cut US jobs and still expects to grow internationally. The NFL, while nixing plans to play a preseason game in China next season have already announced another game in London for next year and played a preseason game in Toronto.

The AFL however signed over all of their interactive opportunities to ESPN in a 5 year deal that covered Internet, radio, publishing, and international distribution. All big growth areas for the league.

Hopefully the AFL plays football again just for the players sake.

*(MLB Interactive was spun off by MLB a few years ago and runs other web sites including MLSnet.com and ICE Network)

I always complain that there's no weather here in Vegas. There's hot and sunny and more often than not wind

Well over the last few days we've had freezing temperatures and a boat load of snow. By my brothers house in Henderson he got something like 7 inches of snow.

It got to a point yesterday where Southwest Airlines canceled every flight in and out of Vegas yesterday.