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1. George DeLeone hired Paul Pasqualoni as an assistant coach at Southern Connecticut State in 1976, and the two have coached together for most of the seasons since, from Division III to FBS to the NFL. When UConn fired Pasqualoni on Monday after two-plus seasons as head coach, the school fired DeLeone, the associate head coach and offensive line coach, too. The Huskies are 0-4, scoring 18 points and gaining 272.5 yards of total offense per game. Pasqualoni has a solid record (151-94-1, .616) in 22 years as a head coach. Something tells me he and DeLeone aren’t done coaching -- together -- just yet.

2. Oregon has won its last 15 road conference games, the longest such FBS winning streak. The Ducks have won their last game at every Pac-12 opponent save Utah (in 2003, when Utes were in MWC. Does that count?) Alabama has won nine straight road SEC games. Stanford and Texas A&M each have won their last five road conference games. The Cardinal lost to Washington in 2012 at CenturyLink Field in Seattle. However, with the victory at that stadium Saturday over Washington State, Stanford has won its last game at every opposing venue in the Pac-12.


3. Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds will announce today that he is retiring next August after 32 years. All Dodds, a former track coach, has done is transform Texas into the premier sports program in the nation. It took him three coaching hires to find Mack Brown, but 150 wins and one BCS championship in 16 seasons indicate Dodds got that one right. It’s a measure of the resources and the expectations that Dodds has raised that fans wonder why the Longhorns don’t dominate every sport in which they compete.

PODCAST
Darren Rovell, who broke the Johnny Manziel autograph story, joins Fitzsimmons and Durrett to discuss the latest on the situation and if Texas A&M should be concerned about Manziel's eligibility. Listen

1. The Johnny Manziel autograph sessions in Florida may put to rest the argument that student-athletes violate NCAA restrictions against taking money because they are on the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum. As Wright Thompson wrote last week, Manziel comes from oil money. If he took a five-figure payment to sign hundreds of items, as multiple sources told OTL, Manziel didn’t do it because he needed the cash. He did it because he wanted the cash.

2. In the 60 seasons from 1948 through 2007, no program led the league in total defense (yards allowed per game) for more than two consecutive seasons. That includes Bobby Dodd’s stingy Georgia Tech defenses in the ‘50s, Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide defenses through his 25 seasons, and Pat Dye’s physical defenses at Auburn in the ‘80s. Fast forward to today: Alabama has led the SEC in total defense for five straight seasons (shared first place with Tennessee in 2008). That’s defensive dominance.

3. It didn’t take long to figure out how Kliff Kingsbury’s relative youth (33) would work to his advantage at Texas Tech. It’s hard to imagine another head coach in the Big 12 -- or anywhere else in the BCS, for that matter -- who would bring in a DJ for the first team meeting of the season. As The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported, the impromptu karaoke served as a bonding agent for a young team. That’s a pretty shrewd move by a pretty shrewd young coach.