STARTING FIVE

Orgeron won 75% of his games at Southern Cal against either Pac-12 opponents or Notre Dame.

1. O Revoir

It was always nothing more than fanciful to suggest that Ed Orgeron, who inherited a moribund Trojan program at the end of September, would be given the keys to the house for good. After all, USC is a Top 6 program, the type of school that can rule if recruiting in its own backyard and yet still draw five-stars from as far away as New Jersey or Florida. USC, Notre Dame, Alabama, Texas, Ohio State/Michigan. Those are top brands in college football.

Was Orgeron a Top 6 coach? Perhaps not. I did love, though, how he embraced the position. How every time he did an on-camera interview he closed by saying, “Fight on!” Loved that. Loyal soldier.

The reason that most USC fans woke up this morning with that feeling you have of staring long and hard into the fridge and deciding whether or not to grab the tuna salad is because, if athletic director Pat Haden was going to scrap the good karma that Orgeron had molded in the previous two months, they’d think he might’ve done better than Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian.

Trojan players…

s

Is Sarkisian, who had been Pete Carroll’s offensive coordinator in Troy’s most recent golden era, solid? Yes. Is he spectacular? That remains to be seen. U-Dub finished 8-4 this season and 5-4 in the Pac-12. It’s best for Haden that the Trojans and Huskies never played, making this decision easier.

And how are the USC players reacting? Oh, they’re fine. Only three tweeted that it felt as if they’d just lost a father.

….and fans just never warmed up to Coach O.

When you get down to it, a head coach is less an X-and-O guy than he is an ambassador and a CEO, especially if he has great coordinators. Would most USC fans and alums agree that Haden could improve upon Orgeron? Yes. Do they think Sarkisian represents that improvement? No.

“Okay, fine, but which one of us is going home with Corvallis?”

Here’s hoping for a Mike Kekich-Fritz Peterson swap between the Pac-12 cohorts. Orgeron to U-Dub. And if UCLA’s Jim Mora, Jr., a Washington alum, leaves Westwood to replace Sark, then Pac-12 commish Larry Scott needs to host a conference coaching key party.

2. Mauled in Maui

It could have been you, Aldous Snow.

A 57 year-old man fishing from a kayak, his legging dangling over the side in the ocean, suffered a fatal shark attack bite yesterday. The fisherman, Patrick Briney, died before a friend fishing in another kayak was able to get him to shore. And this, sadly, is why I always check Outside magazine’s on-line edition.

3. Hater Item

Oh yeah, that’s going in.

You have to salute UConn’s Shabazz Napier for hitting this buzzer-beating, game-winning shot to defeat Florida, 65-64, last night in Storrs. However, being both white and middle-aged, it is incumbent upon me to point out to you that Napier definitely is guilty of a carry and also, unless a Gator defender deflected his “pass”, a double dribble. Oh well, it’s the first week of December. College basketball season does not begin for another three months.

4. Real or Fictional School?

Robby Benson is putting up big numbers at Western University.

The following are one of three entities: Actual school that played a Division I opponent within the past week, fictional school from a film, or actor who I found on IMDB. Can you correctly identify each?

Campbellsville, Regina, Brevard, Florida Memorial, Graceland, Cincinnati Christian, Mount Ida, La Sierra, Edward Waters, Valley City State, Spring Hill, Black Hills State, Nova Southeastern, Cameron, Waldorf, Vanguard, Young Harris, Brewton Parker, Huston-Tillotson.

Answers after No. 5

5. Forecast Like a Champion Today (but not for “Today”)

Sam Champion, the fair-haired meteorologist at “Good Morning, America”, and a staple of my Upper West Side ‘hood for the past quarter-century, is leaving ABC for The Weather Channel. Champion, 52, will become the managing editor of TWC and will also host a morning show for the cable network. He will be based out of Atlanta. Allow us to take this time to note that the forecast for Champion’s disposition has always been bright sunshine, that ABC would do well to look at Hartford-based meteorologist Scott Haney (he’s no Ginger Zee, but she’s no Scott Haney, either), and that we have met a person or two named Champion, but we have never met anyone named Loser or Runner-Up.

Answer to question on No. 4: I apologize, it was a trick; every school there actually exists. Which is kind of my point.

Reserves

— An NFL Mock Draft from Sports Illustrated has two Notre Dame defensive linemen in its Top 20. Things you never thought you’d see.

— Is it just me or is How I Met Your Mother not even trying any more? It’s like when Happy Days just decided it didn’t care if people thought it was a ’50s nostalgia show any more and started to allow its stars to wear contemporary hair styles. Meanwhile, if you stay tuned long enough to CBS to catch Two Broke Girls, there’s no way a woman in New York City who looks like Beth Behrs is working in a greasy spoon longer than five minutes. It’s not a sitcom, it’s SciFi.

–In Humblebrag penalty news, Vernon Davis got tackled how?

–NIU quarterback Jordan Lynch is now No. 2 in The Heisman Pundit’s straw poll. Love watching Lynch play, but he looked pretty banged up after last week’s 316-yard rushing effort. Meanwhile, Thursday’s MAC Championship Game foe, Bowling Green, has beaten its last four opponents by an average of 40 points per game and lost the two previous games by a total of four points. I like the Falcons in MACtion finale.

–Stock in Tesla (TSLA) is up 15% today. That’s what happens when you give away a free fire extinguisher with every purchase. And no, Paul Walker was not riding in a Tesla. Too soon? Of course.

Remote Patrol

 No. 22 Michigan at No. 10 Duke

ESPN 9:15 p.m.

Freshman Jabari Parker and the Blue Devils versus Nik Stauskas, a Canadian, and last year’s national runners-up.

STARTING FIVE

Chris Davis and the greatest finish in college football history. Nice branding there, Mike Slive.

1. A Jordan-Hare Raising Experience

Can we stop arguing about whether Auburn deserves to be ranking ahead of Ohio State (when really it should be whether Auburn deserves to be ranked ahead of Missouri, an argument that admittedly will soon be moot) long enough to bask in the afterglow of perhaps the greatest college football game ever played?

My short list, like yours, only extends as far back as my memory. Every one of the games below was intriguing from the opening snap, was filled with bizarre twists and turns, and featured a crazy finish. Here they are (and notice how all the scores fall between 28 and 42 points) in chronological order:

Notre Dame 35, Houston 34………………..1979 Cotton Bowl

Miami 31, Nebraska 30……………………….1984 Orange Bowl

Notre Dame 31, Miami 30…………………..1988 Catholics vs. Convicts

USC 34, Notre Dame 31……………………..2005

Texas 41, USC 38……………………………….2006 Rose Bowl

Boise State 43, Oklahoma 42………………2007 Fiesta Bowl

Auburn 34, Alabama 28……………………..2013 Iron Bowl

There’s no improving on this scene. College football isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty damn near close.

Worth noting, as Yahoo! Sports’ Pat Forde did, that CBS’ Verne Lundquist called both Saturday’s game and the Christian Laettner buzzer-beater in 1992. Loved Verne informing us that Auburn coach Gus Malzahn and his wife, Kristi, were never served when they visited a Waffle House after the Tigers’ miraculous comeback versus Georgia two weeks earlier. After waiting for what Malzahn deemed too long (then again, he does run a hurry-up offense), the Malzahns stood up and exited.

Any Auburn fan could’ve told Gus that he ought to have headed to Guthrie’s, anyway.

2. Hershel. Walkers.

Ironically, Hershel was the one who in times of crisis always kept his head about him.

Meanwhile, one state to the right of the Iron Bowl, another feud attained climax as the Governor attempted to invade Ricks’ prison in the mid-season finale (there are now mid-season finales?) of “The Walking Dead.” The walkers were upstaged by human-on-human violence that saw Herschel (Scott Wilson) get decapitated by the Governor, who then was cut down with the same cutlass by Micchone. It was a literal, not figurative, back-stabbing as earlier in that same episode Micchone had told Brian-with-one-‘i’ that she was going to kill him.

No lie, Hardwick actually appeared in two Rob Zombie films.

I’m as intrigued by Chris Hardwick, the host of “Talking Dead” as I am by the show itself (Hardwick also hosted the “Breaking Bad” chat-fest, “Talking Bad”). Each Sunday night Hardwick hosts a studio show in which the events of the episode just seen are discussed. It’s week in and week out of grisly deaths of characters we, the audience, had gotten close to, and it’s amplified for Hardwick by the fact that his own father died unexpectedly three weeks earlier. He ended a recent show by noting that his own dad, PBA professional Billy Hardwick, had died the day before of a heart attack, but Hardwick soldiered on.

3. Paul Walker

2 lessons here: 1) Slow down and 2) Is there ever really a need to break the news of someone’s death on Twitter?

The actor who appeared in the “Fast and Furious” films dies in a fiery car wreck. Walker, 40, dies but irony survives. Meanwhile no shortage of folks on Twitter who never met Walker and were not at the scene of the accident tweet the news of his passing, then apologize when it appears that the TMZ report is a hoax (TMX is actually pretty reliable), then notify us again when it turns out that the news, sadly, is true. Why does anyone need to be the first on his or her block to spread the news of the death of someone they’ve never met to people they don’t know?

 4. Speaking of Talking Bad…

This is not exactly new, but Jimmy Kimmel Live! has been asking celebrities to read the nastiest tweets they receive on camera. Here’s Will Ferrell, Andy Dick and others in the first installment…and here’s Russell Brand, Jessica Alba and Zach Braff taking the pain… And here’s Dennis Quaid, Sharon Stone, Aaron Paul, Mark Ruffalo and Larry David reading the haters. As Kimmel quips, “People are the worst.”

 5. Biblio Files

The New York Times releases its “100 Notable Books of 2013”, none of which include the characters Katniss Everdeen or Christian Grey, so who’s reading them? Not us!

I actually enjoyed reading the blurbs that sound as if they’ve been written by someone gunning just a little too hard for an “A” in Freshman Comp. & Lit: “Witheringly trenchant” and “prolix post-modern.”