Mad Men: Big 12 Edition

I should say mad scientists, as two of the top offensive minds in college football reunite in Stillwater. It was Holgorsen's (Mike Leach's) offensive system that was installed in his one year at Oklahoma State in 2010. Coach Gundy and his staff is still running it now, while Holgorsen has taken his circus act to West Virginia.

And one year after Holgorsen took over at West Virginia, the Mountaineers exited the Big East and found themselves in the Big 12. On weekends like this it will be a nightmare travel scenario for Mountaineer fans ("Country Roads" indeed), but Holgorsen is right back where he started.

Now Holgorsen's a charcter - some would say rock star - and is hardly sentimental about a return to Stillwater where he spent all of one season. He reminds us he was an assistant at Texas Tech and Houston for many years and spent far more time on the opponent sideline than the home one at Oklahoma State. He's also got bigger problems with a Mountaineer squad that's going off the rails after three straight losses.

It's warm here in Stillwater, but it's been very windy. If only a man could think of a way to harness all that power and turn it into energy. Just food for thought.

The wind may have an affect not only on Coach Holgorsen's hair, but on the high-volume passing games that both teams employ. Which is why Oklahoma State has the edge, despite a third string QB in this week, they have All-Big 12 RB Joseph Randle who could take the game over.

But the game within the game is the game of I-know-that-you-know-that-I-know what we're gonna do next, now just stop us. The over under on total points is somewhere in the neighborhood of 80. And around 4 hours, to see a couple of ornery guys on the sidelines. You can set your calendar to it.

Paper Backtime: MoneyWall

It's always a pleasure to read one of the more eclectic voices of our generation. His sports-themed books Moneyball and The Blind Side were developed into highly-acclaimed motion pictures. And in the last year, Lweis has taken to a number of different projects:

His 2012 commencement address at Princeton, his alma mater, was widely received for delivering a message that was well outside the box. The same can be said of his Vanity Fair profile of President Obama.

Or my favorite, the one-page Foreword in Mike Leach's autobiography Swing Your Sword, titled "The Importance of Peeing on the Dog."

But Lewis's bread and butter is his unique documentation of the financial world. He wrote The Big Short about the real-estate meltdown and Boomerang about the global economic crisis. But it all started with the 1989 semi-autobiographical Liar's Poker, chronicling the 1980's Wall Street boom, which of course was a house of cards.

I actually worked on a Wall Street trading desk in the summer of 1987, scribbling stock and option orders at a clearing house for small brokerages. I didn't take much away from the experience other than the blue "sell" and pink "buy" memo pads I swiped on my last day.

I went to Syracuse for my freshman year in late August, and the market crashed two months later. Black Monday was October 19, 1987 when in one day the market dipped 23%. I would've loved to be a fly on the wall on the trading desk that day. Lewis's book chronicles the events, but even more so the attitudes that led to it.

Lewis wasn't on Wall Street in physical address only. He reconstructs his entry at Salomon Brothers and quick ascension through the London bond trading desk to his confirmation as Big Swinging Dick (his words, not mine).

Stock (equity) trading was a banishment at Salomon. Bonds were where it was at, especially mortgage bonds. Lewis paints a bunch of fat piranhas playing huge gamblers, using money to make money in the most Machiavellian manner, and moving tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars within seconds.

"There was a phenomenon known at Salomon as a priority. A priority was a huge number of bonds or stocks that had to be sold, either because selling them would make us rich or because not selling them would make us poor. When Texaco teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, for example, Salomon Brothers owned about one hundred million dollars' worth of bonds in the company. There was a real danger that these bonds would become worthless. Unless sold to customers, they could cost Salomon a great deal of money. Sold to customers, of course, they would cost the customers a great deal of money. That, it was decided, was the best thing to do. Texaco bonds therefore became a priority for the Salomon sales force." (p. 224)

After making $225K as a 27-year old, and that money went a little further in 1988 mind you, Lewis decided to hang up his suspenders and phone bank.

"My father's generation grew up with certain beliefs. One of those beliefs is that the amount of money one earns is a rough guide to one's contribution to the welfare and prosperity of our society." (p.307)

Lewis left Salomon Brothers to contribute to society rather than merely profit off of it. He would modestly have you believe (refer to the Princeton speech) that he achieved what he has in life by luck, a series of fortunate events.

I think there's some truth to that, but it's what you can do with the ball when it's fortunate enough to come your way. Lewis just happened to be sitting next to the wife of a Salomon manager at a royal dinner while at grad school in London. He just happened to leave a lucrative career in investment banking to become an influential writer.

I like to say "things don't happen for a reason; there's a reason things happen." All of our decisions aren't perfect, Lewis after all has been married three times. But more often than not, we make our own luck.

I like Lewis's work a lot. So I picked up Liar's Poker hoping to understand how banks could take on this much risk, and learn about leverage buyouts and the like. I hoped a straight-talking and pretty humorous writer could dumb it all down for me. He was only partially successful. I need to get an MBA. Maybe I can change my own destiny.

Game Of Thrones: A Kingdom Rises in the West?

SEC Media Days are over, the surreal reality show that it was, with everyone from ESPN to The New Yorker broadcasting and eavesdropping on the minutiae of conference that's produced the last 6 national champions.

But as dominant and dynastic as the SEC has been, there's no room for complacency. Not only are there perennial powers in the Pac-12 (USC, Oregon), but the league is growing and innovating.

The conference that already had offense chess-masters Chip Kelly, Lane Kiffin, and Steve Sarkisian just added three more icons of spread and tempo. Granted, all three have some baggage.

Starting at Arizona, where Rich Rodriguez will hit the reset button on his career and bring the spread to Tuscon. Rodriguez was a West Virginia guy who found himself in no-man's land. This is all detailed in the book Three And Out by John U. Bacon.

The book's subtitle says it all: "Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football." The book is an eye-opener about the machine of the big university program. Basically it chronicles how Rich Rod became too big for West Virginia, but never fit the mold of a "Michigan Man," and was never really allowed to grow into one.

The book details how events (and people) in Ann Arbor conspired against Rodriguez, and he didn't get the chance to see through what he started there. His success at every level of college football is undeniable, and the footprint of what he started at Michigan is still seen every time Denard Robinson tucks the ball and has the run or pass option.

Arizona did well, and Arizona State was not to be outdone. Enter Todd Graham, the coach whose no-huddle offense set records at Rice and Tulsa, and looked like the guy to turn around Pitt - until he bolted after just one year.

Graham, a father of 6, now has to shake the reputation of a gold-digging opportunist. Not that he seems to care much what others think. He will have his Sun Devils conditioned for all conditions, and they became a better team when he set foot in Tempe.

And then there's Wazoo. Pullman, Washington might be the hardest locale to reach in college football, but it shouldn't matter to a man who spent 10 years in Lubbock, Texas. Mike Leach's mind is isolated from the rest of the world, something he efforts to explain (and mostly succeeds) in his autobiography.

Leach's system is simple - spread the offense enough so there's always more guys than they can cover. It's only how he explains it that's difficult. His success is also prolific - just check the numbers at Valdosta, Kentucky, and Texas Tech - with the one year he helped kickstart Oklahoma under Bob Stoops. It's reasonable to expect he'll do the same at Washington State.

His reputation as a swashbuckler is perpetuated mostly by himself. And the circumstances around his exit from Texas Tech are still a source of conflict - legal action against former broadcaster Craig James, and the network that formerly employed him, is still out there. I won't comment on that but I enjoyed the unconventional book.

Either way, the Pac-12 is fortunate to have all this spicy new blood in the league, not to mention Jim Mora, Jr. at UCLA.

The SEC is still king until the king is dead, but the Pac-12 may soon be ready for the throne.