The Connect: 02/11/09

Tossing linemen overboard for better MPG.  Miami plans to save $140,000 on chartered airfare by busing the team to both the USF game in Tampa and the UCF game in Orlando.  An irrational fandom is horrified ("EW! We got SWAC on us!"), but really, it's not a big deal; it's just less dignified and tooooootally humiliating to be p-p-p-p...poor. Athletic director Kirby Hocutt announced the move as part of a 41-step cost-cutting plan, which includes the following initiatives:

• Instead of entering Dolphin Stadium through smoke, the Hurricanes will now take the field through a tunnel of homeless men paid $2 to blow bubbles.
• Failing brakes will not be repaired; rather, Russell Maryland will be placed at strategic intersections to stop the team bus with his body.
• The costs of keeping players hydrated will be offset by playing all games in the rain. Financial guru and part-time DT Joe Joseph foresaw the recession, and demonstrated the technique last season while losing to Florida State in inclement weather:
  
  
  courtesy Rusty98UM

We're saving our Jimbo Fisher jokes.  According to Alan Schmadtke of the Orlando Sentinel's College Sports, Randy Shannon has the toughest job in the ACC.

Shannon has to take a big step with a football program on which his athletic department is heavily dependent. And now, as he prepares for his third season, he has to take that step with two new coordinators...Unfortunately for Shannon, he doesn’t have a lot of time to make this happen...Financially, Miami needs Shannon’s program back on a BCS footing. Or even back on a New Year’s Day bowl footing. And 2009 is the proving year.

This is all very true. Despite the wealth of its local football and bikini team talent, head coach at Miami is a notoriously tough position that few coaches are willing to take, and the circumstances of Shannon's takeover make it even more so. But...toughest in the whole ACC? Robert Marve's body makeup artist and Al Groh's hype man (the first 30 seconds will do) beg to differ, thankyouverymuch.  (Not to mention whoever kept Tashard Choice stocked in nubile young Asian boys.)

Time to update his dental records.  Former Miami DB coach-turned-premature-DC Tim Walton is leaving the DC position at Memphis to coach defensive backs for the Detroit Lions. Detroit has defensive backs?  Sometimes the jokes write themselves, and sometimes the autoworkers go on strike and someone burns down your house.