Vanderbilt football coach James Franklin hasn't made any secret of his disdain for the way Tennessee celebrated its overtime victory over the Commodores. That video, which OKTC published for the first time, went viral and spawned something unique in the state -- an actual football rivalry.

Franklin referred to the loss and video celebration as an open wound in a press conference.

Fast forward several months to signing day, Vanderbilt notches its best recruiting class in school history and the school releases a well done video promoting the rise of its football program.

What did an astute Twitter observer already spot?

The Tennessee logo is upside down on the schedule posted on the wall 46 seconds in to the video.

Zing.

Intentional trash talk or not, it's an entertaining video -- astute viewers may also note that my 3HL co-host Brent Dougherty and I are also visible later in the video -- we stopped by Vandy's war room on our way to the Super Bowl and Tweeted about it. I mention this because inevitably someone on a message board with an IQ of 70 will claim this is a huge secret.

Let this be a lesson to college coaches: you have the lost the battle to unfairly restrict student transfers.

Period.

Today Maryland coach Randy Edsall became the latest coach to be put through the transfer ringer. After insisting that he would not grant three players a full release from Maryland -- specifically he included restrictions on the players transfer to Vanderbilt because he believed James Franklin tampered with them, an allegation that Franklin denied on our radio show -- Edsall capitulated this morning.

Here was Edsall's statement:

“While at first I thought it was important to limit the institutions to which they could transfer, I have since reconsidered my decision. At the end of the day, I want what’s best for these guys and I wish them well in their futures.

“As a program we are looking forward to putting this distraction behind us and to moving forward.”

These statements are always such complete crap.

It's always great when a coach puts a distraction that he created behind him so he can move forward. (Question: aren't we all moving forward even if we'd like to go backwards? That's how life works, right? No one, so far as I know it, has yet been able to reverse time. Has a coach ever said he'd like to go backwards? Would the world explode if this was in a press release?).

Edsall's capitulation -- following closely on the heels of Tennessee's Derek Dooley surrendering in the case of D'Anthony Arnett's transfer after initially bungling the situation -- is interesting because of what it tells us about the shifting power relationships in major college athletics.

Namely, the players have finally won a public relations battle. Fans and media are aligned in the belief that players should be able to transfer from one school to another without unreasonable restrictions. That is, coaches can restrict a player from going to another school in conference and to teams that are on future schedules, but beyond that any restriction is unreasonable.

Just when LSU fans thought they could start to forget the disaster of January 9, 2012 along comes Mardi Gras.

Yes, that really is Nick Saban holding up a crystal football in a Superman outfit on the back of the float.

And, yes, that really is a large effigy of New Orleans radio ranter Bobby Hebert, who famously went off on Les Miles at the post-game press conference for failing to play Jarrett Lee.

You can see more of the float photos by clicking here, but if you're an LSU fan you'll probably pass.

In the meantime, if you didn't think the LSU-Bama game could get any wilder, wait until Baton Rouge in November.

I can't wait.

By Karen Howell -- the most consistently funny commenter in OKTC history

It's that time of year again. You're coming off of your post-holiday high. Winter grinds on with no end in sight and the football season begins to wind down with nothing but NBA highlights to entertain you until March Madness kicks in. It's easy to sink into those February blues. But fear not, my friends. An entirely new season is upon us that offers all of the drama, action and comedy of SEC media days. That's right, it's Oscar season. The Oscars are Sunday. (If you forget this ask your wife or girlfriend. We always know the Oscar date. Always). 

In today's society, perhaps the only group idolized more than our athletes is our Hollywood actors. The similarities don't end there. Oscar season has it all for the college football fan headed into the long winter of withdrawal. There will be upsets, there will be snubs, there will be victory speeches that make Courtney Upshaw look like Bill Shakespeare. I know what you're thinking, you've been parked in front of the TV every weekend since the season kicked off and are clueless about this year's Oscar contenders. Well, consider this your own Oscar contenders cheat sheet. I've taken the liberty of organizing it in a manner best suited to your attention span, and have linked each Oscar contender to a college football storyline you'll be familiar with. I've also identified the nominations (or lack thereof), at least with regard to the major categories.  Unless specifically stated otherwise, assume James Franco played every role in every movie.

This weekend ESPN.com ran the headline, "Chink in the Armor," after a Friday night New York Knicks loss to the New Orleans Hornets.

The headline only ran from 2:30 to 3:05 on mobile devices.

By Saturday morning a firestorm had emerged. That day ESPN issued a profound apology and then the next day it fired the employee, editor Anthony Federico, who wrote the headline and suspended another employee for 30 days, anchor Max Bretos, who had used the phrase on air.

Yesterday Bretos took to Twitter to apologize: "My wife is Asian, would never intentionally say anything to disrespect her and that community," Bretos wrote. "Despite intention, phrase was inappropriate in this context."

(By the way, "My wife is Asian," is the new white guy's, "I have lots of black friends," line.)

But it's live television.

I do fifteen hours of live radio a week. So I empathize with anyone who says the wrong word or utters a phrase that isn't perfect in the spur of the moment.

We all do it.

Do you really think Bretos decided to wait until after he married an Asian woman to take nuanced aim at the entire continent? If so, he's the ultimate racist secret agent. He hates Asians so much he married one...and uttered a subtle double entendre that only racists even noticed.

Is chess a sport?

Debate amongst yourselves. But in the meantime check out this 60 Minutes story from last night that I bet most of y'all didn't see. I didn't see it either, but I was tipped off with this teaser: the best chess player in the world can beat ten other players without looking at the board.

And Magnus Carlsen did.

He also played the world's best player, Gary Kasparov, to a draw.

At 13.

Seriously, this kid's amazing.

It was an eventful Thursday for Vanderbilt football coach James Franklin.

First, he posed for the awkward SEC coaches photo -- he told 3HL that there was no rhyme or reason to where the coaches sat or stood -- then after meeting all day with SEC coaches -- he suggested that Steve Spurrier and Les Miles would make the best SEC coaching stars on reality television -- he defended his program against accusations of tampering levied by Maryland coach Randy Edsell. Then, not to be outdone, that same evening word leaked out that highly touted Rivals four-star quarterback Johnathon McCrary committed to the Dores over Alabama, Ohio State, Florida State, Tennessee, and Georgia.

Quite a day.

Let's unpack it all.

It's Christmas in February, the SEC coaches elementary school photo was just tweeted out by @sec_chuck

I always love this photo because it brings the most powerful men in Southern sports into one awkward 4th grade class photo. How do they decide on a seating arrangement? Who stands next to who? Recall last year's photo when Gene Chizik and Nick Saban were standing next to each other with a large gap between them. The picture truly spoke a thousand words.  

So let's play one of our favorite games awkward fan photo -- remember the Alabama couple -- SEC coaches edition.

After all, it's only fair.

As always, I attempt to find awkward things in the photo and then y'all point out what I leave out.

1. Will Muschamp appears to have stolen Gene Chizik's leather jacket from last season.

I'm praying that there's a large interlocking UF on the back in blue and orange.

2. Gene Chizik is wearing a sling on his left arm.

Did an energy vampire sneak up on Gene?

Or perhaps this was inflicted by Muschamp in taking the leather jacket? If so, golf clap, it would be the only SEC victory over a coach with a winning record in Muschamp's coaching careeer.

3. Hugh Freeze is the only front row coach to cover his crotch this year.

In last year's version everyone but Dan Mullen covered their crotches.

Also, Freeze is wearing an Ole Miss coaches polo. Otherwise everyone would think he was Phil Mickelson's stunt double.

Yesterday Darren Rovell tweeted some eye-popping numbers about the traffic generated by Sports Illustrated's swimsuit magazine and gallery. In particular, Rovell tweeted that SI.com would receive 45 million page views and an additional 7 million video views. After seeing Natalie Gulbis and Alex Morgan in bodypaint, that could be a low estimate. Combined that figure adds up to 52 million page views -- video views have higher rates, but we'll count a video as a page for purposes of our tally here. For the average reader that 52 million number probably doesn't mean much, but for me it was jaw-dropping.

Why?

Because based on working at FanHouse, CBS, and Deadspin -- three of the largest sports sites on the Internet -- and now running my own site and sifting through our data via Google analytics -- data which I share with you guys on a regular basis for instance we do 3-4 million page views a month at OKTC and 600k unique visitors -- it's likely that one day of online swimsuit viewing will have more page views than just about any online sportswriter will from writing columns and articles for an entire year.

Think about this stat for a moment.

TCU is a small, private school that has only had a handful of students arrested for drug related offenses.

That all changed this morning.

Seventeen current TCU students were arrested along with four football players on coach Gary Patterson's squad.

Meaning, there are some angry parents out there.

Especially the parents who were already paying nearly $44k a year in tuition, room and board.

Seventeen student drug arrests is a massive number no matter what school you're talking about, but it's even larger when you consider that TCU has only 8,000 undergrad students and is, you know, a private Christian school that is one of the most expensive colleges in the country.

We're talking a drug crime ring of Wire-esque proportions that was the subject of a six month investigation. Students were charged with selling cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, and prescription medication.