The sudden death of beloved Georgia mascot Uga VII to an apparent heart attack last week opened the floodgates to an outpouring of goodwill for one of the shorter-lived (and least successful, frankly, in terms of the team's on-field performance) reigns in Uga history, including a private memorial service and burial in Sanford Stadium before last Saturday's sobering loss to Kentucky. It also opened up a window for the capable opportunists at PETA, who suggested the Bulldogs forego the eighth in a line of mascots from a family of English bulldogs bred by a well-heeled and turn instead to our old friend, technology, in the form of college football's -- and perhaps the world's -- first robot mascot:

In the wake of the untimely death of the University of Georgia's (UGA) bulldog mascot, Uga VII, PETA has asked the school's athletic director, Damon M. Evans, to replace the mascot with an animatronic dog -- or to rely solely on a costumed mascot -- instead of using another real bulldog. Bulldogs are prone to breathing difficulties, hip dysplasia, heart disorders, and other congenital ailments, and acquiring a dog from a breeder perpetuates the animal overpopulation crisis while causing another dog waiting in an animal shelter to be condemned to death.

Say what you will about PETA: They know how to use a headline as a hook: Click to read about the Robot Dog, stay to read about hip dysplasia.

And it's hard to argue with the point, frankly, if your first priority in is to add another drip to the vast tide of the issue, "animal welfare," although their point seems to depend at least in part on the dodgy ethicality of existing as a bulldog in the first place. Obviously, flesh and blood will reign in Georgia for the foreseeable future, but the times, they change: If the animal rights lobby comes back in 50 or 60 years with a hunk of barking metal that occasionally attacks unwitting Auburn players who wander too close, they may have a shot with Uga XXIV.

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Hat tip: AJC, via EDSBS.

The most interesting aspect of the Heisman Trophy is always the players it excludes as a matter of course. With the field of favorites rapidly narrowing down the stretch, Alternate Heisman Reality looks at some of the more deserving candidates off the beaten path. Today: Georgia Tech quarterback Josh Nesbitt.

Generic Profile. Junior quarterback for a one-loss, top-10 team possibly headed for a conference championship and automatic BCS bid, and trigger man of the highest-gaining and highest-scoring offense in the ACC.

By the Numbers. Time for the blind taste test -- who you got?

"Quarterback A," as you might have guessed, is media darling and omnipresent Heisman frontrunner Tim Tebow, who has the benefit of being more accurate than "Quarterback B," Nesbitt, but can't hope to match Nesbitt's penchant for big plays. In fact, no quarterback can: In Georgia Tech's overwhelmingly run-based attack -- also expertly navigated by Nesbitt on his way to a likely 1,000-yard season on the ground -- defenses are so stunned when he actually steps back to throw that almost every completion ends as a big play. More than three-fourths of Nesbitt's completions (45 of 58) have gone for first downs, slightly over half have covered at least 15 yards and almost a third have gained at least 25 yards, with a handful of 60-plus-yard bombs in that number. When Mississippi State overplayed the option in early October, Nesbitt burned the Bulldogs for 266 yards and touchdown on 11-of-14 passing.

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On the Spot: Players, coaches and teams with the most at stake on Saturday.

For all the derision -- heck, that's putting it lightly: For all the barely concealed rage that greeted the hiring of Gene Chizik as Auburn's 25th head football coach last December, the actual results on the field have been surprisingly positive. The Tigers started the season 5-0, matching their win total for all of 2007, and were ranked as high as No. 17 in the AP poll with a torrid offense that performed miles beyond the 2008 version despite deploying essentially the same personnel. There have been low points in SEC play -- losses to Arkansas and Kentucky, a 31-10 shellacking at LSU -- but the Tigers still have a chance to win eight or nine games this season, which would match the average Tommy Tuberville established in 10 years on the Plains.

As inspiring as all that has been, though, the first eleven games were just the undercard. We all know the main event, which cranks up when undefeated Alabama rolls into Jordan-Hare Stadium on Friday. Yonder lies your future, Coach Chizik: The Iron Bowl is the game you must win if you are ever to be served a meal in Lee County again, and the result will dictate public perception of your manhood until you die or voluntarily take a job elsewhere, whichever comes first.

Think that's a little overwrought? I just left Birmingham, Ground Zero of the Alabama-Auburn rivalry, after seven years (and six Iron Bowls), and I can assure you it's not. The animosity between the two fan bases results in a 24/7 statewide genitalia-swinging contest that is the simmering inspiration behind every car-flag purchase, every call to the Paul Finebaum radio show and even a substantial portion of wardrobe choices this time of year. A lot of hopes and dreams are invested in this matchup, and when those hopes and dreams get dashed, the coaches more often than not take the blame.

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Dan Hawkins' somewhat manic mind has been dealing with his imminent departure from Colorado from the very first moments of a disastrous season. With Colorado's fourth straight losing season already assured heading into Friday's finale with Nebraska, Hawk was in an openly reflective mood Monday, trying to defend his "pie in the sky" and glass half-full" philosophy even while admitting his "10 wins and no excuses" prediction in the preseason was slightly too optimistic and occasionally indicating he sees the writing on the wall. And nowhere did he seem more resigned to his fate than when he admitted he probably shouldn't have recruited his son to play quarterback:

As the Denver Post quipped, that just about makes it unanimous: No one has suggested Cody Hawkins isn't a hard-working, stand-up guy who's handled being yanked in and out of the lineup over the last two years like "a man's man," but hasn't quite fit as a Big 12 quarterback. Physically, Cody's height and arm have always been regarded as liabilities, and after a respectable debut as a redshirt freshman, he's finished as the lowest-rated regular passer in the conference each of the last two years. The pick-six that turned the tide of a potential upset bid and got him pulled from the game at Texas must be one of the worst combinations of bad decision/bad throw anyone has made this year. Cody still has another season, but to hear his dad talk, it sounded like the verdict is already in.

And as far as the elder Hawk's tenure is concerned, maybe it is -- when the local paper starts drawing eerie parallels between you and Bill Callahan, who had no hope of remaining at Nebraska going into the 2007 finale in Boulder, it's pretty much over; Callahan was so fired at the end, the rest of the Big 12 might as well make it a verb for all lame-duck coaches as they play out the string: Win or lose Saturday, Hawkins seems destined to be Callahan'd by this time next week, after which he'll have plenty of time to reflect on his alternate history memoir.

And hey, glass-half-full: Maybe the school can't afford the buyout, and Dan will get to see his self-described mistake through to the end. Keep reaching for that pie.

Making the morning rounds.

• "I'm responsible. I’m the head coach." After claiming ignorance despite video evidence to the contrary after the game, LSU coach Les Miles took full responsibility Monday for his team's inexplicable clock management gaffe at the end of its 25-23 loss at Ole Miss. Miles admitted "we had no second play called prior to the Hail Mary" on the 4th-and-26 play that set up anticlimactic finish, because that pass was supposed to go into the end zone. It was letting 17 seconds tick away before calling timeout prior to the fourth down heave, though, that brought the most scorn -- from critics and from Miles himself: "I let the clock get away from me. That was my fault, my mistake. ... At that point in time, I had lost the opportunity for the team to win by squandering seconds."

• What? We all know it's coming. Monday's best headline, courtesy the Associated Press:

Oh, but they will, right AP? Nothing in the subsequent article suggests Rodriguez is in any immediate danger, but they will.

• Good luck with that. Winless Western Kentucky was the first team to let its coach go earlier this month, and Monday became the first team to fill its vacancy by hiring Stanford running backs coach Willie Taggart, a WKU alum and Jim Harbaugh's brother from another mother. Fired coach Dave Elson will stay on for the Hilltoppers' final two games in search of one last (and, this year, first) victory.

• How much is firing Ralph Friedgen worth to us? Word to the Washington Post over the weekend was that Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen's $4 million buyout wouldn't be an obstacle to ditching Fridge as the 2-9 Terps hurtle toward one of the worst finishes in school history. The Baltimore Sun doesn't quite think so: With the general budget crunch at UMD, Friedgen will either have to resign or be targeted by deep-pocketed boosters to get around that number.

• Godspeed. Good luck to N.C. State offensive coordinator Dana Bible, a longtime hand at several schools who has been diagnosed with leukemia. Bible missed the Pack's game at Virginia Tech Saturday and won't coach against North Carolina as he undergoes tests in Boston and begins his fight.

Quickly ... Urban Meyer insists he's not going to Notre Dame. So is he just waiting until after the SEC Championship game to take the job, or what? ... Rich Brooks has had enough of this retirement crap. ... Forbes explains how Doug Flutie changed the game. ... The Mountain West reprimands a BYU player and assistant coach for criticizing Air Force's cut blocks. ... And I-AA Northeastern drops its football program after 74 years, leaving the Red Sox and Patriots with one less obstacle in commanding the attention of the Boston sports scene.

Readers who can still recall September (congratulations on that, by the way) may remember the helmet-to-helmet collision between Minnesota receiver Eric Decker and California safety Sean Cattouse, who briefly knocked Decker out of the game and opened up an ugly gash on the senior's chin. It was one of the more impressive, frightening-looking shots of the year -- so much so, in fact, that Minnesota set a physics professor loose to quantify the damage:

According to my physics education by Google, 10.78 g is significantly more force than Apollo 16's reentry to Earth and more than twice what the body can typically withstand for any sustained period (in a fighter jet or roller coaster, for example), but in football terms may be fairly tame: In Malcolm Gladwell's much-discussed New Yorker article on the debilitating long-term effects of head injuries, linemen are routinely recorded sustaining hits well above 60 g, and the general threshold for concussions seems to be somewhere between 50 and 75 g. So either there is some significant disconnect in those calculations and the ones scrawled out by Professor Dahlberg here, or you should shake it off, Decker (when your foot heals, I mean).

I haven't been doing this very long compared to some people, but I'm pretty certain that if any random straw poll of fans was asked to respond to the question "Which college football player would you most like to punch in the face?" no player over the last five years would finish in the same ballpark as Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen, the perfect storm of hype, hair gel and unearned entitlement at the most high profile position in the most widely-despised program in America. Not that Jimmy deserves to be punched in the face or anywhere else, of course, but still -- there are no doubt a lot of smiling people tonight living vicariously through an anonymous patron of CJ's in South Bend, where Clausen was reportedly dealt at least one shiner a few hours after the Irish's deflating double-OT loss to UConn:

Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen was involved in a fight outside a South Bend bar early Sunday morning, according to a report Monday evening by WGN-AM's David Kaplan.

According to Kaplan, Clausen has two black eyes from the altercation at around 2:30 a.m. Sunday. ... The Tribune's Brian Hamilton reports that a South Bend police spokesman said Monday no police reports were filed over the weekend that involved Clausen. The particulars of the confrontation are thus unclear, though a person answering the phone at CJ's, the bar in question, said the incident "absolutely did not take place inside the bar."

The Worldwide Leader's Joe Schad also confirmed Clausen has a swollen eye, at minimum, after being "sucker-punched" outside a bar. If true, it follows Clausen's citation for underage possession as a freshman and starring role in the '08 "Beer Olympics" to keep his career average for minor off-field incidents at one per season.

On the bright side, everyone may be too busy examining Clausen's face for the rest of the week to concentrate on the growing speculation that he'll follow coach Charlie Weis into the NFL by tossing his name into the pool of early entrants for the draft following Saturday's regular season finale at Stanford. If there's anywhere a highly visible party hound can go to keep his after-hours exploits under wraps, it's the NFL, right?

[UPDATE, 12:40 p.m. ET] Via Brooks, the South Bend Tribute reports Clausen was sticking up for his date after a family dinner and got into brief scrum when someone outside the bar pushed her; police showed because of "other skirmishes" at the bar but made no arrests. If there was any question, Clausen will start the Stanford game.

Charlie Weis has never been a particularly popular figure at Notre Dame, even when the Irish were winning in his first two seasons, and John Walters' all-access, "Dead Coach Walking" tour for AOL FanHouse -- while never condescending to suggest Weis may not be fired after Saturday's trip to Stanford -- tugs openly on the heartstrings wherever possible. It's not hard to sympathize: Weis shows up for work hours before sun-up every day, staying well into the night; he's an obsessive recruiter; he totally eschews camera-friendly artifice; he actually lost a chunk of his knee in last year's ugly sideline collision against Michigan, an injury that resulted in multiple surgeries and follows him for days each week after spending hours on his feet on game days but brought mainly fan jokes from fans, etc. Walters, a Notre Dame guy, is convincing at least that Weis isn't being bounced for a lack of old-fashioned elbow grease.

About those fat jokes, though -- whether or not the hecklers, Photoshop artists and ruthless commenters ever considered the impact on their target, the endless digs haven't exactly been rolling gracefully through the years like water off a duck's back. From the sound of it, it's more like they penetrated Weis' heart and coalesced into a dense, black, malignant amulet of bitterness that he vows to carry with him forever:

"The damage to Maura and Charlie Jr. is irreparable," says Weis, referring to the personal nature of the attacks he has been subject to for years now. "It's watching me get hammered. I'll never forgive the people who character-assassinated me without even knowing me. Those people did irreparable damage to my wife and son, and I'll never forgive them."
[...]
"They have the right to criticize the coach for being 6-5," says Weis. "They have that right. It's all the other stuff. You think I don't know that I'm fat? Duh!"

Asked if he should be gone, where would Charlie Jr. would go to college, the coach reponded: "I know where he won't be going to college."

I'd like a precise statistical estimate of Weis critics since 2005 who are actually asking for forgiveness for their juvenile cruelty. Because I know I can name a few who are proudly standing by it.

I'm no kind of "insider" like Walters, who does his best in the service of a positive spin. But when the still-technically employed head coach bitterly promises that his emotionally wounded son won't be following in his footsteps at the old alma mater, it's hard to pretend this split is going to go down amicably.

The week in the undercards.

Quiet. Too quiet.
The BCS hoi polloi remains at a standstill, with TCU and Boise State hanging onto their No. 4 and No. 6 slots, respectively, in the latest Series standings. BYU is also still ranked in the top 20, for reasons beyond even the good Doctor's understanding, and Utah and Houston linger down there in those 20-something slots that go to teams no one knows quite what to do with. Click the above link for more on why these standings are unlikely to change in the next couple weeks, but the short version is this: TCU is a virtual lock for one of the at-large bids, but Boise State may be on the outside looking in for another, for reasons that have nothing to do with the Broncos' march to another undefeated regular season on the field.

It's all local.
Moving from the national picture, then, to the conference championship races, where we have some excitement:

• The main event will be another Friday WAC night showdown on the blue turf, where Boise puts its perfect record and four-year home winning streak on the line against streaking Nevada, winner of eight straight and home to the most statistically dominant rushing attack in any conference in recent memory. The Wolf Pack are by far the greatest threat to the Broncos' in-conference dominance and BCS pretensions, and can walk away with their first WAC crowd since joining the league with a very plausible road upset.

• Central Michigan has locked up its half of the MAC with a 7-0 run in league play, but the East Division comes to a head this weekend when first place Temple (7-0) heads to second-place Ohio U. (6-1) in a rubber match that could provide the Owls one of the most unlikely 10-win seasons in history and their first trip to the conference title game in Detroit.

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It took me a couple go-rounds this weekend to realize the headline "Bowl Championship Series hires ex-Bush administration spokesman to improve public image of BCS" wasn't another magisterial offering from The Onion -- the haphazard hand of reality couldn't possibly align such note-perfect satire on its own accord. But sometimes, I guess, you really can't make this stuff up:

Ari Fleischer Communications, a sports public relations firm headed by the former press secretary for President George W. Bush, has been hired by BCS officials to help remodel the tattered image of college football’s postseason system.
[...]
[New BCS executive director Bill] Hancock said in a statement the goal of the hiring was to help highlight the positive aspects of the BCS, which he called the best way to match college football’s top two teams, while preserving the bowl system.

It might seem slightly counterintuitive to hire the spokesman of an administration that ended in a state somewhat below "tattered" to un-tatter an unpopular system that's come under more and more fire each successive year of its existence. Let's not forget, though, what a public relations ninja Fleischer was in his days in the White House -- here, after all, was an ordinary-looking man who frequently bickered with members of the press corps, who once suggested publicly that citizens should "watch what they say, watch what they do," and who said adding additional information to the "mountain of evidence" that Saddam Hussein had accumulated and was planning to use weapons of mass destruction "is like adding a foot to Mount Everest" ... and who basically won. Fleischer was integral in selling the war in Iraq, and he was smart enough to exit the building before it self-destructed soon after.

So if anyone is equipped to deal with a few grandstanding Congressmen, a nascent playoff lobby and even a playoff-stumping president, it's one of the very few guys who got out of the Bush years relatively unscathed. And if Fleischer's firm is partially responsible for keeping Major League Baseball's head above water over the last few years, too, maybe there's some hope for the Series yet. I know I'm starting to like it more already.