• The last day of Phil Fulmer. The outgoing boss choked up frequenty in his farewell press conference Monday, in front of a tense, absolutely packed conference room with miffed players standing to the side, cheering their coach and openly heckling athletic director Mike Hamilton. It's a wonder Fulmer made it through the spiel without losing it.

Linebacker Ellix Wilson told reporters the players heard the news via ESPN, which is kind of a sucker punch, and all-universe safety Eric Berry got Biblical, saying it felt like he'd lost a rib, or like somebody died. Lineman Vladimir Richard -- surely the only black man in the world named 'Vladimir' -- told reporters, "Coach Fulmer's always gonna be my coach."

Unless Richard is quitting football before his senior year, though, no, he won't be. There's no successor waiting in the wings like Fulmer was for Johnny Majors in 1992 (somebody get Majors' thoughts on his protege's $6 million buyout, please), and not many names floating around. There's the de facto list floating around for every job that comes open -- Mike Leach, Will Muschamp, Lane Kiffin, Gary Patterson, Butch Davis -- and of that group, as much as Vol fans would love to get them some of that West Texas pirate passin' magic, the name with the most immediate traction on the message boards seems to be Kiffin. Whatever that's worth.

If there was any question, here's one name you'll never see in that particular shade of orange: Steve Spurrier. The Ball Coach shot down the inevitable question in a hurry, and congratulated his old rival on hitting the lottery:

"I don’t know whether to feel sorry for coach or congratulate him for the biggest buyout in the history of college football. He got the best deal ever, I think."

Things are better between Spurrier and Fulmer these days than during Florida's run of dominan in the nineties, as Steve says, because South Carolina "can't score 50 on anybody." There's nothing else behind their civility, really, though it turns out 27 points will do the trick, too, under the right circumstances.

• On to a more secure coach, if you can believe that. It's hard to get a firm handle on Pittsburgh, which has spent the first two-thirds of the season oscillating between impressive efforts at South Florida and Notre Dame and awful losses to Bowling Green and Rutgers. But this much is clear: If the Panthers win their last four games, they're going to the BCS. West Virginia's in the same boat at 3-0 in the conference, and UConn is lurking, too, tied with Pitt at 2-1. Let the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette untangle the Panthers' route to the Big East title:

... Pitt is in a tie with Cincinnati (6-2, 2-1) in second place in the Big East, one game behind West Virginia (6-2, 3-0); the Panthers play both the Bearcats and the Mountaineers later this month. If the Panthers win both games as well as those against Louisville (5-3, 1-2) and Connecticut (6-3, 2-2), they'd finish in no worse than a first-place tie with the Mountaineers. They would own the tiebreaker.

Translation: The Pitt-West Virginia finale in Pittsburgh could have major, million-dollar stakes. So does that mean it's about time for the Wannstedteers to drop four in a row?

Quickly ... Kafka is the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week, which he finds unbearably jejune. ... Texas is sending the Big 12 a tape of questionable calls in its loss to Texas Tech. This is a fairly regular practice, by the way. I just wonder if the tape will include the obvious block in the back flag the officials picked up on Jordan Shipley's punt return that began the Horns' second half comeback. ... Oklahoma defensive end Auston English might miss the next two games, including Texas Tech, with a bum knee. ... Georgia Tech's best lineman, Andrew Gardner, could be lost for the year with a dreaded torn labrum. ... The wonders of modern medicine: USC's Kevin Ellison might be in the lineup for Cal less than a week after knee surgery. ... Don't expect Bronco Mendenhall or Kyle Whittingham to look for a way out of Utah as the coaching carousel turns this winter. ... And Hawaii's spending the week before its game at New Mexico State in the West Texas town of El Paso, so you know what that means: We're driving to Mexico! Uh, not so fast, guys.