It's a pitched battle between the third- and sixth-place teams in C-USA's East Division, and what may be the finest Tuesday night football game the city of Memphis will see this year. Why we're tuning in, completely without irony, to tonight's East Carolina-Memphis tilt:

Hot Holtz-on-Holtz ack-shun!
Brace yourselves: Lou Holtz is part of the broadcast team for this game. This game, which features a team coached by Lou-spawn Skip Holtz. The current incarnation of East Carolina is a pale shadow of the merry band of media darlings that beat two ranked teams to open last season and finished as C-USA champions, with an inexplicable loss to SMU under its bandolier already. But something tells us Sweet Lou will find some sweet nothings to mumble about his son's boys in purple. (We give it two and a half quarters before Rece Davis breaks down on air and openly wonders of whose god he ran afoul to find himself stuck in a press box on a Tuesday night in Memphis between an excessively doting Holtz and Mark May, just being his normal self.)

Dead administration walking.
Remember that time Tommy West was utterly and completely fired? The "Dean of Conference USA" is, to put it charitably, dunzo. In eight full seasons as head coach at Memphis, the high-water mark was a nine-win campaign with D'Angelo Williams shredding records back in 2003. Now, with the Tigers' only wins coming at the expense of I-AA Tennessee-Martin and UTEP (and really, who knows what to do with UTEP at this point?), local columnists are calling West a "nice guy" while shopping for replacement candidates, casting doubt on the future of his regime even on the heels of a win, and the Tigers will be lining up without the services of promising quarterback Tyler Bass for the balance of the season. Memphis can still salvage a winning record if it wins out, but with Tennessee, Houston and Tulsa still to come, winning out is a simple impossibility.

Those plucky pirates!
What manner of college student will travel across state lines in full pirate regalia to cheer on his 4-3 team on a Tuesday night? The crowd shots in the stands will tell us. And keep an eye out on the ECU jerseys for perhaps the greatest moniker in football, walk-on linebacker Dustin Lineback, whose fate in life was basically sealed in the womb. Yes, that is his real name, and no, we have no idea why a healthy, eligible human named 'Lineback' is not on scholarship with credentials like that.

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East Carolina and Memphis kick off at 8 p.m. Eastern on ESPN2. Holly welcomes your adulation and veiled threats at nastinchka-at-yahoo, etc.