I let this go yesterday, having already nodded to Mike Leach's refreshingly unprofessional tirade against Eric Mangini, which the Cap'n may or may not have fabricated out of thin (or or nearly thin) air. And as targets go, Stephen McGee, frankly, is low-hanging fruit for Leach, whose teams were 4-0 against Texas A&M during McGee's tenure, by an average margin of 22 points, and 2-0 against McGee as a starter. When Texas Tech traveled to College Station for a 43-25 win last year, McGee, a senior, was planted on the bench in favor of sophomore Jerrod Johnson for all but one pass. So when the Cap'n decided to sarcastically diss the pros for drafting McGee in the fourth round while allowing prolific Leach protegé Graham Harrell fall out of the draft completely --

"I'm happy for Stephen McGee," Texas Tech coach Mike Leach said. "The Dallas Cowboys like him more than his coaches at A&M did."

-- it struck me mainly as, you know, accurate. McGee spent the vast majority of his only season under Mike Sherman sitting behind the promising but very erratic Johnson, who started nine of the last 11 games between the opening loss to Arkansas State and the closing loss at Texas.

But it shouldn't be a surprise that Sherman doesn't necessarily see it that way. And -- unlike Mangini, who spends 22 hours a day watching game film in a high-tech cave burrowed into a seaside cliff in southern Maine, nourished by antioxidant-enriched intravenous sludge -- he proved willing today to defend his quarterback's besmirched honor, which is kinda what Leach was trying to do in the first place:

"I don't understand Coach Leach's comments about Stephen McGee," Sherman said Monday. "He was named our starter until he got injured. I've always believed in Stephen's character and I've always believed in his talent, and I always will. I see him having an outstanding NFL career.

"Coach Leach is in no position to comment about my relationship with Stephen McGee."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this seems more accurate: McGee, emerging from two mostly fruitless years as the primary runner in Dennis Franchione's option-based scheme, promptly injured his throwing shoulder early in the second game last year, at New Mexico, and re-injured it three weeks later against Army. Whether or not it accounted for his entire absence -- Aggie partisans were clamoring louder than ever for Johnson after the horrific start, and McGee's return to the lineup coincided with Johnson's four-interception meltdown in the humiliating blowout loss at Baylor -- the shoulder injury was well-chronicled. (As for Sherman's opinion of his quarterback's pro prospects, the effusive praise he offered to A&M's official game notes prior to the Texas game, in which the hilariously hot-headed QB was hounded and hit often in a 40-point TAMU loss, are a good record to have in this sort of argument.)

Still, if Leach's facts miss the mark, the general tenor of his smack is right on target -- I, for one, would really like to know the answer to this rhetorical question:

"There's been far more rhetoric around this than I ever would have expected," Leach said. ... "But based on all the fuss and commotion on this, I can’t help but wonder what round Coach Sherman would’ve drafted Stephen McGee, given the fact he was once a head coach in the NFL."

Every now and then -- not very often, but occasionally -- honesty can trump facts. (Although, when it does, the lawyer is usually on the other side.)