John Cooper will have his contract "purchased" by Ohio State and he will no longer be employed there as the football coach. He has been in Columbus for 13 years and his tenure there has been anything but quiet and peaceful. His record in bowl games is now 3-8 which is bad enough; but at Ohio State, you expect the number of years coaching at the school to equal the number of wins and losses in bowl games. Last year, the team broke even and this year they did manage to get to a bowl game despite a late season slump. But they got toasted on national TV by South Carolina - a team that was winless last year. And that kinda put the final nail in the icing on Cooper's cake… I wonder if he knows Pepper Rodgers?

In recent offerings here, I have suggested that Art Modell rub Danny Boy's nose in this season by inviting him to a playoff game as Art's guest. I don't want you to think that I hold Art Modell in any great esteem and to demonstrate that fact, let me relay to you a quotation ascribed to Messr. Modell He was talking about the events surrounding his taking his team from Cleveland to Baltimore…

"We had to leave precipitously. I left my colors, my name and my legacy for the people of Cleveland."

Every once in a while, you see a statistic that tends to explain a lot of what you had been seeing in a season. The Chargers were 1-15 last season and they had were at "minus 28" in the turnover differential. By the way, here we will refer to this as a turnover differential since you are adding and subtracting the numbers; we will not refer to it as a "turnover ratio" where you would need to divide one number by another. Around here, we try to make sports safe for people who live their lives under the right hand side of the bell curve.

The Chargers are supposedly set to hire John Butler as GM. Butler was the guy fired by Bills' owner, Ralph Wilson; Butler is generally credited with building the Bills through the draft and keeping them competitive. According to one of the TV talking heads, the issue that led to Butler's firing was that he wanted a 5 year contract extension and Wilson only wanted to give him a 3 year extension. Sounds strange to me; seems if that was the only issue there was a natural place for these guys to have settled…

The Bills are supposedly going to hire Tom Donohue as their GM. Donohue was the guy who lost out in a "power struggle" with Bill Cowher in Pittsburgh and spent last year writing football commentary for an ESPN website. He too is credited with being an astute student of the draft and building a team in that way. If he gets the job, his first big decision will be the future of Wade Phillips and my advice to him is to fire his ass and to be sure that he takes no calls from Kevin Gilbride or anyone who ever sent a Christmas card to Kevin Gilbride.

The Rams fired 3 of their defensive coaches and their special teams coach yesterday. The Rams gave up 30 points a game which is the worst scoring defense in the history of the NFL so someone had to take a fall over that. The Broncos defense which gave up a lot of points and which had some nightmarishly bad days - like the game against Cincy where Corey Dillon ran for an NFL record yardage and they gave up over 350 yards rushing - lost its defensive coordinator yesterday too. One difference in these two cases is that Greg Robinson had been the defensive coordinator on the two Bronco Super Bowl teams where the defense was an important contributor to those championships. In St. Louis last year when they won it all, the defense was not terrible, but it was the offense that carried the team.

Oh, yeah. The Arizona Cardinals fired their offensive coordinator, Marc Trestman, along with three other offensive coaches. Somehow this team manages to find ways to get itself over the salary cap with players that are only marginally talented and to use that situation to massacre coaching careers. Arizona is the elephants' graveyard for coaches.

Dallas papers say that Troy Aikman wants to come back and play at least one more year for the Cowboys. Friends and his new wife are advising him against that move, but it is still up in the air.

The Charlotte Hornets need to look at an important statistic soon. In their first 30 games this year, they were 18-4 when Derrick Coleman did not play and they were 2-6 when he did play. In a game on New Years Day, Derrick played 24 minutes and scored 7 points; he was 1-9 from the field and committed 3 turnovers. Derrick is overweight and out of shape but he manages to make up for at least some of that by being an annoying presence in the locker room and a negative force for team unity. Derrick plus Shawn Kemp plus Vin Baker would make a front court that could be nicknamed "The Devil's Trifecta."

What happened to Ron Artest in Chicago? He was a first round pick out of St. Johns and looked like someone who could be a solid player if not a star. His minutes are dwindling and his scoring and rebounding are dropping even faster. Last night, he played only 11 minutes and was 0-6 from the field scoring zero points and taking down only 1 rebound. Very strange…

The Atlanta Hawks have begun to play much better than they started out. They are now 11-20 after beginning the season 2-13. Amazingly, they are in the playoff picture with that record because the Eastern Conference has a lot of mediocre and marginal teams in it. If the playoffs started now, the Hawks would not make it, but they would miss out by only 3 games. Look at the standings in the east and you will see that all of the teams with less than 18 wins at this stage of the season have serious limitations and lots of potential to unravel like a $10 suit coat.

I know that I was on the edge of my seat waiting to hear when the rematch for the WBA Heavyweight title would be. I can now sleep well because it was announced that Evander Holyfield will meet Johnny Ruiz in this mandatory rematch on 3 March in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. If you remember the first fight between these two, then you have much too much time on your hands; you need to take up a hobby - maybe lawn mowing in Yellowstone Park.

Rick Majerus was hospitalized with chest pains and there was a bit of concern because Rick has had some heart problems in the past. He underwent 4.5 hours of heart "procedures" to unblock a couple of coronary arteries and to insert stents. Maybe he would be well advised to go on a crash diet and lose about 100 pounds just to get down to the "Derrick Coleman class". If Rick does not watch out, they will need to construct a suspension bridge just to span his butt crack.

Finally, here is your hunch bet of the day from Laurel Racecourse. Like Sesame Street, this hunch bet is brought to you by the letter "S":

The Seventh race is a Starter Allowance at a mile and a Sixteenth. In the Superfecta you can box:
Summer Squeal
Saraston
Sir Richardwinalot
Slick Silver