The ones who are in your living room recruiting your children. They’ll promise you that they’ll be his coach for four years, only to go running off to the Seattle Seahawks or USC Trojans at the first opportunity.

Lane Kiffin, one season at Tennessee? Really?

Hey, are we surprised? In many ways, I don’t blame those coaches. It’s a nasty system where they monitor your graduation rates, yet even if they’re terrific, they’ll fire you in a heartbeat if you don’t win enough games.

Meanwhile, your child doesn’t have the option of switching programs when the coach leaves for greener pastures. He or she is stuck. Seriously stuck. It makes no sense to me. When the coach goes, free the recruits — let them go, too. But you might also sign that coach to a huge buyout agreement when you bring him on board.

All of this is why I find Brandon Jennings so refreshing. The point guard will be in the Rose Garden tonight with his Milwaukee Bucks. He’s the one, you recall, who went to Europe last year, rather than play as a college freshman. He had a rough season abroad, too — struggling for playing time under a demanding coach who made him pay his dues.

But the practice time and overall experience he got there were invaluable. Just the No. 10 pick in the draft, Jennings has already had a 55-point game and is one of the top rookies in the league. And oh, by the way, he earned a couple of million bucks last season.

Which is probably quite a bit more than some of the top college basketball programs could have paid him. But I’m not sure about that.

Sorry, I’ve gotten so cynical about Division I college sports these days that I just can’t help but make remarks like that.

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… And I think the Trojans are definitely after him… He ought to wait for a few seasons. I have the feeling the next guy to coach football down there will be doing so under some real hardships.

First off, there are likely going to be sanctions against the Trojans. The whole Reggie Bush saga is going to cost them some sort of NCAA action. And reportedly recruits are already jumping ship in anticipation of Pete Carroll going to the Seahawks — and a possible NCAA probation.

On top of that, following someone into a coaching job who has been as successful as Carroll is always difficult. He’s going to be a tough act to follow — even if he is leaving one step ahead of the NCAA enforcement division.

(By the way, I hate that about college sports. These guys in football and basketball get their program on probation, then pull up stakes and go somewhere else, leaving the mess behind. There ought to be contract clauses that heavily financially penalize coaches who do that — like about $5 million).

Anyway, Mike. You’ve got all you want in Corvallis. And when they start flashing that bankroll at you at USC, just remember how much further your money goes up here than it will in southern California. And if you really want to go, just hang out a few more years until the next guy gets fired.

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The way I understand the whole thing, if Oregon wins its games leading up to the Civil War, if the Beavers do, if Stanford wins out and if USC beats Arizona — and all of these things are possible, if not quite probable –  it would leave Oregon State and Oregon fighting for that berth in the game.

If OSU then beats Oregon, the Ducks, Beavers and Cardinal would be tied for the top spot in the conference, with Oregon State getting the tiebreaker based on wins over both those teams. The Ducks are the only team in control of their own destiny, however. If they win out, they go.

But unfortunately for Oregon, if it loses even one of its remaining games, it probably won’t go. The Ducks won’t fare well in the tiebreakers.

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I was impressed this morning on ESPN radio to hear that network’s Ivan Maisel say he thought the Pac-10 is on a par with the SEC this season. That helps Oregon a bit because I’m afraid Colin Cowherd is correct when he says that around the country, when people see USC lose a conference game, the first reaction is that, well, the Trojans are down a little.

It’s never that someone else in the conference is simply better.

That’s something the Ducks are trying to fight. I think the Trojans ARE down a little. But come on, Oregon is good. And if that conference is ever going to consistently get teams into the BCS title game that aren’t named USC, it’s going to take some national recognition of the strength of the Pac-10.

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Not totally sure they will, but they should. Why? I mean, after all they were beaten by the Broncos on opening night of the season.

Well, several things in this ridiculous system work in Oregon’s favor. It’s a cliche that with the BCS you want to lose early, if you’re going to lose. Teams have done it for years. And for many years, teams finish ahead of other teams they’ve lost games to.

If I’m voting in a poll right now, I put the Ducks ahead of Boise State. Why? Because right now they’re the better team. That’s what you have to consider when you’re voting.

Look, I said this at the time: Boise State is extremely well coached. This team can get ready to play anyone in the country for one game. But take them out of that weak conference, put them in a real conference where they’d have to play a tough opponent every week and they’d lose two or three games every season.

And yes, by jumping Oregon ahead of Boise State, you’d also create inequities in some people’s eyes that might help, eventually, tear the corrupt system down.

Great performance by the Ducks last night. Great. Cannot imagine what they’re going through right now down at USC. That was just not a Trojan team, was it? Ducks made them look like a WAC team.

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I just haven’t bought into the whole Huskies-are-back thing this season. Sure, they’re better. But come on, they didn’t beat USC in that game — USC beat USC. Washington was incredibly lucky with the Southern Cal injury situation and the way the game went. It was nothing like the Oregon State upset over the Trojans last season, where the Beavers pushed USC all over Reser Stadium.

The Huskies won another fluke game, beating Arizona when the ball bounced off some guy’s foot.

So, on the one hand I firmly believe Oregon is the better team, on the other, Washington is having one of those seasons where everything just seems to fall in its lap. And with EPSN’s Game Day probably scheduled to hit Eugene next weekend for the USC game if all goes well this weekend, it’s always the sort of game where the Ducks are vulnerable.

But come on, Oregon is just better. It shouldn’t be close — let’s say two touchdowns, at least.

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I’m sure most of the other schools in the Pac-10 would like to see USC beaten out of a Rose Bowl berth. Everyone loves an underdog and seriously, Oregon State, by winning, would stand as a symbol to other schools in the conference that, yes, it CAN be done on a smaller budget.

But that’s a chump-change reason to root for OSU compared to this – there is a lot of money riding on a Beaver win. BCS bowls come with a very big payout. And the Beavers are the Pac-10′s last hope of getting two teams in BCS bowls this season. The Trojans should grab one of those berths, even if they don’t go to the Rose Bowl. Oregon State would sneak in by virtue of its Rose Bowl berth. But if the Beavers lose to the Ducks, there’s not another BCS team in the conference.

What does that mean in a conference where bowl payouts are divided equally? Near as I can tell, it’s more than $1.5 million per university riding on an OSU win Saturday in Corvallis. BCS bowl payouts are about $17 million. And when you get down to it, if the Ducks win the game they’ll cost themselves a million and a half bucks!

Not that they care.

And yes, even in the high-stakes world of college football, $1.5 million accounts for a lot of video games and plasma screens in your locker room.

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A while back I wrote about cause and effect and what it has to do with Oregon’s quarterback situation. But still, I’d always thought the Ducks did a decent job of getting their signal callers ready to play.

Until Saturday afternoon. Wow — did the coaching staff really think Oregon was so much better than Boise State that it could slide through the game by just lining up and shoving the ball down the Broncos’ throats? Forget about injuries to the quarterback, what in the world was Oregon’s game plan? If you really want to play smash-mouth football, get out of that spread offense, put a couple of tight ends on the field and hand it to a fullback 30 times. Otherwise, use the spread to get your receivers isolated in space and throw the ball up the field! Don’t bring a baseball bat to a tennis match.

That was an expensive mistake for the Ducks, who couldn’t afford a nonconference home loss. But neither starter Jeremiah Masoli nor backup Chris Harper seemed capable of making anything but the most elemental of throws and while they were in the game, the capable Oregon receiving corps was totally wasted. Sure the fourth-quarter comeback behind Darron Thomas (finally, a quarterback who can throw!) was nice but for most of the day, that was a very ugly Duck effort.

And speaking of ugly efforts, my goodness — wasn’t Portland State-Washington State one of the worst games ever played? I realize the Vikings need every penny but $225,000 wasn’t enough to justify that whipping against the worst team in one of the worst major conferences in the country. Honestly, I think there are Big Sky teams that could give the Cougars a go — but not PSU. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Mouse Davis quarterbacks look so inept.

By the way, this just in — the Pac-10 stinks. And after a full season of playing in the Pac-10, USC will be hard-pressed to keep its edge for the BCS playoff to come.

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