In the immediate aftermath of Derek Dooley finally, officially, being announced as Tennessee’s for-the-love-of-God-please-put-them-and-us-out-of-our-misery successor to Lane Kiffin, one of the first names to crop up as a replacement for Dooley at Louisiana Tech was Gus Malzahn.
If that’s going to happen, it’s being done in a round-a-'bout kind of way.
According to Auburn head coach Gene Chizik, he has not heard from anyone connected to Tech expressing an official interest in his offensive coordinator. Not that the no-contact news means anything, especially in this day and age, but Chizik seems confident that Malzahn will return in 2010.
“My goal is to keep our coaching staff intact,” Chizik said according to the Birmingham News. “I expect to be able to do that. There’s been no official contact from Louisiana Tech to our department. ...
“Everybody understands how they [sic] rumor mill starts. There are a lot of things out there that people know that aren’t necessarily fact. Those things are going to continue to happen. We can’t control those things.”
With that being said, and given how this week has gone, I fully expect to publish this post and, within five minutes, see an email with the subject line of “Malzahn new Bulldogs coach.”
I am prepared, though.