Getting Draft Ready: The Western Refining Bowl

We tuned into a college football all-star game over the weekend. Maybe you've heard of it: The "Western Refining Texas v. The Nation" game.

No? Don't feel badly, we'd never heard of it, watched it, and we're still not sure it's an actual game. To give you some idea of who played in this game, Scott Wright made an appearance at halftime (via telephone) and his estimation is that the #1 prospect who played in the game was Xavier Omon, a running back out of Northwest Missouri State.

Mr. Wright believes that Mr. Omon "could go as high as the fifth round."

So this is a second-tier game, and for that you might want to give some second-tier coaches some exposure, right?

No, what you'd want to do is get Gene Stallings (who's last coaching job was with Alabama in 1996) and Buddy Ryan (who's last coaching job was with the Arizona Cardinals in 1995). But Buddy Ryan provided what was the highlight of the game (we've been scouring the internet for video, and could find none): coming off the field at halftime, in response to a reporter's question summarized his team's performance this way:

"We gotta' quit dropping the ball, we gotta' catch something . . . We had a couple of guys mixed up on coverage . . . they turned a guy loose with nobody on him . . . we gotta' get the ball back and give our offense a chance. The first quarterback we had was a goddamned disaster."

We didn't censor that because CSTV, which was broadcasting the game, didn't censor that.

The young man of whom the crusty, old coach referred was Blake Mitchell of South Carolina. To be honest, we're not sure that Mr. Mitchell was any worse than any other quarterback who played in the game, but he sure did get under the skin of Rex and Ryan's dad.

And to show that it may not have been anything personal about Mr. Mitchell, here is a "highlight" from last season's "Western Refining" game.