The silly season in American football is officially here. In the pro and college ranks.
I don't mean conference championship games.
I don't mean when coaches and players of NFL teams that are doomed to miss the playoffs start spewing into every pointed microphone that ol' last-ditch bromide: "All we're concerned about is just getting better today. Nothing else."
I also don't mean talk that Notre Dame might actually beat Alabama in the national-championship game. Really, c'mawn.
Rather, I mean the time of year when Jon Gruden's name somehow gets magically attached to almost every newly vacant, or soon-to-be vacant, high-profile coaching job in both the NFL and U.S. college ranks.
It's become as much a part of the cultural fabric of the end of November as newly frozen garden dirt, bored ticket-office personnel at Buffalo Bills HQ, and NHL lockouts.
You could probably crash Google if you dared to dig up all the instances since the late 1990s when Gru
