Quite the firestorm created today by a post on a Marshall message board that claimed Liberty’s Danny Rocco would be named the Herd’s football coach today. First off, no one was named the Herd’s coach today. Second off, the Herd’s top candidates are reported to be former MU coach Bob Pruett and current Central Michigan coach Butch Jones. Jones is still coaching, as his CMU Chippewas are in the MAC championship game Friday against Ohio, so he hasn’t even talked to the Herd yet. No decision was going to be made today anyway.

Reached via text message, Rocco said “no comment” to rumors that he was interested in the Marshall job, and added “that’s not happening” when asked if he was going to be named MU’s coach Thursday.

So there you go. I stumbled upon a Web site called “FootballCoachScoop.com” today. Reading through it, the blog seems rather reputable, as it seems to nail a lot of stuff before it happens. If you scroll through the entire site, Rocco’s name isn’t mentioned once, not in regard to Marshall or any other school.

Look, I’m not naive. My gut feeling is that it would take a lot for Rocco to leave Liberty at this point, both financially and in terms of school prestige. That doesn’t mean he won’t interview or talk to other schools. It’s part of the game at this level. Do I think Rocco will stay at LU forever? Of course not. He’s going to be a pretty attractive candidate for an ACC school some day with his track record and experience coaching at all levels of the game.

It’s not in his best interest, though, to comment about specific job openings, or for that matter, to make some sort of proclamation that he’s going to be at Liberty for a set period of time. For one, he’s under contract at LU for another three seasons, and it doesn’t look good to your employer if you’re publicly speaking about other jobs while under contract at your current job. There’s a reason why coaching searches are so hush-hush. Athletics directors don’t like to speak publicly about the process until they get to a clearly defined set of candidates (a short list, if you will). It’s close to impossible to get people to speak on the record about coaching searches, because those close to the situations are told not to talk to the media. That’s why there’s a lot of stories that contain the words “sources say.“ I can’t run with “sources say,“ because our parent company, Media General, has a policy against using anonymous sources. And for good reason. Anonymous sources are notoriously unreliable, and as a newspaper reporter, I’d rather deal in truths rather than rumors. I want you, the reader, to be able to trust that when I say someone has taken a job, that he has indeed taken the job.

Anyway, enough of that rambling. I’ll just say this. Don’t be surprised at all to see Rocco’s name tied to other searches, maybe even the Marshall search. It’s part of the game, and part of the price for having a successful coach at an FCS school.

One other quick football note:

* Hofstra dropping football today was a pretty big shock. In recent years, a lot of FCS teams in the tri-state area have done away with the sport—Fairfield, St. Peter’s, St. John’s and now Hofstra. For as nice as Stony Brook’s facilities were, I was a little shocked that a good chunk of the stadium was empty for what was essentially a conference championship game a couple of weeks ago. No excuses, either. It was a 50-degree, sunny day in mid-November. Long Islanders apparently just don’t really care too much about college football.

The CAA will likely play as just one division next year with 10 teams (nine if Rhode Island, as rumored, joins the CAA football dump party). That would mean every team would miss one team in conference play, as used to be the case in the Pac-10 before that league expanded its schedule to a true, nine-game round robin. As for the long term implications, it’s anybody’s guess. But you’d have to think that Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine will get pretty lonely as associate CAA members well away from the heart of the league. Maybe that northeastern FCS conference idea gains some more legs now. Stay tuned.

Moving on to hoops ...

* Tonight’s starting lineups:

CHARLESTON SOUTHERN (4-2, 0-0 Big South)

G Jamarco Warren (15.3 ppg, 3.0 rpg)
G Jeremy Sexton (9.2/3.3)
F Kelvin Martin (13.7/8.3)
F Kenny Mitchell (5.8/4.8)
C Quinton Goods (4.3/4.8)

LIBERTY (3-5, 0-0 Big South)
G Jesse Sanders (6.9/5.8)
G Evan Gordon (7.8/4.3)
G/F Kyle Ohman (15.3/5.8)
F Patrick Konan (7.1/4.6)
C Carter McMasters (4.0/4.4)

* OK, so the last time we saw the Flames in Lynchburg, they were getting waxed by far superior opponents—Clemson and Old Dominion. It was clear that this team was not ready for that sort of challenge yet. By the time they faced some like competition on the back end of the Chicago Invitational Challenge (Mississippi Valley State and Tennessee State), they looked better and won a couple of games. Liberty comes home with some confidence against a Charleston Southern team that’s playing well early in the season. CSU got plowed at Maryland in its opener (not surprising) and hung with a mediocre Air Force team in Colorado Springs (somewhat surprising).

* CSU is coming off a 70-rebound performance against Toccoa Falls Monday. Still trying to figure out exactly what a Toccoa Falls is. Probably the same thing as a Shawnee State.

* I like the switch to the Thursday-Saturday schedule in the Big South for purely selfish reasons. I think it’s better for fans, too, as it’s probably easier to find a way to get to a Thursday night game than it is a Monday night game. This league used to schedule games without any real pattern—random Tuesday and Wednesday games along with the Saturday and Monday games. The set schedule levels the playing field in terms of scouting and preparation. Now that the league has natural travel partners—Winthrop-Presbyterian; Coastal-CSU; Liberty-High Point; Garnder-Webb-UNCA; Radford-VMI—the new schedule makes even more sense.

* CSU’s Jeremy Sexton has scored in double figures twice this season—both times against non-Division I teams.

* CSU’s Jamarco Warren has hit at least three 3-pointers in each of his last three games, including a 4-for-7 showing against Toccoa Falls.

* Maybe 1,500 fans here about eight minutes before tipoff.

That’s all for now.