Anyone remember this?

“I don’t understand it,” Jack Swarbrick said as a new round of conference hopping in college athletics moved into high gear Sunday. “How do you vote as a collegiate president on something that has the potential to provide some benefit for your institution and the conference you’re affiliated with but has a very negative consequence for a host of other members of the academy, as presidents like to call it?

“I’d like to know how much of these discussions are: What’s right? What is the best thing for the larger enterprise, and how many other schools would be adversely impacted?

“I just don’t know that that’s happening.”

Yes, the ND AD complaining about the selfish behavior of Pitt and Syracuse moving to the ACC. He and his institution are so far above such crass things. They would never make a move out of no where without giving their present partners a fair notice. Notre Dame’s president put his money-where-Swarbrick’s-mouth was. Why, Rev. Jenkins even headed up the Big East expansion committee. So you know they wouldn’t act against the best interests of the Big East while helping to make big decisions.

Oh, what’s that?

The University of Notre Dame accepted an invitation today (Sept. 12) to become a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in all sports except football.

That exception for football was even in the sub-headline of the press release, “Football to stay independent but will bring five games annually to ACC.”

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In Syracuse, Doug Marrone has a favorite word. That word: tremendous. He will apply it anything. Opportunities, potential of players, a dinner menu, a good pair of khakis, his thighs. Coach Paul Chryst is a man of few words, so it hasn’t been easy to crack the code to this point.

Here at Blather Labs, we have been parsing statements diligently to locate the “Word of Chryst.” This week, our research has yielded a potential hit.

The word appears to be: neat.

The O-line is doing a horrid job blocking? Well, that’s neat.

Pitt quarterback Tino Sunseri was sacked six times against Cincinnati, but coach Paul Chryst did not place all the blame on one player. “Certainly, the offensive line, you have five guys, and their job is to protect,” Chryst said. “We gave up one (sack) where we had both backs in there, and they both could have taken a hit off the quarterback. The quarterback has to get the ball out of his hands, and that means the receivers have to be precise in their routes. That’s one of the neat things about football. It takes all 11 guys, and that is a great example of it.”

How about the fact that the D-line can’t get any pressure up front? It’s sort of neat.

“One way is adding numbers to create pressure. Right now, it’s kind of neat that each week each team presents a little bit different challenge and you want to make sure you’re being smart with how you approach it,” Chryst said. “Certainly we pressured more in the Cincinnati game than we did the week before. We’re certainly looking at all different options and figuring out what’s best for Virginia Tech.”

Neat may not be the way you or I would describe disasters, but for Coach Chryst it’s all just a puzzle to solve.

Keep your eyes out for more examples of “neat” from Coach Chryst. Along with nifty, swell and even: keen.