Before making his fourth move in five years, Dana Holgorsen needed a little convincing. West Virginia had contacted the Oklahoma State offensive coordinator and expressed interest in grooming him to be its next head coach. But prior to any commitments, Holgorsen wanted to see what it was his new home had to offer. So in late fall of 2010, he boarded a plane for Pittsburgh, where he was met by WVU athletic director Oliver Luck. And on they went, the 75 miles south to Morgantown.

Holgorsen’s first request was to see WVU’s indoor practice area, an amenity Oklahoma State had yet to add. The tour moved through the football facilities, and it was there, walking past photos of that year’s team, that Oliver Luck first mentioned Tavon Austin. “One of the first things Oliver did when he walked me through the building was point to a picture of Tavon Austin and say, ‘You need to get that guy the ball as much as you possibly can,’” Holgorsen recalls. “[Tavon] certainly was not shy about wanting the ball, and we certainly weren’t shy about giving it to him.”

During two seasons in Holgorsen’s offense, Austin got the ball plenty — 303 times, an average of more than 11.5 touches per game. As a senior, he caught 114 passes for 1,289 yards. He added another 643 yards rushing, on 8.9 yards per carry. Including kick returns, Austin hit the end zone 17 times. He was, along with USC’s Marqise Lee, one of the two most electric players in college football.

In case you were busy explaining to your family that you aren't a "doomsday prepper," you're just ready for anything, here's what you missed in sports on Monday.

• Tiger Woods secured his first victory of 2013, easing to a four shot win at the Farmers Open at Torrey Pines. "Winning big tournaments — nothing's better. This is the best feeling in the world," Woods said, before snapping a rubber band on his wrist really, really hard. "Yup, no feeling in the world is better than this one."

1. Jadeveon Clowney
Until the year 2013, if you had asked me to cite off the top of my head the greatest defensive play in college football’s recent annals, I might have noted this, or made a blatantly homerish reference to this. But that era has ended, because I have been told by a seismographer of questionable repute that Jadeveon Clowney’s hit during yesterday’s Outback Bowl actually triggered a minor aftershock at the breakfast buffet of a Shoney’s in St. Petersburg.

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.

• Ryan Vogelsong struck out a career-high nine batters through seven dominant innings as the Giants beat the Cardinals 6-1 to force a deciding Game 7 in the NLCS. Vogelsong's name literally means "birdsong" in German, which is kinda funny when you consider they were playing the Cardinals. But it's less funny when you learn that "Vogelsong" is a German euphemism for killing birds with poisoned food pellets. Ugh, Germany. Ugh. That's just classic you.

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.

• The Detroit Tigers took a 2-0 lead on the Yankees in the ALCS with a 3-0 win on Sunday after Derek Jeter suffered a season-ending ankle fracture during Saturday's loss. "As horrible as the pain was, I noticed it made Nick Swisher stop grinning for a second," said Jeter. "So, you know, it's a wash. The whole thing is a wash, because as much as I hate — as we all hate — Nick Swisher, he's so much more despicable when he grins like a buffoon, which is always. Seriously, I'll pay anyone $500 if they can find a photo of him where he's not smiling in a way that makes you want to slap him. So for, like, three seconds after I went down, he was just this annoying idiot with stupid sideburns who can't hit or field but who, for once in his obnoxious life, wasn't grinning. If I had to fracture my ankle to make that possible, then I guess I'm some kind of martyr. I'm Saint Derek, and all my apostles are guys who can't hit a curve."

I'm not sure the world is ready to handle too much serious discussion about Duke football, so I'll make this quick. All I ask is that you look at these rankings. OK, not at the rankings themselves; look a little lower, the "also receiving votes" section. Where the real teams hang. See that team with three votes in the AP poll, and 10 votes in the USA Today poll? Ranked 36th and 34th, respectively? That, my friends, is the pride of Durham, going places where they're not known or expected or wanted. Or invited.

How can I communicate the strangeness of seeing them on that list? How incredibly weird this feels for Duke football fans? Imagine if Paul Ryan showed up at tonight's debate wearing a Phish bandanna and a Grateful Dead poncho, and insisted on coming out to the sunshine part from that "Age of Aquarius" song. (I'm not even sure they make Grateful Dead ponchos anymore, and the ESPN research people get mad when you make that kind of request, so you'll just have to picture it.) That's how unlikely this feels. Everything is clicking with a backup quarterback named Anthony Boone, and if they beat Virginia Tech in Blacksburg this weekend, there's even a chance they could be ranked for the first time since 1994. At that point, I would start buying canned goods and digging some kind of apocalypse tunnel that would almost certainly collapse on itself within an hour or two.

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.

• Matt Kenseth managed to avoid a 25-car pileup on his way to earning a Sprint Cup victory at Talladega Superspeedway. Kyle Busch, car No. 25 in the pileup, later admitted that he drove in mostly because he "wanted to see what it was like." The only non-car in the pileup, Rex Ryan, said he heard there were free pastries.

I'm running a college football pool this year, and the format is pretty basic: Each week, the 18 players pick 10 games against the spread. Our goal is to have all the high-profile games represented, and to avoid spreads higher than 30 points. Simple.

We're five weeks in, which means each of us has picked the results of 50 games. If you flipped a coin, you'd expect to get 25 of them right. As college football fans, we don't flip a coin; we resort to our deep knowledge of the game, past results, statistics, injury reports, and various other minutiae. And yet, our current leader has 26 points. I'm in second place, with three others, at 25, and everyone else is below the .500 mark.

Is that normal, or are we just really bad at picking football games? It seems like in a group that large, somebody would have to do well, if only by luck. The league average is 4.22 points per week, and again, only one person has actually been successful. It blows my mind. I think the story that best represents our pool came from Week 1, when a gal nailed nine of 10 games to take the weekly prize. The next week, after I sent out the e-mail with the week's picks, her response was hilarious and infuriating all at once: "Guys, I have no idea how to pick against a spread."

In other words, she thought she was just picking the winner in Week 1. Nine of 10. Agony.

While agonizing over the possibility of a second straight Alabama-LSU title game, I think I came up with the worst thing about their horrible dominance: as a neutral college football fan, you have to pick a favorite.

Well, let me qualify that. A person like me, who is incapable of watching a sporting event of any kind (including youth Frisbee) without vilifying one team and venerating the other, needs to pick a favorite. Believe me, that is a hateful, torturous task in this world of Tigers and Tide. Anyone with a semblance of love for the amateur unpredictability of college football probably despises these two programs. They are the evil empire, magnified by a power of two. While the rest of us stand by and watch, helpless, Les Miles and Nick Saban have created near-professional super-teams in a non-professional sport, slowly sucking the competitive life out of the game.

We asked Mark Titus for five predictions before Thursday's March Madness games. Here's what he had to say about tonight's matchups …

Half of last year’s Final Four will lose
This year, the most popular 12-over-5 pick seems to be VCU over Wichita State. This might be partially because people don’t know how good Wichita State is, since they haven’t seen the Shockers play. But most likely, it's because of VCU’s run to the Final Four as an 11-seed last year. My guess is that a lot of people figured if the Rams could make it deep into the tournament a season ago, there’s no reason that they can’t win a couple of games this year.

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.

• Albert Pujols objected to billboards in the Los Angeles area calling him "El Hombre." The words mean "the man," and Pujols would rather not use that nickname in deference to Cardinals legend Stan "The Man" Musial. The Angels quickly agreed, and had the billboards replaced with new ones that read: "Albert Pujols: Mejor que Stan Musial, el gran estupido!"
• Derrick Rose told reporters that he never asked Bulls management to trade Carlos Boozer for Pau Gasol, and that all rumors to that effect are untrue. "I did ask them to trade Boozer for silks and spices," Rose told a baffled media, "but that was less about Boozer and more about my insatiable appetite for frankincense. If I close my eyes, I can smell it now, and I'm in heaven."

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.

• Linside the Air Canada Centre lin Toronto, the lindomitable Jeremy Lin linitiated the offense. Raptors defender Jose Calderon had a linkling — lindeed, a lincredibly strong linference — that a linstantaneous drive was linevitable. "He's not so linventive," Calderon linsisted, linternalizing his lincessant doubt. Linstead, Lin lincapacitated the linattentive Calderon with a lintrepid game-winning 3-pointer. "Linsubordinate lincorrigible lingrate!" a lincensed Amar'e Stoudemire linsisted, lindulging in linvective and linnuendo. "How linteresting!" linterjected the linoffensive Canadians. "Linspired!" Coach Mike D'Antoni lintimated to his lintermediaries. "A LINCANDESCENT, LINVIGORATING SHOT TO LINVOKE GHOSTS, LINCITE RIOTS, AND LINFLAME THE MASSES!" shouted the announcer, and everyone was like, whoa, dude, enough.

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.

• Novak Djokovic outlasted Rafael Nadal in the longest Australian Open championship in history, winning in five sets to capture his third straight Grand Slam victory. After the final point, Djokovic ripped off his shirt and pounded his chest as he screamed in the direction of his family. "I just wanted to make sure the crowd still despised me," he explained. "It was getting dicey after that inspiring victory."

• Despite holding a third-round lead, Tiger Woods faltered to finish third in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, losing to British golfer Robert Rock. Following the loss, Tiger Woods could be seen at a pay phone near the clubhouse, saying, "Elin, accept charges, it's me … I'm going to be a little short this month, hon … sorry, sorry. I won't call you that. Sorry."