NCAA Football miami (oh) RedHawks

OXFORD, Ohio -- As is the custom around here, new buildings are smothered with red brick and molded into a Georgian style. Just like that, they stand as gracefully ancient as Miami University, celebrating its 200th year.

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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Ron Zook kept interrupting his storytelling with smiles and chuckles. Despite enough pressure around his fifth year as head football coach at the University of Illinois to tackle a Galloping Ghost (you know, as in Red Grange from the Illini's distant glory days), he was having a blast.

That's because, as Zook leaned forward on the couch inside his office near Memorial Stadium, he couldn't stop rattling off 35-something-year-old memories of Hepburn Hall, the most unusual of college dormitories.

"What game are they coming to?" said Zook, with wide eyes, looking across the way to his wife, Denise. After she replied, "Michigan State," he named some of the old Hepburn Hall gang and others that he invites to town every year. "About 20 of them," Zook said, before adding, "After the game, they come to my house, and it's a good time." Then he said with a little laugh, "They have a lot more fun than me."

Hey, it's always football season at FanHouse. Welcome to "Greetings From Flyover Country," a new weekly feature that will keep you up to date on Big Ten, Big 12, and MAC football. We'll also cover any Midwestern stories which have national repercussions, along with rounding up the week's arrests and suspensions.

We start this week with a decision bound to have people from San Ysidro to Bangor scratching their heads. Please give a moment's thought to the worst aspect of the last postseason. While the Big 12 championship was settled on the field, the Big 12 South championship wasn't. Instead, the conference gave the division title to Oklahoma, because they use the BCS rankings as a tiebreaker.

Miami of Ohio -- not to be confused with Miami Florida, which also has a black head coach in Randy Shannon -- has hired Notre Dame "offensive coordinator" Mike Haywood to run its program. He succeeds Shane Montgomery, who stepped down after a 2-10 season.

Color us a little confused if encouraged by this hire. Just today we wrote about Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis' continued decision to call plays for his offense instead of his, you know, offensive coordinator, who just so happened to be Haywood. It's very likely that speaks to Weis' own massive control demands, but it may also speak to Haywood's abilities. Regardless it's nice to see another black head coach among the ranks.

For a while, the prospects for minority head coaches in D-I-please-don't-call-it-the-Football-Bowl-Subdivision looked grim, as their numbers shrank when Washington canned Tyrone Willingham, Kansas State parted ways with Ron Prince, and Sylvester Croom stepped down at Mississippi State.

What has happened since has been a needed surge of black /minority coaching hires.

Another FBS head coach spot opened up on Saturday, as Steve Montgomery resigned at Miami University. The RedHawks completed a miserable 2-10 season this week with a home loss to Ohio.

"Shane Montgomery is an extraordinary person who has contributed to our department, university and community in exceptional ways," said Miami-Ohio athletic director Brad Bates. "Ultimately, however, our responsibility to Miami University is to maximize our students' development, and we believe that winning championships facilitates student growth and development in substantial and meaningful ways."

It's pretty clear from that quote that Montgomery did not have much say in the decision. I guess that's what happens when a program hits the skids for a few seasons - Miami struggled after Montgomery took the RedHawks to a 7-4 mark in 2005. They followed that up with a 2-10 season, then a 6-7 mark (which included a trip to the MAC title game) and this season's stinker.

Montgomery's biggest claim to fame might be helping to develop Ben Roethlisberger while he played in Oxford. He faced heavy expectations, being the head man at the "Cradle of Coaches" and all. It never really worked out, so both parties will move on.

Look, I'm not the one saying Charlie Weis is underpaid. It's the fine folks over at Coaches Hot Seat who claim that the best-paid coach in college football isn't making enough. Notre Dame's head coach makes $4.2 million a year, but Coaches Hot Seat says he ought to be paid $5.25 million.

Where do they get off saying this stuff? They didn't just pull that number out of thin air. Coaches Hot Seat figures that a coach should be paid 7.5% of his school's football revenue. Why 7.5%? I don't know, but they claim that the average coach takes in 7.61% of the team's football revenue, so their numbers seem reasonable. Still, take all this with a grain of salt.

Weis is getting shafted by more than a million bucks a year, so is he the most underpaid coach in college football? Nope. Not even close. The school getting the biggest bargain, as measured in sheer dollars, is Georgia. Few can argue with Mark Richt's record as the head Bulldog and, at $2.2 million a year, he probably doesn't remember what ramen noodles taste like. CHS says he ought to be getting just under $5 million. Mack Brown? Underpaid. Jim Tressel? Ditto.

The list of underpaid coaches doesn't stop there.