Southern fried

 I suppose next Brian Kelly will be saying, "And add a side o' grits to that, darlin'."

I suppose next he'll be elbow-deep in beignets and etouffee, and sayin' Robert E. Lee woulda whipped 'em all if he'd had what Grant had, and refusin' to celebrate Memorial Day, because that-there's a Yankee holiday.

I suppose next William Faulkner will be crawling out of his grave to deal with this ... this ... carpetbagging sack of you-know-what.

Because here Coach Carpetbagger was the other night, addressing the crowd at an LSU basketball game with the thickest southern accent this side of the toothless hillbilly in "Deliverance." Grew the damn thing in a day, Coach Carpetbagger did. Went all Foghorn Leghorn as soon as he crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.

Give it a listen. Not bad for a (checks notes) Boston guy, right?

Look. It's one thing for Brian Kelly to look out for No. 1, because college football is a business and that's the ethos. It's even one thing for him to bail on an 11-1 possible College Football Playoff team in the rudest way possible, saying so long to players he allegedly cared about in a cool 11 minutes.

Two minutes later he was peeling out of South Bend as fast he could peel. The only upset is he didn't turn a few donuts in the parking lot on his way out.

But that's neither here nor there. As long as timelines are what they are for coaching hires, the leave-taking is always going to be ill-timed and awkward, if not quite as crass as Kelly made his. Perhaps the NCAA could rouse itself from its stupor long enough to institute a rule forbidding coaches from leaving for a new job until the bowl games wrap up, but it's hard to see how that would even be legal.

Still. You don't have to be as phony about the whole business as Kelly has been.

I mean, really. A fake southern accent? 

Yeesh. What do you suppose would have sprung on the fan base if he'd taken, say, the Texas job?

My money's on Robert Duvall in "Lonesome Dove."