Since we can’t actually give presents to coaches we can at least send them our wishes. Here’s our holiday wishes to college coaches for 2007:

    To Bobby Knight: Dick Cheney’s hunting partners - guys who’ll take some buckshot and keep smiling because it’s celebrity buckshot.

    To Kansas coach Mark Mangino:  National Coach of the Year or if he doesn’t get that, a wicker chair that won’t sag after a few sittings.

    To June Jones, Coach of the University of Hawaii Warriors, who went undefeated despite being a program so strapped for funds their team had to collect little hotel soaps to take showers: Shower Gel dispensers.
   
    To Dennis Franchione, recently fired coach at Texas A & M: Recognition for being a really good newsletter-putter-outer.

    To Les Miles: a coach willing to step in at Michigan as an interim job. Les can tell him where to find inexpensive apartments.

    To Alabama coach Nick Saban, who compared his team’s loss to Louisiana-Monroe to catastrophes on the order of Pearl Harbor and 9/11: A history book.

    To Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy: A trademark on “I’m a Man” bumper stickers.

    To West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez, whose Mountaineer team is playing in the Fiesta Bowl at Phoenix: An opportunity to show his team and fans other people with Spanish surnames.

    To fired Nebraska coach Bill Callahan, who once, after a trip to Norman, referred to Oklahoma University football fans as a bunch of f-----g hillbillies: The deliverance of lots of leisure time with opportunities to take river raft trips down the Chattooga River.

    To Mike Leach, who paid a $ 10,000 referee complaint fine to the Big 12 conference by delivering one million pennies to the league office: A new wagon with heavy-duty springs.

    To Tim Floyd, USC basketball coach, who without even recruiting landed the highest profile freshman, OJ Mayo, when Mayo called him and told him USC was the school where he wanted to attend: A case full of salve to heal the bruises when he keeps pinching himself.

    To Florida University football coach, Urban Meyer, when he wins his next game: The honor of having the cremated ashes of the recently departed Gatorade inventor, Robert Cade, dumped over his head.

    To South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier, who was challenged to a boxing match by Herschel Walker after Spurrier made disparaging remarks about Georgia University football players: The humility to say he was kidding or… he was sorry… or barring that… a walker.