In case you missed it, Applewhite was named offensive coordinator and QB coach at Rice yesterday. The total extent of his coaching experience thus far has been one year as a grad assistant at Texas and one year coaching quarterbacks at Syracuse. That's it.

   With that kind of career track, I assume Applewhite will be replacing Pete Carroll as head coach at Southern Cal in 2007 and then taking over for Tony Dungy with the Indianapolis Colts in 2008. I'm guessing he could then serve as chairman of the Federal Reserve the year after. A run for the White House in 2012 would seem inevitable -- the agent can get the minimum age requirement waived, I'm sure.

I keep forgetting to plug one of the best reference books available, but that all changes in the next paragraph, so keep reading.

   Larry Byrne publishes the "New York State High School Track Bluebook," which is an annual compilation of indoor and outdoor records for boys and girls. Larry also supplies 50-deep lists for outdoors and 25-deep lists for indoors in each event, plus a number of unique features such as top performances by N.Y. alumns.

   If you're a track fan, you need to drop $6 into the mail now. Send your check to Larry Byrne at Box 6825, Warwick, RI, 02887.

   Officials at a Wisconsin high school are apologizing for insults chanted last month during a basketball game. In their chant, fans of a suburban Madison school insulted their city opponents with chants of "food stamps, food stamps" and "Os-car May-er" during a game against Madison East. Oscar Mayer's headquarters is near East.

   Middleton officials sent a letter of apology, and Middleton's principal said three seniors who started the chants offered to apologize.

   Naturally, East got its revenge the old-fashioned way by winning the game, 66-55.

   It all reminds me of the old days, when McQuaid and Irondequoit were Section 5 powerhouses in hockey around 1985. Their meetings at Lakeshore Arena were always well-attended by students, some of whom were all too eager to stereotype the other guys.

   Irondequoit's response was, "We've got girls. yes we do. We've got girls, how 'bout you?"

   Without missing a beat, McQuaid's students fired back "That's alright, that's OK. You're gonna work for us one day."

Another entry from the "kids will be kids department" came out of Syosset as Newsday reported details of a hazing incident involving football players this fall. I think I can almost (but not quite) give them the benefit of the doubt on the crossdressing thing, but I remain a zero-tolerance guy when it comes to alcohol. You drink, you sit. End of story.

As you may have noticed, we snuck in an a fresh set of girls basketball rankings over the weekend. We originally did not think they would be available due to other commitments by poll editor Perry Novak, but he got the job done anyway.

   Player of the year honors go to Rye (Sec. 1) quarterback Jack Donnelly in Class B, Sidney (Sec. 4) running back Aaron Zurn in C and Randolph (Sec. 6) running back Nick Jackson in D.

   Despite playing just two quarters in most games for a state championship team, Donnelly finished the season with 886 yards, completing 63 percent of his throws. He recorded 14 TDs and just one interception.

   Zurn's 13-game totals for Sidney were 1,480 rushing yards, 829 receiving yards and 39 touchdowns.

   Jackson ran for 1,970 yards on just 201 carries and scored 18 TDs. On the defensive side of the ball, he picked off five passes.

Some free advice for the gang at the University at Buffalo: Don't announce six additions to the football staff on the same day that the Bills fire their president/GM.

   Former Bills QB Alex Van Pelt, who played his college ball at Pitt, was among six coaches hired by UB coach Turner Gill, but his was really the only noteworthy name on the list. Still, the announcement would have played well in the Buffalo area and Western Pennsylvania, where UB needs to establish a recruiting foothold.

   No chance of getting a good ride on TV newscasts and in print, though, when the Bills fire Tom Donahoe, a former Pittsburgh Steelers executive. The Bills' news conference was scheduled a day in advance, and eveyone knew what was coming. The UB people should have sat on their announcement for 24 hours.

Hey, Channel 4 in Buffalo, WAKE UP! Your high school scores page hasn't been updated since Dec. 7. Is that a web site or a cobweb site you guys are running?

   Looking back for a moment, 2005 was a year of big changes for NewYorkSportswriters.org as we made numerous improvements and adjustments to the site with a goal of becoming more useful and interesting to our membership.

   We've heard from many users offering their gratitude for the service that NewYorkSportswriters.org provides and offering ideas for improving the site. We're flattered that people care enough to want to make us better, but that's always been a characteristic of our membership.

Some of what was done in 2005:

   With a little luck, the site will take some large steps forward in 2006. A few of our goals and ambitions for the coming year:

Increase the size of our reference section to 200 or more pages of content.
Recruit more newspapers and media outlets into providing RSS feeds to help us compile daily news headlines more efficiently.
Introduce a new design over the summer, featuring wider pages and more efficient coding.
Conduct online polls on a more regular basis. Though they are unscientific, they can be fun.
We'd like to do at least one round of on-site reporting from state championship events, perhaps providing hourly updates from the basketball or track championships later this year.

   Syracuse-area high school programs could struggle to field teams if a federal civil rights complaint against Section 3 is successful. The class-action complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education seeks to force Section 3 to move all girls volleyball programs from the winter to the fall. The area's Class AA schools decided last month to make such a move beginning in 2006.

   In theory, the move would allow about 85 girls volleyball teams to play for New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships. In reality, though, the smallest school districts might not have enough female student-athletes to field teams in volleyball plus established fall sports such as soccer and cross country.

   That's a realistic possibility at the smaller schools. Deduct the 15 or 20 girls who are playing soccer and the 6 or 8 running cross country, and some schools will quickly run short of candidates for the varsity volleyball team.

   Next, compund the problem by having 20 girls try out for basketball in the winter because that's the only team sport the school will be offering. Oh, sure, a few might end up running indoor track but that's about the only other option some of them will have.

   And, finally, let's not kid ourselves. As is the case in swimming and softball, much of the serious recruiting in volleyball takes place out-of-season as the girls compete for club teams.