TROLL TUESDAY: Southern Miss needs a savior, and Brett Favre is waiting

Rather than wait for columnists to bait readers into blind Internet anger, we at SB Nation believe in setting the curve ourselves and doing so honestly. On Troll Tuesdays, we attempt to construct the most obnoxious column on earth. Today: only one man can save the University of Southern Mississippi football program. You may know him by his nickname: “America.”

The University of Southern Miss fired its coach Ellis Johnson today. He’d only been there one year. Firing a coach after he’s only been there one year should be big news, right?

But if not for this column you’d probably never hear about it. Because really, how often do you hear about Southern Miss football news?

NEWSFLASH: Southern Miss football is small potatoes. But here’s an idea: If the Golden Eagles have an itchy trigger finger with all these coaches, maybe they should look at the gunslinger that made them matter in the first place.

That’s right: Southern Miss needs to hire Brett Favre.

Call up Wrangler and see if they make headsets.

It’s time to decide whether they want to be Small Time or Big Time, and time’s running out. Sure, Southern Miss might go after some hotshot coordinator who runs a spread (which doesn’t work outside Boise State), but why go running through a thousand different neighborhoods when the answer is right there in the backyard throwing a football and grinning.

Did you know he’s spent the past few years roaming the sidelines coaching high school ball in Mississippi? Don’t act surprised. This is a man who bleeds pigskin. He’s forgotten more about football than you ever knew.

But brains only get you so far. A coach needs to have heart, and timing.

Favre has both. He has so much heart Lance Armstrong looks like the Grinch in comparison.

If he were a truck, one part would never need to be replaced: the clutch.

So what if he’s never been a college coach before? Bill Belichick wasn’t born with a headset on. Neither was Mike Ditka, and Ditka epitomized football first as a tight end and again as a coach. (How do you spell football? D-I-T-K-A.) Why couldn’t Favre be the next Mike Ditka?

As Sean Salisbury once said, “You give me a leader, and I’ll show you a winner. You give me a coward, and I won’t show you Brett Favre!”

Why make this complicated?

Thanks to Ellis Johnson’s buyout Southern Miss doesn’t have a lot to spend on a new coach. After two decades in the NFL and countless dollars from endorsements Favre doesn’t need the money. Never did, really. Give Favre a piece of land, a playbook, and he’ll find a way to have some fun.

Something tells me recruits would flock to a guy like that, too. A guy who lives for fun. Maybe not the me-first types who demand gold cars and scholarships for their friends, but Southern Miss doesn’t want them anyway. You don’t win championships with me-first guys.

You win them with players who don’t care about how many stars are by their name.

Let the SEC powerhouses pile up the superstars, and while websites rank all the stars ask yourself: How many stars did Favre have coming out of high school?

But football’s not the reason Favre makes sense.

Southern Miss needs an identity. As Chris Berman once said, “I don’t care whether people are Packers fans or whatever, I’ll reiterate what we said, rooting for Favre is like rooting for America.” Does that sound like someone you’d want representing your university?

I can hear the critics now: A coach needs to have integrity. And it’s true, some people might question whether Favre can coach a team after his little scandal on the Jets. After all, a scandal did in Joe Paterno. But there’s a big difference between the two.

Do you know who broke the Paterno scandal? A newspaper.

Do you know who broke the Favre scandal? A blog.

Are you going to trust a bunch of bloggers, or the greatest football player of all time?

Every man hits a little turbulence, but not everybody flies through it. In the end, it’s up to Southern Miss.

Go deep, or go home.

I know what the Gunslinger would do.