Amidst all the discussion about how the University of Memphis should have dealt with its postponed football game at Arkansas State Saturday, the mention of cancelling the game altogether never received much backing.

Memphis and Arkansas State need to keep their schedules at 12 games each.

There will be headaches involved squeezing the madeup game between a Saturday Sept. 22 game at Central Florida and a Tuesday Oct. 2 game at home against Marshall, but Tiger coach Tommy West insisted it be played for postseason purposes. In other words, it doesn’t make sense to reduce one’s chances for getting a sixth win.

While to many it made sense to turn around and reschedule the game for the following day, West didn’t feel comfortable with rushing his team home only to have it rush back to Jonesboro, without the proper pregame routine of a hotel stay and team dinner.

Hotel rooms were scarce for such a large group because of the Southern Heritage Classic and arranging a team meal on such short notice was not feasible.

Three difficult games in 11 days will be challenging, but West seems up to the daunting task. How the Tigers fare may determine their postseason outlook.

Now that The CA has thankfully upgraded our blog capabilities, hopefully The Edge will be a daily stop for Tiger fans. I’ll try to provide some sort of post every day leading up to Memphis Madness, then start with daily blogs once practice begins.

A couple things:

– As first reported by Scout.com, the Morris twins have indeed de-committed from Memphis.

In surfing various message boards, supposed insiders have forwarded the idea that this development is linked to the Sept. 2 incident on Beale Street and other various off-court issues from past years. That assertion is laughable. The truth is, there had been issues in this recruitment for awhile, much of it linked to the influence of Danny Brinkely, the twins’ high school coach from Philadelphia Prep Charter.

After the twins signed with Memphis, their stock went up fairly considerably last year. Brinkley, I’m told from solid sources, had encouraged the twins to look around and see what kind of interest they could get this summer from other programs, which is why they re-opened their recruitment. Meanwhile, Memphis coaches fell in love with Angel Garcia, who looked like a potential All-American during John Calipari’s elite camp in July. The twins and their high school coach, according to my sources — and they haven’t called back to deny this claim — did not want Memphis to recruit Garcia since he essentially plays the same position. This put the Tiger coaching staff in a difficult spot. Should they have backed off Garcia, who they evaluate as a possible top-5 player in the country (and perhaps the best), to placate the twins, who had already waffled once on their commitment? Obviously, Calipari made the call to continue pursuing Garcia, even though he probably knew it could have consequences.

If Garcia meets NCAA qualifications — and we’ll monitor that situation closely in the coming months — the overall impact on Memphis won’t be too significant. The Tiger coaching staff will now look at some other players, and perhaps attempt to get back in on players they didn’t recruit in the summer because the Morris twins were committed. But the Tigers certainly aren’t going to take somebody just to take them, especially given the quality of players they are recruiting for the 2009 class.

THE BIG STORY

Pittsburgh athletic director Jeff Long acknowledged Saturday that he flew to Fayetteville a day earlier to speak with Arkansas officials about the school’s athletic director position.

Sources at Arkansas told Hawgs Illustrated publisher Clay Henry on Saturday that Long has been offered the job and is expected to accept it.

“I was asked by the University of Arkansas to come and talk to them about the director of athletics position,” Long told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Saturday afternoon. “I discussed it with (Pitt) Chancellor (Mark) Nordenberg, so I did go to Fayetteville yesterday (last Friday) and discuss the job with the people at Arkansas.”

A private plane registered to Arkansas’ Board of Trustees flew to Pittsburgh on Friday morning to pick up Long and his wife, Fanny. The plane landed at Drake Field around 10 a.m. Friday.

White has been heading the search to find a new athletic director since Frank Broyles announced in February that he was retiring at the end of the year. Long is the first candidate to be seen visiting Fayetteville.

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