Rats are always the first to flee a sinking ship – and there has been a lot of ratting going on during the immediate aftermath of USU football coach Brent Guy’s firing. The Truant has become a sort of first stop for all disgruntled assistant coaches, players, coaches wives, and athletic department drones, due to our willingness, nay, eagerness, to print un-sourced rumors without even the most perfunctory attempt to verify them.

Needless to say, our reporters have been spending a lot of time in dark, foreboding parking garages, meeting with sources. Many of these sources seem to be strongly motivated by an agenda of some sort, but hell if it’s our job to thoroughly vet these fuckers. We’re in the business of selling newspapers here. If someone wants to call our newsroom and instruct us to call a different number back from a pay-phone so they can rip Brenda Guy’s taste in window coverings, we’re going to send one of our award-winning journalists to cover the unsubstantiated rumor, post-haste!

Here are a few of the juiciest, most injurious bits of gossip The Truant has learned since Guy was fired:

1. Coach Guy and his offensive coordinator Darrell Dickey didn’t speak to one another for six weeks during the middle of last season. The feud began when an argument over who’s the best young male country singer, Dierks Bentley or Brad Paisley, got out of hand.

“Furniture in coach Dickey’s office was destroyed,” during the course of this argument, a source close to the coaching staff told The Truant.

Guy, who favors the oft-humorous song stylings of Paisley, openly mocked his offensive coordinator’s taste in country music, on one occasion musing out loud on the sideline in front of numerous players and coaches that “this must be our ’settle for a slowdown’ two minute offense” when another drive had bogged down.

Dickey’s only retort as he was heaped in ridicule and taken out of the game-planning loop was that as a real Texan, he was in a better position to judge what constituted quality country music than some Okie fucktard.

2. Following the 2006 season, Guy briefly attempted to recruit then-15 year-old country singer Taylor Swift to play defensive back for the Aggies. However, it wasn’t just the innocent mistake it sounds like, said The Truant’s source in the Athletic Department.

“Even after Coach found out Taylor is a young woman, he kept on talking about how ’she sounds fast’ and spending hours a day reading the TaylorSwift.com message boards when he was supposed to be game-planning,” our source said.

A sample Guy-post on Taylor’s board: “Taylor! i [sic] just wanted to tell you how much i[sic] love your songs! they[sic] are so true in so many ways! you can really relate! i[sic] love when im[sic] losing a bunch of football games i[sic] go home and listen to your music and just know that im[sic] not the only one.. someone else has been there! you[sic] are a truly amazing, thoughtful, and beautiful person. you[sic] are my idol! i[sic] love you! PS i [sic] think you could really make n [sic] impact on our special teams coverage unit next season!”

3. Coach Guy’s drinking became more and more problematic as the losses mounted. After last year’s heart-breaking loss to San Jose State, sources tell The Truant that Guy retreated to his office in the Harris Athletic Center and began a bender which culminated in the coach “drunk-dialing” Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Pete Carroll and Joe Paterno in a fruitless attempt to schedule those coaches teams. Sources say that Guy was discovered the next morning in the Angie’s parking lot, clad in a jock-strap and wielding an authentic Nipponese katana.

4. In March of 2007, Coach Guy accidentally listened to the National Public Radio program To The Best of Our Knowledge for seven minutes while driving to work. Reportedly, Guy found the show “offensive” and never changed his car presets again.

5. Guy’s assistant coaches were too embarrassed to tell him that it’s not pronounced Keith Bourbon. No ever informed him and to this day Guy refers to the platinum-selling Australian country artist (Keith URBAN) by the wrong name.

6. Brenda Guy, in fact, has awful taste in window coverings. “It looked like she decided every window in the house should have one of Keith Richard’s scarves hanging over it,” an assistant coach’s wife told The Truant.

HARRIS ATHLETIC CENTER – A few hours after he was fired as USU’s head football coach, Brent Guy reemerged from his office, stepped behind a podium draped in aggie blue, and began what he termed his “farewell” press conference.

“I’d like to begin by saying fuck the fans, fuck the players, fuck the university, fuck you shabbily-dressed media types, fuck Scott Barnes, and fuck the game of football,” Guy stated tersely. “You may be wondering what I’ve been doing in my office the last couple of hours. Well, I’ve been drinking Crown Royal and staring at an 8 by 10 of Riley Nelson some. But mainly, I’ve been thanking god that this is the last time I have to inhale the odor of you fucking sports hacks. You all stink, and your fashion sense is one step above a destitute heroin addict. Fuck you. Now. Are there any questions?”

Bob Flamm, junior sportswriter at the Utah Statesman, raised his hand and asked, “Why don’t you play Sean Setzer some more? That boy can really chuck it.”

“Any smart questions?” Guy replied.

Tommy Stoops, ace reporter for the Ogden Standard Examiner, proceeded to ask Guy where he thought his place in the program’s history would be, given that he had “been present during a time of great change for the program, from joining the WAC to significantly enhanced facilities.”

“Well, Tommy, I’m really glad you brought up those facilities. That’s all I’ve been hearing since I got here, facilities, facilities, facilities. Anyone see that fucking North End Zone Facility make a block or a tackle this year?” Guy asked.

“Now, I’ve got a daughter in the Hi-Lo’s down at Logan High. I go to all her performances, so I’ve got some experience watching teenaged girls prance around waving ribbons in the air and trying to look pretty. But that miserable motherfucking North End Zone Building takes the cake.

“Watch the Utah game, I’m begging you,” Guy went on, seeming to really hit his stride. “Matt Asiata ran it right up the gut on direct snaps for three touchdowns in short yardage situations, and that shitpile of a sports medicine and locker facility didn’t get in on one play. Granted, a couple of those plays were down in the south end zone, but that’s what we recruited the building for, short yardage situations.”

Stoops raised his hand for a follow-up question. “But Coach Guy, don’t you see your new North End Zone building as more of a recruitment tool than an actual..”

Guy quickly cut him off. “I know what you’re going to ask. You’re going to ask about blocking. Non-existent. A building that size should have been a major factor in our run-blocking schemes. Well, I hate to break it to all you misers who donate money to this program, but the N.E.Z. Facility hasn’t had one pancake block all year. We rushed for 179 yards against BYU, but the building sat that one out with a sore girder…I have never felt such a deep, deep sense of shame.”

Stoops then asked Guy pointedly if “there’s one single thing you can be proud of, as a football coach with an 8-38 record in football games.”

“Yes, yes there is, Tommy,” Guy said. “I’m proud of my record of repeatedly kicking some of our best players off the team. My stance was always, if you are performing on a high level on the football field, then you are ripe for being kicked off the team as a symbol of the iron discipline with which Brent Guy runs his football team, just like Jerod Walker, Tony Pennyman, Dionte Holloway and Antonio Taylor. No matter my win-loss record, I can always stand proudly upon my achievement of ruining those young men’s lives for the sake of proving myself as some kind of disciplinarian.”

At this point, director of athletics Scott Barnes led a phalanx of USU police officers in riot gear into the Harris Center and directed them to begin beating the assembled sports media persons with billy clubs, especially Flamm. Barnes allowed Guy to pick his Riley Nelson glossy and a three-ring binder full of intricately diagrammed quarterback draw plays up from his office before he was escorted out into the parking lot, relieved of his set of keys, and informed that USU athletic interns would finish cleaning out his desk for him.

Albrecht, who worried that the girls who all claimed to be eighteen, would pull some ‘crazy eastern voodoo shit’, ala Chinese gymnasts, in order to forge documents to make them older. Albrecht then decided that the risk to his professional status would be affected by becoming an unwitting accomplice to statutory rape,  had his personal secretary James Green thoroughly vet the young ladies passports and documentation.

When one of the girls documents didn’t hold up to Green’s scrutiny, Albrecht heavy-handedly described what he called a ‘grass on the field analogy’ to a visibly shaken Green.

Green, brought to tears by his boss and mentor, stood by while Amy Lee, a sophomore from Macao studying mechanical engineering, ski-poled Albrecht and football coach Brent Guy, while she sat atop the A at the Quad. The rarely completed feat is known as becoming a ‘True Blue English as a Second Language Aggie.’

Lee Gordon, the campus diversity chair, said that this was a step in the right direction.

“Diversity in important to a learning environment, it teaches people how to deal with different people,” said Gordon, who was going to celebrate diversity later that night by performing fellatio on a man.