Chiller Horror Theater: Head of Lee Corso Found, but who knows where the other bodies are buried?

State police reported Monday that the head of Lee Corso had been found in the driveway of an OSU employee and will be returned to ESPN. That afternoon two former Oregon students were cited in the theft.

Like most investigations, it's all fun and games until someone finds a snitch.

Which brings to mind another chilling nightmare scenario. We don't deal in hypotheticals, but this one is too real and too awful to ignore.

Suppose, in the build-up to the National Championship Game, an influential Auburn booster grows tired of all the references to $cam Newton and whispers of illegal recruiting at Auburn. He knows a guy who knows a guy who was roommates with a tackle on the '86 Cotton Bowl team, and that guy has kept in touch with a buddy who's on the staff at Ole Miss. Buncha of Southern boys who still love footbaw, fellas who done pretty well for themselves, and have a pull together now and then. Let's say the booster's name is Billy Clyde Puckett. The names have been changed to protect the unindicted.

So this guy calls his guy and they get to talking. One of them reaches out to a stubby quarterback, finished with his eligibility at Ole Miss, now disgruntled and discarded, with a story of his own to tell. The kid was a human cannonball on the field, and a loose cannon off it, and now he wants to fire off one more shot. He's still a little chafed at how he was unceremoniously dumped at his previous stop.

Billy Clyde gets a chance to meet with him and they discuss a few details and make an arrangement. For $10,000 (or a figure to be named) the kid agrees to tell his side of the story. All of it. The kid sees the big picture. He hasn't many prospects at this point of his life, maybe a job in parks and recreation management, or a cup of coffee in the CFL or the Arena league. And he's cut deals before.

So on the Friday before the NCG he steps up to the podium at a hastily assembled press conference and says:

"Hello, my name is Jeremiah Masoli, and I'm here to discuss the details of my recruitment and improper benefits at the University of Oregon."

But that could never happen, right? It would be more ludicrous than someone walking off with a $5,000 mascot head outside a stadium with 40,000 people.

One discarded former star could blow the lid off an entire program. It's happened before, at Auburn, at Alabama, and elsewhere.

Don't think for a second it couldn't happen here.