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First of all, I struggled to believe the widespread speculation from Friday to this morning that Brad Brownell was going to be fired.

The notion was conceivable, sure. It was abundantly clear that Dan Radakovich had a decision to make, and that it was a tremendously difficult decision.

But quite a few media folks across the country jumped the gun, largely because they were jumping to conclusions after Will Wade apparently pulled his name out of the hat at N.C. State. This event triggered instant speculation across the coaching and agent community that Wade must be headed to Clemson, and therefore Brownell was a dead man walking into Radakovich's office late Saturday morning for their state-of-the-program review.

The problem with this account was that it never matched what we were hearing from our contacts at Clemson. Most important, it never really came close to matching it.