If it’s not over until the fat lady sings, Craig James better stuff a rib eye in Adele’s mouth. The Texas Republican primary is being held tonight for the Senate seat that the former ESPN blowhard has so righteously coveted, and to put it as nicely as possible – he doesn’t stand a f*cking chance. According to the latest public poll, the frontrunner for Kay Bailey Hutchison’s seat is David Dewhurst with 46% of the vote.

James? He’s got just a little catching up to do.

In all fairness to James, what nobody has really talked about during this specific Senate campaign is that his opponents have spent more than $25 million, more than any candidates for any U.S. Senate seat this election. Dewhurst, the lieutenant governor of Texas, has spent a considerable amount of his own money, while Ted Cruz has substantial backing from the Tea Party.

James, on the other hand, is liked by nobody, so he doesn’t have any money. After tonight he won’t have a job, either, which means that somewhere Mike Leach is just laughing and laughing.

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When word hit my Twitter feed yesterday that Washington State football coach Mike Leach was hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit, I was super excited. “Here,” I thought, “will be the ultimate no-holds-barred takedown of Craig James. The uncensored, gloves-off thrashing that college football fans have been waiting for.” Of course, then I realized that would never happen.

On one hand, you have James, the candidate for the U.S. Senate from the great state of Texas so blinded by his own ego and ambition that he doesn’t even want to admit that he stands a snowball’s chance in the Alamo of winning his election. Still, he’ll talk about his destruction of Leach’s career at Texas Tech at any opportunity, because to him it was all politics. Otherwise, he might have done what his son, Adam, once did and admit that Leach didn’t do anything wrong.

On the other hand, there’s Leach. He just wanted to coach college football again, after having his reputation smeared by James and a few years stolen from his career. Once that thought crossed my mind, I realized that we were in for more of a pep rally. And I don’t have a problem with that, because the result was Leach showing that he really does seem like a good guy. Maybe he’s a politician, too, but at least he does a better job at hiding it.

But don’t worry, he did talk about James, and after the jump, I dug out some of the better questions and answers, as well as some questions Leach didn’t answer that might have yielded more entertaining responses.

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If you’re not familiar with the story of U.S. Senate candidate Craig James, it really is quite a tale of scandal, intrigue and unbridled arrogance. Just to catch you up to speed with a dummy’s version – James was a talented running back and attended Southern Methodist University in the heyday of the program’s paid player scandal, and his NFL claim to fame was being ousted by Peyton Hillis as the last white running back to rush for 1,000 yards in one season.

After his short NFL career ended in 1988, James spent the next 20 years as a college football analyst, bouncing around networks, but always having a connection to ESPN, where he would eventually end up. In fact, he thinks so highly of his broadcasting skills that he founded the Craig James School of Broadcasting. And apparently the first lesson you can learn there is how to coddle your underperforming son and use your TV power as leverage in creating and promoting a scandal against a college football coach like Mike Leach.

In 2009, Leach allegedly forced Craig’s son, Adam, to sit in a dark electrical shed as punishment. Leach was eventually fired, and Adam later admitted that he was never forced to sit in a dark shed, was actually told not to sit in that shed, but he did so anyway because he thought it was “funny.” Alas, that is not a story that Craig will ever tell, because he stands by his version and believes that recaps like mine are pure propaganda in a vast conspiracy against his good name.

Or so he basically said in a recent interview (with his daughter) about his current 2012 U.S. Senate campaign, in which he is polling a whopping 4% among voters. Because if you want people to like you, go back to the ground zero of why people hate you.

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As we gear up for the start of college football with four Top 25 teams in action tonight, I just want to wrap up what apparently was the first day of Twitter for ESPN analyst Craig James. James’ meddling in the Texas Tech program (where his son, Adam, currently plays remains on the roster) ultimately led to the dismissal of Mike Leach, who had been the head coach of that program for ten years, and it’s arguable that the whole thing made James look like an stereotypical “soccer mom,” whose overbearing ways led to the dismissal of one of college football’s better personalities.

And so it might go without saying that James’ Twitter debut was a rather rough one; we’ve taken some of our favorite replies to James over the course of the day and added them here for your amusement. Dennymayo’s is my leader in the clubhouse. Enjoy the games tonight while you wonder how this guy doesn’t sue everyone who stares at his kid the wrong way. Thanks for reading.

7:30 PM ET Marshall at No. 2 Ohio State Big 10 Network
7:30 PM ET Florida A&M at No. 13 Miami (FL)
8:30 PM ET No. 15 Pittsburgh at Utah
11:00 PM ET No. 14 USC at Hawaii