In a news conference introducing the Dallas Cowboys coaches for the 2013 season, Callahan downplayed any potential changes within the structure of the offensive staff.

“I checked my ego at the door a long time ago,” said Callahan, who has called the offensive plays with the Oakland Raiders and the University of Nebraska, where he was a head coach.

“It doesn’t matter who calls the plays. We know what the play is going to be so there’s no guessers, no surprises and I think the players can tell you that as well. If you’re a good football team and you have an identity of what you’re doing, they can tell you the play that’s going to be called and featured in that particular down and distance, there’s no mystery,” he said.

There seems to be a mystery regarding the playcaller, especially after team owner/general manager Jerry Jones wanted to make change within the coaching staff by saying he wanted people uncomfortable. Jones said it would be Garrett’s decision to decide if he didn’t want to call the offensive plays anymore.

Callahan said he embraces Jones’ thoughts and he hasn’t spoken to the owner regarding the playcalling but, “I would be very happy to speak with him.”

The Cowboys had the seventh-best offense in the league yet there was some game mismanagement issues with Garrett and the running attack finished 31st overall. Each year, Garrett said he’s delegated duties to other offensive coaches. However, after the 2012 season, Garrett said he expected the status quo to remain in terms of calling the plays.

Jones changed the dynamic at Valley Ranch insisting his coaching staff be open minded about things. Garrett has agreed, however, he won’t reveal if one of those changes is giving the play-calling duties to Callahan.

Garrett said the mechanics needed to be worked out before a final decision is made about the playcaller. When asked about the specifics, Garrett wouldn’t say.
“I got the upmost confidence in Coach Garrett and what he believes and how he wants to go about the process of going through playcalling, whatever it may be,” Callahan said. “So be it. My job and my function as an assistant is to serve the head coach and I’m going to do that to the best of my ability every day I come to work you put your best foot forward and compete.”

Callahan dismissed the notion that he would have to implement the West Coast offense, something he used with the Raiders, over Garrett’s timing-based passing attack.

Callahan said he’s been around long-enough to work with any offensive system. The only difference is the terminology.

“Again, I’ve partaken in playcalling during the games here,” Callahan said. “I’ve done it at several places. It’s a group effort whether it’s collecting thoughts on the sidelines between series as to what plays we’d like to run and getting those ideas from the staff, whether it’s doing it while we are online during the course of a series, whether it’s on the sidelines and somebody’s the primary caller, it really doesn’t matter because I just hearken back to the point I made about preparation of the game plan. It’s a group effort.”

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The former starting quarterback is scheduled to begin classes when the semester starts on Monday and will return to the team after being arrested for a DUI in early October, disenrolling from the university and leaving the team after being suspended indefinitely.

Pachall spent time at a drug and alcohol treatment facility after leaving the team — a decision Patterson said was ultimately Pachall’s — and the coach made it clear the door for Pachall to return was open if he met all the requirements and completed the program.

“He finished all of his in-patient work and has been in out-patient work up until Friday,” Patterson told the paper. “He did everything we wanted him to do.”

The team is scheduled to meet on Sunday, the paper reported, and Pachall would be joining them. Patterson noted that he didn’t know if Pachall would be the team’s starting quarterback, but that he hadn’t thrown a football or lifted weights in “several months.”

“He met with Campus Life and one of the reasons I feel so good about this is because they feel so good about it. They feel very comfortable with it,” Patterson told the paper.

Pachall completed 66 percent of his passes for 948 yards, 10 touchdowns and an interception in four games last season before his arrest. He threw for 2,921 yards, 25 touchdowns and seven interceptions in 2011 as TCU’s starting quarterback.

He was replaced by Trevone Boykin after leaving the team. Boykin finished 2012 with 15 touchdowns and 10 interceptions along with 2,054 passing yards, completing 57 percent of his passes. TCU also went 3-6 with Boykin as the starting quarterback.

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Two people with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press on Saturday that the NCAA is scheduling meetings to discuss specific allegations with individuals who are believed to have committed violations found during the inquiry. Some meetings will take place Monday, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because neither the NCAA nor Miami authorized them to reveal the developments publicly.

The reviewing of specific findings is a sign that the investigation phase is ending, meaning Miami may finally receive its notice of allegations letter in the coming days. Typically, schools review at least one draft of the notice before it formally arrives.

The NCAA does not comment on ongoing investigations. Miami’s statement throughout the investigation has been that it is cooperating and not commenting further.

Earlier this month, Miami coach Al Golden told the AP that he did not expect the university to be surprised by the NCAA’s findings.

“We just want to receive the notice,” Golden said. “The day we do that is the day we take a big step forward. I don’t think there’s any question that will be a release. And the good thing there is we don’t anticipate any shock or any surprise.”

Miami’s receipt of the notice of allegations is simply the end of one phase of the process.

Up next would be the sanctions phase, when the actual penalties against the Hurricanes would be handed down. Typically, schools and individuals named in the notice of allegations have 90 days to file a response to the NCAA’s findings, all of which would be reviewed by the committee on infractions — which operates separately from the NCAA’s investigative arm.

If the notice of allegations is, in fact, looming, that means Miami may find out its punishment by perhaps May or June.

Some of the sanctions have already gone into effect, since they were self-imposed. Miami’s football team has missed three postseason games — two bowl games and what would have been an appearance in this season’s Atlantic Coast Conference championship game — in response to the investigation, and Golden is holding back a number of scholarships from the 2013 roster as well.

The Miami investigation may go down as one of the most complex in the NCAA’s history.

For starters, the principal whistleblower is Nevin Shapiro, a former booster who’s serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for masterminding a $930 million Ponzi scheme. Virtually all of the individuals who were named by Shapiro in his detailed claims that were published by Yahoo Sports in August 2011 are no longer at the university, and several of the people to whom the NCAA wanted to talk simply refused during the inquiry.

The NCAA inquiry started several months before that August 2011 article.

Shapiro’s tales were wild and sordid, with claims of him giving dozens of coaches, players and recruits things like cash, memorabilia, strip-club outings, yacht rides and even paying for prostitutes. In an interview in 2011 with Miami CBS affiliate WFOR, Shapiro predicted that his claims would lead to Miami’s football program getting the “death penalty” — the sanction where the NCAA would basically shut down the program.

Most of Shapiro’s claims involved the football program, though others also involved the Hurricanes’ men’s basketball team.

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