Since HBO's "The Sopranos" and "Entourage," FX's "The Shield" and ABC's "Lost" don't have any new episodes out right now, my favorite TV show right now that does not have CSI somewhere in the title is the CBS drama "NUMB3RS."

For those of you who haven't not watched it, "NUMB3RS" is about FBI agent Don Epps and his highly intelligent brother Charlie, a college professor who somehow manages to use math to help his brother take down the bad guys.

Be it Markov chains, Bayesian probabilities, areas of optimization or just your basic algorithms, the case always gets solved with a little help from math.

I bring this up simply for two reasons: 1. somebody might get a kick out of a sports writer writing about math in terms other than ERA or batting average; and 2., maybe one of these things will help me understand recruiting math.

You see, NCAA rules dictate college football coaches can only give out 25 scholarships per year -- this year it's next Wednesday.

Yet routinely, these coaches will go above and in some cases way beyond 25 commitments ... hence recruiting math.

Ole Miss coach Ed Orgeron, obviously a master of this new figuring, had 33 commitments last season and has 26 right now.

Sylvester Croom has 31 he calls his own right now at Mississippi State. South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier has racked in 30.

Arkansas coach Houston Nutt already has 25 of his own and has shown before he can take more than the allotted number and make it work.

Perhaps the Riemann Hypothesis would work here. Or would Prime Number Theorem come into play?

Obviously, I don't really know, but when else I am going to be able to toss those kind of terms out?

What I do know is that as deadline approached for this column to be done, Arkansas is sitting on 25 commitments and doesn't appear to be slowing.

In fact, the Fibonacci Sequence and Golden Ratio -- look it up and see if I am joking around or not -- could very well come into play here if Arkansas gets up to as high as 31.

I say 31 because it appears the Razorbacks would still take commitments from a half-dozen difference-makers such as Alabama defensive end Damario Ambrose (6-foot-5, 250 pounds), Hargrave Military Academy offensive lineman Kareem Crowell (6-5, 215), Little Rock Central star Charles Clay (6-4, 212), cornerbacks Terry Carter (5-11, 170) and William Cole (5-10, 170) and Osceola wideout Cam Baker (6-0, 170).

Maybe even Blinn (Texas) Junior College defensive end Alex Cook (6-5, 225) would land here as well, especially if current commit Chavis Williams ends up elsewhere after his recent flirtations with Alabama and Auburn.

Of course odds are Arkansas won't run the table and thus have to figure out how to get 32 or 31 into 25.

Also there are some on that list that will no doubt have to enroll at a junior college or prep school first.

Past that point, a simple Principal Components Analysis would be needed or maybe once the letters-of-intent have actually arrived, a Statistical Textual Analysis can be performed to determined who gets in and who doesn't.

It's all about Pursuit Curves anyway -- aiming ahead and getting there before the other coach does.

One thing is definite. How this football program continues to improve will certainly be all about fluid dynamics -- basically navigating the water no matter what kind of turbulence shall arise.

DUDLEY E. DAWSON IS A STAFF WRITER FOR HAWGS ILLUSTRATED, A STEPHENS MEDIA GROUP PUBLICATION. HIS COLUMN APPEARS EACH TUESDAY. E-MAIL: DEDSPORTS@AOL.COM