Forever Saturday

Catching up: Should I stay or should I go?

2010-07-21T10:40:00.013-07:00

* Football over baseball (for now): Clemson coach Dabo Swinney is celebrating Christmas in July right now, because QB Kyle Parker (who seemed to be gone when the Colorado Rockies took him in the first round last month) announced Wednesday that he's turning down $2.4 million in signing bonuses to return to school and play football this fall.

He definitely left open the possibility of leaving next offseason -- or any other time -- to focus exclusively on baseball, but at least top prospect Tajh Boyd would have more than a few spring practices under his belt by that point. The transition would be a little more manageable.

Parker's not quite Drew Henson in terms of football ability, but he's pretty good. He completed 55.6% of his passes with 20 TDs and 12 interceptions last year as a redshirt freshman, and he lit up both Miami and Florida State with a combined seven touchdowns passes. The $2.4 million question is whether he can do that without C.J. Spiller's 1,700 total yards and Jacoby Ford running circles around people. If he can, Clemson will be at or near the top of the ACC Atlantic again.

* Martin changes his mind: Cal freshman Chris Martin, a five-star prospect and one of the top defensive ends/outside linebackers in the country according to Rivals, lasted all of about four months as part of the Golden Bears' recruiting class:

Chris Martin, one of the top recruits from Cal's 2010 signing class, has announced his intention to transfer out due to "distractions."

"My decision to transfer definitely does not reflect on the football program or the academics at Cal," he said in a press release. "Rather, I feel like for me to focus and truly reach my potential I need to leave many of the distractions I have here at home in the Bay Area.

"I need to venture away from home and start my college career somewhere else where I don't have those distractions."

Martin went to high school in Oakland. If you're thinking it's a little odd to commit to what's basically your hometown school and then decide four months later that there are too many "distractions" in the area, you're correct. But if there are some people around him who are getting into trouble or making him think he'd be better off somewhere else, I can't blame him. He's 18.

So where's he headed? Well ... when this guy wants to get away from home, he really gets away:

A day after he notified the University of California about his intent to transfer, former Grandview High School linebacker Chris Martin announced Wednesday he will be heading to the University of Florida.

Martin made his choice of Florida public on his Facebook page, saying: "I would like to thank everyone who has been supportive of me through my crazy mental episodes. A special thank you to my mother and father who have supported me no matter what. I love you both. God has granted me a second chance. A chance I cannot mess up. With that said. Go Gators. Thank You to everyone and all the coaches who showed their interest in me."

It's worth noting that Florida's 2010 recruiting class now includes an entire defensive line (two ends and two tackles) full of five-star prospects. Urban Meyer, you are truly a recruiting maestro.

* Middleton done at U-Dub: Washington tight end Kavario Middleton is no longer a Washington tight end. In fact, he's no longer a Washington anything:

Washington has dismissed starting tight end Kavario Middleton for a violation of team rules less than two weeks before the Huskies begin fall camp.
Washington coach Steve Sarkisian made the announcement on Tuesday in a statement but did not specify what Middleton did. The school said there would be no further comment.

Middleton was a big-time prospect back in the day (in the top 100 nationally) and started to put things together last year as a sophomore with 26 catches for 257 yards and three touchdowns. Then, during spring practice, he was supposedly passed by redshirt junior Chris Izbicki, who has a grand total of seven career receiving yards. Given the comments from Middleton's high school coach -- "Sark gave him every opportunity to improve and grow" -- my guess is that his demotion on the depth chart was a motivational tactic after a handful of screw-ups and that his "violation of team rules" was the last straw.

* Still undecided ... still: Bryce Brown, the most noncommittal player in the history of college football, apparently has changed his mind yet again. He left Tennessee in March and was presumed to be transferring to Kansas State (close to his family's home in Wichita) with older brother and former Miami linebacker Arthur Brown, but rumor has it that Bryce now wants back in at Tennessee. K-State must not have been as excited as he'd expected (who knew?).

Since the brothers seem to be set on playing together and Tennessee is woefully short on scholarship players (seriously, the Vols only have about 70), it sounds like the hypothetical package deal suggested a few months ago might be back on the table. Derek Dooley's "I'm not going to make a recruiting pitch" stance is admirable now but won't be remembered so fondly when UT is sitting at home in December with a 5-7 record.

If he can just bring in the Brown brothers, a five-star QB, a few talented offensive linemen, a starting safety ...

* You're next: SEC coaches are probably a little leery about picking up the phone right now, because that agent party down in Miami has the enforcement guys at the NCAA thinking they're The Untouchables. It all started with North Carolina and Marvin Austin, but that was just the tip of a massive, Titanic-destroying iceberg. Next on the list was South Carolina and Weslye Saunders. After that it was Florida and the Pouncey brothers. After that it was Alabama and Marcell Dareus. And now they're head ed on down to Georgia:

Georgia associate athletic director Claude Felton says the NCAA has requested permission to conduct an inquiry on campus.
TMZ.com reported Wednesday that Georgia is investigating whether All-American wide receiver A. J. Green attended an agent's Memorial Day weekend party in Miami that also has spurred investigations at Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Georgia football coach Mark Richt met with Green on Tuesday, and Green denied being in Miami that weekend, sources told ESPN.com.

Yikes. First of all, if you're a big-name college athlete and you're attending an all-expenses-paid trip on an agent's dime, you're an idiot. That's about as blatant as a rules violation can get. Secondly, I hope Green -- and everyone else, for that matter -- is telling the truth about who went where and who paid for what. Remember what happened to Dez Bryant? Breaking the rules is bad but not necessarily a career-ending transgression. Breaking the rules and lying about it? Just ask Bryant.

The (almost) last chapter in the Reggie Bush saga

2010-07-20T15:58:00.011-07:00

We all knew this was coming ...

USC will replace athletic director Mike Garrett with former Trojans quarterback Pat Haden, university president-elect C.L. Max Nikias announced Tuesday.
Garrett has been under fire since USC was hit with numerous NCAA sanctions and a finding of "lack of institutional control" after lengthy investigations into benefits received by Bush and former basketball player O.J. Mayo.

... although calling it a retirement is a joke if I've ever heard one. Garrett's had his head in the guillotine since the beginning of the NCAA investigation. It's also kind of weird that a guy most people under the age of 40 know as a Notre Dame color analyst -- or crazy-eyed Tom Hammond's sidekick -- is now the USC athletic director.

But this part of the announcement was what shocked everybody:

Nikias also said USC will return the Heisman won by Bush in 2005 to the Heisman Trophy Trust next month.

Wwwhhaaaaaa?!? Jaw, meet floor. ESPN provides additional information:

The decision was an extension of the self-imposed penalties, which stated USC would dissociate itself from Bush and Mayo permanently. The NCAA bylaws also stated USC would have to "show cause why it should not be penalized further if it fails to permanently disassociate [Bush] and [Mayo] from the institution's athletic program."
Bush still has his own Heisman Trophy. The Heisman Trophy Trust has not taken any action against Bush or made any request to have him return his copy of the trophy.

The school has to separate itself so distantly from Reggie Bush that it's removing the greatest individual honor in sports -- one of seven in the program's history -- from Heritage Hall. More than anything else that's happened so far, I think this shows just how serious Bush's transgressions were. (It's a sad and amusing coincidence that USC's first Heisman winner was none other than Mike Garrett back in 1965.)

The question now is what the trust decides to do with the actual award: Either Bush keeps it or the spot gets vacated. Like I said a few weeks ago, I don't think an ineligible player with an erased past should get to keep the Heisman. If he wasn't eligible to play, he wasn't eligible to win anything. Hell, even the school won't acknowledge it -- you think anyone will ever take "Reggie Bush, Heisman winner" seriously?

This is where the "but O.J. Simpson got to keep his Heisman" response typically comes in, to which I say, "weak comparison." Committing stupid crimes 30 years after you leave college doesn't have anything to do with your NCAA accomplishments. O.J. was an awesome football player with a whole bunch of impressive records that I could look up right now on the NCAA website. Bush -- at least according to the NCAA -- didn't exist in 2005. You won't find his name or stats in USC's media guide, the NCAA website or anywhere else. Some kid looking at a list of Heisman winners 20 years from now will be pretty damn confused when he gets to Reggie Bush and sees a list of zeroes in the stat column. Fortunately for him, Wikipedia will be implanted in all our brains by then, so it won't take long to to get the details (YouTube will also be transmitted directly into our corneas and cell phones will have been replaced by Facebook transmitters).

Where was I? Oh yeah ... if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Bush having an empty spot on his gigantic mantel at some point in the next few months.

But if you think about it, it doesn't really matter matter what the trust decides. We all know what was going on: Bush's career was a sham, and the jokes about "U$C" will forever be attached to his name. His history has already been decided. The official removal of the Heisman would just be the final clump of dirt on a legacy that's already dead and buried.

Tough call for Jim Tressel

2010-07-20T01:01:00.010-07:00

Some genius or another -- I think it was Bruce Feldman -- over at ESPN seemed genuinely puzzled yesterday when the Big Ten announced which players will be available to the press at media days in two weeks and Terrelle Pryor wasn't one of them.

Of course! I mean, he's such a well-spoken guy ... and on that note, here's a breakdown straight from Jim Tressel's typewriter version of Microsoft Excel (I have impressive hacking skills) on why Pryor wasn't invited to Chicago:
For the visually impaired, the breakdown goes:

He might kill people, murder people, whatever (53%)
I don't trust him to pass, let alone represent the program (27%)
The biotches might expect something for free (12%)
His "Mika Vick" eyeblack wouldn't be appropriate (8%)

It's good to know Tressel's been doing his research.

A new (and improved) philosophy

2010-07-19T23:35:00.005-07:00

The nasty, leech-infested muck that is college basketball has (fortunately) never really found its way to college football. Agents, runners, AAU weirdness and murky "here, have a job and car" recruiting scandals just aren't nearly as prevalent ... at least we don't think they are.

But kids get stuff sometimes. Stuff they aren't supposed to get. And we all know it. I don't know if the people in power just didn't really realize it was happening in football until all the USC stuff came about or if that was some sort of wake-up call as to the go-go-gadget arms of greedy agents, but for whatever reason, the NCAA is seriously cracking the whip right now at the first sign of inappropriate benefits.

Exhibit A:

Florida and NCAA officials are investigating a potential rules violation that allegedly occurred this past December involving former Gators football standout Maurkice Pouncey, sources said.
Florida is internally investigating what sources described as an allegation that a representative of an agent paid Pouncey $100,000 between the Gators' loss to Alabama in the Southeastern Conference championship game and their season-ending Sugar Bowl victory over Cincinnati. Florida apprised the NCAA of the allegation after it became aware of it.
Two sources also told Schad that the letter was accompanied by photographic evidence of an alleged runner for an agent in social situations with Pouncey and his brother Mike, including at two awards shows.
Mike Pouncey will be a senior offensive lineman with the Gators next season.
The sources told Schad that the Pounceys have provided phone, bank and credit card statements that do not show any large payments. Two sources added that Maurkice Pouncey said he paid for a Cadillac Escalade and jewelry after the NFL draft with a deferred line of credit and did at times lend the Escalade to Mike in Gainesville, Fla.

Getting a line of credit after you leave school but before the draft? OK. Receiving $100,000 from an agent while still playing in college? Not OK. This seems fairly straightforward; I still can't figure out why it becomes a problem almost every year around bowl time.

Fortunately for Florida, there's not much possible damage. Older brother Maurkice already graduated, so the worst-case scenario is that he played in the Sugar Bowl while ineligible, meaning Florida would have to vacate the win (and Cincinnati could mercifully erase that ass-kicking from its record books). It could also end up as a secondary violation if the NCAA decides that there was a not-so-strict atmosphere around the locker room (at Florida?!? No!).

Mike could also run into some eligibility questions if he was hanging around with a runner or receiving any money on his own, but I can't see the NCAA coming down hard on him for using his brother's car. Have fun trying to close that can of worms.

Exhibit B:

South Carolina athletic director Eric Hyman says the NCAA is investigating a possible rules violation of one of its athletic programs.
Gamecocks tight end Weslye Saunders told ESPN on Sunday that he has been interviewed by NCAA investigators in connection with the North Carolina case.

Saunders is a well-known friend of Marvin Austin, who started the whole UNC investigation by tweeting about a trip to Miami that presumably involved a bunch of money -- not his own -- being thrown around.

He's also one of the best tight ends in the country. If it turns out that he was involved in some shady activity, his loss (even for a few weeks) would be a pretty painful one for the South Carolina offense. But you know what's amazing about Steve Spurrier? Even in the middle of an awkward and possibly controversial situation, he can still pull out an off-the-cuff FTW comment:

"All I know is they had talked to him and talked to some players at North Carolina. That's all I know," Spurrier told the paper. "Whatever comes [of it], we'll just have to wait and see.
"We're not going to look the other way like possibly Southern California did," Spurrier continued. "We're going to abide by the rules."

Excellent. We'll see if he's still cracking jokes if Saunders is suspended for the season; my guess is that he'll throw his visor, utter some sort of "dad-gum" comment with an obnoxious smirk on his face and then blame it all on Stephen Garcia.

These two stories will undoubtedly be the catalyst for 387 columns about how college athletics aren't what they used to be and agents are ruining sports and "get off my lawn" and so on and so forth, but like I said earlier, this shit happens. And these situations are not comparable to what happened at USC; that was a widespread, years-long lack of compliance that was a bomb just waiting to detonate. The interesting thing is that the NCAA is kicking ass and taking names all of a sudden.

The Bylaw Blog explains the new policy perfectly:

What appears to have happened in this case exemplifies the new approach:

Pick a target population, in this case football student-athletes who were expected to be drafted who returned to school.
Investigate the target population for evidence of violations, which turned out to be improper benefits received by agents.
Use the associations and connections between involved parties as a jumping off point for related investigations, using Saunders’ association with UNC defensive end Marvin Austin.

Such an approach was not possible as recently as five years ago since the NCAA enforcement staff did not fully understand the patterns of this activity. It’s the difference between playing Whack-a-Mole and knowing how the game works to predict which mole is coming up next. ...
Certainly the NCAA is devoting more resources to investigating and researching these problems, and that’s a question of priorities and will. But more important is that the NCAA is simply getting better at investigating and knows more about what to look for, where to look for it, and who to question.

We could debate the fairness of amateurism rules until we're blue in the face -- I believe the proper term for that discussion is "beating a dead horse." But with the current bylaws being what they are, it's nice to know that the NCAA is actually, you know, enforcing those bylaws and trying to ensure that there won't ever again be a blatant, USC-level rule-flouting that gets everyone pissed off as the obvious violations pile up and the punishment never comes.

Jeremiah Masoli, you are free to go

2010-07-19T22:10:00.005-07:00

Jeremiah Masoli pretty much disappeared off the face of the Earth about two months ago. He was dismissed from the team at Oregon after a ridiculous string of off-the-field shenanigans, and the assumption at the time was that he'd be transferring immediately. Then there were rumors that he'd be entering the supplemental draft. And then nothing.

The supplemental draft came and went last week without Masoli's involvement. Nobody really noticed except The Oregonian, which was able to verify that Masoli did NOT turn in his paperwork by the required deadline and therefore has retained his one year of college eligibility.

So where's he headed? Nobody knows. Hawaii (where Masoli spent his senior year of high school) apparently was a candidate for a day or two after Masoli got in touch to gauge the coaching staff's interest, but The Star-Advertiser reported over the weekend that it "was mutually decided" that Masoli wouldn't be a good fit. I have a feeling that decision was about as mutual as Tiger Woods' impending divorce -- the conversation probably went something like this:

Masoli: "Hey, would you guys be interested in having me on the team if I transferred to Hawaii?"
Greg McMackin: "Ummm ... no thanks."
Masoli: "Fine. I didn't wanna come anyway."

There was an interesting development today, though, when KEZI-TV in Oregon reported that "a source very close to Jeremiah Masoli" said Masoli had completed his final undergraduate coursework at Oregon, meaning he can switch schools if he's accepted into a graduate program and be eligible to play immediately, even at a D-I school. That'd obviously help in terms of getting a relevant program to give him a shot since he won't have a year's worth of rust to shake off when he gets back on the field.

The same source claims Masoli's first choice for that hypothetical shot is Ole Miss (which is odd since there doesn't appear to be any particular connection there, but whatever). How does Houston Nutt feel about that?

I asked coach Houston Nutt via text message if he was pursuing Masoli. He flatly texted “No.”

I see. That seems pretty definitive, but note that it doesn't say Nutt wouldn't consider bringing Masoli in -- just that he's not pursuing him. Based on Mississippi's recruiting strategy (sign 40 guys and see which 25 qualify) and lack of an established QB, I don't think Nutt would kick him to the curb if he decides to enroll this fall.

But if Nutt really isn't interested, the options appear to be few and far between; the only D-I school that's even brought Masoli in for a visit is Louisiana Tech. That was before the news came out that he could be eligible to play this year rather than in 2011, of course, but what legitimate program is gonna pin its hopes on a fresh-off-the-street criminal with no experience in whatever offense that school happens to run and only one year of eligibility?

If you're thinking "that has Kansas State written all over it," you and I are on the same page. Bill Snyder has never been shy about bringing in questionable characters (academically, criminally or both) if he thinks it'll help him win. I don't have any idea if there's mutual interest, but it's an idea that makes sense to me ... especially since senior QB Carson Coffman hasn't exactly dominated in his mostly uninspiring career at KSU (he was actually benched after four starts last season).

Other than that, I dunno. It's hard to envision any other BCS conference team knocking at his door. I don't blame him for looking around -- Louisiana Tech can't be at the top of anybody's list -- but if it comes down to Louisiana Tech or Random FCS Technical School, the choice will be pretty easy (and probably pretty quick since fall practice starts next week).

Is UNC the new USC?

2010-07-16T09:41:00.004-07:00

Sounds like there's potential trouble in Chapel Hill:

A source at North Carolina told ESPN.com's Joe Schad on Thursday that UNC football players were interviewed by the NCAA this week and asked questions about agents and whether anyone had received gifts or extra benefits.

North Carolina seems like an odd place for violations, but Butch Davis knows how to collect NFL-caliber talent (remember the 2001 and '02 Miami teams?). UNC has a ridiculous six legitimate first-round prospects on defense alone: Robert Quinn, Marvin Austin, Quan Sturdivant, Bruce Carter, Kendric Burney and Deunta Williams. When you have talent, the agents will come calling.

The interesting thing is that there was no public report of violations or unusual activity at North Carolina (at least not that I'd heard of). But the NCAA wouldn't just step in and start an investigation without having something to go on.

ESPN provides a little background:

The investigation began with a phone call from the NCAA, Baddour said, though he declined to say when the call came or when investigators had visited the Chapel Hill campus.
A second source said that the NCAA asked all of UNC's projected NFL draft picks to provide phone records so investigators could see which agents they had spoken with.
The players were also asked who paid for the travel, who paid their rent and which agents they had met with and when, according to the second source.
Austin recently tweeted about a trip to Miami.
Both sources used the word "hectic" to describe the agent activity surrounding North Carolina football since multiple players passed on the NFL draft.
A third source, with ties to North Carolina, said that Austin was asked about having been seen driving Kentwan Balmer's vehicle.
Balmer is a former North Carolina defensive end who plays for the 49ers and worked out in Chapel Hill this offseason. Another source said Austin stayed at Balmer's apartment at times this offseason as well.

"Hectic" agent activity, eh? The compliance people at USC would probably recommend nipping that in the bud. That's not something you wanna screw around with, because that's the kind of thing that can really put a school in the NCAA's doghouse. Signing with an agent equals an immediate relinquishing of all eligibility, and since all the aforementioned guys passed up the draft to return for their senior seasons (except for Quinn, who's a junior), I don't think that's what they had mind. Accepting stuff from an agent is also a hardcore violation, although it's one a player can work his way out of if he handles it right.

The Bylaw Blog (which is remarkably informative when it comes to all this NCAA crap) makes an excellent point: Since any impropriety apparently occurred since the end of last season -- and obviously no games have been played yet this season -- nobody could have played while ineligible. If Austin received some free rent from Kentwan Balmer, for example, he could probably just repay that amount and resolve the situation before the start of the season. If an agent paid for a trip to Miami to meet with a representative, that's more of a gray area. There's usually going to be at least some loss of eligibility due to receiving inappropriate benefits.

But until the NCAA announces specifically who or what is being investigated, it's pretty hard to know exactly how serious things might be. Back to the Bylaw Blog:

The biggest question now is which NCAA group was on campus investigating. If members of the enforcement staff were around, then you can bet the NCAA thinks it has something.
If it was the Agents, Gambling and Amateurism staff, things are much murkier. Part of the AGA’s directive is fact-finding and research on agent trends and activities. But the AGA is also an investigative body in enforcement cases. So fact-finding may have turned into a lead, or the AGA could have been checking in on a hotbed of agent activity and decided there was so much activity that it was necessary to ensure violations had not occurred.

So there could be a serious investigation into already-documented inappropriate activity. Or it could simply be research on the number of agents around campus. Or it could be that agents are known to be around campus and the NCAA is just checking to make sure that there haven't been any violations. Figuring out the details is half the fun!

Based on the NCAA's typical time frame, we should find out more in about 2016 ... OK, not really. This is one case where the school needs to know ASAP if anybody's looking at ineligibility, so my guess is that there'll be something at least moderately definitive by the end of August.

As far as long-term impact, I don't have any rooting interest in UNC or any idea whether Butch Davis runs a loose ship (although he definitely cleaned up Miami after Dennis Erickson left), but it'd be a shame if some of the team's best players got the program into a bunch of trouble just as the Heels are finally becoming an ACC contender for the first time since the Mack Brown era.

So long, Bobby Johnson

2010-07-15T09:32:00.011-07:00

Exactly 52 days before Vanderbilt's season opener against fellow competitive nerd Northwestern, coach Bobby Johnson announced his retirement Thursday:

"I've decided to retire, not resign," Johnson said. "It's a tough decision with which my wife, Catherine, and I struggled. This is a personal decision."
"Football is not life, but it's a way of life and it consumes your life," Johnson said. "You only have so many years to live, and you want to see a different way."

The timing makes the whole thing seem a little odd, but Johnson, who turned 59 earlier this year, emphasized during his press conference that his retirement didn't have anything to do with health. It sounded like he just wasn't motivated anymore (and I know from experience that having a not-very-motivated coach just hanging around at the end usually leads to bad things).

A lot of people will look at a 29-66 career record at Vandy and say, "Meh, mediocre coach for crappy program." But that's selling him way short. Consider that in the 20 years prior to Johnson taking over, Vanderbilt had averaged three wins per season, hadn't finished over .500 or played in a bowl even once and had a season-high of five wins (on four occasions).

In comparison, Johnson's final five years make him look like Bear Bryant:

2002 Vanderbilt 2–10 (0–8, 6th East)
2003 Vanderbilt 2–10 (1–7, T–5th East)
2004 Vanderbilt 2–9 (1–7, T–5th East)
2005 Vanderbilt 5–6 (3–5, 5th East)
2006 Vanderbilt 4–8 (1–7, 6th East)
2007 Vanderbilt 5–7 (2–6, 6th East)
2008 Vanderbilt 7–6 (4–4, T–3rd East) W Music City
2009 Vanderbilt 2–10 (0–8, 6th East)

It took him a few years to get going, but once Johnson had flushed the system and brought in his own players (his first senior class would've been in 2005), Vandy went on its best four-year run since 1956-59 (!!!). We're talking about the Eisenhower administration, people. This is a school with four bowl games in its history -- no other SEC program has played in fewer than 14 -- and a grand total of one postseason ranking, which came in the grand ol' days of 1948. All you need to know is that he was SEC Coach of the Year in 2008 for finishing 7-6 and winning the Music City Bowl.

This one-sentence snippet from ESPN nicely summarizes Johnson's impact:

Johnson ended losing skids to eight SEC teams during his tenure, including a 22-game string to Tennessee in 2005.

He made Vandy consistently competitive against its SEC peers for the first time since at least the 1980s and arguably the 1950s, and that's about all that can be expected. His 29-66 record and 2-10 final season shouldn't be what people remember.

Offensive line coach and assistant head coach Robbie Caldwell now takes over on an interim basis. He's never been a head coach or even a coordinator at any level, which is terrifying, but there aren't many other options when (a) you're Vanderbilt and (b) it's just seven weeks before the start of the season.

Reason #3,742,818 why I love college football

2010-07-14T22:58:00.009-07:00

Nebraska lost to Iowa State 9-7 last year -- at home, no less -- by committing a ridiculous eight turnovers, including four inside the Iowa State 5-yard line. It was one of the most bizarre games I've ever seen; I even wrote about it at the time.

The Cyclones were 18 1/2-point underdogs, were playing without starting QB Austen Arnaud AND star running back Alexander Robinson and put up 239 total yards and no touchdowns. And they won (their first win in Lincoln in 33 years).

There's no accurate word to describe it other than "lucky." Paul Rhoads probably knew this -- he just didn't care. He was riding a wave of adrenaline that could have carried him halfway back to Ames, and it led to one of the great locker room speeches of all-time (and I don't mean great in a Mike Gundy "I'm a man!" way):

That's what it's all about, right?

A new game show where everybody loses!

2010-07-11T18:45:00.015-07:00

The offseason is boring for everybody. For fans, this means discussing depth charts and debating expansion scenarios. For players, this means finding trouble in new and eventful ways. And this was an unusually eventful week; in fact, it was so eventful that it's time for our first-ever episode of "Who Wants to be Arrested in a Ridiculous/Stupid Way?"

Contestant #1: Behind our first curtain is ... well, several guys, and they're all wearing orange. Two Tennessee players were arrested and several others were questioned after a fight at a Knoxville bar ended with an off-duty cop being beaten and lying unconscious on the ground outside. Some of the players were underage, including five-star freshman receiver Da'Rick Rogers. The fallout: Starting safety Darren Myles Jr. (one of the two guys arrested) has been kicked off the team and starting defensive tackle Marlon Walls and starting linebacker Greg King have been suspended indefinitely. Rogers was the other play arrested, but there's been no word yet on his punishment (Tennessee's investigation is still ongoing). If you're wondering why Myles got the boot, here you go:

An affidavit regarding Myles' arrest stated that a university officer identified himself to Myles at Bar Knoxville, after which Myles fled on foot. When the officer caught up to Myles and attempted to place him into custody, Myles broke free from the officer's grip and struck him in the face. Myles was later taken into custody by the Knoxville Police Department, which turned him over to university police.

And there's this:

This is the second time Myles has been in trouble. A projected starter this coming season, Myles was charged April 18 with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and public intoxication following an incident at another nightspot near campus. Dooley handled Myles' punishment for that arrest internally, though that criminal case is still pending.

Sounds like a guy with his head on straight, yes? Stupidity rating (on a scale of 1-10): Myles and Rogers each get a 10 and everybody else gets an 8; we'll call it a collective 9.

Contestant #2: We have another team effort, this time from a couple Georgia players who managed to do all their damage (literally) from the comfortable confines of a Chevy Avalanche. Backup running back Dontavius Jackson and starting receiver Tavarres King, both redshirt sophomores, were arrested and Jackson was charged with a whopping six crimes for some serious shenanigans:

Jackson was driving a Chevrolet Avalanche that belonged to King when officers noticed he did not move over for a separate police stop on the road and was traveling at a high rate of speed, university police chief Jimmy Williamson said. Two police vehicles were at that stop and one left to pull over the Avalanche at about 3 a.m.

Police had received a report that a vehicle had been struck earlier by an Avalanche, and the driver of the car that was hit identified a tag number and described some of the occupants.
"That just happened to be the car that our officer was behind, and he pulled them over."

So you've just been involved in a hit-and-run. You're approaching several police cars along the side of the road. Do you:

(a) Reduce your speed to something below the speed limit
(b) Move over to avoid being noticed
(c) Both of the above
(d) Don't move over or slow down, guaranteeing that you'll attract attention

Oh, and both had been drinking; neither is 21. We might have a winner! No official punishment has been announced yet, but Georgia's athletic department policy requires a minimum one-game suspension for any alcohol-related incident (and they probably won't get a slap on the wrist after Georgia athletic director Damon Evans just had to resign due to his own DUI scandal last week). Stupidity rating: 9.

Contestant #3: Our third contestant is a large gentleman -- about 6-foot-2, 260 pounds -- who's a returning starter at Iowa and enjoys drinking. And driving. At the same time.

Iowa defensive end Broderick Binns was arrested early Friday and charged with drunken driving.

A police report said Binns was pulled over near campus by University Heights police for traffic violations. The report said Binns had watery eyes, smelled of alcohol and showed impaired speech and balance.

Well at least he didn't try to hide it, right?

Police said the 20-year-old Binns initially denied drinking. He later acknowledged having several drinks and failed a preliminary breath test.

Ummm ... yeah. The original report also said Binns had a club wristband on that listed his age as 21. Unfortunately for him, police officers are capable of reading a driver's license and quickly realized that he's only 20. Oops. "Some form of suspension" now awaits, according to Kirk Ferentz. Stupidity rating: 7.5.

Contestant #4: We actually have a second contestant from Georgia (better keep your eyes on these kids, Mark Richt). But ladies, if you're looking for a rebel, you might want to skip over redshirt freshman cornerback Jordan Love and his not-so-intimidating rap sheet:

Love was arrested late Monday night after police responded to a complaint about three individuals shooting off fireworks near a campus dormitory. According to University of Georgia police chief Jimmy Williamson, the responding officer arrested Love after he refused multiple requests to provide his middle name before relenting.

Wait ... what??? I assume he was being a smart-ass, probably offering a bunch of profanities in place of his middle name or telling the officer to do something to a body part that shall not be mentioned, right?

Police presented Judge Charles Auslander with what they considered extenuating circumstances after Williamson spoke with Love's family Tuesday. Love does not use his middle name, Lawrence, as he was named for someone with whom the family no longer associates, Williamson said.

This brings me to a little segment I like to call "Really!?! With Seth & Amy."

If I ever make it to Athens, I'll be secure in knowing that the police are out there enforcing every Civil War-era law to the fullest, especially ones like "no spitting in public," "ties required at all times" and "middle names must always be provided to law enforcement officers."

Ridiculousness rating (on a scale of 1-10): 463.

And with that, I believe Jordan Love has established a Ken Jennings-esque record that might never be topped. We have our winner.

And the hits just keep on comin'

2010-07-10T22:04:00.013-07:00

Here's a brief and chronological summary of things that happened to USC this week:

1. Junior defensive end Malik Jackson, a rotational player with 3.5 sacks last season, announced that he's transferring to Tennessee.
2. Seantrel Henderson was released from his letter of intent and signed with Miami.
3. USC issued letters of apology to five schools for claiming that they had inappropriately contacted freshman running back Dillon Baxter (which apparently never happened).
4. Junior fullback D.J. Shoemate, a former running back/receiver who's played sparingly in the past two seasons, announced that he's transferring to UConn.
5. The AFCA announced that USC is ineligible for this season's coaches' poll.
6. Redshirt freshman Byron Moore, listed as the backup at strong safety heading into fall camp, left the program and enrolled at a juco.

Wwwwhheeeeeee!!! A couple thoughts:

* On the surface, it doesn't look like the aforementioned transfers (Jackson, Shoemate and Moore) are particularly harmful. But this is what I said after the NCAA came down with the hammer of death a month ago:

Think about this: Since the NCAA recruiting-class limit is 25 players, USC's yearly limit has now been cut to 15. In 2014, there will be -- at the absolute most -- 45 non-freshmen on the roster (I suppose there could be a few fifth-year seniors still around, but I don't see how USC will be able to afford to redshirt anybody with that sort of personnel deficit).

Every player who transfers leaves a hole that has to be filled by somebody. And if it's a freshman, that's just one more guy who won't be around in five years when USC has half a roster.

That's obviously why Henderson's loss was so devastating: The sure-fire four-year starters are the ones USC absolutely must have in order to stay elite. There will be no depth, no more position battles between four former five-star recruits. Almost every recruit needs to turn into a good player or there will be a complete hole at some spot on the roster (the funny thing is that since Henderson eventually did sign his letter of intent, he took a scholarship that could have gone to someone else in this past recruiting class).

So when USC fans try to explain that so-and-so wasn't that good anyway and only left because he couldn't get regular playing time, just remind them that you'll be pointing at their depth chart and laughing in about three years.

* I'm torn on the idea of not allowing a team to be ranked. On one hand, it makes sense that a team that's ineligible for the BCS shouldn't get a ranking. Why does it matter how good people think they are when they can't play in a bowl anyway? On the other hand, the sole purpose of every week's poll except the season-ending one is to compare teams. If USC is 8-2 on November 27 and loses to an 8-3 Notre Dame team, I'd like to know how the coaches think that win stacks up. Did ND just beat the #10 team in the country or the #20 team? That difference could mean a lot to an opponent in terms of both ranking and bowl placement.

My solution: Now that the BCS is the determining factor for everything, allow every team to be ranked but simply remove any ineligible ones from the BCS standings. That still achieves the primary goal ... or at least what I think is the primary goal. If the goal is to embarrass USC a little more by not even acknowledging their existence on the field during their two years in college football's version of timeout, then yes, ignoring them in the coaches' poll is probably the way to go.

* The Dillon Baxter situation is just flat-out weird. To recap: Baxter informs USC's director of compliance on June 11 that he's been contacted by five schools about transferring. This is against NCAA rules, as freshmen are not eligible to transfer without penalty. USC then sends a letter to the Pac-10 and NCAA seeking to remind the five schools (Alabama, Florida, Fresno State, Washington and Oregon) that freshmen are not to be contacted. All five receive a letter informing them of such. A month later, they all receive letters of apology after USC announces that Baxter “has now confirmed that he did not receive a call from your institution."

Ummm ... so did he or didn't he? I've been trying to wrap my head around the whole scenario and just can't figure it out. If he wasn't contacted by those schools -- and he named them specifically -- why would he make it up? I don't see what the motivation would be. And if he was, why did he back down? There would be proof via cell phone records and/or text messages, so it's not like it'd just be his word against a bunch of athletic departments and lawyers.

Michael Lev at the Orange County Register threw out this idea:

A colleague of mine came up with a theory, which goes like this: At the time, all five schools seemed like prime candidates to poach USC juniors and seniors who could transfer without having to sit out a year per the NCAA sanctions. (We subsequently learned that they couldn’t go to other Pac-10 schools.) So if you’re USC and you’re concerned about that, why not float a story that might cause those potential poachers to back off?

Ehhhh ... maybe. It's plausible but a little far-fetched. If you're looking to scare away poachers, this seems way too complicated. Think about it. "OK, let's go to a freshman and have him come up with a story about how he's been contacted by these teams, which they can't do. But we can't just announce it -- it'll have to go through compliance, and then they'll have to file a complaint. Then the NCAA will tell those schools to back off and everybody else will be too scared to mess with us 'cause we're USC!" Sounds like a brilliant plan except for the 500 things that could go wrong AND the fact that it wouldn't stop any of those schools from contacting whichever juniors or seniors they wanted. Lane Kiffin might be sleazy enough to come up with something like that, but again, I don't really see what the point would be. And this theory seems really unlikely in light of the news that Tennessee faxed the USC coaching staff a list of every junior and senior on the roster, implying that the Vols would be recruiting all of them. If any school was in line for a warning shot, it was Tennessee.

The only logical explanation I can come up with is that Baxter was contacted by players for those teams but not necessarily representatives (read: coaches). Keep in mind that Baxter was a big-time recruit from San Diego; it's probably safe to assume that he knows somebody -- former teammates, former opponents, buddies from combines and camps, etc. -- on just about every D-I roster. And I imagine that there were a whole lot of texts and Facebook messages to USC players on June 10 saying something like "Dude, I can't believe what happened to you guys. You should come play with me." Except their messages had more typos and crazy words those damn kids use.

He probably got some texts and told the coaches about it, and the staff interpreted that as inappropriate contact. When USC actually investigated and realized that it was just talk between players and not contact initiated by coaches or boosters or administrators, they had to back away from the original claim without going into too much detail. The coaches can't just come out and admit that they told Baxter to report something that wasn't really a violation; they'd be hit with the NCAA equivalent of filing a false police report. Yeah, it's petty, but USC can't afford even the slightest hint of violations right now.

I could be completely wrong about the whole thing, of course. But when it comes to weird stories that are missing a big chunk out of the middle, Occam's Razor is our friend.

Henderson headed to Miami (not the Heat)

2010-07-09T15:00:00.004-07:00

For the record, I don't think LeBron James or Dwyane Wade had anything to do with this:

Seantrel Henderson, a prized offensive lineman considered by most analysts to be the nation’s top high school football recruit, and his father, Sean, said on Friday afternoon that he would attend the University of Miami in the fall.

Big win for Miami, especially after USC shocked me and everyone else when they released Henderson from his letter of intent, making him eligible immediately. Miami could be extremely good this year, but there isn't much experience or depth on the offensive line. The projected starter at right tackle is Jermaine Johnson, a four-star prospect a year ago but still just a redshirt freshman. Henderson will get a shot to start right out of the gate.

As for USC, this was just one part of a horrific week that I'll discuss more in a separate post. Losing a rotational defensive end (Malik Jackson) hurts, but losing a top-10 national prospect who might have started for three or four years is a killer. USC just won't have the scholarships to absorb that kind of loss a couple years down the road -- that's when they'll be the most desperate for elite starters, because there will be literally nothing behind them. With Henderson gone, there are only three O-linemen on the roster from the last two recruiting classes (two tackles and one center). Have fun with that in three years.

One last note: I give USC (read: Lane Kiffin) a little credit for manning up and letting Henderson walk after persuading him to sign by promising minimal NCAA sanctions. It would've been pretty lame to force an elite freshman to sit out a year just because he was smooth-talked into ~~bed~~ believing USC would get off light and didn't want to be part of a decimated team with no hopes of a national title.

Splittin' up the Big Ten

2010-07-01T15:18:00.018-07:00

You can probably find about 600 gazillion proposals for Big Ten divisional alignments out there on the interwebs. Some of them are ridiculous and don't make sense. Some are just funny. A lot of them are pretty much the same. But since everyone's dying to know my thoughts (obviously), here we go ...

There are a few things that need to be established before we get to the nitty-gritty:

1. Jim Delany -- and everyone else who matters -- has repeatedly emphasized that competitive balance and long-standing rivalries will be prioritized over geography.
2. Unfortunately for Delany, pretty much every real rivalry in the Big Ten is based primarily on geography. Think about it.
3. Michigan and Ohio State will be in the same division. There's no way the best rivalry in college football is getting split up -- Delany and Michigan AD Dave Brandon have basically said as much. Nobody wants to see what's traditionally the conference's biggest game of the year replayed a week later. Not gonna happen. I will immediately laugh at and ignore any proposal that separates UM and OSU.
4. The Wisconsin-Iowa-Minnesota triumverate will also remain intact. There's no good reason to split them up and eliminate one or more of the Big Ten's most intense rivalries.
5. There are four traditionally elite programs: Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Nebraska (in no particular order).
6. A hypothetical North-South alignment wouldn't work. Not only would you be separating Michigan and Ohio State, you'd be separating Nebraska from all three of its geographic rivals and creating an embarrassingly weak divisional grouping of Illinois/Northwestern/Indiana/Purdue. You'd lose a ton of rivalry games and end up with illogical divisions that are no better than the ACC's (quick, name which teams are in the Atlantic Division and which are in the Coastal). East-West is the only way to go.

OK, so ... there are two similar proposals that fit all of these requirements. The first:

West	East
Nebraska	Ohio State
Iowa	Michigan
Wisconsin	Michigan State
Minnesota	Penn State
Illinois	Purdue
Northwestern	Indiana

Obvious problem: Three of the four strongest teams are in the same division.

Wisconsin and Iowa will probably be better than Michigan and Penn State this year, but the important thing to remember is that we're talking about permanent, long-term divisions. Kansas State was awesome back in the late 1990s, too, and Oklahoma and Texas sucked. But if anything's been established in the last few years (with the resurgence of Alabama, USC, Texas, Oklahoma, etc.), it's that the cream will always rise to the top. Michigan will be very good again, probably soon. And for schools in geographically isolated areas or with limited resources (like K-State), it's really hard to maintain consistent success. It's extremely likely that 20 years from now -- and for most of the time in between -- the top four in the Big Ten will still be Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Nebraska.

My first instinct when looking at this proposal was that it'd be fine despite its one obvious flaw. Having three of the top four in the East makes it pretty top-heavy, but Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin have all been consistently good (except for a few outliers) for the past decade. It's not like the West would be bad. And, just as importantly, every meaningful rivalry is preserved.

But consider this: No school other than Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State has won an outright conference title since 2001, and it's only happened three times since Penn State joined the Big Ten in '94. Those three represent a clear top tier. The whole point of having a conference championship game is to have a conference championship game, not a BCS tune-up like we've seen for Texas or Oklahoma in the Big 12.

While all three schools in the West are consistently good (sometimes better for Nebraska), it's asking a lot to assume that either Wisconsin, Iowa or Nebraska will be elite every year and provide an opponent at the approximate level of the Ohio State-Michigan-Penn State winner. In other words, it's a lot more important to put two of the conference's best teams in the championship game than it is to have divisions that are hypothetically balanced in terms of average winning percentage or some other statistical measure.

The more I've thought about it, the more I've decided that there's no reason NOT to shift Penn State to the West and balance out the four traditionally elite programs. Penn State is the only school in the conference that doesn't have a geographical or historical rival -- mostly because they've only been in the Big Ten for 16 years and Pitt's in the Big East -- but if you asked PSU fans who their biggest rivals are, they'd probably say Ohio State, Michigan and Iowa, just because those are the teams Penn State usually plays with the most on the line. Their rivalries are purely competitive ones. There's no hatred, no sense of attachment or history.

If you wanna talk about history, consider that a recent Nebraska-centric post on Penn State blog Black Shoe Diaries has already generated 200-some comments on the 1994 national title vote. I agree with the writer's assessment that PSU-Nebraska isn't a rivalry just because of 1994, but it doesn't hurt. There's something to be said for having a pissed-off fan base. And what really matters is that the two would regularly be competing for division titles, which is exactly what makes Penn State's games against Ohio State, Michigan and Iowa so important.

That leads us to our second proposal:

West	East
Nebraska	Ohio State
Penn State	Michigan
Iowa	Michigan State
Wisconsin	Purdue
Minnesota	Indiana
Illinois	Northwestern

Better, yes? The East's top pair (Michigan and Ohio State) is traditionally a tiny bit stronger than the West's (Nebraska and Penn State), but the West's second tier (Wisconsin and Iowa) will more consistently compete for division titles than the East's (Michigan State, Purdue and Northwestern). This arrangement does require the Illinois-Northwestern "rivalry" to be split up, but I doubt anyone outside the state lines will lose any sleep.

Probably the best-case scenario in terms of pure balance would be splitting up Iowa and Wisconsin, but that just can't happen. Even if there's some sort of protected cross-divisional rivalry game, those two schools are rivals with each other AND Minnesota AND would be geographic rivals with Nebraska, so somebody would be seriously losing out and would probably throw a shitfit.

As far as I can see, this is the best we're gonna get. We keep every rivalry intact except Illinois-Northwestern (which would still be played at least two out of every four years) and ensure that each division will almost always have a team worthy of playing in the conference championship game.

All that said, I won't be surprised if Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State end up stuck in the same division when the music stops (the decision will be made in August). That'd be the easy/lazy way to do it. But based on Delany's insistence that competitive balance will be key, my prediction is that we get Michigan-Ohio State in one division and Penn State-Nebraska in the other.

The other issue still to be determined is whether there will be eight conference games (as has been the case forever) or nine, which would allow more intraconference play and cut down on games against the New Hampshire Culinary Institute. Nine would be better on almost every level ... except for the whole money thing. More crappy opponents = more money and a better shot at bowl eligibility (which in turn means more money). There will probably be some school presidents and athletic directors who are FOR SERIOUS against losing any wins and/or revenue.

Assuming that the money argument wins and that we're stuck with eight conference games, that means five divisional games and three nondivisional games. I'm still hoping that one of those three nondivisional games will be locked in as an annual crossover rivalry for each team (such as Illinois-Northwestern, Michigan-Minnesota and maybe Michigan State-Penn State), but that'd be a bitch mathematically. The two free nondivisional spots on each team's schedule would then rotate between five schools; I don't have any idea how that would work.

Realistically, it'll probably be an eight-game conference schedule with the three nondivisional games for each team rotating every two years. Michigan would play (just hypothetically) Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota for two years -- home and away with each -- and then Illinois, Wisconsin and Penn State for two years. No team would ever go more than two years without playing any other team. Hard to complain about that (even if you're Illinois or Northwestern).

But a nine-game schedule would be even better: With four nondivisional openings and only six nondivisional opponents, each series would be "on" for four years and "off" for two. Every team would play every other team in four out of every six seasons. At that point, protected rivalry games wouldn't even be necessary. Sign me up.

For the record, there's at least some support for the nine-game schedule. ESPN blogger Adam Rittenberg talked to five athletic directors who seemed to be on board, and it only takes nine votes to pass a bylaw in the Big Ten. So if you'd like to sign my petition ... yeah, that'd be awesome. I'm just not sure there's enough support, especially when you consider that at least a few Big Ten teams already have their 2011 nonconference schedules filled. I don't think anybody wants to pay Directional State University a $200,000 cancellation fee and then fill that spot with a conference road game.

If it happens, great. If it doesn't, I have no issues -- as long as the divisions are balanced and preserve all the major rivalries. Like I said earlier, I won't be shocked or devastated if Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State end up clumped together in the Division of Death, but my hope is that Delany and the rest of the decision-makers are smart enough to look at the Big 12 and realize that having a conference championship game won't mean much if two of the three best teams are sitting at home.

It's a long way from Oregon to Louisiana Tech

2010-07-01T10:38:00.008-07:00

Jeremiah Masoli's college career might not be over just yet:

Jeremiah Masoli visited Louisiana Tech in Ruston, La., over the weekend, The Oregonian has confirmed, as the former Oregon quarterback attempts to sort out his future after being kicked off the Ducks team this spring.

A previous report from a TV station in Louisiana said Masoli planned to visit Louisiana Tech and Mississippi State, but The Oregonian disputes that and says he does not intend to visit Starkville. Assuming this is accurate, the choice will be between Louisiana Tech and the NFL supplementary draft.

The obvious question here: Why Louisiana Tech? Nobody seems sure. My guess is that new LT coach Sonny Dykes (formerly the offensive coordinator at Arizona) reached out to express interest, because there can't be too many schools looking to bring in a guy who's pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary AND been charged with marijuana possession and driving with a suspended license all within the last five months.

Dykes is a spread-offense guy who obviously has seen what Masoli can do in person (he accounted for a ridiculous 11 touchdowns in two career games against UA). Dykes probably figures that even a year's worth of Masoli in 2011 would do a lot for the visibility of his program. It's also worth noting that this year's projected starter, Ross Jenkins, is a senior. LT will have a new starter in 2011 one way or another, so why not make it a former Heisman candidate? There's little downside for Tech.

For Masoli, though, I'm not really sure how sitting out a year and then playing at a mid-major in Louisiana would be a benefit. It'd be nice to show people that he can avoid committing any crimes for a while -- the NFL usually prefers that -- but sitting out a year and then (even in a best-case scenario) tearing up the WAC won't really help his stock. I don't see any scenario that ends with him going higher than the sixth or seventh round ...

... all of which leads me to believe this NFL.com report that says Masoli is expected to enter the supplementary draft (although that was written before his visit to Ruston and doesn't really provide any specific info). He still won't go in the early rounds, but I'd rather develop while getting paid a few hundred grand a year than develop while hanging out in rural Louisiana. Call me crazy. Then again, getting a college degree and getting his life straightened out before getting to the NFL certainly wouldn't hurt. He's probably just glad to have that option.

The draft will be held July 15, so we'll know either way within two weeks.

Ridiculous stat of the day

2010-06-24T13:45:00.003-07:00

Washington State has won a total of two games against D-I teams in the past two seasons. That's pretty bad. But to realize just how epically, ridiculously terrible they've been, just look at this chart that shows the worst single-season yardage differentials in the past decade:


1.	2009	Washington St	-3161
2.	2006	Temple	-2841
3.	2008	Washington St	-2630
4.	2009	New Mexico St	-2526
5.	2003	Army	-2514
6.	2001	Baylor	-2415
7.	2005	Temple	-2348
8.	2002	Rutgers	-2292
9.	2008	Washington	-2263
10.	2003	Buffalo	-2227

Upshot: Washington State's past two seasons have been two of the three worst for all teams in college football in the past decade. And if you need further proof, here it is: Wazzu has been outscored by 723 points (!!!) in that time.

We're talking about a Pac-10 team that went to a Rose Bowl just over a decade ago and is now being obliterated by an average of 241 yards and over 30 points per game. That's just embarrassing. I know it's not easy to win at a school with minimal tradition in the middle of nowhere, but somebody should remind Paul Wulff that it's OK to be competitive.

Seantrel Henderson isn't so sure anymore

2010-06-24T10:45:00.010-07:00

If anybody really got screwed in the whole USC fiasco, it's the recruits who signed on with Lane Kiffin just two months before the penalties were handed down. None of those players knew how bad things would be (although they must have had some idea that there'd be serious punishment), and they can't be too happy now that they won't be able to play in a bowl until at least their junior year and probably won't ever seriously compete for a national title.

Uber-recruit Seantrel Henderson, for example, is less than thrilled:

National offensive player of the year Seantrel Henderson might be wavering on his intent to enroll at Southern California after the school was dealt severe NCAA sanctions.
Henderson, an offensive tackle from Cretin-Derham in St. Paul, Minn., skipped a scheduled orientation last week which prompted Trojans coach Lane Kiffin and three members of his staff to fly to Minnesota earlier this week.
Henderson's father, Sean, spoke to USA TODAY and said he could not comment on the situation.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press did manage to squeeze a comment out of him ... kind of:

Playing in a pro-am basketball league Tuesday night, Henderson was asked about his status with USC.

"I don't want to talk about that," Henderson said according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Henderson was smart back in February. He decided to wait to sign a letter of intent until after the penalties had been announced -- and he could do this because he was either the No. 1 or No. 2 overall prospect in the country (depending on which scouting service you prefer), so teams would wait for him. He could've waited until August if he wanted to. But for some reason, about six weeks after Signing Day (and after several meetings with Lane Kiffin), he gave in and signed. Good choice, right?

So now he's got a couple of not-so-exciting options:

1. He can play out the string at USC, possibly start as a freshman and have a good shot at being a first-round pick in a few years -- but probably never experience college "glory," so to speak.
2. He can transfer. Since there's not a chance in hell USC will grant him an immediate release, he'll have to sit out a year (essentially a redshirt year) and then will have four years to play wherever he wants.

Where would he go? His other finalists were Ohio State and Miami, but he'd also visited Notre Dame, Michigan and Minnesota and had offers from literally every major program. It's not like he'll have to go somewhere with limited exposure if he decides to leave -- he'll just miss out on the chance to start as a freshman and accelerate his NFL timeline. In other words, his decision will tell us whether it's college or the NFL that Henderson's really looking forward to.

We should know one way or another in the next two months since I assume he'll want to be settled by the start of the season. Either Kiffin will salvage the biggest (literally) and best prospect in his 2010 class -- which is crucial since USC will be limited to 15 scholarships in each of the next two classes -- or Christmas will come early for some other big-time program.

On a related note, I have no idea why more prospects don't disregard the letter of intent. It provides no benefit for the student-athlete; all it does is lock the player into a particular school. The school can withdraw the scholarship offer at any time and has no obligation to provide four years of aid (just ask Alabama). It's a one-year-at-a-time deal. The fine print basically says, "We can screw you over whenever we want if we decide to give your scholarship to somebody else. Sorry." Actually, I don't think it says "sorry." I'll double-check.

But if you're a recruit with a choice between 20 or 30 BCS conference schools, why sign a letter of intent? Nobody's gonna turn you away and NOT offer you a scholarship if you want to come -- it's just a matter of whether you lock yourself in. And if the school isn't locked in for four years of aid, the player shouldn't be locked in either.

Example: Mitch Mustain. He was the top QB recruit in the country in 2006 and picked the local school, Arkansas, only to be immersed in craziness almost immediately upon his arrival. He transferred to get away from it and (coincidentally) ended up at USC, where he had to sit out a year. Had he not signed a letter of intent with Arkansas, he would have been eligible to play in 2007 at USC and might have beaten out Mark Sanchez as John David Booty's backup. It's very possible that he'd have been the starter in '08 and '09 and would have been a first-round pick in April's draft. Instead he's spending his senior year on the bench behind Matt Barkley. I'm not saying with any certainty that things would have gone differently for him, just that I'm sure he'd like to know what would have happened in '07 (and beyond) if he'd have been eligible.

That's obviously a rare scenario, but the same holds true for just about any five-star prospect. Considering all the possible issues that could come up -- coaching changes, NCAA penalties, lack of playing time, etc. -- why risk penalizing yourself for a possible transfer if you don't need to? It's a screwy, one-sided system.

Seantrel Henderson knew it and shouldn't have signed. I'm just curious about whether he's more upset with Lane Kiffin's crazy recruiting voodoo or his own decision to give up on what was a pretty smart plan to avoid all the letter-of-intent restrictions.

Catching up: A rivalry in danger

2010-06-22T14:37:00.018-07:00

* The end of The Holy War? I was under the assumption that when Utah was invited to the Pac-10 and said "yes please my bags are packed let's go," it meant that the Utah-BYU series would just continue as an annual nonconference matchup. But BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe doesn't sound very confident:

“BYU and Utah have over time developed one of the storied rivalries in college athletics,” Holmoe said in a statement released from the school. “Utah’s move to a different conference will certainly have an effect on the rivalry; however, at this point it’s hard to know to what extent. [Utah athletic director] Dr. Chris Hill and I have a very good relationship and will certainly be talking about this in the future. For now, we’re grateful for the long tradition of athletic competition between the two schools.”

Keep in mind that Utah also has a 115-year-old rivalry with Utah State and an upcoming series with Boise State from 2011-13. With the Pac-10 playing a nine-game conference schedule, that doesn't leave a whole lot of room for flexibility (although the series could always take a short break and then continue in 2014).

And the more I've been thinking about it, the more I've been wondering exactly how motivated Utah will be to keep playing BYU. The Utes are in the Pac-10 now -- they don't need the publicity or the national recognition from that sort of game. But BYU does. Wouldn't it benefit Utah to eliminate one of BYU's few nationally relevant games (and head-to-head recruiting opportunities) now that the Utes have the upper hand?

On top of that, it's not like Utah will be looking to toughen its schedule while regularly battling for bowl position in what should be a pretty deep Pac-10 (or Pac-12 or whatever). They'll be looking at the same formula as every other BCS conference school: more easy nonconference opponents = more home games, more money and more bowls.

I still hope something gets figured out, but this year's BYU-Utah game might be the last until at least 2014.

* A rough week for Ohio State: Ohio State had an Oregon-style week, losing three potential contributors to various shenanigans in a matter of three days. Recruit suffering life-threatening gunshot injuries? Check:

Jamel Turner, 18, was left in critical condition by a shooting early Saturday in Youngstown. A 17-year-old girl was killed in the shooting.

By the way, this is the second time Turner (a four-star DE/OLB) has been shot in the past year. "Wrong place at the wrong time" has to turn into "might wanna find some new friends" at some point. Hopefully Turner recovers and gets his life back on track.

Receiver (not a starter but a significant contributor) flunking out and transferring to a junior college? Check.

Receiver Duron Carter, a starter for Ohio State in 2009 as a freshman, has enrolled at Coffeyville Community College in Kansas with intentions on improving his academic standing. Carter, who had 13 receptions for 179 yards last season, missed the Buckeyes' 26-17 win over Oregon in the Rose Bowl after being ruled academically ineligible.

If the name sounds familiar, that's because Duron's father is Hall of Famer (and former Buckeye) Cris Carter. He looked like a potential star as a freshman before his academic issues, so his loss will be felt, especially in three- and four-receiver sets. OSU is particularly inexperienced after starters Devier Posey and Dane Sanzenbacher. Carter was third among receivers in yardage last year; after that, there's nobody else on the roster with a college reception.

And last but not least (OK, this is probably least), defensive end Keith Wells left the team Monday and intends to transfer. Wells was a pretty highly touted recruit but hadn't amounted to much, getting spot duty as a freshman but then redshirting as a sophomore. He was looking at up a lot of similarly talented players on the depth chart and might have been having academic issues (there's some dispute on that). He hasn't yet announced a destination, but don't be surprised if it's a lower-division school where he can get immediate playing time if he's eligible.

* Arizona loses a receiver: Spectacularly named senior Delashaun Dean, one of a group of three returning Arizona receivers with over 40 catches last season, has been suspended indefinitely:

Arizona Wildcats wide receiver Delashaun Dean was arrested over the weekend on weapons charges and has been suspended from the football team indefinitely.
Coach Mike Stoops issued a statement this morning confirming the suspension. He said Dean's penalty is "due to a violation of team rules."

Dean's loss would hurt, but UA actually has remarkable depth at wideout, even with Terrell Turner (48 catches) graduating and tight end Rob Gronkowski heading to the NFL. There are four returning juniors with significant experience: starter Juron Criner (45 catches) as well as David Roberts (43 catches), David Douglas (31 catches) and William Wright (23 catches). This is a benefit of regularly sending out three- and four-receiver sets. With QB Nick Foles and the rest of the offense returning almost intact, the passing game should be fine.

As for Dean -- a pretty good athlete at 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds -- any shot at the NFL probably hinges on working his way back and having a strong senior year.

* Former five-star recruit headed to ... USF? It's only been two years since Darrell Scott was the top-rated running back in the country (and No. 6 player overall on Rivals), but it's been a loooong two years. Scott passed up offers from USC, Florida, Texas and everybody else to go to to Colorado (for some reason) and has been the epitome of the team as a whole: a disappointment. He rushed for 343 yards as a freshman after getting beat out by fellow freshman Rodney Stewart, then posted a whopping 95 yards last year while missing time with a nagging hip injury. The lack of help on a horrific offense probably hasn't helped.

With Dan Hawkins on the holy-crap-my-ass-is-on-fire hot seat, Scott has decided to jump ship and head to (according to his Facebook page, anyway) USF.

"Just got a scholly peeps!!!! Your looking at a bull now," he wrote. "USF here I come baby."

If he's looking for playing time on what should be a pretty good team, he seems to have chosen wisely. USF's starting running back this year will be Moise Plancher, a sixth-year senior (yes, that's right). Backup Mike Ford was dismissed from the team in February, and there's nobody else of note on the roster.

Scott will have to sit out this season as a transfer but should be the front-runner for the starting job on a Big East contender in 2011.

* Oregon might be a little closer (maybe) to deciding on a QB: The battle to replace the moronic Jeremiah Masoli has been a dead heat since spring, with Dennis Dixon play-alike Darron Thomas (a redshirt sophomore) battling experienced-but-not-as-athletic senior Nate Costa.

I guessed about two months ago that Thomas would get the nod based on nothing but potential and one half against Boise State in 2008. But on Monday -- which was Oregon's first day of summer conditioning -- Oregon beat writer Rob Moseley made an observation that might mean something or might mean absolutely nothing:

Nate Costa has consistently been at the front of the pack leading guys through drills this evening.

Note that these weren't organized drills or plays, just "voluntary" workout-type things ("voluntary" goes in quotes because everyone knows they aren't really voluntary). But if Costa appears to be taking more of a leadership role for a program that hasn't exactly been stable this offseason, that might be the difference come September; this is a talented team with still-realistic Pac-10 title aspirations.

Don't expect an official decision until the final days of fall camp.

The Pac-10 gets its 12th team

2010-06-16T14:17:00.007-07:00

The Pac-10 didn't take long to recover from its broken heart:

The Pac-10 invited Utah to become the 12th member of the conference Wednesday, two days after being turned down by Texas, Oklahoma and three other Big 12 schools.
Utah officials did not immediately say whether the invitation would be accepted. However, a source tells ESPN that Utah will join the Pac-10.

Obviously. I'm sure there'll be a lot of debate over where to stay in the Mountain West or head to the Pac-10. "Let's see, would you like to keep your $1.33 million in TV revenue or would you like $15 million, a shot at an automatic BCS bid and a huge boost in prominence?" Tough call. The only negative anyone has come up with is the split from BYU, but some minor scheduling adjustments should take care of that and keep The Holy War alive and well as a nonconference matchup.

From the Pac-10's standpoint, Utah is actually a pretty good addition. Good football team (at least middle of the pack in the Pac-10), good basketball team, good TV market (Salt Lake City is the 31st-largest in the country) ... nothing spectacular but nothing not to like. Getting more quality competition is never a bad thing.

Overall, though, the Pac-10 didn't really do anything to increase its national relevance. Nobody east of the Mississippi will be drawn to the impending Pac-10 Network to see Utah-Arizona or Colorado-Washington or just about any other combination outside of USC-Oregon. In other words, Utah and Colorado are both fine additions, but they represent expansion for expansion's sake. The important thing is that the new Pac-10 can split into two divisions, hold a championship game, start a network and bring in a little extra money via Denver and Salt Lake City. The lesson: If there's more money, everybody's happy.

The Denver Post reports that the new divisions will look like this:

South	North
USC	Cal
UCLA	Stanford
Arizona	Oregon
Arizona St.	Oregon St.
Utah	Washington
Colorado	Washington St.

No surprises there. One of the big concerns with a divisional split was that the Washington, Oregon and Arizona schools wanted to keep their regular trips to California to help with recruiting. Separating Stanford and Cal from USC and UCLA makes that possible and still retains most geographic connections. The only quasi-rivalry that might be lost some years is USC-Cal; that's manageable.

I've seen a bunch of articles praising Larry Scott for his aggressive moves in expansion, and I'll give him credit for trying to do something EXTREMELY bold. But at the end of the day, the Pac-10 pretty much is what it was a week ago except with one more good team (one that'll finally get a chance to test itself against consistently strong competition) and one more mediocre team. And a championship game, of course.

And then there's the Mountain West. The poor, poor Mountain West. Just five days ago, the addition of Boise State seemed like the first step toward a guaranteed automatic BCS bid. With Utah, BYU, TCU and Boise State? That's a strong conference, probably even better than the Big East. I even said this at the time:

... even if the Big 12 stays intact, the Mountain West will be a lot stronger coming out of expansion than it was going in.

Errrr yeah. I obviously didn't foresee the current scenario. As it is, we're right back to square one. There's one excellent team (Boise taking Utah's place) and two consistently very good teams (BYU and TCU). Unless the MWC can steal another good program from a major conference (extremely doubtful), it's gonna be pretty hard to land that coveted auto-bid.

So close and yet so far ...

The story of expansion in hilarious MS Paint

2010-06-15T23:45:00.034-07:00

There's a guy on a Texas message board who does awesome stuff with MS Paint. That's pretty much all the explanation you need. Enjoy:

The end.

Coaching signals FTW

2010-06-15T20:10:00.006-07:00

I've seen some pretty crazy coaching hand signals, but the Oklahoma assistant (I can't tell who it is) at the very bottom right corner of the screen in this video is either extremely aroused or should probably come up with a new signal for whatever he's trying to call:

I mean, what kind of play is that?

The Big 12 is still kickin'

2010-06-14T18:26:00.017-07:00

So ... I guess we won't be seeing a Pac-16. Texas has decided to save the Big 12 -- and about half the teams in it -- by choosing the status quo and the promise of $25 million or more per season in TV revenue.

This obviously takes care of any talk about superconferences, at least for now. The Pac-10 will likely stop at 12 teams and the Big 12 is probably stuck at 10, so until the Big Ten makes another move, there probably won't be a conference with more than 12 teams. Not exactly what we were expecting a few days ago, right?

But if you've looked at the details of Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe's sales pitch, you might have noticed something:

Texas stands to earn between $20 million and $25 million annually in television revenue in the reworked deal, including money from its own network, according to Orangebloods.com.
The Longhorns' network figures to generate between $3 million and $5 million, according to the Orangebloods.com report. Because the Big 12 has unequal revenue sharing, the deal will mean more money for Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma, who all would receive at least $20 million annually from the new deal.
The other seven schools in the Big 12 would make between $14 million and $17 million, doubling what they currently receive in TV revenue.

OK, let's figure this out. The Big Ten distributed between $20 million and $22 million in TV money to each team last year, part of which came from the ABC/ESPN contract and part of which came from the Big Ten Network. The SEC distributed about $17 million to each school from its contract with ESPN. The Big 12?

1. Texas: $10.2 million
2. Oklahoma: $9.8 million
3. Kansas: $9.24 million
4. Texas A&M: $9.22 million
5. Nebraska: $9.1 million
6. Missouri: $8.4 million
7. Texas Tech: $8.23 million
8. Kansas State: $8.21 million
9. Oklahoma State: $8.1 million
10. Colorado: $8.0 million
11. Iowa State: $7.4 million
12. Baylor: $7.1 million

Granted, the Big 12's TV deal was outdated and was set for a significant boost this offseason. But I highly doubt that it would've surpassed the SEC deal, and there's no way it would've gone past the Big Ten's total revenue package. And that's WITH Nebraska and Colorado. Yet according to Beebe, the revenue-sharing payouts will now look something like this:

1. Texas: $22 million
2. Oklahoma: $20 million
3. Texas A&M: $20 million
4. Everyone else: $15 million

Add it all up and that's a total of $167 million a year, or $16.7 million a team. Keep in mind that the second- or third-most valuable program (Nebraska) is gone along with the third-biggest market (Denver) the conference owned. Is the Big 12 run by the underpants gnomes? Because the new plan looks something like this:

1. Lose two valuable schools
2. ?
3. Profit

There must be something I'm missing. Fox Sports will be expected to pay the same amount for what's basically Texas, Oklahoma and Conference USA as ESPN is paying for the SEC? Yeah, I don't get it. Maybe the Big 12 can get that amount, but if so, Fox is flat-out stupid.

The more likely scenario: Beebe is pulling numbers out of his ass in a desperate bid to keep his conference alive. Not that I can blame him; it was his only chance to avoid what would have been the complete and utter collapse of the Big 12. But why would anyone more than double the value of a TV contract for a conference that now has one nationally relevant game (Texas-Oklahoma) a year? I could go on, but I think you get the idea. I'll be pretty surprised if the actual payouts end up close to what's being promised.

The other thing that's weird is that the whole cause of the unrest in the Big 12 was the uneven revenue sharing. Texas got just over 10% of the conference's total TV money (a little over $10 million), so teams like Baylor and Iowa State were left with a much smaller portion (around $7 million). Nebraska, Missouri and the middle-of-the-pack schools got about $8.5 million or $9 million. So how's that new deal look, Missouri? Texas will now be raking in roughly 13% of the overall TV package, while the bottom seven schools will each be pulling in about 60-75% of that. Everyone besides Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M is now in even worse shape than before in terms of percentages. And the sad part is that they all need Texas so badly that they'd have signed off on just about anything.

At the end of the day, it was all about power for Texas. If it was about money, UT could have had about $30 million in TV money from the Big Ten and $500 million from the CIC for research. If it was about academics, UT could have gone to the Pac-10 and given the school a reputation boost. Doing neither of those things made a pretty clear statement. If you condensed the entire negotiation process into one conversation, it would have gone something like this:

Missouri: This sucks. I can't believe how unfairly you treat me, Texas. I'm outta here as soon as the Big Ten breaks up with Notre Dame.
Texas: Fine. Good luck with that. I'll go hang out with my other friends and laugh while lighting my Cuban cigars with $100 bills.
Missouri: Shit. You're right. Hey, wait a minute -- maybe we can work something out.
Texas: I'm listening ...

This all has a downside, of course. If/when another conference comes calling at some point in the future (if the Big Ten decides it wants Missouri, for example), what will stop anyone from bailing? Going to the Big Ten or Pac-10 would still represent a huge financial boost AND equal revenue sharing. If you're not Texas, Oklahoma or A&M, you have no reason to be loyal. And if Missouri or Kansas (or both) were to be pulled away, what's already a thin conference would become a complete joke. I'd think Texas would have to leave at that point.

A friend actually pointed that out and made a simple suggestion: Why doesn't the Pac-10 just invite Kansas, who would definitely accept? That'd probably weaken the Big 12 to the point where Texas would say, "Screw it, let's just get out of here and find somewhere stable where we can still make a ton of money." And if that happened, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State would come along too. They'll go where Texas goes. The other spot would be Texas A&M's (if they want it) or Texas Tech's (if A&M were to pick the SEC). Makes sense, right?

And eventually, that might be the Big 12's downfall. There are too many unhappy/mistreated partners that will be willing to leave at the drop of a hat. But it might not happen for a while (maybe never if the Big Ten doesn't want Missouri), and for Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Baylor and Iowa State, that must be an overwhelming relief.

As for the Pac-10, it sounds like Utah is likely next on the list. There's little value in expanding to 11 teams (not enough for a conference championship game); it's just a matter of which school will get the 12th ticket.

Side note: Adding Utah and Colorado is fine, but it's gotta be a little bit of a letdown after barely missing out on the Texas-Texas A&M-Oklahoma-Oklahoma State conglomerate. The Pac-10 Network (or whatever it'll be called) suddenly seems a little less interesting. The Big Ten, meanwhile, has to be feeling pretty good about itself. Think about it: The Big 12 is still alive but significantly weaker, the Pac-10 is pretty much the same as it was before but with two more teams ... the Big Ten is the only conference that's definitely stronger than it was last week.

I still think there's almost no chance that the Big Ten stops short of 14 teams, but Jim Delany said the other day that the conference will now revert to its original 12-to-18-month timeline, meaning we probably won't know anything (officially, anyway) until next offseason.

Unofficially, I don't think it's any secret that Notre Dame is still at the top of the list. And the more I hear, the more I think Notre Dame will eventually be one of those 14 (or 16) teams. It'll just be too easy for the Big Ten to split up the Big East. I see one of these two things happening:

1. The Big Ten will invite two schools -- probably Rutgers and Syracuse -- which is guaranteed to cause the Big East to implode and force Notre Dame to find a home for all its sports.
2. The Big Ten will tell the Big East that it intends to invite Rutgers and Syracuse, and this threat will force the Big East to give Notre Dame an ultimatum: join for football (and save the conference) or GTFO. Notre Dame obviously won't be joining the Big East for football, so they'll be in the same situation as in the previous scenario.

Either way, Notre Dame will need a home and the Big Ten will be happy to oblige. My guess is that the second scenario is a lot more likely, because I don't think the Big Ten wants to go to 16 teams unless it absolutely has to. Getting Notre Dame and one of Rutgers/Syracuse/Pitt/Maryland is preferable to getting Notre Dame and three of those schools, because those schools just don't provide enough in revenue to make up for their addition. The fewer schools added beyond Notre Dame, the more money everyone's sharing.

There's a rumor going around (I've heard this from more than one knowledgeable person) that Notre Dame has been offered a stepped invitation, basically ramping up the number of Big Ten games each season and becoming a full conference member the year after the NBC contract expires in 2015. That would be a pretty generous concession by the Big Ten, but I'm on board with whatever it takes. Notre Dame is still wildly valuable and extremely popular throughout the country; getting ND in the conference would have more financial impact than any move any other conference could make. And let's face it: Notre Dame belongs in the Big Ten.

So ... where were we? Oh yeah. Once the Pac-10 adds Utah, we'll probably be done with expansion for a while. Unless the Big Ten gets Notre Dame to sign up (I'm pretty sure Delany would accelerate his timeline for that), at which point everyone will go crazy again.

Catching up: Non-expansion stuff is still happening

2010-06-13T23:09:00.009-07:00

* Masoli done at Oregon: This was a mere blip on the radar last week amid all the crazy expansion talk and the USC penalty-palooza, but Oregon QB Jeremiah Masoli was dismissed from the team for "failing to adhere to obligations" that were set this spring when he was suspended for the upcoming season. In case you're wondering what "failing to adhere to obligations" means, here ya go:

Masoli was stopped by Springfield police at 9:17 p.m. local time on Monday after exiting a driveway without stopping. At that time, the officer cited the former Ducks quarterback for driving with a suspended license and possession of one ounce or less of marijuana.

Brilliant. We're talking about a guy who just led Oregon to the Pac-10 title, was second-team All-Pac-10 and would have been a legitimate Heisman candidate next season. He fucked up once (stealing laptops from a frat house with teammate Garrett Embry)? OK. People make mistakes. I have no problem with him getting a conditional opportunity to work his way back. But to take that chance -- as well as any chance he had at the NFL -- and just smoke it away? What an idiot.

* The AP lets USC off the hook: Of all the stories and columns emanating from the USC punishment, the most confusing might have been the announcement by The Associated Press that the Trojans will get to keep their 2004 title. This part makes sense ...

"It would be impractical to (name a different champion)" AP sports editor Terry Taylor said. "It's been six years. Memories have faded and the poll board from that year is no longer intact."

... but why not leave the title vacant, which is what the BCS is expected to do? According to the official record books, USC didn't win its final regular-season game or the national championship game (because Reggie Bush was ineligible), so how can the AP still declare them the national champion? I don't get it. For once, the BCS has it right.

And I feel the same way about Bush's Heisman. If he was ineligible to play, how can you NOT strip him of the award? This is from the Heisman voting instructions:

"The (Heisman Trophy) recipient must be in compliance with the bylaws defining an NCAA student athlete."

He was breaking the most basic NCAA rule for the entire season in which he won the Heisman. What more would a player have to do to lose his award (as well as his future voting rights and seat at the ceremony)? You don't have to go back and name a winner or change your vote; just don't let him keep the honor he doesn't deserve.

* Anybody wanna transfer? It's open season at USC for juniors and seniors, who are free to be contacted by any program and free to transfer without sitting out a season due to the two-year postseason ban. But will anyone actually leave? Ehhhh ...

Here's the thing: Any upperclassman starter at USC is still in better shape in terms of exposure and NFL readiness than he would be by transferring. Bowl games don't matter that much. Guys who are platooning or sitting behind five other high school All-Americans, though, might look elsewhere. Any shot of college glory is gone now that USC can't play for a national title (or even play in a Rose Bowl) for the next two years, so if there's a starting job available at some other solid program, those guys might as well take it. It'll just be a matter of how sure a backup might be that he can win a starting job at a new program in a new system with only fall camp to prove himself.

The Orange County Register did a little asking around and got a "don't have plans to leave" response from backup QB Mitch Mustain and an "I am not leaving SC" tweet from sometimes-good/sometimes-benched running back C.J. Gable. Those would be (presumably) the two most coveted backups on the roster. So as much as most people would love to see a mass exodus, it ain't happenin'.

* Clemson loses a quarterback (probably): When the Colorado Rockies took Kyle Parker in the first round of last week's MLB draft, it probably spelled the end of his career at Clemson. Remember Drew Henson? Guys with a few million bucks on the table don't go back to college very often.

I was skeptical about Parker beating our former uber-recruit Willy Korn for the starting job last fall, but he did it -- and he turned out to be pretty good. He completed 55.5% of his passes and had 20 touchdown passes and just 12 interceptions, impressive numbers for a redshirt freshman who was spending half his time on another sport.

Assuming he won't be back, the starting job likely falls to athletic redshirt freshman Tajh Boyd, a one-time Tennessee commit who inexplicably had his scholarship offer pulled when Lane Kiffin took over at UT. Talent is what he has; experience is what he doesn't. With no C.J. Spiller and a completely unprepared QB taking over at the start of fall camp, Clemson's offense could be a little ugly early in the season (those games against North Texas and Presbyterian probably look like a blessing now). After that, it'll all depend on Boyd's development and whether he plays up to his recruiting hype or just plays like a freshman.

* Dorsey isn't coming to Michigan: Probably the most hyped recruit in Michigan's 2010 recruiting class was cornerback Demar Dorsey, ESPN's 12th-ranked player in the country. Note that I use the word "was." Naturally, since the RichRod era at UM seems to be cursed, Dorsey won't ever make it to Ann Arbor:

Michigan defensive back recruit Demar Dorsey has been released from his letter of intent after not being admitted to the school, his father said Wednesday, according to The Detroit News.

D'oh. The worst part is that he was technically qualified according to NCAA standards, but Michigan wouldn't admit him. This would normally cause me great irritation. However, two reports (at least one from an extremely reliable source) make it clear that Dorsey's transcripts were, ummm, questionable. Basically, his grades were in such poor shape heading into his senior year that the fact that he qualified automatically raised suspicion. That's not good -- just ask Derrick Rose.

As much as I'd love to add a five-star corner to UM's depleted secondary, I accept that there are some academic standards that simply have to be upheld. We're not talking about Florida State (which, coincidentally, is on Dorsey's short list of potential destinations). But I'm not gonna lie: It hurts to have a top recruit at a position of need yanked out of the class four months after Signing Day, especially knowing that it's probably bowl game or bust this season for Rodriguez.

* And that'll do it: Back to your regularly scheduled expansion talk ...

A date has been set

2010-06-11T12:43:00.004-07:00

We'll get a decision from Texas on Tuesday:

University of Texas regents will meet next week to decide whether the Longhorns will remain in the Big 12 or switch to another conference.

The regents announced Friday that they will hold a meeting by telephone Tuesday for "discussion and appropriate action regarding athletic conference membership."

There's been a lot of speculation in the last 24 hours, but according to Chip Brown (a writer for Texas' Rivals affiliate who's made a name for himself with a lot of behind-the-scenes info on expansion), the outcome has already been decided:

Texas will announce its plans to join the Pac-10 after its regents meet next Tuesday, source confirm to Orangebloods.com.

While this guy seems to have established himself as reliable, keep in mind that four days is an eternity in the world of rumors and negotiations. If the Big Ten were to swoop in and make a persuasive pitch or if the Texas Legislature were to really put the pressure on UT to keep the Big 12 intact, I think it's still a possibility that the mass exodus to the Pac-10 could fall apart.

But if nothing changes in the next 96 hours, we should all start preparing ourselves for the Pac-16 and the death of the Big 12.

The Mountain West gets in on the action

2010-06-11T10:10:00.004-07:00

This has been expected for a while now, but Boise State is finally making the leap to a legitimate conference:

Boise State is leaving the Western Athletic Conference, a league the Broncos have dominated for a decade in football, the Mountain West Conference confirmed with a statement Friday.

This is a huge win for both Boise State and the Mountain West, and I'll explain why. For Boise, this represents competition. No more eight-week stretches with irrelevant games against San Jose State, Hawaii and Louisiana Tech, games Boise can win by four touchdowns with nobody outside the state of Idaho giving the slightest crap. There will suddenly be meaningful matchups with Utah, BYU and TCU (assuming those schools are still there when the dust settles), which will give Boise the legitimacy it can't get in a conference full of third-tier schools. An undefeated season by a preseason top-10 team in the new-and-improved Mountain West might actually be enough to garner BCS title game consideration.

As for the Mountain West, there's a very simple, very obvious reason to bring in Boise State: an automatic BCS bid. The BCS determines its autobids using a rolling three-year formula, and when Boise's three-year record is added to the already-close-to-enough performances of Utah, BYU and TCU, there's a good chance the MWC will qualify for an autobid and all the money that comes with it. The whole BCS system could change once all this expansion mania is complete, but as things stand now, the Mountain West will be as good as the Big East.

And this probably won't be the last move by the Mountain West. Boise was actually expected to be invited last week -- the conference just held off because everybody wanted to wait and see what would happen with the Big 12. Unless Texas pulls a shocker and decides to stay put (which a few teams have to be desperately hoping for at this point), there will be some quality leftovers in the refrigerator. Kansas? Kansas State? Baylor? Iowa State? The Mountain West will have its pick of some/all of those teams. None of them really move the needle nationally in football, but the Kansas schools are good from time to time and basketball would get a MASSIVE boost. The conference would suddenly be relevant in both major sports.

Like everyone else, the MWC now just has to wait for the Big 12 fallout to see where it goes next. It could end up staying at 10 teams or it could end up with as many as 16. But even if the Big 12 stays intact, the Mountain West will be a lot stronger coming out of expansion than it was going in.

Expansion and the Texas conundrum

2010-06-11T00:18:00.004-07:00

This is what I said a few hours ago:

... megaconferences are about to happen one way or another.

I might have been going a little overboard with that statement, because I don't think it's a given that there are gonna be four 16-team conferences in the near future. Possible? Sure. Maybe even likely. But not a given.

On the other hand, there's no way the Big Ten is stopping with just Nebraska. Jim Delany has been talking for months about expanding the conference's TV footprint/reach; I don't think he had Omaha in mind. Texas and Notre Dame are still the primary targets. Rejections from those two would probably result in the addition of some less-spectacular group of two or four teams that would include Missouri, Pitt, Syracuse and/or Rutgers. I don't see any way the Big Ten has fewer than 14 teams when all is said and done.

Everything else hinges on Texas. If Texas joins the Pac-10, the dominoes start to fall as the other conferences try to keep up. The SEC won't be sitting still if the Pac-10 becomes the Pac-16 and the Big Ten grows to 14. But if Texas decides to stick it out in the Big 12 ... well, there might not be such mass chaos. I don't think that'll happen, but it could. Texas will decide whether the Big 12 lives or dies. And if the Big 12 lives and the Big Ten decides to hold at 12 or 14 teams, the Big East also could survive. There are scenarios that end with no massive changes and a bunch of 12- or 14-team conferences.

The problem with those scenarios is they assume that just about everyone of importance will choose loyalty/comfort/tradition over money (yeah, that happens a lot). But since people are talking about this as the potential armageddon of college athletics, who knows?

Texas, the ball is in your court. We await your decision.

USC gets the hammer

2010-06-10T22:14:00.009-07:00

Sweet merciful crap:

The NCAA threw the book at storied Southern California on Thursday with a two-year bowl ban, four years' probation, loss of scholarships and forfeits of an entire year's games for improper benefits to Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush dating to the Trojans' 2004 national championship.
The penalties include the loss of 30 football scholarships over three years and vacating 14 victories in which Bush played from December 2004 through the 2005 season.

Any Song Girls need consoling? No? Fine ...

OK, I try not to brag about my correct predictions -- I get enough wrong that I don't really wanna go back and review all of them -- but I'd like to point out a few things. First is ESPN Pac-10 blogger Ted Miller's prediction, which was posted last week:

... even in the worst-case scenario for the Trojans, the NCAA sanctions should -- and almost certainly will -- fall under the penalties Alabama earned (in 2002, when the Tide were handed a two-year bowl ban and docked 21 scholarships).

Then there's CBS college football ~~idiot~~ writer Dennis Dodd's prediction:

USC football is going to walk. There will be no NCAA jail. ... I'm not claiming to know how USC has wriggled free. I'm just telling you it has happened. That was part of Kiffin considering the job.

Errrr yeah. It's a good thing Lane Kiffin knew the results of the investigation six weeks before USC even met with the NCAA. Way to use the ol' brain, Dennis.

Anyway, here's my prediction from last Thursday:

Vacating of all wins from 2004 and 2005
Four years of probation
Two scholarships lost for a two-year period
Ineligible for postseason play for two years

I have no inside knowledge of NCAA operations and no inside sources at USC. I simply used past precedent and some common-sense conclusions to come up with an educated guess, and I ended up a hell of a lot closer than the guys who get paid to do this stuff. There were only two things I had not quite right: USC only had to vacate two wins from 2004 (instead of all of them) and lost 30 (!!!) scholarships over three years instead of two for two.

The vacating of wins was a given from the beginning; it's been common knowledge for a while now that Reggie Bush was ineligible during at least the 2005 season. But losing wins from from the end of the 2004 season means that USC is no longer the 2004 national champion -- that title will be vacated and there will be no official champion (even though both Oklahoma and Auburn finished with perfect regular-season records).

It's the other penalties that will REALLY hurt, though. It's been seven years since a Division I school (Alabama) was banned from postseason play; this isn't a common thing. Every junior and senior on the roster will now go the rest of his career without playing in a Rose Bowl or having a shot at a BCS title. Don't be surprised to see a few transfers (not a lot, but there'll be a few guys who escape).

And losing 30 scholarships (10 per year from 2011 through 2013)? That is absolutely devastating. I don't care how much talent you have on your roster, there is simply no way to overcome that unless you have remarkable luck with your recruiting and development. Think about this: Since the NCAA recruiting-class limit is 25 players, USC's yearly limit has now been cut to 15. In 2014, there will be -- at the absolute most -- 45 non-freshmen on the roster (I suppose there could be a few fifth-year seniors still around, but I don't see how USC will be able to afford to redshirt anybody with that sort of personnel deficit).

Even in a best-case scenario, recruits pan out as quality starters at about a 50% rate (that'd be for an entire team of five-star players). So even if USC brings in nothing but the best players and develops them as well as anyone else, there will probably be only 20-25 good players on the roster heading into 2014. There might be enough superstars and enough capable players to field a still-pretty-good team, but they'll constantly be an injury away from starting a walk-on. Lane Kiffin better hope he has a freakin' unbelievable recruiting class in 2014 -- and 2015 and 2016 -- or there could be a really rough stretch coming up for USC in a few years (right about the time that bowl ban wears off).

I do feel a little sorry for the players who are caught up in all this, but I can't feel too sorry for Kiffin (who was on the staff back in 2004 and '05) or the people in the athletic department. And I sure as fuck don't feel sorry for athletic director Mike Garrett, who has overseen the decimation of both the basketball AND football programs in the last two years and still managed to come up with this gem of a statement:

"As I read the decision by the NCAA, all I could get out of all of this was, I read between the lines, and there was nothing but a lot of envy, and they wish they all were Trojans."

Stop. Stop right now. You're an idiot if that's your interpretation of this:

"The general campus environment surrounding the violations troubled the committee," the report said.
The report also condemned the star treatment afforded to Bush and Mayo, saying USC's oversight of its top athletes ran contrary to the fundamental principles of amateur sports.
"Elite athletes in high profile sports with obvious great future earnings potential may see themselves as something apart from other student-athletes and the general student population," the NCAA report said. "Institutions need to assure that their treatment on campus does not feed into such a perception."

The investigation found exactly what it should have found, and USC will be feeling the results for at least the next seven years. It will be a while before we see the Trojans playing for another BCS championship. I'd also say the door is wide open for Oregon to assert itself as THE dominant team in the Pac-10, which would have been a ridiculous statement about five years ago.

Will these penalties completely destroy the program? No, nor should they. There's enough high-end talent -- both players and coaches -- that USC probably won't revert to being bad like in the late '90s. But if you look at Michigan and Tennessee over the past couple years, you can very clearly see the struggles of teams playing well below the scholarship limit (neither was penalized scholarships, but both had a series of transfers and whatnot that led to a lack of depth). It won't be an easy recovery, especially if teams like, say, Texas and Oklahoma happen to be joining the Pac-10 around the time USC's scholarship limits are really taking effect.

We're about to find out just how good of a coach Lane Kiffin really is.

Here come the pretzels

2010-06-10T11:21:00.014-07:00

It was such a slow, boring offseason just a couple weeks ago (outside of baseless expansion rumors, of course). But all of a sudden:

The Pac-10 conference announced Thursday that the University of Colorado has agreed to leave the Big 12 to join its conference.

And that's just the first in a massive setup of dominoes as we head toward megaconferences:

A source close to the Nebraska program told ESPN's Chris Mortensen that athletic director Tom Osborne informed some staff members within the past 24 hours the Cornhuskers were going to make the move to the Big Ten conference.

Boom goes the ~~dynamite~~ Big 12. With Nebraska and Colorado gone, the Big 12 North is basically done, so the Big 12 South has a big-time decision to make. At this point there are only three possible scenarios:

1. The Pac-10 becomes the Pac-16 as Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State become the newest members of a conference that would go overnight from probably the third or fourth best in the country to rivaling the SEC.
2. Texas (and possibly Texas A&M) joins the Big Ten, which really wants Texas and its gazillion viewers for the Big Ten Network.
3. Texas binds itself to A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor and decides to salvage what it can from the Big 12. If Texas and Oklahoma stick around, there are still the makings of a functional conference in both football and basketball. It won't have anywhere near the monetary pull of the Big Ten or a possible Pac-16, but it could survive.

Assuming Texas and its pals do join up with the Pac-10 (the most likely scenario), it will be a clear statement that Texas has chosen state loyalty over money. That's not to say that the Pac-16 won't get a sweet TV deal that brings in similar revenue to the BTN, but the one thing that's rarely mentioned in all the Big Ten expansion talk is the CIC (an academic consortium that consists of the Big Ten schools and splits $6 BILLION annually for academic research). Any new member of the Big Ten would presumably be included in the CIC and have access to $500 million that's not available anywhere else, which makes $20 million in TV money look like the change in my pocket. Even if the Pac-16 seems like a better fit geographically or competitively, $500 million a year would be a persuasive offer. It probably just won't be persuasive enough since the people making the decisions are the people running the athletic department.

So where does the Big Ten go next? The Big East. Not because it includes any school that's particularly desirable, but because taking two teams from the Big East will destroy that conference and put Notre Dame in a corner. The school's non-revenue sports will need a conference, and any conference willing to take Notre Dame will demand its football program as well. Geography only leaves two options -- the ACC and the Big Ten. The choice between those two is pretty easy. And I'm pretty sure the Big Ten would gladly invite, say, Pitt and Rutgers if it meant ND would come along as well. At that point, depending on exactly how many invitations are required to blow up the Big East, Missouri might also be invited to even out the Big Ten at 16.

Is there any scenario that involves Notre Dame leaving voluntarily without the Big Ten decimating the Big East? Yes -- but it still involves the same basic principle. If ND's administration has any foresight, they'll realize that megaconferences will be the death of the Big East regardless of who's directly responsible. If the Big Ten doesn't come calling, the ACC will (after it loses a few teams to the SEC, which obviously will have to keep up with the Joneses and expand to 16 teams too). Let's say the Big Ten takes Nebraska, Missouri and (just hypothetically) Rutgers. The SEC will then make a play for Florida State and Miami (and maybe some other pair such as Georgia Tech and Clemson), and the ACC will then have to fill those spots in order to keep up. They'll go after Pitt, Syracuse, USF and any other relevant schools left in the Big East. No matter how you slice it, I'll be stunned if the Big East is still in existence in two years. (Yes, I've heard the rumors that the Big East might make a play for Kansas and some of the other Big 12 leftovers, but there's just no way that's geographically feasible. Forget about it.)

I'm not sure Notre Dame can risk letting everything play out and not having a chair in the Big Ten when the music stops. It's the only possible landing spot that allows them to maintain most of their century-old traditions and national appeal. I believe that the Big Ten is, at least for now, waiting to see whether Notre Dame realizes that this is 2010 and that megaconferences are about to happen one way or another. I also believe that the Big Ten has extended an invitation to Texas and would take Texas and Texas A&M regardless of what Notre Dame wants to do. So we're back in wait-and-see mode.

For what it's worth, there's a rumor (that appears to have legs) that Texas, A&M, Notre Dame and Missouri have been invited to the Big Ten, with the offers to Mizzou and A&M contingent upon the other two joining. Texas and Texas A&M officials did have a meeting Thursday, but there was no resolution or indication about a potential conference choice. If this is true, it would definitely help explain Missouri's surprising silence on the issue. The MU administration has made it clear from the beginning that they'd crawl through broken glass to get to the Big Ten, so if they do have an invitation, why haven't they accepted already? And if they don't, why haven't they sought out other possible options? A contingent invitation certainly seems possible (maybe even likely based on the lack of info from Missouri). Landing all four of those teams seems like a pipe dream, but if Jim Delany pulls it off, he'll officially be granted the title of The Most Powerful Man in College Sports.

Personally, I won't be devastated if Texas ends up in the Pac-16 rather than the Big Ten. I'd like to have Texas (along with its cachet and the gobs of money it would bring), but from a competitive standpoint, any conference with Texas in it will be a hell of a lot harder to win. Just look at the proposed Pac-16: Good luck to a school like Arizona State, which would have to beat Texas AND Oklahoma just to get out of its own division and then play, say, USC or Oregon for the conference title. Yikes. I wouldn't be overly upset with a Big Ten combination like Nebraska, Missouri and Notre Dame, all of which provide a lot of fans, money and quality competition without the extreme talent advantage.

There are a ton of questions about exactly what the BCS bids would look like (two for each megaconference?) and whether some portion of the Big 12 might try to hook up with the Mountain West to form a sort of second-tier megaconference, but it's hard to know anything until there are answers from the two schools at top of the money heap: Notre Dame and Texas.

One last note: The big loser today was Baylor. Colorado jumping at the Pac-10's invitation was smart because it means that the Texas Legislature can't attach Baylor to its big brother in Austin and piggyback it into a new conference (a six-team move to the Pac-10 that included Baylor would have left Colorado with nowhere to go). Since Oklahoma won't be jumping ship without Oklahoma State, there's only room for three Texas schools in the Pac-16, meaning any sort of serious realignment would probably leave Baylor relegated (rightfully) to either the Mountain West or Conference USA.

Hurry up already

2010-06-04T15:43:00.004-07:00

Apparently we won't be getting the NCAA's verdict on USC today:

USC assistant vice president of media relations James Grant told the campus television station Thursday that the NCAA has not informed USC that the report is ready for release.

If you're wondering why it's taken so freaking long to finalize the penalties, the educated people I've talked to (or read) say there are a lot of details to iron out, and these have to be agreed upon and signed by every member of the Committee on Infractions. In other words, there's probably some argument over the exact penalties (length of scholarship reductions, etc.). The fact that the report was set to be released today means they have to be close -- the overall punishment structure is probably set -- but there's no way to know anything until the whole thing gets released.

Hopefully we find out the specifics some time this decade.

USC's Day of Reckoning finally approaches

2010-05-30T15:42:00.014-07:00

Remember when you were a kid and you did something really stupid that you knew was gonna get you in trouble? I'm talking about a no-questions-asked, you're-grounded-for-a-week kind of screw-up. You just sit there sulking over your eventual ass-whooping as the clock ticks and your heart moves up into your throat a little more and a little more and a little more, and eventually the wait becomes almost as unbearable as the punishment itself -- until you get punished, of course, and then you just wish the whole thing had never happened.

I'm guessing that's kinda how USC fans/players/coaches are feeling right now, because Dad is on his way up the stairs with belt in hand:

The NCAA committee on infractions will release its findings regarding the USC football and basketball programs on Friday, a source with knowledge of the situation told ESPN.com's Dana O'Neil on Sunday.

It's about freakin' time. It was way back in mid-February when the Committee on Infractions met for three days and pored over about 7 billion pages (approximately) of information turned up in the four-years-long investigation, and there's now just one question left unanswered: How bad will it be for USC?

First things first: USC isn't getting the death penalty (or anything close to it). If you've ever looked at the requirements for the NCAA to even consider handing down the death penalty, you'll see that USC doesn't come close. A school basically has to be on probation for an extended period of time and then commit multiple infractions while on probation. And, obviously, those violations have to be deemed so severe and intentional that the program deserves to be eliminated. It's only happened three times under the NCAA's current bylaws, which were adopted in 1985 (SMU football has been the only Division I program penalized), and none of those situations compare to this one. Two of the three involved actual payments being made to players by the school, while the other involved a soccer program -- one that the athletic department didn't even realize existed (!!!) -- using former professionals.

USC is a different but more complex case. The main allegations:

1. Reggie Bush received monetary benefits of over $100,000 and free use of a house paid for by agents Lloyd Lake and Michael Michaels during 2004 (USC's national championship season) and 2005 (Bush's Heisman Trophy season).
2. Running backs coach Todd McNair became aware of Bush's financial and housing arrangements at some point before the 2006 national title game against Texas.
3. Agents and representatives were allowed in the locker room, on the sidelines and in various other locations that would give them pretty much unlimited access to USC players.
4. Joe McKnight was regularly seen driving a Land Rover registered to a local businessman and wannabe marketer named Scott Schenter in the fall of 2009. USC ruled him ineligible for the Emerald Bowl after an internal investigation.

These are purely the problems relating to the football program, by the way. The basketball program had its own issues (specifically Tim Floyd making cash payments to O.J. Mayo), and that investigation was eventually clumped together with the football one, but it's not clear whether that will have any effect on the football-specific punishments.

The other factor that makes it kinda hard to figure out exactly how badly USC has screwed up is that nobody's quite sure how much anybody at USC knew or whether anyone at the school was actually involved with the arrangement of improper benefits. Was Pete Carroll setting up sweet vehicle deals for his players? Doubtful. But it's pretty clear that he (and everyone else) was intentionally turning a blind eye toward a lot of pretty obviously questionable activity. When your star running backs are regularly driving around high-end cars that are WAY above their means of living, that seems like something you should notice and maybe investigate. And if Todd McNair really did know about Bush's perks and didn't tell anybody, that'll obviously be a consideration (although maybe not much of one since he's no longer at USC).

It seems that USC's real problem (and only problem that we know of) was a SUPER-MEGA-EXTREME "failure to monitor." The coaches and administrators didn't really do anything inappropriate, but they ignored -- probably intentionally -- everything going on around them. This is a serious problem in the eyes of the NCAA.

What does that mean in terms of penalties? Well ... for the most comparable case I could think of, I went back to the Michigan basketball scandal. Refresher: Recruits and players (mostly the Fab Five and a few guys before and after) were accepting cars and a lot of money from a booster named Ed Martin. Martin wasn't really directly affiliated with the university, but he had made enough of the right donations that he landed some nice tickets and became involved with various UM basketball functions. Then he started getting buddy-buddy with recruits. He bought one kid a birthday cake, bought another some airplane tickets, etc., before it just turned into straight-up cash payments and vehicles. And Steve Fisher knew about it (most of it, anyway). Fisher was fired when everything came out.

That stuff sounds pretty familiar, right? Just replace "Ed Martin" with "Lloyd Lake," "Michael Michaels" or "Scott Schenter" and then replace "Steve Fisher" with "Pete Carroll." Carroll is already gone, of course, but a lot of people think it was no coincidence that he jumped ship when he did. Anyway, the penalties were severe: Four years of probation, two years of ineligibility for postseason play, one lost scholarship for a four-year period, the vacating of all wins and records that involved ineligible players and the return of all funds from conference/NCAA tournament appearances during that time.

I think USC's penalties will look similar, because even though there might not have been as many athletes involved as in the Michigan basketball case, there were more agents/leeches involved and it required an extended period of ignorant bliss on the part of USC. Here are my predictions:

Vacating of all wins from 2004 and 2005
Four years of probation
Two scholarships lost for a two-year period
Ineligible for postseason play for two years

Yes, that's right. I think the NCAA will drop the postseason hammer. Look at the other possible penalties and tell me how USC would suffer. Forcing them to vacate wins and go on probation does nothing other than scribble over history that's already been written. Docking a few scholarships is a real penalty, but is that alone enough to deter some other school from "looking the other way" and letting money/recruits/championships roll in? No way. There has to be some sort of serious punishment coming down -- I don't see how else to interpret the NCAA combining the football and basketball investigations and then refusing to allow USC football to penalize itself.

Some people are still expecting a slap on the wrist (I feel bad even linking to this) ...

Postseason ban? It ain't happening. Crippling scholarship cuts? No way. ... I'm not claiming to know how USC has wriggled free. I'm just telling you it has happened. That was part of Kiffin considering the job.

... but this column includes no logic whatsoever. Lane Kiffin accepted the USC job back in mid-January, about a month before USC had even met with the NCAA. He jumped at it because it was an elite job -- his "dream job" -- with a salary of about $4 million. How would he have known what the penalties would be? The school doesn't even know yet! But somehow, because of his incredible brilliance, Kiffin was able to determine that the punishment would be modest enough that it wouldn't significantly impact his career. Right.

There's also the classic argument about big schools not getting punished because it will hurt the NCAA's bottom line. First of all, the NCAA makes no money from football. That's right. All money from football goes to the schools (ticket sales), the conferences (TV rights/bowl deals) and the bowl games. The NCAA makes over 96% of its total revenue from the licensing and television rights to the NCAA basketball tournaments, so if there's any incentive to let people off easy, it'd be in basketball only. "But maybe the NCAA wants to preserve its major brands," you might say. The Bylaw Blog refutes that with, like, evidence:

There are 342 schools in Division I right now. Of those, 73 are in Power Six conferences for basketball. As a percentage, 21% of the schools are in these conferences.

There have been 114 major infractions cases since 2000. Interestingly, that’s almost half of the 235 total cases processed since 1953, validating this decade as a decade of drastically increased enforcement. Of the 114 cases, 42 involved Power Six conference schools. So while the big boys only make up less than one quarter of the Division I population, they account for over a third (37%) of the major infractions cases.

If you screw up badly (and publicly) enough, you will be punished. It doesn't really matter how big or how good you are. USC isn't "too big to fail" like the mortgage companies were.

Like I said earlier, the NCAA's refusal to allow USC to self-impose penalties on its football program is the most important indicator we have. The committee basically said, "Don't bother wasting our time with low-ball offers." Based on that and what we know about the investigation -- specifically Bush's ineligibility, McNair's knowledge of it and the frequency of agent-related problems -- USC has to be punished somewhat severely and docked scholarships, postseason eligibility or both (sorry, Class of 2014).

Don't forget to bring a towel

2010-05-25T22:26:00.012-07:00

In case you ever really wondered about the inanity of the NCAA's guidelines on everything, Maize and Brew brings us Exhibit 2 from the Michigan investigation (yes, this is a completely real interview transcript):

Good Lord. It's a miracle that every school in the country hasn't been penalized at some point for gray-area practice-time overages.

And if you're interested in this sort of thing, Mgoblog took an in-depth look at the Michigan documents and came to one clear-cut conclusion: Scott Draper (the assistant athletic director for football) and Brad Labadie (director of football operations, working directly underneath Draper) should be fired.

While the school's compliance office was sending out constant, nagging emails asking for practice-time forms, descriptions of quality-control staff duties, etc. -- in a proactive effort to avoid any potential violations -- these guys were apparently asking each other about TPS reports or something while responding with emails along the lines of "errrr yeah, I'm just getting the final signatures right now" but not ever submitting anything until the day before the Free Press report went public.*

It was a comedy of errors that revolved around the football administration refusing to respond to the compliance officers' demands for required forms. And the problems started in October 2007, when Lloyd Carr was still coach. It was first noticed that documentation was missing in April 2008. The compliance office started hounding people to the point that Labadie actually sent an email complaining about it, yet the problem dragged on and on and on until August 2009, when the school was notified of the Free Press story and somebody said "oh shit, what's everybody been doing for the last 18 months?"

This is why UM believes Rich Rodriguez should not be punished for a "failure to monitor": Associate athletic director Judy Van Horn and RichRod "agreed that Labadie and Draper would continue to be the administrators responsible for football compliance issues" at the time of his hiring. He was told about how things were done and that those guys handled it. They didn't handle it, and Rodriguez was never made aware of it (apparently because he's such an intimidating figure):

Labadie told the enforcement staff that he did not tell Rodriguez that he had failed to submit CARA forms because he did not want Rodriguez to look unfavorably upon him.

Huh? Rodriguez also stated in his official response to the NCAA that he had prepared and submitted descriptions of the quality-control staffers' job duties. These were never turned in to the compliance office by Draper/Labadie (if they had been, the compliance people likely would have recognized the problem with QC staffers being involved in voluntary workouts). Oh, and Labadie was the guy who told the coaching staff that the oh-so-controversial stretching time could be considered voluntary. Good work all around.

There's a lot more in the full post, but in summary, there was a shitload of communication that was never responded to (or was responded to with lies and procrastination). It's actually pretty embarrassing. I don't know what else Draper and Labadie do, but how you ignore important requests from your superiors for a year and a half without getting punched in the face (or fired) is beyond me. Unfortunately, nobody actually kicked these guys in the ass and forced them to do the things they were supposed to be doing, and it resulted in the penalties announced yesterday.

* This is not a joke. After one of the monthly email requests (in March 2009), this was the response:

Draper replies that Brad is acquiring the "last remaining signature[s]" from the seniors.

The forms weren't turned in until five months later. There were no player signatures on them. AAAAAARRRRGHGHGHGHGHGH. Why am I unemployed while these guys are making close to $100K?

The verdict is in

2010-05-25T19:20:00.016-07:00

Man, this has been the loooooongest offseason ever. When expansion rumors and announcements of NCAA violations are the highlights of the month ... well, I guess you know it's May.

But anyway, after months (and months and months) of debate over the allegations at Michigan and how thoroughly the program would be destroyed and humiliated, the verdict is finally in: No scholarship losses. No postseason ban. No recruiting restrictions. No firings.

Here were the penalties announced Tuesday:

• Cut back practice and training time by 130 hours (twice the amount of the overage) over the next two years, starting this summer.
• Cut number of quality-control assistants from five to three and banned them from practices, games or coaching meetings for the rest of 2010.
• Two years of probation.
• Letters of reprimand issued to seven people, including head coach Rich Rodriguez.
• Announced that quality-control assistant Alex Herron was fired after his claim of not being present during some activities was discredited by players.

In other words, the meaninglessness of the punishment fit the meaninglessness of the crime. The results were even less severe than I (and an NCAA compliance guy) predicted a couple months ago, so yay.

And then came my favorite part of Michigan's response:

"The University is satisfied that the initial media reports are greatly exaggerated if not flatly incorrect."

It's funny how the story went "Michigan accused of major violations," then "Michigan being investigated by NCAA" and then "Michigan announces punishment for NCAA violations." At no point did most people bother to look at the details or realize that the actual penalties were mostly unrelated to the Detroit Free Press report claiming massive and blatant practice time overages that turned Michigan into the butt of terrible jokes for the past eight months. In fact, the investigation showed pretty much exactly the opposite: The only practice-time violation was 20 minutes a day of stretching that the school counted as voluntary but the NCAA classified as mandatory "preparation." The remainder of the punishments stemmed from quality-control staffers overseeing voluntary drills (a rules violation), which the school said was due to miscommunication between the compliance department, the football administration and Rodriguez:

In his response, Rodriguez argued that his quality-control assistants doubled as part-time strength coaches, something his filing says the NCAA allows and “Michigan’s chief compliance officer” -- associate athletic director Judy Van Horn -- “told the enforcement staff” may be “permissible.”

Athletic director Dave Brandon went out of his way repeatedly to clarify that the problem was a communication error between multiple levels of the athletic department and not a "failure to monitor" by Rodriguez. You can believe whatever you like, but it's worth noting that Michigan publicly released every document from its investigation (in PDF form for your viewing pleasure), so there doesn't appear to be any effort to hide or distort the facts. Also, Brandon knows what he's doing: He hired the former head of the NCAA Committee on Infractions to run the investigation/response. If he wanted to show he's serious about doing things right, I think he succeeded (he also pretty much guaranteed that the NCAA won't have anything to add in terms of punishment).

Rivals writer Jon Chait -- who's very good, although I don't always agree with him -- has an outstanding take on the overlooked aspect of the Free Press' debunking:

The football program turned out to have exceeded practice and training limits by a minuscule amount. ... Nothing remotely resembling the Free Press's Dickensian portrait of players working two or three times the prescribed time appears in the report. This is the equivalent of being accused of massive tax fraud, bringing in the IRS for a thorough audit, and then admitting you mistakenly expensed a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

He goes on to explain how stupid the entire investigation was and so on and so forth, but the conclusion is particularly relevant after you've perused ESPN and read all the "OMG Rodriguez is SOOOO on the hot seat now" columns. His parting shot:

The reality, of course, is that Free Press is highly unlikely to apologize for its bungling report. ... Ray Donovan, a Reagan-era Secretary of Labor, was indicted of a high-profile crime that commanded media attention. When he was acquitted, he famously asked, "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"

The university's report shows that, whatever small rules violations occurred, there's no evidence that Rich Rodriguez had any knowledge of or gained any substantial benefit from them. The charge that he has operated a football sweatshop has been totally debunked. Where does he go to get his reputation back? Not the Detroit Free Press.

The Free Press writes these stories because they sell, and they sell because the court of public opinion made its decision about Rich Rodriguez a long time ago: He's a hick who destroyed UM's reputation and tarnished its spotless legacy (who's Gary Moeller?) and should be fired as soon as possible to avoid any further damage.

Fortunately, Michigan isn't run by the court of public opinion (side note: is it a coincidence that "public" can easily be misspelled as "pubic"?). The athletic department is now headed by a guy who's defended Rodriguez from the get-go and clearly isn't stupid enough to think "Hey, our last coaching search was so much fun, let's do it again!"

The only thing that will determine RichRod's fate at Michigan is how many games he wins. To be specific, whether Michigan finishes over .500 and gets to a bowl game. There's no scenario in which UM goes to a respectable bowl game this year and Rodriguez gets fired -- it's just not happening, regardless of what Adam Rittenberg or Mark Schlabach or Bruce Feldman might tell you. There's too much support from the people in charge (Brandon and school president Mary Sue Coleman). And hell, the guy hasn't even had a senior class yet; I'd bet my left arm that seven wins would be good enough to ensure his return to what should be a loaded team in 2011.

And now that I've gotten all that out of the way, I'll get back to the original issue: Will there be any real effect from the aforementioned punishments? Once you get past the hand-wringing and the "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" articles, all that's left is 20 fewer minutes of practice each day. As Yahoo's Dr. Saturday notes, just moving things along at a Benny Hill-like pace should take care of that. The loss of quality-control staffers probably increases the workload a bit for the guys on salary, but they'll manage. Probation just means that the NCAA is watching you like a hawk -- there are no actual requirements.

And does this "permanently weaken Michigan's football brand name," as ESPN suggests? Meh. I just have a hard time getting up in arms about such minor issues or seeing any lasting, long-term effect. I don't think most people really even care (I don't), because everyone with even a cursory understanding of college football knows that this stuff happens everywhere and is WAY less severe than a lot of other recent scandals.

Did it permanently tarnish Ohio State's image when Troy Smith (remember, the guy who won the Heisman in 2006) took a cash payment from a booster in 2004 or when Maurice Clarett was suspended for the 2003 season for receiving inappropriate benefits? Have the 27 arrests at Florida under Urban Meyer permanently tarnished the image in Gainesville? Has Oklahoma's brand name been permanently ruined since the here's-some-money-for-doing-nothing scandal involving former uber-recruit QB Rhett Bomar? In hindsight, it's pretty amusing to go back and read guys like Stewart Mandel identifying the "irreparable stain" on Oklahoma football and talking about how things would fall apart without the starting QB and how the scandal would set the program back "for years to come" (yeah, OU played in the Fiesta Bowl that year and nearly won the national title two years later behind a Heisman-winning QB named Sam Bradford).

Everything is forgotten when you win. Fortunately, what's clear after today is that the important people at UM realize this and are trying to make it as easy as possible for RichRod to do so. The program is moving on from all this crap. The rest is up to him.

Final thought: While we're on the subject, when the hell are we gonna hear about a real infractions case (I'm looking at you, USC)? The NCAA finished its three-day hearing with USC about three months ago and still has yet to announce anything other than the committee rejecting the school's attempts at self-sanctioning (which has to point toward something serious, right?). I'm not sure what they're waiting for, but I wouldn't mind having the national media's knee-jerk overreactions shift from Michigan to USC.

This is a joke, right?

2010-04-30T09:57:00.007-07:00

See if you can make it through this four-minute video without cringing or laughing (it won't be easy):

I don't know what to say. How did someone at Notre Dame came up with this idea and think it was a good one? And why does that person have such a horrible understanding of what constitutes music? I'm not sure whether I'm amused or just embarrassed for ND fans everywhere.

Let's settle down about Andrew Luck

2010-04-29T22:48:00.008-07:00

Seen any 2011 mock drafts? If you have, you know how much people love Stanford QB Andrew Luck. I have yet to see any scout project him anywhere outside the top 10 next year if he chooses to come out as a redshirt sophomore.

But is Luck really that good already? This is a basic summary of what everyone's saying:

The guy's got all the tools -- an NFL arm and an NFL rest-of-him (6-foot-4, 234 pounds) -- to hug it out with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in any of the next three Aprils. Luck already is rated as the first pick of the 2011 draft. You don't need Todd McShay to tell you that. Any agent worth his platinum Rolex Yacht-Master can see it.

I'm not gonna try to argue his obvious physical gifts, and realistically, his raw talent will probably guarantee him a spot somewhere near the top of whatever draft he chooses to enter (Stanford's pro-style offense won't hurt either). I just think people are seriously jumping the gun if they're expecting him to become a dominant, top-tier QB this year.

Think about this: Michigan uses a fairly run-heavy offense, and Tate Forcier split snaps with Denard Robinson last year while also missing some time due to a sprained shoulder. Forcier threw 281 passes. Luck threw 288.

There was an obvious reason for that: Toby Gerhart and his 343 (!!!) carries for just under 2,000 yards. But Gerhart's now in the NFL, meaning Luck will be expected to lead the offense, not just help it, because I don't see the running-back-by-committee group of Stepfan Taylor, Jeremy Stewart and Alex Debniak coming anywhere close to Gerhart's level of production. For reference, Luck attempted more than 22 passes in five games last year. In those games, he completed 52.8% of his passes and averaged 263.6 yards, 1.4 touchdowns and 0.6 interceptions. That's not bad -- a 134.8 pass efficiency would have been slightly above average (47th) nationally -- but when we're talking about a guy widely viewed as next year's top overall prospect, it's not exactly dominant. (Jake Locker, by the way, was 55th in pass efficiency; that's a discussion for another time.)

And it's not automatic that a guy will markedly improve between his freshman and sophomore years. There are a lot of other variables that come into play, especially for QBs who don't have elite athleticism to fall back on (Vince Young, Pat White, etc.). I specifically remember watching Chad Henne struggle as a sophomore in 2005 while Mike Hart was on the sidelines for much of the year with an ankle injury, because he just wasn't yet capable of carrying the offense. Don't be surprised at all if Luck has some of the same issues. It won't be easy to lead the Pac-10 in pass efficiency when there aren't eight or nine defenders in the box on almost every play, and Stanford won't be scoring 55 points against USC this fall while Luck goes a pedestrian 12-for-22 for 144 yards (those were his numbers against USC last October).

The "other variables" I mentioned above: Stanford's starting receivers both return, but the offensive line is being completely rejiggered after losing two starters. That's basically a net wash, although does having a year's experience with your receivers make up for having a reconfigured offensive line AND a significantly worse running game? Probably not quite.

Stanford's spring game provides us another point of reference, albeit not a great one since Luck and his starting receivers were split up. His performance -- 23-for-34 for 173 yards and no touchdowns in a thrilling 3-3 game -- was OK but not great, which I think is about what we should expect overall this season. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts (mmmm, doughnuts) that Luck doesn't finish in the top 10 in pass efficiency this fall. I'd even go a step further and predict that he doesn't garner first- or second-team Pac-10 honors; I think those spots will go to Matt Barkley and Jake Locker (not necessarily in that order).

But there are sort of two different questions here:

1. Will Luck be a top-five prospect for next year's draft if he declares?
2. Will Luck perform like a top-five pick?

As I mentioned earlier, anybody who's 6-foot-4 with a rocket arm, decent athleticism, experience in a pro-style system and even moderate competence will probably be a first-round pick (JaMarcus Russell, anyone?). But until we see Luck actually throw a few passes without having a Heisman Trophy finalist standing behind him, I think we should all tone down our expectations just a tad.

Just what we needed

2010-04-28T14:41:00.004-07:00

If there's anything the average college football fan has been asking for the last few years, it's more bowl games. Right? RIGHT?

The NCAA has approved 35 bowl games for the next four years, including two new ones: the Dallas Football Classic and the New Era Pinstripe Bowl in New York.

Perfect. I'm actually a little intrigued by the Pinstripe Bowl, just because it'll be played at Yankee Stadium and I'm a sucker for games at cool venues. But there are already some really crappy bowls (I'm looking at you, Little Caesar's Bowl and New Mexico Bowl). When is enough enough? Did you realize that just 13 years ago (the 1996-97 season), there were only 18 bowl games?

It's not that I have anything against a Rutgers-Iowa State game; the problem is that the "postseason" has lost any semblance of value. With Western Kentucky now a full-time FBS member, there are 120 major college teams, and 70 of them will play in bowl games. That's 58.3%. Isn't a bowl berth supposed to be, I dunno, a reward of some sort? It's pretty sad that it's now easier to make a bowl game than to not make a bowl game.

On a related note, exactly 71 teams have been bowl-eligible in each of the past three seasons. But what if, just out of bad luck, there are only 69 next year?

“They don’t have a formula yet, but the NCAA has told all the bowls that if there aren’t enough bowl-eligible teams, all the bowls will still be played,” said Bruce Binkowski, executive director of San Diego’s Pacific Life Holiday Bowl and the San Diego Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl. “They still need to figure out what the formula is going to be.”

It’s not clear if that could mean teams with losing records playing in a bowl or granting berths to 6-6 teams whose records include two wins against teams from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). Currently, only one FCS win is allowed to count toward bowl eligibility.

Wooooo. So even if Michigan doesn't improve much from last season, a 5-7 record might be enough to squeeze into the GMAC Bowl. I'm pumped.

The only positive is that I think I have a legitimate shot of getting the Forever Saturday Bowl approved for the 2014 season.

One more spring disclaimer

2010-04-28T11:40:00.003-07:00

Just to clarify, the stuff posted yesterday wasn't entirely gleaned from spring games. The games themselves aren't a very good way to judge things, for a number of reasons (offensive lines get split up, first-team offenses go against second-team defenses, starters are held out for precautionary reasons, etc.).

But hearing all spring that Denard Robinson might have surpassed Tate Forcier on the depth chart was something that could be verified in the spring game, and it was. The fact that a walk-on QB is dead even with Kevin Newsome for the starting QB gig at Penn State is a bad sign for Newsome, regardless of either guy's stats. Dayne Crist's participation in Notre Dame's spring game was meaningful in and of itself. And so on.

The three weeks of practice as a whole are a lot more meaningful than the games themselves, but the games provide a public way to view everyone's progress in a semi-meaningful environment and determine (at least to some extent) what's true and what's just coachspeak.

Spring football definitely happened

2010-04-27T22:24:00.011-07:00

I've done a whole lot of blogging over the past month -- and by "a whole lot" I obviously mean "zero" -- but yes, spring football happened. If you've ever watched a spring practice (or even a spring game), you know that it's pretty boring, but since it's all we've got until fall, we might as well glean what we can.

Standard spring disclaimer: Guys who look too good to be true (based on past performance) usually are, but redshirt freshmen and former top recruits who start to put it all together are worth taking seriously. Also consider context: Position "battles," especially at QB, aren't really battles unless both guys are truly getting an equal opportunity to win the starting job. You know a motivational ploy when you see one.

With that out of the way, what have we learned?

* Michigan has options at QB. I refused to believe the spring reports that Denard Robinson had become a legitimate threat to start for Michigan this year. Robinson might be the fastest man alive, but he wasn't really a quarterback last year. He was a running back who would take direct snaps and occasionally throw it to the other team. The idea that he had taken a quantum leap to the point where he was even with Tate Forcier? Incomprehensible.

Yeah ... then I watched the spring game. I don't know what happened the past four months, but the guy looked like a different player. He was running the zone read with confidence, dropping back out of the I-formation, throwing lasers, looking like a REAL quarterback. He ended up 9-for-12 for 175 yards and three touchdowns, and he made people look ridiculous whenever he felt like taking off (although we already knew he could do that).

Is he the starter in the fall? I'm not sure. Forcier has actually demonstrated competency against good defenses in games, which is a little different from playing against your own backups in a pointless scrimmage. Realistically, with Robinson's passing skills still fairly primitive, I have to believe both guys will take a decent number of snaps. But I won't be surprised if Robinson gets a shot as the de facto starter -- if he's 75% of the passer Forcier is, he'll be unstoppable -- and I never thought I'd be saying that.

* Georgia is losing quarterbacks like whoa. Georgia's three-way spring QB battle -- between Aaron Murray, Logan Gray and Zach Mettenberger -- was won by Murray, a redshirt freshman and former top-50 recruit. No surprise there, although Mettenberger was pretty highly rated as well and Gray is an athletic guy who has actually played a little bit.

But Mettenberger (who was already suspended for the season opener after an alcohol arrest) has since been kicked off the team for the always-specific "violation of team rules," and Gray is now supposedly "weighing his options" (read: probably transferring), meaning Georgia might be down to one legitimate option by the time September rolls around. Murray's obviously a pretty good option, but if he gets hurt ... yikes.

* Penn State's quarterbacks will probably be terrible (at least for a while). Joe Paterno's still alive, right? OK, cool ... anyway, if Penn State's spring game was any indication, Evan Royster will probably get about 480 carries this year.

Kevin Newsome, a dual-threat sophomore who was one of the top QB recruits in the country last year, was 5-for-12 passing and ran for a grand total of 12 yards. Walk-on Matt McGloin, his primary competition, was 10-for-23 with two interceptions. True freshman Paul Jones performed respectably, going 5-for-8 for 67 yards and two TDs, but he was also the clear No. 3 guy coming into the game. Robert Bolden, a top-100 recruit this past year, would be a legitimate option if he had enrolled for the spring, but there's no way he's showing up in August and winning the starting job -- especially for a team whose second game is in Tuscaloosa against the defending national champs.

There's enough talent that somebody will step up eventually, but the offense might be ugly (or just super run-heavy) for a while.

* Bill Snyder still loves him some blowouts. Remember Bill Snyder? Remember how he built Kansas State into a power by destroying I-AA teams and then going about .500 in the Big 12? This seemed like a plausible strategy for getting a terrible team like Kansas State into bowl games on a consistent basis, but it's entirely possible that Snyder just enjoys destroying bad teams -- even if that bad team consists of his own players:

Bill Snyder still has a few more months before he has to pick a starting quarterback for next season. On Saturday, though, Carson Coffman did everything he could to speed the process along as he passed for 440 yards and seven touchdowns to lead the Purple team to a 79-0 victory over the White in the annual spring game at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

Snyder went with the bizarre strategy of putting his starting offense AND defense on the same team and pitting them against the backups, and 79-0 (and 737 total yards) was the result.

What does that mean? Well, it means Kansas State will probably have a pretty good offense, which isn't a surprise. Coffman, who's now a senior, was a pretty big recruit back in the day, and Daniel Thomas will probably be one of the better running backs in the country. It also means Kansas State has no depth whatsoever. I don't care how good your starters are; there's no reason the backup defense should give up close to 80 points while your backup offense can't muster a freakin' field goal.

* John Brantley will probably be OK as Tim Tebow's replacement. Florida hasn't run anything other than The Tebow Offense since Urban Meyer's first year, so things will definitely be different this season. But any concerns were probably eased a little bit by this:

Brantley completed 15 of 19 passes for 201 yards and two touchdowns Saturday - the kind of performance many expected from the highly touted quarterback who waited three years behind Tebow for a shot to start.

Facing Florida's first-team defense and wearing a red, non-contact jersey, Brantley showed the kind of awareness and confidence of a seasoned starter. He even did it with four linemen sitting out for precautionary reasons.

Either Florida's first-team defense is fucking terrible -- which seems EXTREMELY doubtful -- or Brantley (a redshirt junior who was the national Gatorade Player of the Year in 2006) is a pretty good QB. The latter seems more likely.

But that doesn't mean the offense will be built entirely around Brantley, who's not exactly Pat White when it comes to athleticism. Freshman Trey Burton and redshirt freshman Jordan Reed (who might be a tight end but might not be) will compete for time in Florida's version of the Wildcat, which should probably just be called the Tebow. Expect at least one of those guys to see regular snaps. Urban Meyer might be THE AWESOMEST COACH EVER, but he's never run an offense that didn't include a running QB as an integral aspect (remember Tebow as a freshman?). I don't see that changing this year.

* Arizona State still has no offense whatsoever. ASU fans pinning their hopes on improved QB play or a newfound running game will probably be disappointed. I heard some generally positive reports from spring practice, but the on-field results ....

Brock Osweiler completed 17 of 33 passes for 151 yards with an interception and touchdown, the lone TD recorded by the offense. Steven Threet threw three picks, completing 9 of 27 for 117 yards.

The running game? James Morrison turned in the best work, rushing six times for 26 yards. Jamal Miles needed 12 carries to net 28 yards. That was about it. Cameron Marshall gained 5 yards on seven carries.

... yuck. There might be long-term hope for Osweiler and Threet, both of whom are ginormous and have extremely strong arms. But how much can you expect from two guys with minimal experience (both have about half a season's worth of playing time) on a team that lost both its starting receivers (Chris McGaha and Kyle Williams) and has no running game? That's a rhetorical question, by the way.

Oh, and on an offensive line that's been an ongoing debacle for the past three years, starting guard Jon Hargis tore up his knee in practice and will miss the season. Good news all around! I've been saying this since last season: Barring Jake Plummer regaining his NCAA eligibility, the Devils' complete lack of an offense will keep them out of a bowl game and will probably cost Dennis Erickson his job.

* Dayne Crist has magical healing powers (duh, his name is Crist). When he tore his ACL six months ago, the assumption was that Dayne Crist would miss Notre Dame's spring practice and therefore be in a battle for the starting job with the incoming freshmen. But lo and behold, Crist took the field for the spring game last weekend and didn't seem like a guy struggling to recover. He went 20-for-31 for 172 yards with a TD and two picks, which isn't dominant but is playing, which is a big positive for Brian Kelly.

Another positive: A running game actually exists. Redshirt freshman Cierre Wood, who seems like the perfect speed back for Kelly's wide-open offense, ran for 110 yards and two touchdowns. Jonas Gray also had a long TD run and generally impressed, and don't forget about incumbent starter Armando Allen. There are options, and all of them are talented enough to be a threat when Crist isn't airing it out.

Does that mean the offense will be more balanced than what we saw at Cincinnati? No. Kelly loves to throw -- downfield, specifically -- and with one of the best receivers in the country (Michael Floyd), one of the top tight ends in the country (Kyle Rudolph), a couple talented outside receivers (Duval Kamara and Shaquelle Evans) and stud freshman Tai-ler Jones making a name for himself this spring, it's not like he'll be lacking for weapons in the passing game. ND's offense will probably be very good. The defense? Ehhhh ....

By the way, Nate Montana was the star of the spring game, meaning Beano Cook will project him to win three Heismans, but we're talking about a walk-on who went to community college last year and completed 35% of his passes. It's unlikely that he'll see the field in any meaningful capacity.

* Spring in Eugene was fairly uneventful. There's no possible way any school had a crazier spring than Oregon. Shall we recap?

1. Jeremiah Masoli was suspended for the season after being arrested and charged with stealing from a frat house.
2. Starting running back LaMichael James was suspended for the season opener (against New Mexico) after being sentenced to 10 days in jail for harassment.
3. Linebacker Kiko Alonso was kicked off the team after receiving a DUI citation.
4. Receiver Jamere Holland, who went apeshit on Facebook after hearing about Alonso's punishment, was dismissed for his very public violation of team rules.
5. Kicker Rob Beard pleaded guilty to harassment for pushing a woman to the ground after a party. Beard was then beaten unconscious by the woman's friends, two of whom ended up pleading guilty to assault.
6. Coach-turned-athletic director Mike Bellotti resigned after all the aforementioned controversy to take a job as an ESPN analyst. He was given a $2.3 million severance check on his way out the door, which prompted an investigation by the state attorney general and resulted in the embarrassing announcement that Bellotti had never actually signed a contract, so there was no official payment arrangement for his services.

Wow. Most of that stuff is pretty minor in terms of on-field impact, but there's no way to sugarcoat Masoli's suspension. He would have been a legitimate Heisman contender on the returning Pac-10 champion; he won't be easy to replace.

The candidates: Redshirt senior Nate Costa, the projected 2008 starter who has since gone through about 8,000 knee surgeries, and uber-athlete Darron Thomas, who looks kind of like Dennis Dixon and played like him in his only meaningful game (nearly bringing Oregon back from 24 down against Boise State two years ago while throwing for 210 yards and three touchdowns).

What did we learn this spring? Not much. The two have apparently been neck-and-neck throughout practice, splitting time with the first team. The Ducks' final scrimmage -- also known as the spring game -- will be held May 1, but all indications are that there won't be a final decision until fall. There could always be a rotation, but I have to believe Chip Kelly will try to settle on someone (my money's on Thomas) as the full-time guy. He knows this team has the surrounding talent to win its second straight conference title.

* Other stuff happened. Big Ten expansion-palooza! 2011 mock drafts! I'll get to all that stuff in separate posts, because this one was purely dedicated to football (albeit fake-ish spring football). I also should clarify that I care about more than just quarterbacks, but hey, that's the glamour position. Other interesting position battles that were inadvertently skipped here will be discussed in the near future (Michigan, Florida State, Miami and others all have interesting things going on at running back, for example). Sadly, there's plenty of time before September.

All your LaDariuses belong to Auburn

2010-04-01T22:56:00.004-07:00

I've never met anyone named LaDarius. This can't be that unusual; how many people do YOU know named LaDarius?

But somehow, against all odds, Auburn pulled off a remarkable feat in its 2010 recruiting class:

I have no idea what this means, but it's impressive.

Bryce Brown is soooo predictable

2010-03-19T11:02:00.005-07:00

Remember Bryce Brown? Last year's top prospect nationally (according to Rivals) who sort of committed to Miami, sort of decommitted, then dragged out his recruitment forever before finally signing with Tennessee?

He and top-ranked all-purpose back David Oku both ended up in Knoxville after deciding that they really loved the recruiting process (I like to picture the two of them at McDonald's, staring at the menu for 10 minutes because they can't decide what they want). I said this exactly one year ago yesterday:

Brown and Oku might both be upstanding young men, but what are the odds one of these guys transfers by his junior year? 99 percent?

In hindsight, 99 percent might have been a little low. According to VolunteerTV, Brown is no longer a part of the team at Tennessee and is looking to transfer, possibly to Kansas State. If you're wondering (rightfully) why anyone would want to play at K-State, Bryce's older brother (and a former stud linebacker recruit himself) Arthur just transferred there from Miami. And if you're still wondering why anyone good would want to go to K-State, the Browns grew up in Wichita. Family matters, I suppose.

It's times like these when I fantasize about a casino where I can place bets on things like "Will Bryce Brown graduate from the University of Tennessee?" I need to call the State Gaming Board about this.

Anyway, Derek Dooley goes for the understatement of the year:

“(He has) concerns that I believe stem from -- and he told me stem from -- No.1, some of the reasons why he came here, and No. 2, his experience over the first six months he has been here. ... He’s dealing with a lot of issues.”

Indeed. This is what happens when you have a less-than-respectable agent/handler/manager from the time you're a junior in high school and never learn how to make decisions for yourself.

Wherever he ends up, I just hope it's where Bryce Brown wants to be and NOT where Brian Butler wants Bryce Brown to be. And I hope he sticks around long enough to get some use out of his gobs of talent -- if he doesn't, I'll probably look back in a couple years and regret wasting so much time writing about him.

Michigan-Notre Dame goes under the lights in '11

2010-03-18T11:17:00.011-07:00

When I found out two weeks ago that I'd be getting laid off, I actually had a fleeting thought along the lines of "Hey, at least I'll have more time to blog."

But it doesn't work like that. First of all, I'm not really unemployed yet. My incredibly generous employer has decided to keep me around until the new guy takes over and decides I'm not worth paying anymore, so I've got a couple days left of showing up to work for no good reason other than to not lose my severance. Secondly, even when I do finally get laid off (probably Monday), I'll have to spend my newfound free time doing things like ... I don't know, looking for a job (on a related note, scouring the interweb job sites for something that pays me $100,000 a year to surf ESPN.com hasn't produced much so far).

It hasn't helped that my overall motivation level is near zero and that there hasn't exactly been a ton of exciting stuff going on in college football, but there are some things I just have to write about, specifically this:

University of Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon announced today a historic night football game at Michigan Stadium between the Wolverines and Notre Dame on Sept. 10, 2011. It will be the first-ever primetime game played at home in the history of Michigan football.

Excuse me while I throw a party ...

OK, I'm back. In case you're wondering why this is such a big deal, re-read the last sentence quoted from that press release: It will be the first-ever primetime game played at home in the history of Michigan football.

The school has always resisted night games for two very obvious reasons:

1. There are no lights at Michigan Stadium, so a ton of portable ones will have to be rented and brought in.
2. The UM fan base includes a lot of ... umm ... older alumni. They like morning tailgating, afternoon games, early dinners, etc. If you've ever watched an SEC night game, you've probably come to the stunning conclusion that students love night games because they get a full eight hours to drink beforehand and get totally jacked up. This obviously isn't the image the UM administration wants to promote for what's essentially a Midwestern Ivy League school.

So what changed? I'm not 100% sure, but Rich Rodriguez and Dave Brandon are both a little more new-school. RichRod was able to promote the spring game as a "come on down for a party" event and drew over 50,000 fans last year, which was roughly twice as many people as had ever shown up before. Brandon's a former UM player and CEO of Domino's, so he's in a unique situation as a guy who wants to promote football as a business but has explicit familiarity with what the players want. This is a good thing.

And I'll say the same for the night game: It's a good thing. It will be an amazing experience. If I can afford tickets (which I'm sure I can't), I'll be there. The crowd -- or at least the student section and the under-80 crowd -- will be electric. It will be on national TV. The recruits who talk about how awesome The Horseshoe and The Swamp are at night will finally get to experience that intensity at Michigan Stadium, and that can only help.

I know some people who have been complaining for a while about Michigan's schedule (Notre Dame, a mediocre second school and a couple of MAC snacks) and lack of innovation. "Where are the home-and-homes with Texas or the games at Yankee Stadium or anything that will actually be exciting?" This will be exciting. And it's only 541 days and 4 hours away.

A random rant about Big Ten expansion

2010-03-04T17:35:00.007-07:00

I stumbled across an old ESPN article the other day about the New York cable companies (among many others) refusing to carry NFL Network because of the cost. This is way-old news and doesn't reference college football in any way, so why do I care about it? I care because it kinda sorta indirectly relates to Big Ten expansion and the viability of Rutgers as a candidate.

(Insert forewarning here about my lack of expertise in TV ratings/operations.) Basically, to carry a channel, cable companies have to pay the provider the cost per subscriber (which varies based on the desirability of the channel, obviously). Most of that cost is then passed on to subscribers. ESPN, for example, is $3.00 per subscriber, but everybody wants it, so companies like Comcast and Cablevision and Time Warner are more or less obligated to carry it. They refused (and Time Warner still refuses) to carry NFL Network because the cost is between $0.61 and $0.75 (depending on who you believe), and they feel that it wouldn’t make sense to have somewhat of a niche channel on basic cable, where every subscriber pays for it. Most people don’t want to pay even 61 cents a month for something they never watch. The only way you can get it is on a premium package, because then you’re paying the cost directly.

If Rutgers joined the Big Ten, it'd be safe to assume that the same thing would happen with the Big Ten Network. The Big Ten has far fewer interested fans than the NFL does in New York/New Jersey, so there’s no way Time Warner and Cablevision (which comprise pretty much all of the New York TV market) would put it on basic cable, especially when you consider the price.

The cost per subscriber is $1.14, so that amount times the metro New York population of 18.8 million (if EVERYONE got the channel on basic cable) would be around $22 million, which is exactly what the Big Ten should be looking to generate from a new school in order for each school to make money via expansion (each school currently gets $22 million from the TV revenue pot). There are also around 8 million people in New Jersey who aren't part of metro New York City, so the total added TV revenue would actually be about $30 million. That’d be outstanding.

But it’s not gonna happen, because most of those subscribers aren’t going to get it on basic cable (maybe some will in New Jersey, but not a significant number). So let’s say, hypothetically, that 25% of the people in metro NYC pay for the premium package with the Big Ten Network on it. That seems fairly generous given the general lack of interest in college sports in the NYC area and the fact that most Big Ten games are already on national TV, but I think it’s reasonable. In that case, the $1.14-per-subscriber figure is now multiplied by 4.5 million (in metro NYC) and, just to pull a number out of my ass, another 6 million in New Jersey (75% of the population, another pretty generous number). So $1.14 x 10.5 million = $12 million. Meh.

Granted, that’s more pure TV money than would be made by adding Missouri (total population 6 million, although most of it probably would get BTN on basic cable) or Pitt (no net addition since most of Pennsylvania already gets BTN). But that’s not a huge amount, and I feel like to add a mediocre football program and a terrible basketball program -- both of which would do nothing for you nationally from a competitive or prestige standpoint -- the monetary aspect would have to be overwhelming, and $12 million (roughly) to split between 12 schools isn’t overwhelming when each school is already getting $22 million.

I know some people say getting more exposure in the Northeast would help in other ways, but I’m not sure what those other ways are. The number of D-I football prospects in New York and New Jersey is extremely small (this year, there were a total of FOUR four- or five-star recruits in the two states combined), so why does it matter if more people there are watching Big Ten football? Money, right? It doesn’t really help on the field (maybe on the court), and it doesn’t help enough financially to make up for that.

Personally, I’d much rather have the athletic boost from Pitt (high-level football and Big East basketball power) or Missouri (solid football and nearly annual NCAA tournament appearances along with six Elite Eights).

Upshot: Other than a not-that-significant boost in TV revenue, I don’t see adding Rutgers doing anything positive for the conference. And yes, I've already said this in fewer words, but the idea of Rutgers being relegated to the sports tiers in NYC (which seems certain) just added to my concerns.

Iowa fans win

2010-02-26T20:43:00.004-07:00

I vaguely remember the 2002 Iowa team as a Brad Banks-led juggernaut that smoked Michigan in Ann Arbor, went undefeated in conference play and lost to USC in the Orange Bowl. Banks was a Heisman finalist, Kirk Ferentz was suddenly an NFL coaching candidate, etc.

Thanks to Iowa blog Black Heart Gold Pants, I now have one more hilarious reason to remember that team (or at least the fans of that team). He starts off discussing Iowa's ownage of Minnesota over the past decade before getting to the good stuff:

But it all began in 2002, as the most surreal season in the history of the program came to a close in Minneapolis. Iowa spanked Minnesota 45-21 to finish Big Ten play undefeated for the first time in program history, close out an 11-1 campaign, and send the Hawkeyes to a BCS game for the first time ever. The Iowa fans in attendance -- and, by midway through the fourth quarter, Iowa fans were all who remained in attendance -- threw roses on the field. Then they threw themselves on the field. Then they lifted their collective leg and staked claim to the Metrodome in one of the all-time great moments in ownage, tearing down Minnesota's goalposts and attempting to carry them out of the stadium. To this day, it remains the ultimate trump card in any discussion of the Iowa-Minnesota rivalry.

Ummm ... what?!? That's gotta be an exaggeration, right?

Wow. Just wow. If Iowa and Minnesota ever go to war, I'm on Iowa's side.

Some real predictions about Michigan

2010-02-24T11:04:00.004-07:00

As usual, Mgoblog is way ahead of the curve when it comes to actual, insightful research about a controversial situation. Brian got ahold of some anonymous NCAA compliance blogger (apparently this does exist) who goes by Compliance Guy, and he got some real answers about Michigan's current situations and likely penalties. Click here to read it.

His summary is mostly in line with the expectations I laid out yesterday, although he believes the final punishment (self-imposed or from the NCAA) will be a bit more harsh. Points:

* The final finding from the Committee on Infractions will look pretty much the same as what was released yesterday. All the charges will probably be considered major violations, with the possible of exception of the practice time overage (which, ironically, is what the Free Press exaggerated to a ridiculous extent to start the entire investigation).

* None of the penalties will be considered severe major violations. The worst is actually the "failure to monitor" charge against the university for not keeping track of the practice logs or communicating accurate compliance information to the football program, which led to the apparent rule misinterpretations.

* The allegation regarding the lying grad assistant probably won't amount to anything as long as he's fired. It will follow the coach around, but it won't hurt the university.

* The likely penalties are:

A reduction in countable coaches (one coach will have to be reassigned to a noncoaching position);
A reduction in practice with a shorter spring season in 2011 and/or reduced hour limits;
Possibly recruiting restrictions, including limiting the number of coaches off-campus at any one time;
Possibly a reduction of around three scholarships for a year or two;
3-4 years probation (longer due to repeat violator status)

I should have included the part about a reduction in countable coaches in my post yesterday, and probation was an obvious one. The thing I forgot about is the "repeat violator" status, which stems from the Ed Martin scandal that took place 20 years and two basketball coaches ago. Basically, it took the NCAA so long to build its case and finalize penalties that UM is still on probation. Lame.

But anyway, there you go. A shorter spring practice (or one with reduced hours), one reassigned strength/position coach, a reduction of two or three scholarships for a year and three or four years of probation. I'm a little surprised that he expects as many as three scholarships to get cut, but that basically just means a few walk-ons who would have otherwise earned some financial help won't get it. I don't see anything with long-term ramifications or anything that'll have a real effect on the on-field product.

And that's pretty much what I wanted, because as I said yesterday, there's no reason that these allegations -- especially compared with what's going on at some other schools (ahem USC/Alabama/Michigan State/Clemson) -- should result in anything serious.

Those lying, cheating bastards

2010-02-23T23:37:00.006-07:00

In case you've been buried under a rock today, you know that the NCAA released the findings of its investigation into Michigan's football team.

The results weren't really GOOD for Michigan, but they weren't anywhere near as bad as what was alleged by the Detroit Free Press back in August in a report that was ripped apart at the time by me and many other educated people.

Here's the gist of it, nicely summarized by ESPN Big Ten blogger Adam Rittenberg:

1. Five Michigan quality control staffers regularly engaged in both on-field and off-field coaching activities that are prohibited by NCAA rules. By engaging in these activities, Michigan exceeded the limit on number of coaches who can engage in these activities. Quality control personnel are alleged to have coached players two days a week in offseason workouts, warm-up activities during the season and film study, and they also attended meetings that involved coaching activities.

2. Michigan violated NCAA rules by having football staff members "monitor and conduct voluntary summer workouts, conduct impermissible activities outside the playing season, require football student-athletes to participate in summer conditioning activities for disciplinary purposes [missing class], and exceed time limits for countable athletically related activities during and outside the playing season." This seems to be the most serious charge and the one that sparked the Detroit Free Press report and the investigation. Here are some of the specifics:

* In two separate offseason periods in both 2008 and 2009, football players were sometimes required to participate in up to 10 hours of athletic activities or weight training/conditioning, which exceeds the limit of eight hours.
* During the 2008 season, players were sometimes required to participate for up to five hours a day in "countable athletically related activities," exceeding the maximum of four hours. The staff exceeded the 20-hour-a-week limit by 20 minutes during the week of Oct. 19, 2008.
* During September 2009, football players were required to participate in four and a half hours of activities per day, exceeding the NCAA limit by 30 minutes. The report identifies four dates in question: Sept. 7, Sept. 14, Sept. 21, Sept. 28.

3. Graduate assistant Alex Herron is accused "providing false and misleading information" to both Michigan and the NCAA enforcement staff when asked about the allegations. He denied being present for 7-on-7 passing drills in the summers of 2008 and 2009 when he allegedly conducted the sessions.

4. Because of the first two allegations (detailed above), Rodriguez is alleged to have "failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance within the football program and failed to adequately monitor the duties and activities of the quality control staff members, a graduate assistant coach and a student assistant coach, and the time limits for athletically related activities."

5. Because of the first two allegations, Michigan's athletics department is alleged to have "failed to adequately monitor its football program to assure compliance." Compliance staff members became concerned about the duties of the quality control coaches in the winter of 2008 but didn't gather enough information to determine potential problems. The strength and conditioning staff didn't calculate time limits for offseason workouts or effectively communicate information to the compliance office. This resulted in the compliance office approving miscalculated activities and failing to follow its own policies for monitoring these activities. Athletics staff also failed to provide the forms showing countable activities to the compliance office.

To answer the obvious question: Yes, this happens everywhere (and I do mean everywhere). Think I'm too biased and that I'm just trying to defend Michigan? Fine. I'll cede the floor to Yahoo's Dr. Saturday:

Stare into the face of bureaucracy, Michigan, and quiver at its awesome power.

Know also that every program in the country -- and I'm pretty confident when I say every program -- would run afoul of at least one of those infractions (or similar ones; it's a big manual) on a somewhat regular basis, as the minimum cost of employing fallible human being while continuing to dead-lift with the Joneses. Other programs, however, weren't the target of an investigation by a major metropolitan newspaper that left no stone unturned in its efforts to make a splash against a high-profile program. Michigan was, which is why it was Michigan's coach, president and new athletic director (not even officially on the job for two more weeks) in front of the cameras today feigning contrition over barely spilt milk.

It's wildly irritating to see this happening at UM while it's clear that there are programs all over the country blatantly flouting NCAA rules and general moral standards, but whatever. It is what it is.

To summarize, the whole report can be boiled down to two things:

1. Michigan believed 20 minutes of each practice (two hours a week when added up) counted as voluntary stretching and preparation. The NCAA disagreed. This will probably lead to a filing by Michigan explaining its side of the argument, and nothing will come of it because this is an extremely gray area in the NCAA rule book.

2. Quality control coaches (graduate assistants) observed "voluntary" summer workouts, and one of them lied about it when questioned by the NCAA. This is a little more clear-cut, as it's basically forbidden for anyone except trainers to be doing anything at summer workouts. The tricky thing is that graduate assistants are paid interns and don't count toward the NCAA limit on number of coaches, so do they count the same as coaches for practice involvement? Probably, but that's another gray area. Then again, for a coach who's been around for a long time, it's something Rodriguez probably shouldn't have risked.

Basically everything else in the report is in reference to Rodriguez and the school's compliance department failing to catch and stop those two issues.

There are a total of five violations. You might see in some places that there are five MAJOR violations, but that's incorrect. All five are called "potential major violations," which simply means that they might be major violations and they might be secondary violations -- it'll depend on the school's response (via a rebuttal to the allegations or self-imposed punishment, probably some of each).

You can be pretty sure that Alex Herron, the GA accused of outright lying to the NCAA, is as good as gone. No one else is accused of lying, so the assumption here is that the lies were to cover his own ass and that removing him from the department should take care of that problem with the NCAA.

Incoming athletic director Dave Brandon also made it clear that the UM compliance system for practice time reports is being revamped, which should serve as evidence that the school has taken care of any communication issues and isn't intentionally turning a blind eye to NCAA compliance. The same goes for the football team, obviously.

My only real concern is with the QC staff being present at summer workouts. That's something it will be a little difficult to get out of, especially if the NCAA had enough evidence to decide that one of the people in attendance was lying about his direct involvement. This is a fairly minor thing in the big picture, but my guess is that UM will self-impose a couple penalties to fend off any punishment from the NCAA (not that anything serious would happen, but it looks better to slap yourself on the wrist than to have somebody else do it).

A realistic guess: The football team loses a couple days of offseason practice (or cuts a couple practices short) and docks itself a scholarship for one or two years, which is more than sufficient punishment.

For all the people saying "but but but RichRod's contract says he can be fired for major violations!": Yes, I'm sure it does. And I'm sure there would be a lot of elite coaches lining up to take over a rebuilding team at a school that just fired its coach after two years. Stop.

Brandon made it as clear as can be at Tuesday's press conference:

“Rich Rodriguez is our football coach. He’ll be our football coach next year. There is nothing that I see in what has come up in the notice of allegation or our internal investigation that leads me to believe that there should be any change in the status of our football coach.”

That takes care of it, I'd say.

The long and the short of it is that these are piddling, delving-into-the-gray-areas allegations. There's just no way the NCAA comes down hard on UM for anything in this report, because doing so would open up a ginormous can of worms. Literally any newspaper anywhere could do a FOIA request and get some practice logs and show that Big State University (woo "He Got Game" reference) went over the allowed time limit one day in July of 2003, and the precedent would be set for major penalties. The same is true with the quality control coaches and their level of involvement. It's just not gonna happen.

And when UM announces in a few months that it will self-impose some minimal, barely noticeable penalties that won't have any real effect on anything, that'll be the end of it -- especially with a ruling on the three-years-in-the-works USC case coming in the near future. Michigan's case was peanuts compared with USC's. UM gets a brief mention on Sportscenter and the third spot on ESPN's "Top Stories" list; USC will get its own Outside the Lines special and a full week of Mark Schlabach, Joe Schad and Pat Forde poring over the long-term ramifications, whatever they may be.

So yeah, once this works its way off the front page and we actually have something interesting to talk about, it'll be quickly forgotten. RichRod will still be coaching come football season and all the Free Press ridiculousness will have had no tangible effect on Michigan in any way, which is exactly how it should be.

Is it September yet?

A dozen young'uns to watch

2010-02-17T19:07:00.019-07:00

OK, so Signing Day happened two weeks ago. A bunch of guys you don't know much about signed with a bunch of different schools, and now they'll be forgotten for a while.

Most of them will, anyway. But a few guys always step up as freshmen and make themselves known immediately, usually because they're in the perfect system or at a position that's barren of talent or experience. If your primary competition is a walk-on, there's a good chance you'll be seeing more than just special-teams duty.

Which guys will be doing that this year? Here's my best guess:

1. Lache Seastrunk, RB, Oregon. Seastrunk's a five-star lightning bolt from Texas with absurd speed and change-of-direction ability. You think LaMichael James is fast? Wait til you see Seastrunk. I had him near the top of this list even before James was arrested Wednesday on a domestic violence charge, and there's a chance now that he'll be the starter for Oregon's season opener. Don't be surprised at all if Seastrunk makes a name for himself as the next Steve Slaton/Reggie Bush and runs for 1,000-plus yards this fall.

2. Michael Dyer, RB, Auburn. With Ben Tate and his 1,400 yards out of eligibility, Auburn needs a running back. Enter Dyer, a five-star guy in the top 20 overall on Rivals who reminds me a lot of Mark Ingram. He doesn't have elite speed, but he's a 5-foot-8, 210-pound bowling ball who's fast enough and has fantastic moves and balance. I expect Dyer to get immediate playing time, probably platooning with little speedster Ontario McCalebb and getting close to 200 carries.

3. Marcus Lattimore, RB, South Carolina. Notice a theme here? Steve Spurrier has a couple decent running backs at his disposal, but there's nobody at Lattimore's level; he was Rivals' top running back and the No. 10 player in the country. He's a bigger guy (6 feet, 210 pounds) with an unusual upright running style sort of similar to Herschel Walker or Adrian Peterson. He might not find a whole lot of holes behind South Carolina's O-line, but he'll get plenty of chances.

4. Andrew Hendrix, QB, Notre Dame. Redshirt sophomore Dayne Crist is the only scholarship QB currently on the roster and will likely be the starter after seeing a handful of snaps last year behind Jimmy Clausen. He also tore his ACL in November and won't be available for spring practice, meaning one of ND's freshman QBs will have a chance to earn some playing time. Hendrix has a little bit of competition in Luke Massa and Tommy Rees, but neither of those guys came with Hendrix's hype (he was a high four-star with offers from just about every major school nationally). Hendrix should have a chance to compete for the starting job right off the bat, and I wouldn't be shocked if he wins it.

5. Owamagbe Odighizuwa, DE, UCLA. For the record, I just copied and pasted his name rather than spending five minutes trying to make sure I spelled it correctly. Anyway, UCLA was sorely lacking a pass-rushing defensive end last year; Brian Price absorbed double-teams on a regular basis and still easily led the team with seven sacks. Odighizuwa is a big-time recruit -- rated eighth overall nationally by Rivals -- and could have gone absolutely anywhere he wanted. He's an unreal athlete and will likely start as a true freshman.

6. Chris Martin, DE, Cal. Jeff Tedford somehow brought in two five-star guys (safety Keenan Allen was the other), and both have a decent shot at starting as freshmen. Martin has been compared to Julius Peppers and should fill a serious pass-rushing void that might be even worse than UCLA's. The defensive tackles (departing senior Tyson Alualu and stud sophomore Cameron Jordan) combined for 13.5 sacks; no other D-lineman had more than two.

7. Keenan Allen, S/WR, Cal. The "other" five-star Cal recruit, Allen has absurd athleticism and put it on display as a return man at the Army All-America Bowl. Nobody's quite sure where he'll end up in college -- Rivals says defensive back, but ESPN and MaxPreps rate him as an athlete -- but he's shown that he can do anything. As a senior in high school he scored 53 (!!!) touchdowns on offense while compiling a ridiculous 145 tackles and eight interceptions. I'd put him higher on the list if he had a defined position, but he'll probably return kicks and get some playing time on both sides of the ball as a freshman.

8. DeMarcus Milliner, CB, Alabama. Javier Arenas and Kareem Jackson are both gone from 'Bama's ridiculously good secondary, so it's time for some fresh blood. There are options -- LSU transfer Phelon Jones and redshirt freshman Dre Kirkpatrick (a five-star in 2009) are probably next in line -- but Milliner enrolled early and has the size, speed and hype (No. 23 player nationally on Rivals) to compete for a starting spot or nickel duty right away.

9. Ronald Powell, DE, Florida. OK, so I should probably include the top-ranked recruit in the country. A look at the measurables: Powell is 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds and has been clocked at 4.52 in the 40. He also racked up 26 sacks in his final two high school seasons while playing a little running back, linebacker, tight end, etc. Pretty talented, yes? As for Florida, Carlos Dunlap and Jermaine Cunningham are both headed to the NFL, so the opportunities will be there (one end spot should be open for competition opposite senior Justin Trattou). Powell obviously has all the talent to be an elite player; it's just a matter of whether he'll be ready as a freshman to beat out former backup Willie Green.

10. Kyle Prater, WR, USC. Prater was Rivals' top receiver in the country and the No. 3 recruit overall, getting tagged as the next Mike Williams (the college version, not the NFL one) because of his 6-foot-5 frame, hands and body control. USC is actually fairly thin at receiver with Damian Williams gone -- Ronald Johnson is now the obvious No. 1 guy, but Brice Butler was second among receivers with just 20 catches last year -- so Prater should have a shot at pushing his way into the starting lineup.

11. Cullen Christian/Demar Dorsey, CB, Michigan. UM needs all the help it can get in the defensive backfield -- especially with Donovan Warren headed to the NFL a year early -- and they couldn't have done much better than landing Rivals' third-ranked cornerback and ESPN's top-ranked safety (although Dorsey will start out as a corner). Unless Michigan sticks with Troy Woolfolk at corner (my bet is that he switches back to deep safety in UM's weird 4-4 defense), one of the freshmen will probably start opposite 2009 uber-recruit and redshirt freshman Justin Turner.

12. Da'Rick Rogers, WR, Tennessee. Rogers isn't here because of any obvious openings in Tennessee's lineup; it's purely a talent thing. A top-10 overall player in the country on Rivals who's been compared to Calvin Johnson and Julio Jones, Rogers is 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds with the size, speed and hands to be a dominant No. 1 guy. He might just be too good to keep off the field, even with Gerald Jones and Denarius Moore nominally ahead of him on the depth chart. Tennessee now just needs to find a QB to get those guys the ball.

Looking back in embarrassing fashion

2010-02-17T13:38:00.012-07:00

Every blogger and sportswriter out there throws out a ton of predictions about everything. I post plenty of my own, some of which are pretty accurate and some of which make me look like an idiot. The problem is that most people don't ever go back and see how good/bad their predictions were (there's probably a good reason for this). How am I, as a reader, supposed to know how much stock to put into your prognostications if I don't know whether you're ever right about anything?

So I'll step up to the plate and review each of my predictions from September 2, the opening day of the college football season. I'll go with the Gene Wojciechowski gradin g system of one point for a correct prediction, no points for a wrong one and a half-point for a sort-of-right-but-not-totally-accurate one.

A forewarning: It's not pretty. Here we go ...

What I said: Florida will win the national championship. A loss is possible at some point -- it's still college football, after all -- but even a one-loss Gators team has a good shot at getting in the national title game (unless that loss is in the SEC championship game).

Result: 0 points. It was pretty clear by midway through the season that Florida and Alabama were the two best teams in the country, but 'Bama dominated the SEC championship game and went on to win it all. Close but no cigar.

What I said: Tim Tebow will become the second player in history to win the Heisman Trophy twice. Colt McCoy could give him a good run -- Tebow and Sam Bradford each have a Heisman already, so there will be some sentiment that it's McCoy's turn if Texas beats Oklahoma.

Result: 0 points. I was right about the McCoy sentiment, but Tebow missed a game and a half with a concussion, struggled in the passing game for much of the season and finished a distant fifth in the Heisman race. Mark Ingram and Toby Gerhart, neither of whom were mentioned at any point in my predictions, came out of nowhere to dominate the voting.

What I said: USC will lose two games. I'm not sure which two (yay for being specific), but with road games at Ohio State, Cal, Notre Dame and Oregon along with home games against Oregon State and UCLA, I just have a feeling that this is the year the Trojans' ridiculous streak of top-five finishes comes to an end.

Result: 1/2 point. USC obviously lost more than two games, but the point was that USC wouldn't be its usual self with a freshman QB and a particularly tough schedule. I was right about that; USC finished 9-4 and fifth in the Pac-10.

What I said: Oregon will win at least a share of the Pac-10 title. I was shocked when I saw that the Vegas over/under on Oregon's wins was 7.5, because with USC and Cal both coming to Autzen Stadium, I think Oregon wins at least one of those two and finishes no worse than 9-3 overall.

Result: 1 point. Oregon looked horrible in a season-opening loss to Boise State but regrouped quickly, took USC to the woodshed and beat Oregon State to win the Pac-10. Even after a Rose Bowl loss, Oregon finished 10-3. I guess I should have taken the over on 7.5 wins.

What I said: Notre Dame gets to 9-3 and salvages Charlie Weis' job. I think ND is vastly overrated this year, but I just don't see many threats on the schedule. A split against Michigan and Michigan State, a loss to USC and a loss to Pitt (a fairly pessimistic view of their four toughest games) only gives the Irish three losses, and other than that ... UConn? Stanford?

Result: 0 points. Ummm ... yeah. I was actually dead right about the first four games, but ND lived by the sword all year before finishing with an 0-4 collapse -- including losses to UConn AND Stanford (oops) -- and Charlie Weis was fired about seven seconds later. Notre Dame ended up 6-6 and turned down the chance to play in a crappy bowl game.

What I said: Notre Dame won't play in a BCS bowl. The thing that will help the Irish get to nine wins is the same thing that will keep them out of the BCS: a weak schedule.

Result: 1/2 point. Notre Dame definitely DIDN'T play in a BCS bowl, but it wasn't because of a weak schedule. In fact, just the opposite: The schedule turned out to be a lot tougher than I gave it credit for. UConn, Stanford, Pitt, Washington, Boston College, Navy ... a lot of ND's opponents ended up being far better than expected.

What I said: Michigan will finish 7-5. I won't do a game-by-game breakdown, but there are five games on the schedule that should be definite wins for UM and five more that fall into the toss-up category (I'm putting Penn State and Ohio State down as probable losses).

Result: Do I get a half-point for this? No? Damn. I was right about the overall assessment -- there were five should-have-been-guaranteed wins on the schedule and a bunch of toss-ups -- but Michigan lost one of those easy wins (Purdue) and pulled out only one of the toss-ups (Notre Dame). The oh-so-close losses to Michigan State, Iowa, Illinois and Purdue were the difference between bowl eligibility and another painfully long winter.

What I said: If Boise State loses to Oregon tonight (yes, I'm hedging here), there will be no "BCS buster" this year. BYU, TCU and Utah are all ranked in the preseason polls, but BYU plays Oklahoma, TCU goes to Clemson and Utah visits Oregon. Oh, and they all have to play each other in the Mountain West. I don't see any of the three coming out unscathed.

Result: 0 points. In fact, I should probably get negative points for this one. Boise State beat Oregon and finished undefeated en route to a Fiesta Bowl matchup against ... TCU. Both were 12-0 heading into the bowls and finished in the top 10. And while Cincinnati wasn't technically a BCS buster, their pathetic history essentially puts them in the same category as Boise and TCU. Poor effort on that one.

What I said: The winner of the Texas-Oklahoma game will run the table and play Florida for the national championship. And the winner of that game will be ... hold on while I flip a coin ... I'll go with Texas.

Result: 1 point. Woooooo!

What I said: Michigan State will fall short of expectations, but not by much. MSU is kind of in the same boat as Notre Dame: The schedule is favorable enough (missing Ohio State, for example) that it will be difficult to lose more than four games. I'm predicting 8-4.

Result: 0 points. Oh, Sparty. MSU had four losses by the end of October, including an embarrassing home defeat against Central Michigan. A 6-7 finish wasn't exactly what fans were hoping for in a supposed breakout year with Michigan, Iowa and Penn State all at home and Ohio State not on the schedule at all.

What I said: Arizona State, picked as a dark horse in the Pac-10 by such geniuses as Mark May, will struggle to reach a bowl game. The offense could be atrocious -- the running game is nonexistent and Danny Sullivan should not be a Pac-10 starting quarterback -- and while the defense should be pretty good, a late-season stretch against Stanford, Cal, USC, Oregon and UCLA will be a killer. I'll say 6-6.

Result: 1 point. I was off by a couple games -- ASU finished 4-8 -- but everything else was frighteningly accurate. The offense was terrible (the running game was nonexistent and Sullivan got benched) and the defense was very good, although not good enough to save a team that couldn't score. And that killer late-season stretch? ASU went 0-6 after a miraculous win over Washington on October 17.

What I said: If Ohio State beats USC (there's that "if" again), the Buckeyes will finish undefeated. Their only real challenge in the Big Ten is Penn State, so there's a good chance that the winner of the game in Happy Valley on Nov. 7 will run the table against the rest of the conference and finish 12-0.

Result: 0 points. Ohio State obviously didn't beat USC, so the rest of the prediction was moot, but a bizarre and ugly loss to Purdue rendered it wrong anyway.

What I said: Here's my projected top 10 at the end of the regular season (note that this is NOT a preseason ranking or a list of teams I think are the best, just a guess at how the polls will look going into the bowl games):

1. Florida
2. Texas
3. Ohio State
4. Oklahoma
5. Oregon
6. Penn State
7. USC
8. Alabama
9. LSU
10. Boise State

Result: 1/2 point. I had six of the top 10 in the AP poll and seven of ten in the coaches' poll, so I'll give myself a little credit for that. I obviously couldn't foresee Oklahoma's disastrous string of injuries or USC's Pac-10 collapse. Boise and Alabama should have been higher, and it goes without saying that I didn't expect TCU and Cincinnati to end up in the top five.

So that's 13 predictions and a total of 4 1/2 points. I'm not exactly Nostradamus. I don't think I did too badly, though; most of my predictions weren't that far off. Florida ended up being the second-best team rather than the best team, for example, and both Michigan and Notre Dame came out on the wrong end of a few games that could have easily swung the other way.

Still, 0.34 points per prediction won't win any awards. I'll give myself an uninspiring C+.

Expansion-palooza!

2010-02-16T12:48:00.015-07:00

So I'm back from vacation and I decided that I should probably write something. What's that? It's been 10 days? Hmmm ... fortunately I've got plenty of stuff to write about, despite the fact that pretty much nothing interesting has happened while I've been away. I gave up on my Signing Day post since it was getting ridiculously outdated, but I will have something about the incoming freshmen posted either later today or tomorrow.

Anyway ... for the past week, expansion (Big Ten, Pac-10 and otherwise) has been the topic of conversation on message boards everywhere. The news heard 'round the world:

“There have been preliminary exchanges between the Big Ten and Texas,” the source told the Journal-World on Wednesday. “People will deny that, but it’s accurate.”

I have two comments on this:

1. Texas is the ultimate prize in college sports. The football, basketball and baseball programs are all elite and the school has both excellent academics and a ginormous endowment. It's also in the mother of all TV markets as the primary team of choice for just about everyone in the second-most populous state in the country.

2. There is still almost no chance that Texas will end up in the Big 10 -- but not for the reasons most people think.

The determining factor in all this will be money, of course. Jim Delaney would be swimming around in a pile of cash like Scrooge McDuck, but would Texas really benefit? There are a few misconceptions about that, so let me do some clarifying.

I've had trouble finding a specific number, but according to Outside the L ines, each Big Ten team made about $22 million last year from the TV deal with ESPN and the Big Ten Network. Texas, according to the only detailed breakdown I can find, made $10.2 million in TV revenue last year (more than any other Big 12 team because of a wildly uneven conference distribution based on number of TV appearances). Considering that the Big Ten would be adding ALL of Texas and probably some surrounding areas, that $22 million payout would go up significantly (I've seen several estimates of around $8 million extra per team, although I can't find a link right now).
If you assume that a Big Ten championship game would be make about as much money as the SEC championship game, the conference as a whole would make about $15 million a year, and each team would get about $1.25 million. That's chump change compared with the TV deals, so just bringing in a mediocre 12th team to set up a title game won't cut it if the Big Ten wants to do anything of real value.
Travel costs won't stop Texas from joining the Big Ten. The school would be making roughly an additional $20 million from TV deals alone, so to steal a line from Brian at Mgoblog, even the crew teams could travel first-class and there'd still be money left over that wasn't there before.
Losing the conference rivalry with Oklahoma won't matter either. Until half of the old Southwest Conference merged with the Big 8 in 1996, Oklahoma-Texas was always a nonconference game. That could continue with no problem.
The Texas A&M game would be a little tougher, and that's where things start to fall apart.

I don't doubt that Texas would at least consider the idea of joining the Big Ten. There was a discussion back in the SWC days of joining the Pac-10, and there was even some talk with the Big Ten before things eventually fell into the place for the Big 8 supermerger. But part of the reason for that merger was the Texas Legislature. Texas is a state school, meaning it receives its educational funding from the state. When the state government got wind of Texas and Texas A&M planning to leave for the conference that would soon be known as the Big 12, everyone threw a shitfit. The conclusion: Baylor and Texas Tech had to come along. If they hadn't been allowed to join and Texas still would have joined the Big 12, the state would have pulled the school's funding. In other words, Texas had no real choice.

I don't know if the same thing would happen now that those schools have established themselves (sort of) in a BCS conference, but I think there'd be a huge fight. Nobody would be very happy about losing so much of the state's marketing power and economy to places like Columbus, Ann Arbor and Iowa City. Red tape will probably be the end of it.

And if you think maybe the Big Ten will bring along A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor just to get Texas, you're wrong. The more I hear from people about a hypothetical 14- or 16-team superconference, the less I think it will happen. Here's why:

1. Every team added beyond No. 12 has diminishing financial returns, even if it's Nebraska or Missouri or Pitt or Syracuse or somebody else that's not Baylor. If every team is getting (hypothetically) $30 million in TV revenue, a new team would have to add that much in order to be worth bringing in. Nobody other than Texas could do that -- Texas Tech and Baylor wouldn't even come close -- so the Big Ten would be taking a financial hit by cutting extra pieces from its revenue pie.

2. Football scheduling would be a bitch. Any more than 12 teams and you basically have two different conferences. The teams on each side would play maybe two teams on the other side each year (not including the conference title game), so you'd lose a crapload of rivalries and create a clusterfuck of rotations that would be just about impossible to keep track of for the casual fan. One of the great things about the Big Ten is the seemingly ancient traditions -- even nonrivals like Minnesota and Michigan have rivalry games and trophies like the Little Brown Jug -- so there's no way to split up the current teams into two divisions and not piss of a whole bunch of people and destroy part of the conference's history.

3. I don't think most Big Ten teams would approve adding more than one team. Even if the new schools were all good additions athletically AND academically (which is unlikely), I have a hard time believing that some schools -- Purdue, Minnesota and Wisconsin, for example -- want to be relegated to complete irrelevance in most sports while still having to coordinate travel thousands of miles away for even nonrevenue stuff like field hockey. A little extra money is nice, but probably not at the expense of losing some national recognition because nobody cares about your school's athletic programs anymore.

So yeah, for all those reasons along with the obvious difficulty in actually organizing the theft of three or five teams from other major conferences, the superconference thing isn't happening. Texas probably isn't either, although I'd say the possibility exists; we'll call it 5% instead of the 0.1% I suggested a few months ago.

Nebraska also came out and said, "Hey, why not us?" this week, which was pretty much a kick in the groin to the Big 12 but an understandable move given the financial disparity between the Big Ten and most of the Big 12. I don't think that'll happen, though, because the Big Ten gains nothing except a football program (albeit a great football program). Terrible basketball program (no NCAA tournament wins EVER!!!), crappy baseball team, no major TV market, mediocre academics ... there's not a whole lot to get excited about there unless the Big Ten just wants to boost its view in the football world (which I admit is a possibility). Nebraska is a probably a little bit more likely than Texas because of the lack of red tape, but maybe 10% instead of 5%.

Pitt, Missouri and Rutgers -- and possibly Syracuse -- are still the most likely candidates. Here's a remarkable stat: Every team in the Big Ten made almost twice as much in TV revenue last year as the ENTIRE Big East. Yes, that's right. I wasn't sure a few months ago whether Syracuse would make the jump because of Jim Boeheim's role as de facto Big East spokesman, but financially, there's no way they (or anyone else in the conference) could turn down a chance to join the Big Ten. Missouri's in the same boat.

The Big Ten's in a good situation here; they can take pretty much anybody they want from that group, with no negotiation necessary.

The one thing I haven't mentioned that should be seriously considered: making the conference better on the field (or court, preferably both). Rutgers might add a nice chunk of TV money in the New York market, but does that make up for bringing in an East Coast version of Northwestern? In my opinion, no. That difference in TV revenue would more than be accounted for with a couple BCS berths or Final Four appearances, which you might get by adding Pitt or Missouri.

When people talk about the Big Ten, they think of a group that's largely below the SEC and even the best of the Big 12 on the football field. Again, the money would be nice, but that perception won't change unless the 12th team is more than just a money tree. Given the available options, I'll be a little disappointed with anyone other than Texas or Pitt. I'd be satisfied with Nebraska or Missouri.

For visual purposes, here are my odds:

Pitt 2-1
Missouri 3-1
Rutgers 3-1
Nebraska 10-1
Syracuse 10-1
Texas 20-1
Superconference 100,000-1

No, I don't care that those numbers don't add up to exactly 100%. So that's that ... wait, what? Now the Pac-10 wants to expand too? Gah!!!

Let's start with a basic premise: The Pac-10's situation is waaaay different from the Big Ten's. The Big Ten already has a ton of money and just wants to complete its master plan. The Pac-10 is in somewhat of an identity crisis, falling below every conference except the Big East in TV money and becoming a national afterthought outside of USC football. In other words, the Pac-10 doesn't have a whole lot of leverage.

There also aren't a whole lot of desirable teams, so the list of potential candidates is short and sweet. It goes something like this:

1. Colorado
2. Utah
3. BYU
4. UNLV
5. Colorado State

Oregon blog Addicted to Quack put together a solid and well-researched piece and basically came to the conclusion that Colorado is the key to everything. The only major TV market in the western half of the U.S. that isn't already covered by the Pac-10 footprint is Denver, so that's the target. A rejection from Colorado probably makes everything else moot.

Utah appears to be a clear-cut No. 2 and would probably be the 12th team if Colorado decides to get the ball rolling.

One thing I'm surprised by is the lack of discussion about BYU. The academics aren't impressive (there's no research program, for example) and no games are allowed on Sundays, but the athletic programs are consistently good and there's a LOT of money to go around. Also, there are a lot of Mormons. National fan support wouldn't be an issue. According to Utah blog UteFans.net, the BYU situation goes beyond sports:

BYU is a parochial school that a number of Pac-10 schools would never allow to be invited ... there are a lot of admins/students/faculty/boosters in UCLA, Cal, Stanford, and other Pac-10 schools who have issues with the Prop 8 thing and the LDS church support of it.

Prop 8 was passed in 2008 and banned gay marriage in California. I don't know how much truth there is to that, but the general lack of public consideration lends credence to the idea that there's a little bit of a stigma around BYU that it wouldn't fit well into the Pac-10 culture (whatever that is). Addicted to Quack agrees:

A conservative, non-secular, non-research university that hardly has graduate programs and won't play on Sundays? There is no way BYU would be allowed into the conference. To get the SLC market, Utah makes more sense on every possible level ...

I'm not sure I agree with that last statement, but whatever. If, by some bizarre occurrence, Utah turns down the Pac-10's offer and the conference decides that it just isn't interested in BYU, the situation gets ugly. Colorado State has solid academics but offers little athletically or financially (unless you think CSU would bring in a lot of viewers in Denver, which is wildly optimistic). UNLV brings a nice market but is basically a community college and has been terrible at football for as long as anyone can remember. I think UNLV would be the first choice between the two, only because they have a consistently good basketball program and bring in the third-largest available market. Colorado State would provide a natural rival for Colorado but wouldn't actually add anything to the conference as a whole.

But it'll probably never get to that point. There's no reason Utah wouldn't jump at the chance to get into a BCS conference. Colorado, of course, is already in a BCS conference. Is there any reason they'd consider a move to the Pac-10? Well ... yes and no.

The Big 12 could make my research a lot easier (no specific payout numbers for individual teams are available), but based on my mathematical brilliance, it appears that Colorado made about $7 million in TV money last year. The Pac-10, on the other hand, paid less on average but will be negotiating a new TV contract next year (hence the desire to expand). Assuming a 50% increase in total revenue -- which seems reasonable based on the HUGE bumps seen by the Big Ten and SEC -- that number would go up ... all the way to $7.25 million. Woooo! There'd also be a roughly $1 million payout from a conference championship game and maybe a slight boost in some other areas, but the difference wouldn't be drastic.

Obviously, it'll come down to whether Colorado feels that it has more long-term earning potential in the Pac-10 than the Big 12. If it seems like a real possibility that Texas or Nebraska might jump ship for the Big Ten and leave the conference scrambling to fill holes, CU might just decide to be proactive and get out while the getting's good. The school would be docked a year's worth of conference payout -- approximately $13 million (this is the total payout, not just TV money) -- if it leaves without giving two years' notice, but that shouldn't be a sticking point if the powers that be decide a move is for the best.

Given the clear interest in listening to an offer and the fact that school administrators are already heavily researching a potential move, my guess is that Colorado will be a member of the Pac-10 in 2011. There's no real attachment to the Big 12, and the idea of getting a financial boost (along with the potential growth of a looming Pac-10 Network) and an academic boost from joining the Pac-10 will probably be enough motivation.

Where does that leave the Big 12? The loss of Colorado would be irritating but not devastating; the problem is that there's no one of comparable quality who could step in. TCU? Houston? Meh. Interestingly, BYU has been mentioned in the past as a Big 12 candidate, and if Utah ends up in the Pac-10, that'd probably be BYU's cue to find its own big-money conference. Plug BYU into the Big 12 North and everyone's happy -- except the Mountain West, of course, which would then be looking to rebuild.

Hopefully you got all that, because there will be a quiz tomorrow.

Robbin' the cradle

2010-02-06T14:28:00.013-07:00

I know what you're thinking: "How can a college football blog go a full three days past National Signing Day without even mentioning it? It's one of the biggest days of the year! What kind of fan are you, anyway?"

Response: Not a very good one, obviously. I've actually been working on a Signing Day recap but have been somewhat detained by work. Lo siento.

In the meantime, though, this happened:

Lane Kiffin really is getting a jump on recruiting.
No sooner had the Trojans new coach put the finishing touches on the Class of 2010 recruits, that he turned his attention to the Class of 2015.
That's right, 2015.
On Thursday evening Kiffin received a verbal commitment from 13-year old wunderkind quarterback David Sills of Bear, Del.

OH THE HUMANITY WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!? Fortunately, we're not talking about a legal contract here. Kiffin extended a scholarship offer -- which can be withdrawn at any time if the athlete doesn't hold up athletically or academically -- and Sills accepted, something he can back out of at any time. He's not being sold into slavery.

To me, what's more surprising than a 13-year-old committing to USC is that this hadn't happened before. Just look at the infestation of agents and AAU coaches in college basketball. They know about every 11-year-old with Division I potential, and when college coaches find out about a guy, they don't hesitate go after him -- age be damned.

This came from the West Lafayette Journal & Courier just a couple weeks ago:

Recently, Purdue coach Matt Painter and Indiana coach Tom Crean attended a Decatur Central eighth-grade game to watch 6-foot-7 Trey Lyles.
In early December, Illinois coach Bruce Weber was in the stands to watch Larry Austin, a Champaign (Ill.) Grant Middle School eighth-grade guard, play against Washington Middle School.
Recently, the NCAA added seventh-graders as official recruiting targets.

Yes, seventh-graders -- kids the same age as Sills.

The thing that will always make football coaches a little more hesitant to offer a young kid a scholarship is the importance of physical development in football. A middle schooler who's 6-foot-3 and can handle the ball like a point guard is probably a safe bet to be an excellent basketball player at some position. You can't say the same about football; a dominant Pop Warner running back might put on 50 pounds and become a lineman, or his growth might come to a halt and he'll fall behind physically. It's a different ballgame.

But if you're a coach and you see a kid you know is gonna be good, you don't wanna risk missing out on him because some other guy saw him and offered him a scholarship first. Remember Chris Leak, the Florida starter when Tim Tebow was known for nothing but the jump pass? He was a one-time can't-miss prospect himself, and he was offered a scholarship by Wake Forest when he was an eighth-grader. With talent like that, sometimes you just know.

I actually first heard about Sills roughly a year ago. Why? Because he was featured in a CBS Sportsline article as the next big-time recruit (CBS is obviously waaaaay ahead of Lane Kiffin in the scouting department). This is from Dennis Dodd on February 13, 2009:

David Sills is available. Just in case there's a college coach who hasn't heard of the game's next great quarterback, let's review: Sills is captain of his team. Rocket arm. Mad smarts. Breaks down defenses like he's speed reading Dostoyevsky novels.

The most renowned QB teacher in the country says Sills "could very well redefine the quarterback position one day," and "is well on his way to becoming one of the most polished, pro-ready prospects ever to be recruited out of high school."

Just to be clear: David Sills is 12. A sixth-grader, three years away from even playing in high school.

When a nationally renowned QB coach says that you could be "one of the most polished, pro-ready prospects EVER," you're probably pretty good. See for yourself:

Yeah, that's pretty good for a 13-year-old. He also looks like he's about 72 pounds, so I'm hoping he bulks up a bit before he starts getting hammered by Pac-10 defensive linemen. But Sidney Crosby was built like a stick when he was 13 too, and that wouldn't have stopped any college from offering him a scholarship (his parents actually went to court when he was 13 to try to get him into major juniors, which is typically reserved for ages 17 and 18).

What I'm trying to say is that it's happening in all sports, and it's happened before in football (see Chris Leak); Kiffin's just the first to make news by offering a seventh-grader instead of an eighth-grader. Expect to see it a lot more in the future.

And if you're looking for a job (aren't we all?), Rivals and Scout should have some junior high scouting positions available soon ...

Weird stuff that makes no sense

2010-01-31T23:32:00.010-07:00

I don't know where this video came from or why I'm posting a video of teenage Asian girls on a college football blog, but here you go:

I have so many unanswered questions, specifically:

1. What the hell is going on in this video?
2. Why are these girls having some sort of romantic fantasy about an Iowa football helmet?
3. What the hell is going on this video?

Perhaps Mr. Sparkle can answer my questions:

Ehhh, I'm still pretty confused. Moving on ...

There's a lot of crazy shit at Every Day Should Be Saturday, but sometimes that craziness turns into flat-out awesomeness. I present black Jim Tressel:

It's Tressel's deep, unsoiled whiteness that makes him so goshdarned Tressel-ish. For proof of this, we performed a racial inversion experiment on Jim Tressel, and the stunning results follow:
Your move, Negative Doppelganger Tressel. Until further notice, Black Dandy Tressel is assuming command and dazzling you with the matching socks and style sharper than the laser-powered mind of Craig Krenzel himself.

I have nothing to add.

The Tebow ... er, Senior Bowl

2010-01-30T15:03:00.010-07:00

I decided to watch the Senior Bowl this afternoon (I'm not sure why), and at some point I came to the conclusion that there's no way any player in the history of the event has drawn more interest than Tim Tebow. That's 60 years of a game that's featured Terry Bradshaw, LaDainian Tomlinson, Thurman Thomas, Philip Rivers and about 100 other future NFL stars.

He didn't even play a whole lot in the game itself, but he was still the focal point. Just look at ESPN's headline: "Tebow struggles, South ~~gets ass kicked like in Civil War~~ falls in Senior Bowl." And in five days of practice -- which are always more interesting than the game because you get to see everybody doing a lot of different one-on-one drills that project well to the NFL -- Tebow was THE story every day.

Tuesday didn't go well. Three fumbled snaps? Yikes. Here's Todd McShay with some analysis:

He was out of rhythm, missing receivers low and high and fumbling snaps while also struggling to read defenses and use proper footwork when dropping from under center.

Here's Bucky Brooks at NFL.com (although I have a hard time taking a guy named Bucky seriously):

Tebow repeatedly dropped snaps, and had a tough time hitting open receivers. While it is apparent that he has been attempting to work on his unorthodox delivery, his elongated wind up and tendency to pat the ball before releasing, clearly impact his accuracy.

In other words, Tebow had all the problems we knew he had coming in. Things got a little better as the week went on despite a bout of strep throat; I didn't hear about any more fumbled snaps, which is obviously a good thing. And for the record, he was fine in the game itself. The AP story says he "struggled" because he was stripped of the ball twice (I'm not sure why that's really his fault), but I thought his passing was pretty good. He finished 8-for-12 for 50 yards and had four rushes for four yards. He looked about like his usual self, in my opinion.

And that's the ironic thing about all the Tebow intrigue the past several days: Nothing was gonna change for him. If you liked him at the beginning and you saw him improve taking snaps and continue to be upbeat while battling an illness, you weren't gonna change your mind based on a bad day. If you didn't like him and you watched him struggle with snaps and questionable mechanics, it probably just verified your concerns.

This week has been a microchosm of the entire scouting process. But as Mel Kiper explained perfectly, all it takes is one team to fall in love with him ... and with an unquestioned winner and unbelievable leader like Tebow, that team is out there.

As for the other guys nobody really cared about, the two unquestioned winners were Ole Miss RB/WR Dexter McCluster (a 5-foot-8 version of Reggie Bush who will probably end up doing a little bit of everything in the NFL) and Michigan defensive end Brandon Graham (yay for something good coming out of Michigan this year).

McCluster's Senior Bowl week was a lot like Chris Johnson's in 2008, when his stock skyrocketed because people realized he was the fastest guy on the field even against NFL-caliber players. That worked out pretty well for Johnson, although McCluster won't go quite as high in the draft because he's not a true running back. Still, the consensus now seems to be a second-round grade. Is he worth that? Probably, even though I'm not sure he'll ever make it to a Pro Bowl without a set position. But that's sort of his selling point: If you can get an explosive runner, receiver AND returner with a second-round pick, that's a pretty good deal.

Graham was flat-out awesome in practice all week, reportedly dominating every O-lineman he went up against and being called the best player in attendance by Todd McShay. And that was before the game itself, when Graham had five tackles, two sacks, a tackle for loss and a forced fumble and was named MVP. I can't say this any more clearly: If Graham had played for a team that didn't finish 3-9 and 5-7 the past two years (or on a defense that didn't suck), he'd have been a first-team All-American. He's that good.

The glaring question is whether he can be an elite pass rusher at 6-foot-1 and with 30-inch arms; by NFL standards, he has the body of a short tyrannosaurus rex. I don't think he'll be an elite pass rusher, but he can be a good one, and that's just a complement to his true strength (stopping the run). The other big question: Is he a 3-4 outside linebacker or a 4-3 defensive end? My answer: It probably doesn't matter. If you put a gun to my head and told me to choose his best position, I'd say defensive end because of his strength. That said, the comparisons to LaMarr Woodley are valid ... so I don't know. Either way, it sounds like he's moved from borderline first-round pick to solidly in the first round, maybe in the top 20 if he performs well at the combine.

Any way he can get another year of eligibility? Please???

Look out, Boise State

2010-01-28T15:22:00.004-07:00

Without question, the coolest field in college football belongs to Boise State. That will continue to be the case in Division I, but ...

Taking a cue from Boise State's famous blue turf, Eastern Washington is planning to install an artificial red playing surface inside its football stadium. The Big Sky program's official school colors are red and white.

Whoa. You're probably wondering what that would look like. Fortunately, Eastern Washington has been kind enough to provide us with an incredibly high-tech computer-generated glimpse:
I think I said this already, but I repeat: whoa. That's pretty intense. According to Dr. Saturday over at the Yahoo/Rivals conglomerate, there aren't currently any NCAA rules or bylaws regarding playing fields (well, I'm pretty sure they have to be the right size, but there's no restriction on color). They might wanna consider one, because as cool as a red field would look, I can't imagine it'd be easy for fans or officials to make out what's going on when the players' uniforms (and the ball) blend in with the surface. And yes, I know I'm no fun.

But will I tune in to watch a game (assuming EWU is ever on TV) and find out? Hell yeah.

The tragic but inspirational story of Elliott Mealer

2010-01-24T02:02:00.020-07:00

You probably have no idea who Elliott Mealer is; there's no reason you would. He's a backup lineman at Michigan, a redshirt freshman this past year who appeared in nine games and did nothing of note.

But the fact that he played at all is basically a miracle, and here's why:

A 2007 Christmas Eve car accident near Mealer's hometown of Wauseon, Ohio, took the life of his father, 50-year-old David, and his longtime girlfriend, 17-year-old Hollis Richer. Elliott Mealer, his mother, Shelly, and his 23-year-old brother, Brock, survived. The accident left Brock Mealer with a severely damaged spinal cord and a broken right wrist. Elliott Mealer suffered a torn right rotator cuff, believed to have been incurred when he tried to lift a section of the SUV to free his loved ones.

Holy Lord. Rich Rodriguez honored Mealer's scholarship offer despite the injury, and Mealer spent all of 2008 rehabbing. He worked his way into the offensive line rotation last year and will be in contention for a starting spot at guard this fall. His emotional recovery ... well, that's been a little tougher. Here's the story from ESPN360 (trust me, it's worth your time):

Hang on a second while I get a Kleenex ... just a second ... OK. I can't even imagine.

And then there's Mealer's brother, who got a nice, optimistic prognosis after the crash: He was told that there was a 99.9 percent chance he'd never walk again. I'm sure he was happy to be alive, but that had to be utterly devastating for a 23-year-old college student. Fortunately, the story gets better:

By springtime, Brock started standing with the help of braces. Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez introduced him to the team during a practice. The Wolverines were kneeling with their helmets as Rodriguez told Brock's story. At the end of it, they rose to their feet and gave him an ovation.

Rodriguez was just two weeks into his new job when he got the call about the Mealers. He hadn't met Elliott or the 100 or so others on Michigan's roster. But he called Mealer to tell him that no matter what happened, even if he couldn't play, he'd always have a scholarship at Michigan.

The family -- Ohio State diehards before Elliott committed to Michigan -- immediately fell in love with Rodriguez. For Brock, it wasn't hard to do. A few months after the wreck, the coach visited him in the hospital during the Super Bowl. They promised to someday run out of the tunnel into the Big House together.

Great story -- and that's where it ends, right? Nope. Michigan has a strength and conditioning coach by the name of Mike Barwis. He's a former cagefighter (yes, seriously) who used to wrestle with wolves (yes, seriously); he's basically the Chuck Norris of trainers. He's also widely renowned for his advanced training techniques and has been cited by many NFL players as THE guy to visit for offseason workouts. How does this relate to the Mealers? Barwis is the guy with the gravelly voice walking next to Brock Mealer (who supposedly had a 0.1 percent chance of ever walking again) in this video:

Simply amazing.

A lot of people hate Rich Rodriguez because he isn't an eloquent, grandfatherly figure like Lloyd Carr and he didn't come from Bo Schembechler's Old School University, and therefore he's the anti-Christ. But all the criticism he's absorbed through two rough seasons, an NCAA investigation and a whole bunch of roster turnover has created this inaccurate image of a terrible coach who hates his players and is doing everything possible to destroy Michigan on and off the field. The Mealers would be happy to set you straight on that.

A tip of the cap to Brian at Michigan blog Genuinely Sarcastic, who compiled a bunch of this Mealer-related material. He's always worth reading if you're a Michigan fan.

Catching up: The offseason is upon us

2010-01-23T11:33:00.017-07:00

* Get ready to throw a lot: Louisiana Tech, meet the Mike Leach spread ... sort of. Nobody actually wants to hire Leach, so Tech did the next best thing and hired Sonny Dykes, Leach's former protege and son of original spread passing game maestro Spike Dykes. The younger one had been at Arizona the past few years under Mike Stoops, turning what had been an abysmal offense into something not so abysmal (and actually fairly good at times). He served as co-offensive coordinator at Texas Tech for two years -- during which time Arizona was 74th and 115th (!!!) in total offense -- then went to Tucson and did this in three years:

2007: 67th in total offense, 56th in scoring offense
2008: 33rd in total offense, 24th in scoring offense
2009: 58th in total offense, 61st in scoring offense

Dykes isn't quite as pass-happy as Leach, though. In those three years, Arizona actually got increasingly balanced; they went from 10th in passing to 36th to 48th, and they went from 114th in rushing to 48th to 52nd. This year's overall dip had a lot to do with Willie Tuitama's departure after setting every school passing record in '08, but at least Dykes has shown the ability to adjust based on his personnel. He says he'll do the same at Louisiana Tech, which is probably good since Ross Jenkins hasn't exactly set the world on fire in two years as starting QB. Fortunately for Dykes, the expectations aren't high at Louisiana Tech. Proof: Derek Dooley just went 17-20 in three years and got hired by Tennessee. Be a WAC version of Texas Tech (top half of the conference and fairly regular bowl berths) and everyone will be happy.

* Everybody wins: East Carolina went for one of its own after Skip Holtz bailed for USF, hiring recently fired Texas Tech D-coordinator and ECU alum Ruffin McNeill. I wasn't gonna bother with numbers since Texas Tech's defense is seemingly always crap-tacular, but lo and behold:

2007: 45th in total defense, 50th in scoring defense
2008: 79th in total defense, 74th in scoring defense
2009: 49th in total defense, 41st in scoring defense

Tech's defense has been about average under McNeill; that's pretty impressive when you consider the competition (the OMG OFFENSE OFFENSE OFFENSE Big 12) and the insanely fast pace of Mike Leach's no-huddle offense, which results in a lot of possessions -- and therefore scoring opportunities -- for both teams. Just as importantly as all those numbers, though, is what McNeill did in the Alamo Bowl. He took over as interim coach amid all the Leach firing/lawsuit/Adam James controversy and had all of three days to pull Tech together and get the team focused. I'd say he did nicely: the Raiders won 41-31 in a game that featured two ballsy fourth-down conversions on the clinching drive. Tommy Tuberville was hired as head coach a few days later and cleaned house, but that worked out OK for McNeill -- he was even able to bring along an offensive coordinator in Lincoln Riley, Texas Tech's receivers coach and interim O-coordinator for that 580-yard, 41-point Alamo Bowl performance. Considering all the bizarro coach shuffling this offseason, this is one of the few instances in which I'm pretty sure everybody's happy with the end result.

* Newton finds a home: Former Florida quarterback Cameron Newton has enrolled at Auburn. Newton was essentially given the boot by Urban Meyer a couple years ago because of some ... um, unpleasantries. He transferred to Blinn Junior College, won a juco national title and has now transferred back into the SEC. Chris Todd was roughly a gazillion times better as a senior (under new O-coordinator Gus Malzahn) than he was as a crap-tastic junior, but with Todd out of eligibility, the starting job will now be in the hands of senior Neil Caudle, athletic redshirt freshman Tyrik Rollison or the 6-foot-6, 240-pound Newton, a five-star QB back in 2007 who was rated the No. 28 prospect in the country by Rivals. Newton appeared headed to Mississippi State a few weeks ago, but these comments from his father make it pretty clear that not even a prior relationship with Dan Mullen (Florida's offensive coordinator when Newton committed to the Gators) was enough to outweigh the stigma of Mississippi State:

He was leaning toward Starkville. He had that relationship with Dan Mullen and there was a comfort level there. I didn't think that was the right place for Cam. They just don't have all the moving parts. Cam was going to have to be the star. He'd have to do everything himself. I didn't want him to be a rented mule.

Ouch.

* On his way back: Boston College linebacker Mark Herzlich, the 2008 ACC defensive player of the year, is back at practice after missing the entire 2009 season due to a rare form of cancer called Ewing's Sarcoma (I don't think it's related to the Ewing Theory). His career was thought to be in jeopardy, but according to The Associated Press, he was found to be cancer-free in October and began working with the team last week in an effort to get back for the 2010 season. His return would be huge for BC: We're talking about a guy who had 81 tackles, two sacks, two fumble recoveries and six interceptions in 2008. Good luck to him.

* QB drama: Buffalo quarterback Zach Maynard is no longer a Buffalo quarterback. Maynard quit the team this week without citing a reason, but his high school coach had some harsh words for new coach Jeff Quinn (who was Cincinnati's offensive coordinator under Brian Kelly):

"It had everything to do with Turner leaving," Otis Yelverton, Maynard's high school coach in Greensboro, N.C., and a close family friend, said by telephone Thursday night. "Here's the deal. I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus but I guess I am going to throw him under the bus. You got a starting quarterback who doesn't talk to the new coaching staff until (this past) Friday. We got a problem with that. ... You got a coaching staff that comes and acts like they really didn't want him there."

Quinn stayed at Cincinnati through the Sugar Bowl, arrived at Buffalo on January 5, met with the team on January 10 and met with Maynard individually on January 15. Is that an unreasonable timetable? I don't think so; a new coach has too many things to worry about to spend all his time bowing down to the team's young QB. Regardless, Maynard's a big loss. As a true sophomore this season, he started every game and completed 57.5% of his passes with 18 touchdowns and 15 interceptions along with 300 rushing yards. It seems like a safe bet that Quinn will be running the same offense we saw at Grand Valley State, Central Michigan and Cincinnati, so he'd better find a quarterback. The only guy left on the roster is Jerry Davis, a redshirt freshman who was 8-for-15 passing this year after coming to Buffalo as a no-name recruit.

I've got the early-entry blues

2010-01-18T12:47:00.027-07:00

Almost exactly a year ago, I titled a post "Mass exodus" when it became clear that just about every relevant draft-eligible underclassman was headed to the NFL. This obviously was written before Sam Bradford, Colt McCoy and Tim Tebow all decided to return, which led to the easiest decision ever for the guys who decide which players to put on the covers of college football preview magazines.

In all, 46 underclassmen declared, including four of the top 10 rushers and six of the top 14 receivers (statistically) as well as guys like Matt Stafford, Mark Sanchez, Knowshon Moreno and Percy Harvin.

This year isn't really any worse numerically -- 53 underclassmen declared by Friday's deadline -- but I guess it seems a lot worse because of what's left (or, more specifically, what isn't left). Unless I'm missing somebody, Mark Ingram is pretty much the only truly elite player returning next year -- and that's probably because he's a sophomore, so he doesn't have a choice. The only other first-team AFCA All-American coming back is Michigan State linebacker Greg Jones, who's very good but not exactly Ray Lewis. After that is ... ummm ... Kellen Moore? Jake Locker? Terrelle Pryor? Case Keenum? Jacquizz Rodgers? All are good players, obviously, but none are dominant. The 2010 season won't be anything like the 2009 one, where there were several top teams loaded with upperclassman talent.

So which teams lost the most? Off the top of my head: Oklahoma, Florida, Notre Dame, USC and Georgia Tech (in no particular order).

Oklahoma is the team we never knew (at least on offense), and now Sam Bradford, Jermaine Gresham and Gerald McCoy -- all probable first-round picks -- are off to the NFL, as is cornerback Dominique Franks. The one positive: Since Bradford and Gresham both missed basically the entire season, the offense has been preparing for life without them for a while. For all intents and purposes, they were gone a year ago. Oklahoma should be fine going forward with Landry Jones, DeMarco Murray and Ryan Broyles. The defense also got some good news with the return of defensive tackle Adrian Taylor and linebacker Travis Lewis.

In terms of volume, Florida was hit harder than anybody: Tight end Aaron Hernandez, center Maurkice Pouncey, cornerback Joe Haden, safety Major Wright and defensive end Carlos Dunlap are all headed for greener pastures (literally). None of those losses individually is as devastating as Tim Tebow's graduation, but that's FIVE potential All-Americans who would have been the core of next year's team minus Tebow, Brandon Spikes and a bunch of other senior starters. I guess a lot of turnover is inevitable the year after you return 21 of 22 starters, but yikes.

Notre Dame ... obviously. Passing was the only thing ND did well last year (and they did it very well), but that'll be a little harder without Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate. Seeing as how Brian Kelly can turn fourth-stringers like Tony Pike into Heisman candidates, he probably could have done OK with Clausen. Tate's a big loss too, but Michael Floyd's a hell of a fill-in. Keep in mind that he had 13 catches for 358 yards and five touchdowns in the first two and a half games this year before breaking his collarbone; he might be better next year than Tate was last year.

USC is kind of in a similar situation to Florida: Each of the guys leaving early -- Joe McKnight, Damian Williams and Everson Griffen -- could be replaced individually, but the overall effect is pretty devastating when combined with the departing seniors such as Taylor Mays, Jeff Byers, Anthony McCoy and Josh Pinkard. And remember all those prep All-American running backs USC accumulated? McKnight, Stafon Johnson, C.J. Gable ... the only guy left now is Gable, who's been surpassed on the depth chart by Allen Bradford. Next year's USC team is gonna be just as inexperienced as last year's was, so maybe Pete Carroll was smart to get out when he did.

Georgia Tech's losses have gone a little under the radar, but they really got hit hard. Jonathan Dwyer is a beast of a running back and had almost 1,500 yards rushing this season, and for a team that really only plays one receiver, Demaryius Thomas and his 46 catches (38 more than anyone else on the roster) will be missed. Oh, and then there's Derrick Morgan, who led the ACC with 12.5 sacks and will likely go in the top 10 overall, and safety Morgan Burnett, a second-team All-ACC pick. If Georgia Tech goes back to the Orange Bowl next year, Paul Johnson should be given a lifetime contract extension.

Other thoughts on guys entering the draft:

* Jevan Snead probably should have stuck around at Ole Miss another year. I can't blame him for leaving since he had already earned his degree, but he had a terrible year (54.4% passing, 20 TDs and 20 interceptions) and is no better than the fourth- or fifth-best QB coming out. A good senior season would have put him in competition with Jake Locker and Ryan Mallett to be the first quarterback drafted in 2011.

* Jake Locker, on the other hand, made the right call. He probably would have gone in the top half of the first round (Todd McShay was in love with him) because of his arm strength and athleticism, but he's got a lot to learn in the passing game. Another year under Steve Sarkisian with a not-that-terrible team should help a lot and give him a good shot at being the No. 1 overall pick next year.

* Toby Gerhart -- and any other power running back, for that matter -- absolutely had to leave school. You can't run with that sort of violent style and not expect to get hurt occasionally. And after racking up 341 carries this year, every similar season in college would just be taking away a season in the NFL. I guess we'll find out how good Andrew Luck really is next year; I know he's talented, but there's a big difference between being a complementary piece to a star running back and being THE guy.

* You'll hear a lot about how Arrelious Benn was a disappointment as a junior, but anyone who watched Illinois will tell you that if Juice Williams had any connections between his arm and his brain, Benn would have put up about 1,000 yards and 15 touchdowns. That's why I was a little surprised when Benn declared; he easily could have had a huge senior year with pocket passer Jacob Charest taking over at QB, pushing him into the top 10 or 15 overall. Still, he's an absolute physical freak who should be an immediate starter in the NFL.

* Dez Bryant, Jahvid Best, Eric Berry and Rolando McClain had easy decisions. When you're a sure-fire first-round pick (especially this year, with a lockout and rookie salary cap looming on the horizon), you've gotta consider everything that could go wrong and strike while the iron's hot. I can't blame any of those guys for jumping at the money ... it just sucks for us fans to know that we're missing out on a year of awesomeness.

Here's the full list of underclassmen leaving early:

Kevin Basped, DE Nevada
Arrelious Benn, WR Illinois
Eric Berry, S Tennessee
Jahvid Best, RB California
Navarro Bowman, LB Penn State
Sam Bradford, QB Oklahoma
Dezmon Briscoe, WR Kansas
Antonio Brown, WR Central Michigan
Dez Bryant, WR Oklahoma State
Bryan Bulaga, OT Iowa
Morgan Burnett, S Georgia Tech
Bruce Campbell, OT Maryland
Jimmy Clausen, QB Notre Dame
Rennie Curran, LB Georgia
Anthony Davis, OT Rutgers
Carlos Dunlap, DE Florida
Jonathan Dwyer, RB Georgia Tech
Dominique Franks, CB Oklahoma
Clifton Geathers, DE South Carolina
Thaddeus Gibson, OLB Ohio State
Jermaine Gresham, TE Oklahoma
Everson Griffen, DE USC
Rob Gronkowski, TE Arizona
Joe Haden, CB Florida
Aaron Hernandez, TE Florida
Kareem Jackson, CB Alabama
Chad Jones, S LSU
Reshad Jones, S Georgia
Linval Joseph, DT East Carolina
Darius Marshall, RB Marshall
Ryan Mathews, RB Fresno State
Rolando McClain, LB Alabama
Gerald McCoy, DT Oklahoma
Joe McKnight, RB USC
Shawnbrey McNeal, RB SMU
Carlton Mitchell, WR South Florida
Joshua Moore, DB Kansas State
Derrick Morgan, DE Georgia Tech
Jerell Norton, DB Arkansas
Jason Pierre-Paul, DE South Florida
Maurkice Pouncey, C Florida
Brian Price, DT UCLA
Dennis Rogan, DB Tennessee
Jevan Snead, QB Ole Miss
Amari Spievey, CB Iowa
Golden Tate, WR Notre Dame
Demaryius Thomas, WR Georgia Tech
Earl Thomas, S Texas
Donovan Warren, CB Michigan
Damian Williams, WR USC
Mike Williams, WR Syracuse
Jason Worilds, DE Virginia Tech
Major Wright, S Florida

Not included on that list are the following players who had a redshirt year available but chose not to pursue it (these guys aren't considered early entries by the NFL):

Toney Baker, RB NC State
Toby Gerhart, RB Stanford
Abe Koroma, DT Western Illinois
Blaze Soares, LB Hawaii

Let's settle down, people

2010-01-16T16:31:00.025-07:00

Probably the best thing about Tennessee choosing a new coach Friday is that I hopefully won't be subjected to any more "LANE KIFFIN IS THE BIGGEST JERK EVER!!!" columns. I'm looking at you, Gene Wojciechowski:

Whatever happens, it will take years for Kiffin to patch and caulk the gaping holes in his credibility. If you were a recruit, why would you believe a word he said?

OK, let me start by saying that Kiffin is an asshole. From the moment he accepted the Tennessee job, he went out of his way to insult everyone from Steve Spurrier to Urban Meyer to recruits. He just doesn't care.

But for everyone crying about him leaving Tennessee after one year, get real. College football coaches have as little job security as anyone on Earth; everybody out there is one or two bad seasons from getting canned. Loyalty doesn't exist from either side. If you want to coach at a big-time school, the only way to do it is to leave your former employer between a rock and a hard place by jumping ship when said job is offered to you. Kiffin can't just wait around a couple years on the off chance that he might get a second chance at his dream job. It was unfortunate timing for Tennessee, nothing else.

Look it at from a real-world perspective: You take an excellent job with a great salary, plenty of money to live on. You're excited and plan on being there for as long as possible, and you bring in a number of good employees to help achieve your long-term goals. A little over a year later, you're offered an even better job, an opportunity of a lifetime that you'd only dreamed about. It's where you grew up and where you honed your skills, and they're offering to significantly increase your salary and let you bring along all your best employees. If you can honestly say that you'd turn that job down, you're a more loyal person than I am.

And after all the hatred from Tennessee fans and all the criticism in the media, the second person the Vols went after -- Duke coach David Cutcliffe -- had been at his job for all of two years. The guy they hired -- Louisiana Tech coach Derek Dooley -- had been at his job for three years. Urban Meyer left Bowling Green after two years and then Utah after two more to take over at Florida. Brian Kelly left Central Michigan after three years and then Cincinnati after two to go to Notre Dame. That's what happens when elite programs have job openings.

I suppose two years is slightly better than one, but it doesn't matter; every recruit those guys brought in still had at least three years left under another coach. There's no right time to leave a program, so criticizing Kelly or Kiffin but not criticizing Dooley or Meyer is ridiculous. If you want to blame anybody, blame the NCAA for not allowing players a free transfer if their coach is fired or leaves voluntarily.

Then there's the FURY about Kiffin immediately trying to persuade Tennessee's recruits to join him at USC. Por ejemplo:

the thing that I do not understand is Kiffin & Co. trying to singlehandedly tear down the Tennessee football program by trying to steal recruits already committed.

For an appropriate response to these claims, I'll cede the floor to Dan Hawkins:

IT'S DIVISION I FOOTBALL!!! If you think this doesn't happen everywhere up until the minute a guy faxes in his letter of intent on National Signing Day, you're smoking crack. Just last year, for example, Michigan had two committed players bail on Signing Day but pried receiver Roy Roundtree away from Purdue, at which point Joe Tiller spewed some holier-than-thou complaints about Rodriguez being "a guy in a wizard hat selling snake oil." It was then discovered that Purdue's first move after losing Roundtree was to try to get a guy who had just signed a letter of intent with Ball State. Pot, meet kettle.

As someone who closely follows recruiting, I can tell you definitively that no commitment goes unchallenged until the paper is signed. Hell, it's a common thing now for guys to commit while still openly considering other schools and taking official visits. They're not really committed; they're just reserving a spot.

Anyone remember Bryce Brown, the top-ranked player in the country last year who ended up signing with Tennessee? For almost a year before National Signing Day, he was "committed" to Miami. That obviously meant a lot.

Again, the timing of all this craziness obviously sucks for Tennessee (February 3 is approaching in a hurry), but if it's not against the rules, it happens. Get over it and move on.

I hate to be the guy to defend Kiffin, because I really think he's a douche. But that's the thing: Just because he's done a ton of stupid shit and nobody likes him, that doesn't mean we should all flip out about him jumping at the USC job and trying to bring some recruits along with him, both of which are perfectly understandable and have plenty of precedent from coaches who didn't receive nearly the amount of criticism.

Tennessee hires that one guy's kid

2010-01-15T23:28:00.013-07:00

Most Tennessee fans couldn't have picked Derek Dooley out of a police lineup 24 hours ago, but they'll probably become familiar quickly:

Derek Dooley, the son of Georgia legend Vince Dooley, was introduced Friday as Tennessee's second new head coach in 14 months, replacing Lane Kiffin days after he bolted for Southern California.

I wasn't surprised at all that the Vols made Texas defensive coordinator (and coach-in-waiting) Will Muschamp their top priority after Kiffin left, and when Muschamp turned them down, I wasn't surprised that Duke coach (and former longtime Tennessee O-coordinator) David Cutcliffe was next on the list. But hiring Dooley was a surprise. Also surprising: Dooley being able to find a bright-orange tie that quickly. Impressive ...

If you'd never heard of Dooley before today, here's a brief summary: He's been an offensive position coach (wide receivers and/or tight ends) with SMU, LSU and the Miami Dolphins, and he was also Nick Saban's recruiting coordinator from 2000-02, when LSU finished with Rivals' top-ranked class twice in three years. He's young (41), he's smart (a law degree?!?), he's an excellent recruiter and he's worked under one of the best coaches in the sport. And if this reminds you of somebody, you're right: Dooley is basically a smarter, less douchey version of Lane Kiffin.

And that's not where the similarities end. Dooley went to Louisiana Tech in 2007 and took over for Jack Bicknell, who was fired after going a little under .500 (43-52) in eight years and reaching only one bowl game (a Humanitarian Bowl loss to Clemson in 2001). In three years, Dooley did the following:

2007: 5-7
2008: 8-5 (beat Northern Illinois in Independence Bowl)
2009: 3-9

If you're counting at home, that's a 17-20 record; he was 12-12 in WAC play. Tennessee fans probably gagged on their Jack Daniels when they heard about that on the teevee.

There's not much to point at and say, "Wow, that's impressive," but to argue that Louisiana Tech didn't improve during his tenure would be stupid. This year's 3-9 record was mostly the result of four losses by eight points or less, including a 24-16 loss to LSU in November. Louisiana Tech was also the only team in the WAC to come within 10 points (45-35) of Boise State. Compare that with the 2007 team, which was coming off a 3-10 season and lost to LSU by 48 (yikes), Nevada by 39, Cal by 30, Mississippi by 24 ... you get the idea. Competing is the first step toward winning.

I watched the Louisiana Tech-LSU game and saw two teams that didn't belong on the same field talent-wise, and there were only two reasons that game was close:

1. Jarrett Lee is a pretty terrible quarterback, which hurt LSU's offense all year.
2. Dooley's creative (and aggressive) play-calling got Louisiana Tech a fucking brilliant touchdown just before the half to take the lead, and his unwavering optimism/confidence clearly rubbed off on his players.

This postgame quote pretty well summarizes my thoughts:

"We ran ball as well as you can run it against them," Tech coach Derek Dooley said. "We went toe-to-toe and we weren't affected by the environment. We weren't playing in awe of LSU, and I think those are great steps. At the end of the day, they have a better football team than we have."

So Tennessee fans should feel pretty good, right? Ummm ... maybe. Bringing in high-end recruits and inspiring confidence in your players are definitely things you want from your head coach, but what you need from your head coach are wins, and the fact of the matter is that his career record is 17-20. It remains to be seen whether that says more about Dooley or the difficulty of doing any better than .500 at Louisiana Tech.

There are two quarterbacks in the NFL right now with the last name of Manning. Both have every skill necessary to be elite and bloodlines that provided a head start money can't buy. Peyton turned those advantages into awesomeness, becoming one of the greatest QBs in NFL history. Eli is an average starter, which is fine but probably not what the Giants were hoping for at $16.5 million a year. Dooley reminds me of one of the Mannings ... I'm just not sure yet which one.

Dooley is the top-five draft pick with "upside" (Jay Bilas' favorite word), a guy who hasn't shown much in terms of results but might be unbelievable in the right situation. Tennessee is obviously banking on being the right situation.

Would I have hired him over Muschamp? No (not that Tennessee ever had a choice, but it's a point of comparison). Would I have hired him over Cutcliffe? Probably. Cutcliffe would have been the safe pick, the guy who's been around and knows the program and probably would have been able to stabilize things and do a fine job. Dooley is the upside pick, a riskier hire but one that might look brilliant five years from now. And since neither of the aforementioned guys were interested, Tennessee's choices were limited anyway.

But comments like this ...

We thought the Chisik hire at Auburn was bad, this is ten times worse!! A losing record in the WAC conference, are you kidding me?

... are moronic (which I guess is appropriate for any conversation in SEC country). It's funny that the comparison is Gene Chizik, who was hired last offseason from Iowa State with a 5-19 record and promptly led Auburn to an 8-5 season with the help of crazy-but-brilliant offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn. I could easily see Dooley getting off to a similar start, especially when you look at Tech's impressive rushing numbers and realize that he'll have guys like Bryce Brown and David Oku at his disposal next year.

If I had to bet one way or the other on Dooley -- either boom or bust -- I'd go with boom (a firecracker boom, not a nuclear one). He can recruit, he's smart and he's been trained by the best, and those things will be a lot more relevant at Tennessee than at a talent-deprived mediocrity like Louisiana Tech. It's not easy to win in the SEC against Florida, Georgia, Alabama and LSU, but everything's relative; in the world of college football, Knoxville is the freakin' Taj Mahal compared with Ruston, Louisiana (wherever that is).

Little Lou headed to USF

2010-01-14T18:55:00.022-07:00

The carousel keeps spinning:

Skip Holtz is the new football coach at South Florida, taking over a program recovering from a scandal that led to the firing of Jim Leavitt. USF will introduce him as the second coach in the Bulls' 13-year history on Friday.

A couple years ago, I was of the opinion that Holtz was a fairly mediocre coach whose name was worth more than his results. Winning one playoff game at UConn (a I-AA school at the time) and going slightly above .500 at East Carolina does not equal an overwhelming resume.

After two straight Conference USA titles and with a 38-27 record at a place that had gone 3-22 in the two seasons before his arrival, I'm willing to reconsider. That's pretty good. I don't know exactly how he's doing it (I'll get to that momentarily), but he's winning games.

I've heard a few people say that South Florida is basically a lateral move from ECU, but that's just wrong. USF hasn't won fewer than eight games in the past four years, is located in a great recruiting area, has a 65,000-seat NFL stadium and plays in a BCS conference with no clear-cut dominant team. All things considered, the Bulls are in great position to step up and become a player at the national level.

The question is whether Holtz is the guy to do that, especially when there are some pretty good coaches out there (cough Mike Leach cough) who would have been more than interested. Here's what he's done at East Carolina:

2005: 5-6
2006: 7-6 (lost Papajohns.com Bowl to South Florida)
2007: 8-5 (won Hawaii Bowl over Boise State)
2008: 9-5 (lost Liberty Bowl to Kentucky)
2009: 9-5 (lost Liberty Bowl to Arkansas)

Again, this followed up a disastrous two-year stretch under former Florida defensive coordinator John Thompson, so 38-27 is pretty good, right? But when you try to figure out how East Carolina has taken control of the conference, that's where things get difficult.

Holtz was an offensive coordinator at Notre Dame and South Carolina (quick, guess who hired him) before taking over at ECU, yet his offenses were flat-out bad, finishing worse than 60th in total yards every year. And it wasn't for a complete lack of talent: Holtz coached Chris Johnson (the guy who just ran for 2,000 yards with the Tennessee Titans), Jets receiver Aundrae Allison and graduating quarterback Patrick Pinkney, who might not be drafted but was a pretty good starting QB for three years.

So while Holtz's offenses have underachieved, his defenses have carried the team by being ... well, pretty average (although by Conference USA standards, "average" is equivalent to "awesome"). Last year's defense was pretty good (30th in scoring and 41st in total yards), but this year's dropped off some (36th in scoring and 71st in total yards) and ECU still went 9-5 despite the offense staying very blah. An overtime win over Marshall here, a four-point win over UAB there -- ECU did just enough to get by. Granted, that's a significant improvement from 3-22, but we're not talking about Brian Kelly's Midas touch.

The number of close wins leads me to believe that Holtz is probably a good game-management coach (I haven't seen ECU regularly enough to make a definitive statement on that), but he'll have to produce more on offense to lift USF from its current plateau up to Big East power. I'm curious to see who he hires as coordinators, especially since East Carolina D-coordinator Greg Hudson just left to be Jimbo Fisher's linebackers coach at Florida State. For a guy who doesn't appear to have true strategic brilliance on either side of the ball, that will probably determine his long-term success (or, as his daddy calls it, thuctheth).

Change of plans

2010-01-14T18:45:00.011-07:00

Lane Kiffin apparently won't have Norm Chow at his side after all:

Norm Chow will remain offensive coordinator at UCLA, according to UCLA officials.
Chow’s status has been in doubt the last week after USC made contact with him in an attempt to lure him back as offensive coordinator under new head coach Lane Kiffin.

Kiffin said the other day that he intends to call plays for USC "like I always have," which was probably a deal-breaker for Chow (as it should be). I don't know why he would join Kiffin to be essentially a consultant when he can continue as a true offensive coordinator at UCLA.

What does it mean for the Trojans? Well, it means Kiffin's coaching ability will be a little more relevant than expected, which may or may not be a good thing.
Let's look at what his teams have done offensively (again, the Raiders don't count, so we're talking about 2005-06 USC and 2009 Tennessee):

In 2005, USC finished first nationally in total offense (577 yards per game) and second in scoring (49 points per game) while becoming the first team in NCAA history with a 3,000-yard passer (Matt Leinart), two 1,000 yard rushers (Reggie Bush and LenDale White), and a 1,000-yard receiver (Dwayne Jarrett). How much of that was Kiffin and how much of it was the other guys? Hard to say. But the 2004 national championship team -- with Norm Chow as O-coordinator -- averaged 130 fewer yards and 11 fewer points per game, so there was obvious improvement.
In 2006, the running game plummeted to 68th nationally while the John David Booty-led passing game finished 14th in yards and 30th in efficiency. USC finished 21st in total offense (392 yards per game) and 18th in scoring (30.46 points), which isn't spectacular for USC, but keep in mind that Booty had never taken a meaningful college snap before the '06 opener and Chauncey Washington wasn't exactly Reggie Bush or LenDale White. Jarrett and Smith were about the only guys left at the skill positions, so you could argue that the '06 offense had the least talent of any in the Pete Carroll era.
In 2009, Tennessee finished 60th (smack dab in the middle of the FBS) in total offense and 43rd in scoring offense at 29 points per game. The running game was average (54rd), the passing game was average (43rd in yardage and 38th in efficiency) ... everything was very meh.

When you look at USC's 2006 numbers and consider that this year's Vols had Jonathan Crompton throwing to a bunch of inexperienced receivers (other than Gerald Jones) yet STILL produced more through the air than Montario Hardesty and Bryce Brown did on the ground, there's a conclusion that can be drawn: Kiffin's background as a quarterback shows up in his team's offensive results. In other words, his teams are better at throwing the ball than running the ball. This isn't necessarily good or bad, just an interesting observation going forward.

Based on the typical talent level at USC, the 2006 numbers are probably a realistic expectation (except for a slightly better running game, if for no other reason than the pure quantity of five-star running backs USC pulls in). His quarterbacks and receivers will probably be very good.

Is he Norm Chow? No. His overall lack of play-calling experience is a valid concern, as three years isn't exactly an eternity. But his offenses have ranged from elite when he has talent to average when he doesn't have much, and the talent should never be much of a problem at USC.

Lane Kiffin is an enigma

2010-01-12T23:25:00.017-07:00

There are two ways to look at Lane Kiffin:

1. He's an obnoxious loudmouth who has no track record of success as a head coach.
2. He's a very good offensive strategist and a phenomenal recruiter who knows how to sell his program to both players and elite assistants.

Both of these things are true, which is why he's probably one of the most controversial figures in college football. If you asked 100 fans, "Is he a good coach or is he just an annoying coach," you'd probably get about a 50-50 split. It all depends how you look at it.

ESPN's Pat Forde takes the anti-Kiffin angle:

At this rate, Lane Kiffin is an 8-5 season at USC away from a $50 million contract to coach Peyton Manning and the Colts.
Seriously, why not? Why wouldn't he just keep rising up the coaching ranks on the basis of nothing much at all? If a 31-year-old with no head-coaching experience can get the Oakland Raiders job, and a guy who got fired from that job after losing 15 of 20 games can get the Tennessee job, and a guy who went 7-6 in a reckless first season in Knoxville can get the USC job … is there any rung of the sport to which Kiffin cannot climb?

These are entirely valid points, because there's really nothing in Kiffin's past that demonstrates that he'll be a good head coach or a good school representative (I'll get to that momentarily). But here's the question I've been asking myself: Does it matter if Kiffin is a good head coach?

That probably seems ridiculous; of course it matters ... right? Consider the following:

Every player at USC was part of a top-10 recruiting class.
Lane Kiffin can recruit like nobody's business, and getting elite players to come to Los Angeles isn't exactly rocket science.
USC will have arguably the best offensive AND defensive coordinator in the country as well as a slew of other well-respected assistants.

What can Kiffin possibly do to screw that up? If you're regularly bringing in five-star talent and you have two of the best strategists in the sport at your side, will your game-management decisions really be that important? Maybe against Ohio State and Oregon, but not against most of the Pac-10. What I'm saying is that even if Kiffin is an average or poor in-game coach, it'll be hard NOT to win nine or 10 games a year at USC. If he's a bad coach, maybe it'll be eight. If he's a good coach, it'll probably be 10.

USC is obviously counting on the latter and hoping that the elephant in the room -- Kiffin's unending string of off-the-field controversies -- stays tucked away in the corner. His penchant for petty recruiting violations at Tennessee was somewhat of a running joke, but when USC gets stripped of a bunch of wins and scholarships (probably) for lack of institutional control, that stuff won't seem very funny to the administration.

If he's smart enough to keep his mouth shut and go about his business -- or, more importantly, let his assistants go about their business -- the transition/recovery should be relatively painless for USC. If he continues to act like an idiot because his ego is out of control and we find out that there's a reason he has a career record of 12-21, his tenure (and that of athletic director Mike Garrett) will end quickly in an inferno of criticism.

A gun-to-my-head prediction: USC of the near future will be about halfway in between the 2002-08 juggernaut versions and the 2009 blah version that finished fifth in the Pac-10, meaning nine or 10 wins per year and fairly regular Rose Bowl appearances. Kiffin will probably make an ass out of himself at some point, but as long as he wins a few BCS games, nobody will care. College football isn't a seven-days-a-week religion in Los Angeles like it is in SEC country. In summary, it won't be a disaster.

I haven't even mentioned Tennessee in all this, but it's OK; they seem to be taking things well.

Kiffin (both of 'em) to USC

2010-01-12T18:43:00.016-07:00

Chicken soup for a slow news day:

Tennessee's Lane Kiffin has agreed in principle to become the next head coach at Southern California, sources close to the situation told ESPN.com's Chris Low on Tuesday.
According to the sources, Kiffin will bring his father and defensive coordinator, Monte Kiffin, and assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator Ed Orgeron to Southern Cal with him, and wide receivers coach Kippy Brown will be named interim head coach at Tennessee.
A deal is being worked on in hopes of bringing longtime offensive coordinator Norm Chow back to USC in the same capacity, sources close to the school told ESPN's Shelley Smith.

Wow. I predicted that Kiffin would be one of the first guys contacted based on his USC background, but the searched seemed to be moving in a different (and not good) direction. After being rejected by Mike Riley, Jack del Rio and Jeff Fisher, USC could have done a lot worse than Lane Kiffin -- especially when you consider that he's bringing along Norm Chow and Monte Kiffin, two of the best coordinators in all of football.

Is Kiffin a good coach? I don't think anybody really knows yet. Is he an asshole? Yes. But he'll probably be a successful asshole with a coaching staff like that. The only thing that could get in his way is his own ego.

The hardest part will be making enemies in the Pac-10 as fast as he did in the SEC. It won't be easy, but I'm sure he'll find a way (stealing Chow from UCLA is a good start).

Other than that, he'll just have keep the recruiting class intact (one thing he shouldn't have too much trouble with given his recruiting prowess), guide USC through likely severe NCAA sanctions and follow a legend who made winning 11 games and a BCS bowl every year look like a walk in the park. It's not exactly an ideal situation to step into, but if USC was looking for a guy with abundant confidence (also known as cockiness) who knows a thing or two about dealing with negative publicity, they sure found him.

Up next at Central Michigan: Dan Enos

2010-01-12T17:23:00.008-07:00

Central Michigan announced Tuesday that Michigan State running backs coach Dan Enos has been named head coach. Insert joke here about being the next coach at Cincinnati.

I'll be honest: I don't know a whole lot about Enos, which isn't surprising since his resume consists of jobs as a quarterbacks coach or running backs coach at schools such as Southern Illinois and North Dakota State. The one thing I do know is that Enos is widely recognized around the state as MSU's top recruiter, the "coffee is for closers" guy on the staff. How much that will matter at a MAC school remains to be seen. I suppose the important thing is that he brings in better players than Western Michigan and Toledo and the rest of the MAC, but it's not like he'll ever get the state's high-end recruits to come to CMU instead of Michigan or Michigan State.

On top of that, Enos has never been more than a coordinator (and that was at the Division II level), so while he has a fairly extensive offensive background, it's still a HUGE jump up to D-I head coach. It's kinda surprising that CMU reached out to a guy with such little experience ... then again, they've done pretty well with their past two hires (Brian Kelly and Butch Jones), so I should probably give them the benefit of the doubt.

The advantage Enos will have right from the start is that he's taking over the best program in the MAC ... sort of. CMU has won three of the past four conference titles under Kelly and Jones, which is great. The Chips have accumulated a lot of momentum in that time. The bad news is that the star offensive players who were the key pieces on those teams -- Dan LeFevour, Bryan Anderson and Antonio Brown -- are all gone. Anyone who expects Enos to come in this year and win another MAC championship is probably being unrealistic.

As for the Chips' long-term success, it will depend on whether Enos can use his recruiting magic and offensive acumen to produce a good team; based on what little is known about him, I can't offer an educated guess either way. The only reaction from Michigan State blogs is basically "this sucks for our recruiting."

Catching up: Coaches are goin' places (or not)

2010-01-11T11:47:00.015-07:00

* USC gets shot down: Mike Riley is no longer a candidate at USC after withdrawing his name from consideration and signing a three-year extension with Oregon State. I'm a little surprised -- I thought he'd at least listen to an offer, because it's not like Oregon State is a better job in any way, shape or form than USC. But I guess he's happy where he is, and there's nothing at all wrong with that.

Where does USC turn now? I figured Steve Sarkisian would be high on the list, but he said Sunday that USC hadn't called and that he wouldn't be interested anyway. Jeff Fisher also said he has no interest, specifically citing the pending NCAA investigation. I also don't think Jim Harbaugh's leaving Stanford for a rival he's made no secret of hating. There's been no word yet on Jaguars coach Jack del Rio (another USC alum), but if he decides to stay in the NFL, the choices would be limited.

I think Paul Hackett's looking for another head coaching job ... seriously though, it'll be really interesting to see if USC goes after somebody like Mike Leach, Gary Patterson or Chris Petersen.

* What's going on at USF? Jim Leavitt has hired a team of lawyers in an effort to force USF to reinstate him as head coach. He maintains that he did not hit Joel Miller in the face and that he should not have been fired, and his lawyers threw in this little nugget:

The attorneys released a statement Friday of behalf of the coach, saying the dismissal "is contrary to the terms of his contract" and violates Leavitt's constitutional rights.

I'm not sure which amendment says you can't be fired; if there is one, I'm sure a lot of people would like to know about it.

This is probably a financial move, as Leavitt is owed only a week's pay ($66,667) if fired with cause, but there was a rumor earlier today from ESPN's Bruce Feldman that USF was actually considering giving Leavitt his job back (!!!). It's also been reported that Michigan offensive coordinator Calvin Magee will interview (or already has) for the job, while East Carolina's Skip Holtz, former Iowa State coach Dan McCarney and both Terry and Tommy Bowden have been mentioned as candidates.

There's nobody on that list better than Leavitt, but it would be bizarre and shocking to see him get his job back after the school's investigative report pretty much called him a lying bastard.

* They are ND: Notre Dame's coaching staff is just about complete. Brian Kelly has been assembling his staff over the past week and now has all the key pieces in place, including offensive coordinator Charley Molnar and defensive coordinator Bob Diaco, both of whom came over from Cincinnati.

Molnar served as QBs coach but apparently will add the role of OC -- which is mostly just a title since Kelly calls the plays -- while Diaco will remain D-coordinator. For all the criticism Cincinnati's defense took this year, Diaco did a pretty good job taking a unit that lost 10 of 11 starters from 2008 and getting it to respectability (66th in total defense and 44th in scoring defense). Before coming to Cincinnati, he served as a linebackers coach under Al Groh, meaning he loves him some 3-4.

The interesting name on the staff: Chuck Martin, the former Grand Valley State head coach who I mentioned as a possible D-coordinator candidate when Kelly was named Notre Dame's coach. Martin has a ridiculous resume, going 74-7 with two national titles in six years at Grand Valley, and Kelly offered him the DC job at both Central Michigan and Cincinnati. At Notre Dame, though, he'll actually be coaching defensive backs, which was his role as an assistant before becoming D-coordinator at Grand Valley. He'll also likely be an assistant head coach.

The rest of the staff is mostly Cincinnati guys. The lone Notre Dame holdover is running backs coach Tony Alford, a veteran who's been at ND for two years after spending time at Louisville, Iowa State, Washington, etc. He's been around and has coached some pretty good players, including Victor Anderson at Louisville and Troy Davis at Iowa State. Notre Dame was pretty terrible at running the ball this year (84th in the country), but that had more to do with the crappy offensive line than the running backs.

Outside of losing offensive coordinator Jeff Quinn to Buffalo, Kelly has to be pretty happy. Keeping most of his staff intact and adding Chuck Martin isn't a bad way to start his Notre Dame career.