Catching up fears the probe (not that kind)

It's last summer all over again: The specifics are a little sketchy so far, but the rumor making its way around the interwebz is that NCAA investigators are headed to Florida -- the state, not the school -- to look into some shady goings-on in the recruiting world (gasp). Normally I wouldn't bother posting something with so few details, but a radio report (no link, obviously) backed up the above-linked note from the Orlando Sentinel with essentially the same info. The relevant part:

Among the schools whose recruits are in question: Ohio State, Louisiana State, Auburn and Tennessee.

It seems pretty plausible that the NCAA uncovered some recruiting-related shenanigans during its time at OSU, and with several schools directly connected, this has the makings of last year's devastating agent party in Miami that resulted in North Carolina's defense imploding, Marcell Dareus getting suspended, etc. Set media to DEFCON 2.

Learn how to park: Speaking of North Carolina ...

North Carolina has released documents showing a group of Tar Heel football players accumulated more than $13,000 in parking citations over a 3 1/2-year period. The school released the documents Thursday, a day after the state Court of Appeals denied the school's request to delay the release of those records pending an appeal.

The obvious questions: How did a handful of players rack up over $10K in parking tickets? And why was the school trying to keep that out of an open-records request? Conveniently, the school "didn't say whether fines were paid." Anybody wanna wager on whether some of those parking tickets were "taken care of?" Given the already-tenuous situation at UNC with the NCAA investigation set to wrap up this month, this seems like a not-so-good thing to add to the evidence pile (assuming the NCAA didn't already know, which is definitely possible).

UPDATE: UNC now says just 30 of the parking tickets are unpaid, so I retract my previous statement. Still unanswered is why members of the football team are incapable of parking legally.

UPDATE UPDATE: The parking tickets were the least of UNC's concerns:

"One UNC football player accrued 93 parking tickets under nine license plate numbers between October 2007 and August 2009, according to parking records UNC released Thursday and a database search of the University’s Department of Public Safety website. …

The plates in question corresponded to cars including a gray Dodge, a gray Nissan, a black Acura, a black Honda and a green BMW, according to the records."

Nine cars in two years? Yeah, that seems totally reasonable and not at all like Terrelle Pryor. I retract my retraction. There's some funny business at North Carolina (and I didn't even mention the John Blake-Gary Wichard phone records).

Dana Holgorsen is a different cat: In case you were unaware, Dana Holgorsen came from the Mike Leach School of Strange Dudes. But rather than dreaming of being a pirate and talking about fat little girlfriends, Holgorsen's thing -- when not getting kicked out of casinos, anyway -- appears to be jumping out of airplanes over the New River Gorge. Yeah, you read that correctly.

It's a miracle: Penn State and Pitt, who haven't played since 2000 (mostly because Penn State was vengefully demanding a 2-for-1), will resume their rivalry with a home-and-home series in 2016-17. They've played 96 times since 1893 but only four times since Penn State joined the Big Ten in 1993, which is ridiculous. And it doesn't sound like that number will be getting a whole lot bigger in the foreseeable future:

"Right now, we wouldn't be interested in (playing Pitt) on an annual basis," Curley said.

Lame. It's a good rivalry; play it and stop being vindictive (I'm looking at you, Penn State).

Didn't I just write about this? The disturbingly protective Forcier family has posted on its collective Twitter feed that Tate has NOT contacted the staff at Hawaii, which is contrary to a report earlier this week from the Honolulu Daily Star. So no Hawaii (at least not yet) ... but he IS interested in Kansas State and Colorado, neither of which is exactly overflowing with quality depth at QB. One potentially relevant note: Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News said in his blog Thursday that Forcier has "non-football issues that must be resolved (i.e., academic) before he enrolls anywhere." This was also the insider-ish word when he left Michigan, and since he never enrolled at Miami (or anywhere else), it's not like he's been working on getting his grades up. That's probably gonna severely limit his options -- he'll have to get admitted somewhere despite his crappy grades and then take some summer classes or something just to get himself eligible to get back on the field. In other words, there's a reason a guy who was starting at Michigan as a freshman is now strongly considering San Jose State.