Catching up on non-OSU stuff

USC stripped of 2004 BCS title: Meh. After the NCAA went kaboom on USC's record books, this was pretty much a formality -- you can't win a national championship without, like, winning any games. But it's kinda weird to think that the most dominant team of the past 15 years officially never existed (rewritten history FTW).

Tommy Tuberville says Auburn should get 2004 title: In other news, Tommy Tuberville says he likes breathing air and wonders if Mila Kunis is interested in hooking up.

Big Ten title game staying in Indianapolis: So the conference of Leaders and Legends, manball, JoePa and a name that hasn't been accurate for 20 years (which I'm totally cool with since it's been the Big Ten since roughly the beginning of time) has decided that its biggest stage will be a dome in Indianapolis. Wooo tradition.

Sarcasm aside, I'm actually not totally upset about that. If I could bring Keith Jackson back from the not quite dead to have him call the Big Ten championship game from the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field ... well, that'd be awesome. But I hate watching important games played in stupid, crappy weather (aka the month of November) that manipulates the outcome. That includes rain, wind (good luck, mediocre punters!), field-destroying frost -- everything except snow, which is indisputably awesome. A dome definitely solves that problem.

My first choice will ALWAYS be on-campus games -- seriously, conferences (except the Pac-12) are dumb for ignoring the always-available 100,000-seat mega-stadiums at their own schools that would be filled in about 7 seconds -- but since those aren't happening, I'm fine with Indy. It's somewhat of a relief to know that the Big Ten will never (at least not through 2015) decide its champion with a semi-organized game of bobsled on the Soldier Field linoleum.

Why do we have kickoffs? Hmmm ... Greg Schiano's ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to his newsletter:

This is Schiano’s plan: Replace all kickoffs with a punting situation, including after the opening coin toss and to start the second half. So, as an example, when Team A scores a touchdown, it immediately gets the ball back on a fourth-and-15 from its own 30-yard line.

It can punt it back to Team B — the most likely outcome and a safer play since the bigger collisions usually happen on kickoffs. Or it can line up and go for the first down, essentially replacing an onside kick with an offensive play that would require more skill than luck.

Overreaction to Eric LeGrand's horrific injury? Probably. Ever gonna happen? Probably not. But after two days of thinking about it, I can't still can't come up with any specific reason for the existence of kickoffs other than "they've always been there." And when the governing body is saying "how can we water these things down so people stop getting paralyzed and stuff," it's worth thinking about a superficially crazy change.

79 days without a DUI for Michael Floyd: Notre Dame is allowing Michael Floyd to participate in "voluntary" summer workouts, with participation in those presumably being the first step toward reinstatement (the other step: STOP GETTING ARRESTED). Brian Kelly has already said that Floyd is an ‘all in or not’ situation -- he'll either play in every game or none (although the fact that he's made of paper mache makes playing in every game unlikely) -- but the news that he's actually participating in a football-type thing seems to represent progress.

Tennessee LB Herman Lathers breaks ankle: Ouch. Lathers, now a junior, started every game last season for a surprisingly decent Tennessee team with just about no depth and was supposed to be the leading returning tackler and only returning starting linebacker. Sounds like he might be out for the season.