Beaten to the punch by 16 years

Back in 1995, Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff either owned a DeLorean or had an amazing epiphany that now seems prophetic. The story/letter can be read here (hat tip to friend Brett Fera).

Obligatory Miami-goes-boom reaction

The most thorough and destructive investigation of an athletic department in the past 30 years came down the pipe Tuesday. If you haven't read it, please do -- it's well worth your time.

When the reports started leaking out Monday night and basically went "Miami booster in Ponzi scheme talks about giving players stuff," I figured it was something along the lines of the Ed Martin/Fab Five scandal, where a booster with a bunch of inappropriately acquired money was just tossing it around to people while the school was unaware (or mostly unaware, depending on what you believe about Steve Fisher). But man ... that was definitely not the case.

Excerpts:

Shapiro said he violated NCAA rules with the knowledge or direct participation of at least six coaches – Clint Hurtt, Jeff Stoutland and Aubrey Hill on the football staff, and Frank Haith, Jake Morton and Jorge Fernandez on the basketball staff. Multiple sources told Yahoo! Sports Shapiro also violated NCAA rules with football assistant Joe Pannunzio, although the booster refused to answer any questions about that relationship. Shapiro also named assistant football equipment manager Sean Allen as someone who engaged in rulebreaking and equipment managers Ralph Nogueras and Joey Corey as witnesses to some of his impropriety.

The booster said his role went one step farther with the basketball program, when he paid $10,000 to help secure the commitment of recruit DeQuan Jones. Shapiro said the transaction was set up by assistant coach Jake Morton in 2007 who acted as the conduit for the funds, and was later acknowledged by head coach Frank Haith in a one-on-one conversation.

Strip club visits included both coaches and players – something that was referenced in a portion of federal testimony by Chicago real estate investor Sherwin Jarol, who was deposed in Shapiro’s Ponzi case. At one point in his testimony, a recording of which was viewed by Yahoo! Sports, Jarol describes a pair of August 2008 visits to Solid Gold nightclub with Shapiro. He says “the coach of the Miami basketball” team (Frank Haith) attended one trip.

So yeah ... that guy was "rogue" the way Jim Tressel was rogue. And there's so much more, I don't even know where to begin. The guy was part-owner of (and recruiter for) a sports agency, held team parties on his yacht, hosted recruits, arranged and paid for hookers on his yacht and in hotels, had players staying at his house on a regular basis, re-established the "bounty" system set up by Luther Campbell back in the original days of Miami insanity, and so on. There are photos, many witnesses and thousands of court-obtained financial documents that back up all of this.

With all that established, Charles Robinson -- the best investigator the NCAA has ever had* -- goes for the win:

In hindsight, Shapiro said he looks at that moment and realizes Miami could have seized on countless incidents and ended his flagrant assault on NCAA bylaws. Just a 20-minute drive northwest from campus, across one of the causeways and into Miami Beach, Shapiro’s high-rolling routine with Hurricanes football players was on display on a daily basis. And according to Shapiro, all Miami needed to do was look.

But instead, Shapiro said he was enabled by the university, allowed to run the entire Miami team out of tunnel and onto the field – twice – and once honored on the field by former athletic director Paul Dee during a game. The same Paul Dee who wagged a finger at USC as the chairman of the NCAA’s committee on infractions in 2010, chiding the Reggie Bush/O.J. Mayo scandal as a systematic failure.

“High-profile players demand high-profile compliance,” Dee said while announcing USC’s sanctions.

Ouch. We're talking about years of rampant violations involving a major booster, numerous coaches, hundreds of players and some unknown number of recruits, most of it under the supposedly watchful eye of the freakin' chairman of the Committee on Infractions.

Here's the weird/tricky thing: Other than the handful of current players named in the story (Jacory Harris being one), everybody's gone. In the past year, entirely new football and basketball staffs have been hired, so there's no way to punish the coaches who were most prominently involved. But that didn't save Michigan after the similar-but-much-less-severe Fab Five stuff, and it certainly didn't save USC after Pete Carroll had jumped ship (just in time, no less) for the NFL. In that regard, I feel truly sorry for Al Golden and Jim Larranaga. The sanctions are coming, and they'll be bad.

Some Miami fans tried to save face with the inevitable statute-of-limitations argument, but there's a big caveat they're forgetting about: If there's an established "pattern of willful violations" that stretches beyond the four-year limit -- and I'm pretty sure this qualifies -- the statute of limitations can be extended to whenever that pattern began. In other words, everything Nevin Shapiro did since the time he became a booster in 2001 can and will be included in the eventual notice of allegations.

Oh, and then there's this:

As required by NCAA legislation for any institution involved in a major infractions case, Miami shall be subject to the provisions of NCAA Bylaw 19.6.2.3, concerning repeat violators, for a five-year period beginning on the effective date of the penalties in this case, February 27, 2003. Any major violation occurring between February 27, 2003 and February 26, 2008 would trigger repeat violator status for the Hurricanes.

Miami is in up to its eyeballs.

There was a pretty interesting article a couple weeks ago on FOX Sports with the headline "Have we seen the end of the NCAA death penalty?" Summary: Probably, but if there's a scandal that's "institutional" enough, the option should be there.

Miami obviously didn't have its board of trustees signing off on slush-fund payments to players like SMU did back in the day, but the coaching staff was (allegedly) setting up purchases of recruits and bringing guys to a booster's yacht while the athletic department was busy ignoring it and arranging even more access for him so the school could keep cashing his massive donation checks. Unless Auburn turns out to be as bad as some people think it is, these are probably the worst violations we're ever going to see.

So ... I have no idea if this reaches the level of "institutional" involvement necessary to bring up death-penalty talk among the typically cowardly people at the NCAA, but we're gonna find out.

*The NCAA should seriously just outsource its investigative work to Yahoo, which is constantly establishing just how little the NCAA can do to police itself and its institutions. And kudos to Yahoo, not only for the story but for the timing -- waiting until juuust after the Ohio State hearing to unleash something even bigger was pure brilliance.

Everybody point and laugh at Texas A&M

Well ... this is awkward:

The Southeastern Conference is not extending an invitation to Texas A&M to become its 13th member but isn't ruling out adding the Aggies in the future.

University of Florida president Dr. Bernie Machen said the conference's presidents and chancellors met on Sunday and "reaffirmed our satisfaction with the present 12 institutional alignment."

In other words, "Thanks for playing and drive home safely to your jilted and bitter family." How humiliating for A&M.

I assumed that with both A&M and the SEC being so publicly open about the situation, the vote was just a formality. Not so much. The only logical explanation I can come up with for the last-minute chair-pull is that the presidents wanted a more certain long-term plan than "let's just take A&M and then see who else wants to come down the road." Maybe they'll start up the realignment talk again in the offseason when they can negotiate with more than one team at a time and see if an A&M-Florida State package deal (or something equally enticing) can be arranged. Bringing in, say, Texas A&M and Missouri seems like expansion for the sake of expansion, and nobody wants to share their dolla dolla billz with people who aren't bringing any additional money to the table.

As for the Big 12 ... man, I dunno. This seems like the equivalent of finding out (in very public fashion) that your moderately hot girlfriend is cheating on you but knowing that you're not that attractive and if you dump her, you won't be getting anything better and may very well spiral into a complete breakdown. My guess is that everybody puts on a brave face and pretends to be content until whenever this situation crops up again (and it will). On a related note, to be a Texas fan today would be flat-out awesome -- I'm soooo looking forward to Prevail and Ride's MS Paint storyboard.

What a weird ending to a weird week.

Catching up just needs an invitation

Texas A&M is ready to go (for real this time): According to ESPN, a decision has been made at A&M:

Texas A&M intends to move from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference, where it hopes to begin play in 2012, school officials have said.

After 15 years in the Big 12, Texas A&M has been considering the switch for the second time in a year.

A high-ranking source within Texas A&M confirmed to ESPN's Doug Gottlieb on Saturday morning the Aggies were poised to join the SEC. The San Antonio Express-News reported the time frame of their tentative plans to begin competition.

While that sounds definitive, there's still one minor detail: A&M doesn't have an official invitation yet. There'll reportedly be an SEC meeting Sunday to discuss/vote on the situation, but ESPN cites an SEC source as saying that there's "a 30 percent to 40 percent chance the Aggies would not get enough votes for an invitation to the league."

Take that FWIW, because I have a hard time believing that the SEC would shoot this thing down after extensive behind-closed-door negotiations that led to A&M burning a whole bunch of fragile bridges. That'd be very uncool. It sounds like the real uncertainty relates to the so-far-unknown 14th team and what the next step would be if A&M does get an invitation. This quote was particularly interesting:

"We realize if we do this, we have to have the 14th," the SEC official said. "No name has been thrown out. This thing is much slower out of the chute than the media and blogs have made it."

Ouch -- he's obviously referring to me. And I wonder where this other guy is getting his information:

The SEC now likely will pursue Florida State, Clemson and Missouri, a source told ESPN.

As I mentioned yesterday, I'd think Oklahoma and Florida State would have to be at the top of any realistic list, but maybe Oklahoma has been adamant about sticking around in the ever-shrinking Big 12. Missouri seems like an odd choice -- they're probably having a party in their pants right now just thinking about the possibility. Clemson would be of similar quality to Missouri but would at least be a very natural geographical fit, sliding right into the SEC East with South Carolina.

It's a little surprising that the scenario hasn't even been seriously discussed yet (assuming the aforementioned SEC official is telling the truth); that seems like something you'd want to explore before approving a fifth wheel 13th team ... although given all the legal maneuvering and difficulties involved in getting one team, let alone two, maybe it's best to take things one step at a time.

As for A&M, it sounds like there'll be a decision Sunday as to whether an invitation will be extended. If/once that happens, I doubt there will be anything the Big 12 or anybody else can do to stop the inevitable.

Howard Schnellenberger to retire: Anyone under the age of 30 younger than me has little to no recollection of Howard Schnellenberger as a relevant name in the coaching world. But the guy who did the following things ...

• Ran the offense for the perfect 17-0 Miami Dolphins
• Built the Miami program that became a juggernaut before Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson rode it to bigger and better things
• Came back to college to start from scratch a Florida Atlantic program that has been better than respectable for most of its 10 years of existence
  

... definitely deserves some recognition, and now's a good time since he announced this week that he'll be stepping down at the end of the season following his 52nd year (!) in coaching.

His 57-63 record at FAU obviously doesn't tell much of the story; keep in mind that when Schellenberger got to Miami, the football program was nothing -- it was on the verge of elimination because it was completely irrelevant -- and he turned it into an absolute powerhouse in the span of about five years. He might have gone down as a JoePa-type figure there had he not made the not-so-good-in-hindsight decision to walk away after winning the 1983 national title to take a job with ... drumroll ... a yet-to-be-named USFL team that was supposed to play in Miami but ended up relocating to Orlando and never played a game under Schnellenberger. D'oh.

Schnellenberger went back to college to coach at Louisville and turned a crappy program into something much better toward the end (he left in 1994), then went to Oklahoma for one disappointing season before stepping down and leaving coaching until 2001, when FAU came looking for somebody who knew how to run a football team.

The guy is now 77 and is still outcoaching most of the Sun Belt, which might not be much of an accomplishment but is a nice cherry on top of a damn impressive career. He'll retire with an overall record a little north of .500 (he's currently 157-140) and the gratitude of three schools that were a lot better when he left than before he got there.

ASU loses Brandon Magee for the season: I was thiiiis close to going down to ASU's scrimmage on Saturday, but I stayed up too late Friday night and didn't have the energy and therefore missed out on watching outside linebacker Brandon Magee suffer a horrific, season-ending tear to his left Achilles tendon.

If you're not familiar, Magee is somewhere between above average and good: D-coordinator Craig Bray told me last week that Magee was the most consistent linebacker on the team last year, and he didn't mean it as a backhanded compliment or a slap at Vontaze Burfict's always-hilarious antics.

Fortunately, linebacker is/was the one position on defense where ASU still had some depth -- senior Oliver Aaron is the nominal backup, and both he senior Colin Parker are talented and experienced enough to fill in without a massive drop-off -- but the pure volume of significant losses on defense is gonna take a toll at some point. Just since spring, ASU has lost All-American corner Omar Bolden (torn ACL), defensive end James Brooks (left program for personal reasons) and now Magee. The starting unit has gone from "really good" to "probably good," and the depth has gone from "fine" to "nonexistent." At this point, any serious injury at any position is going to represent a massive and potentially devastating hit to that particular unit.

ASU is probably still the best team (other than USC) in the division, but the big goals -- Rose Bowl, national championship, etc. -- all require getting past Oregon at least once and probably twice, and that's looking less realistic than ever.

Corwin Brown hospitalized after suicide attempt: This is such an odd and sad story. Former Notre Dame defensive coordinator and 1992 Michigan team captain Corwin Brown was involved in a lengthy standoff at his home in Indiana on Friday, and it only ended when he shot himself in the head. He's obviously been hospitalized; it's not clear if his life is in danger.

The standoff started with some sort of domestic dispute that involved shots being fired, and after his wife and kids made it out of the house, this happened:

Brown asked to talk to several friends during the standoff. Shortly before it ended, someone could be heard saying through the bullhorn: "Be a Michigan man today. Step up to your obligation."

Several seconds later the person said: "Please don't let me down. Please!"

Moments later, a fire truck and ambulance rushed to the front of the house.

That's just gut-wrenching. Brown's only 41, by the way, and nobody seems to know (or is saying publicly) what's going on in his life. Whatever it is, hopefully he can get through it.

Cincinnati goes overboard: OK, so I realize that black helmets are the new cool thing to do (for some reason), but Cincinnati is taking things to the EXTREME SNAP INTO A SLIM JIM:

Yeah ... ummm ... didn't Cincinnati already have black helmets? I'm not sure the black-on-black "C" is even gonna be visible on TV or from the stands, and if it's not, what's the point?

Gotta be different grumble grumble get off my lawn grumble.

Penn State players live in excruciating fear: The fact that I got to the middle of the fourth sentence of this story (which someone emailed to me) before realizing that it was pure Onion brilliance and not an actual article says something about the subject:

STATE COLLEGE, PA—Hospitalized after a receiver crashed into him on the field last Sunday, Joe Paterno’s return to practice Wednesday came as a vast relief to Penn State players, all of whom live in constant fear of being the one who inevitably kills the 84-year-old head coach.

"Every game, every quarter, every down, I’m terrified I might be the one who kills Joe Paterno," said junior wideout Curtis Drake, who now refuses to run sideline routes. "It’s not just playing football, either. The tough part is all the little things, like staying 3 feet from him when he's talking so you don't use up all the oxygen in the air, and making sure he's not standing in your shadow, where he could get cold."

I have nothing to add here.

Kevin Wilson isn't amused: A little background on this story: New Indiana coach Kevin Wilson agreed to do an interview with Indianapolis radio hosts Dominic Zaccagnini and Jack Trudeau, who's a former Illinois quarterback. When they introduced Wilson for his interview, the Indiana fight song was playing and Trudeau wisecracked, "Of course, when I played Indiana, they didn't play this song very often, because I don't remember them even scoring against us. Ha ha." That didn't go over so well:

Zaccagnini: You sound like you've been doing some screaming at practice, coach. Are we yelling at the players already?

Wilson: No, we're yelling at media guys that don't have a clue. ... Y'all were referring to fight songs, I remember (Indiana) putting 61 on the Illini back when I was at Northwestern, and they kind of stunk at the time, too. Anyway, I got some things to do, guys. What do you guys need?

Zaccagnini: Here's how you can help us. Tell us how you're going to get IU into a bowl game. They haven't been in three straight years —

Wilson: I think the magic number's winning six games —

Zaccagnini: — I don't want to define your tradition, so you do that —

Wilson: —and the key to doing that is scoring more points than the opposition, playing defense and (the) kicking game. ...

I take a little pride in winning at Northwestern, winning a Big Ten championship. Take a little pride in being at little Miami (Ohio) and beating North Carolina and Virginia Tech and Northwestern when they're ranked. Take a little pride in doing a good job up here. That's what we're looking forward to doing.

Trudeau: Coach, I don't appreciate your attitude, really. We do have a radio show and we do have to entertain and if you don't understand that, then… I'm a little disappointed in a school that needs to have some publicity, some good publicity go your way. I'm a little surprised at your attitude, coach.

Zaccagnini: I'm a little shocked too—

Wilson: I'm trying to take a little pride —

Zaccagnini: — I'm not sure how much in demand you are with the media.

That was basically the end of it, as the radio guys hung up shortly thereafter because they were just shocked and appalled that Wilson didn't wanna participate in laughing at his new school. Dr. Saturday came down pretty hard on Wilson for not having a sense of humor, but I don't blame him. The "hur hur your school sucks" schtick probably isn't that amusing when you're the guy responsible for making it not suck.

WTF is going on with Texas A&M?

I thought we were done with the whole conference realignment thing for a while, but Texas A&M seems really dedicated to seeing this through (or just really desperate to get out of the Big 12):

HOUSTON -- The Texas A&M System board of regents has called a special meeting Monday that includes an agenda item about conference alignment. The session comes amid speculation that Texas A&M is leaving the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference.

The item, part of the executive session agenda, is called: "Authorization for the President to Take All Actions Relating to Texas A&M University's Athletic Conference Alignment, The Texas A&M University System."

The news of the meeting comes on the heels of the Texas House Committee on Higher Education calling a Tuesday hearing, to which Big 12, SEC and Texas A&M officials have been invited, to discuss possible realignment of college conferences in the state.

Texas Rep. Dan Branch said the Tuesday meeting has been scheduled in part "because we are hearing Texas A&M and the SEC are talking more seriously and we are hearing about a possible vote (for invitation) by SEC presidents." Branch said he's heard the SEC vote could be as early as Saturday.

This isn't quite the same as "I heard Notre Dame and Texas and Rutgers are going to the Big Ten to make a superconference!" There's definitely something going on here, with Texas A&M moving its Board of Regents meeting up to Monday in order to make a decision before the Texas House can talk about the situation.

If you're thinking "Why would Texas A&M wanna leave the Big 12," you haven't been paying attention. Texas is going to financially dominate the rest of the conference for the foreseeable future, and with the jealousy that situation's sure to create among the schools that could do better by jumping ship (like Oklahoma and Texas A&M), the Big 12 is and will continue to be teetering on the brink of implosion. If you can get out and find a safe home -- or a better one, in this case -- you should do it.

Remember two days ago (you might not if your memory is as pathetic as mine)? I wrote this about the Longhorn Network and Texas' soon-to-be-massive pile of money:

If you think it's bad for the long-term viability of the Big 12 that one school can market its own rights and make three times what everybody else does, you're right (I don't think it would take much of a sales pitch from the SEC to get Oklahoma and A&M to jump ship and completely obliterate the conference).

Yeah ... that was somewhat prophetic.

Anyway, between the aforementioned financial situation and Texas A&M's "little brother" inferiority complex, being able to play the SEC card and be a different fish in a different pond rather than a smaller fish in Burnt Orange Pond has to be pretty tempting. And given the way this thing has progressed over the past few days, it's starting to sound more and more like an inevitability. This is a tweet from Kirk Bohls, a pretty well-respected and connected columnist at the Austin American-Statesman:

Texas AD DeLoss Dodds tells me "it looks to me like they're leaving."

That's pretty straightforward.

Assuming this thing goes through and isn't headed off in the legislature or wherever, the million-dollar question: What happens next? There's no way the SEC just wants to bring in one team and stop at 13 overall (seven in one division and six in the other), so maybe there's more to the Florida State situation than we know:

Florida State is another school that has been mentioned as a potential new addition to the SEC. But university President Eric Barron said he hasn't had any talks about his school leaving the Atlantic Coast Conference for the SEC. Still, he didn't say it would never happen.

Barron said Friday that while he finds speculation fascinating, he has not had any talks about Florida State moving from the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The only schools that jump out as obvious candidates are Oklahoma (for the reasons mentioned above) and Florida State, which could greatly enhance its financial situation and not really lose anything -- it'd be easy to flip the Labor Day matchup with Miami to a nonconference game (like it was for years when Miami was in the Big East) and make Florida-Florida State a huge SEC game rather than the strangely meaningless end-of-season rivalry game that it is currently.

If it's Oklahoma, the Big 12 is probably done. The rest of the schools (everyone except Texas) might be desperate enough to stick together that they'd be willing to bring in Tulsa and/or Houston and/or whoever else they can add to get to 10 teams, but would Texas really have any desire to beat up on the WAC South each year? Keep in mind that Texas views itself as the biggest and best in every sport, not just football, so relegating the school's other athletic programs to essentially mid-major status wouldn't be a real desirable option. Texas would become an independent (and find a new home for its other sports), the Big 12 would be extinct and there'd be a whole bunch of schools between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains trying to figure out what to do next. It'd be pretty crazy ... and everybody thought it'd be the Big Ten that would blow up the conference structure as we know it.

Anyway, I won't go too far with the doomsday scenarios until something actually, like, happens. But if the SEC issues an invitation Saturday (as was mentioned above as a possibility), we should know A&M's fate pretty soon.

Ohio State awaits a verdict

Ohio State's final NCAA hearing/plea for pity came and went Friday in relatively quick fashion, lasting just four hours (IIRC, the infamous USC hearing dragged on for about two days). The only real "newsy" item that came out of it was Ohio State's decision to give back its Sugar Bowl paycheck of about $340,000, a very noble act given the way the school appealed to get its five ineligible players cleared for a game it never should have been playing in.

Media people weren't allowed, so nobody knows what Jim Tressel or anybody else had to say outside of his statement that "I had an open and constructive exchange with the committee on infractions." I'm sure he did. What we do know is this: Gene Smith said afterward that a final ruling is expected in about eight weeks, which puts the big announcement smack dab in the middle of the season. If it's bad, it could be really bad for morale and recruiting ... but it probably won't be that bad.

In a remarkable stroke of coincidence (totally a coincidence, I'm sure), the NCAA's much-debated July 13 letter was released by ESPN on Friday, and the content is ... ummm ... interesting:

On Monday, the enforcement staff conducted another call with institutional officials and determined that it is possible to move forward with the August 12 hearing while acknowledging the additional review is necessary. At this point in the inquiry, the available evidence does not warrant additional allegations; however, the investigation remains open. As a result, the staff and institution agreed not to postpone the currently scheduled hearing date of August 12 while we finalize the investigation of the remaining open issues. The institution understands and agrees that additional allegations may result from the ongoing inquiry and that the violations set forth in the current notice of allegations may form the partial basis for a failure to monitor of lack of institutional control when viewed in light of any additional violations. The institution also understands that if new violations are discovered, a second hearing may be necessary.

The NCAA is definitely leaving open the possibility of coming down hard in the future, and because of that, I've come to the following conclusions:

1. The investigators have some information that they think is damaging but hasn't been confirmed or thoroughly fleshed out (whether that'll ever happen is completely unknown).
2. The penalties stemming from the original report won't be terribly severe.

Regarding that first conclusion, word on the interwebs is that the guy named Ellis who was heavily sourced in the Sports Illustrated expose has met with the NCAA, which obviously would be bad news for OSU since he seemed to have the scoop on everybody's shady dealings. If that tweet is accurate (and that's a big if), it would explain the NCAA's stance, which is basically: "We think we know some stuff but wanna hear it from the horse's mouth and will then determine a course of action."

As for the second statement, I'm coming to grips with the fact that the TatGate stuff alone isn't going to result in devastating penalties. I mentioned at some point recently that the recent NCAA standard has been two for one: For example, if you play two ineligible players, you lose four scholarships for a year (or two for two years). Based on that, I'd expect OSU to lose 10 total scholarships -- stretched out over some not-super-long period of time -- on top of the meaningless probation the school has offered to "impose" on itself.

What makes the OSU case so much more egregious than usual (and thus harder to predict) is Tressel's involvement. There's a big difference between finding out after the fact that a player was ineligible, which is normally what happens, and knowing about it/covering it up in order to win as many games as possible ... so that seems bad. Maybe the fact that he's gone offsets that, but maybe the fact that he "retired" and wasn't actually punished in any meaningful way pushes things back in the other direction. And does the whole Sugar Bowl fiasco potentially bring postseason sanctions into play? I dunno. It's a weird scenario.

But since I'm somewhat obligated to make a prediction (which will probably change repeatedly in the next two months), here you go: Five scholarships stripped for each of the next two seasons, a fine proportionate to the school's Sugar Bowl earnings and no postseason ban. Oh, and the always-devastating probationary period.

In (approximately) October, we'll find out one way or another ... unless the NCAA comes across something of substance before then, in which case there could be a much more meaningful hearing after the season that would make this one seem like a pat on the back. Another hearing would mean another notice of allegations, and another notice of allegations would almost certainly mean a failure to monitor and a lack of institutional control. If that happens, all bets are off and I'll be preparing a new bag of popcorn.

Arkansas takes a potentially devastating hit

Knile Davis, the SEC's leading returning rusher, is done for the season:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino confirmed Friday that running back Knile Davis is expected to miss the season because of a left ankle injury.

The injury is a major blow to the preseason expectations for the Razorbacks, who were 10-3 and reached their first BCS bowl game last season.

Davis suffered the injury early in the scrimmage portion of practice on Thursday and was carted off the field without being able to put weight on his left leg.

Wow. Arkansas has been talked about by a lot of people (including me, briefly) as a team with realistic chances of winning it all this year, but losing a guy who ran for 1,322 yards last season makes that significantly less likely.

The backup options are OK but not great: Dennis Johnson (a senior) is fast and a good kick returner but has never been given more than 57 carries in a season, and junior Ronnie Wingo is a bigger guy who has more every-down-back skills but has been used more as a receiving threat thus far in his career (he has 90 career carries, about the same amount Davis had in the final three games of last year).

Despite my assertion a couple weeks ago that Davis has been a tad overrated by some people, his presence would have made things a lot easier on new QB Tyler Wilson, who's stepping into the massive hole left by Ryan Mallett. Skill-position talent is a nice thing to have. And given the unlikelihood that either Wingo or Johnson (or a combination) can replicate what Davis did last year, it'd be a good idea to scale back the Arkansas expectations. A 10-2 record that's good enough for a second straight BCS game is a reasonable goal; winning the national title probably isn't anymore.