1. USC (25) 1445
2. Alabama (17) 1411
3. LSU (16) 1402
4. Oklahoma (1) 1286
5. Oregon 1274
6. Georgia 1107
7. Florida State 1093
8. Michigan (1) 1000
9. South Carolina 994
10. Arkansas 963
11. West Virginia 856
12. Wisconsin 838
13. Michigan State 742
14. Clemson 615
15. Texas 569
16. Virginia Tech 548
17. Nebraska 485
18. Ohio State 474
19. Oklahoma State 430
20. TCU 397
21. Stanford 383
22. Kansas State 300
23. Florida 214
24. Boise State 212
25. Louisville 105
The obvious takeaway: USC is eight first-place votes and 34 points ahead of everybody, including still-almost-dead-even Alabama and LSU, with LSU dropping from first to third (barely) after the Tyrann Mathieu shenanigans. The coaches' poll was flipped in terms of order but, more significantly, had all three within two first-place votes of each other; the media obviously love them some USC.
Other observations will be somewhat limited because I already made them. Srsly: After LSU, the AP poll is exactly the same as the coaches' poll all the way down to No. 16. I expected at least a little deviation among maybe the Michigan/Wisconsin/Michigan State triumvirate or Texas' placement or something but got nothing except for some minor shuffling toward the bottom.
The AP poll does provide a little context for Ohio State: They're 18th, one spot lower than Nebraska and therefore third in the Big Ten Whatever Division. I know Urban Meyer is God and yadda yadda yadda, but that ranking is probably more reasonable than the bottom-half-of-the-top-10 ones provided by a bunch of the preview magazines/websites given that Ohio State was 6-7 last year.
Speaking of the Big Ten, this ...
Michigan (1)
... is glorious despite its ridiculousness.
Also glorious: It's 12 days until football (the real kind). Yes.
First things first: Apologies for an unplanned midweek hiatus. I've got a lot of things going on that unfortunately supersede my blogging desires. It will never probably will happen again.
Maryland quarterback C.J. Brown will miss the entire 2012 season with a knee injury, a severe blow to a team that now must rely on two untested freshmen to run the offense.
Brown, a redshirt junior, tore his right ACL during a non-contract practice session Tuesday night.
Yeesh. The problem for Maryland isn't so much that Brown was awesome -- although he did represent a large majority of the returning running game, starting for most of the second half of last season and running for 547 yards and five touchdowns while going 82 for 166 with seven touchdowns and six picks -- as much as it is that there's really no replacement. The options now: true freshmen Perry Hills and Caleb Rowe, with Hills the nominal leader by virtue of being the previous No. 2 guy on the depth chart. Neither one got a whole lot of guru love coming out of high school.
Brown wasn't a great passer but at least provided Maryland something to work with on offense
(and provided other teams something to have to gameplan against) since he has/had 1,000-yard
ability. Alas. The offense most likely will not be good at anything given the loss of its leading returning rusher and the probable lack of a passing game.
Again: The Randy Edsall Experiment is so doomed.
Honey Badger update: There were reports circulating the other day that Tyrann Mathieu wanted to stick it out at LSU and try to get back on the team next year; LSU's compliance director totally shot that down ...
"He's permanently ineligible to play football at LSU," Bahnsen said in a telephone interview Monday afternoon. "That's definite. That's what was said Friday."
... before LSU's associate athletic director sort of corrected him and left a little leeway:
"He can come back to LSU as a student, but we're not even going to speculate beyond that," Herb Vincent said.
I see. LSU's drug policy (which is reportedly what Mathieu violated; surprise!) explicitly states that a third failed drug test results in "permanent ineligibility," but it's the SEC yadda yadda yadda. From Mathieu's standpoint, getting back on the field at LSU would probably be the best-case scenario since it'd generally assuage any character concerns and allow him to actually, you know, play meaningful games and stuff. I still consider it extremely unlikely given the uncertainty of a hypothetical year-from-now return as opposed to the certainty of going to the FCS.
Either way, he'll have to decide pretty soon since the deadline for enrollment at most schools is right around September 1. ESPN says he's been contacted by about 20 schools (all FCS, presumably) but hasn't visited any of them other than McNeese State. Another potentially complicating factor:
Former LSU star Tyrann Mathieu has entered a drug rehabilitation program in Houston since being dismissed from the Tigers, according to a television report.
Tyrone Mathieu says his son is committed to restoring his health and won't play football until he is confident that his rehab is complete. That may rule out the possibility of Mathieu transferring to a school at the FCS level and playing this season, after which he would be eligible for the NFL draft.
I suppose that's good news from a getting-his-life-together standpoint, although any extended rehab stint would make it almost impossible to play at allthis year; what that means for his future is anybody's guess.
Penn State you know the drill: Former Penn State wideout Devon Smith, who actually left the
team/was dismissed from the team back in June, is headed to Marshall:
Wide receiver Devon Smith has transferred from Penn State to Marshall. Marshall coach Doc Holliday announced Smith's transfer Thursday.
Smith, a senior, will be eligible to play this season because of the NCAA's penalties against Penn State. The 5-foot-7, 147-pound Smith caught 25 passes for 402 yards and two touchdowns at Penn State last season. He also returned kicks.
As noted, Smith is hilariously small and thus isn't exactly a No. 1 receiver; he'll presumably find a home in the slot and terrorize (or something) Conference USA this season, which will be his last since he's a senior. You don't care about what it means for Marshall since, I mean, it's Marshall.
As for Penn State, it's worth pointing out (even though Smith was already gone regardless) that the top four receivers, top two tight ends and top two running backs are all gone due to either transfer, graduation or dismissal. There is nobody on the roster who had more than four catches last year; that honor belongs to sophomore wideout Shawney Kersey. Go, team.
NEED MOAR BEEF: Nebraska apparently won't have its starting left tackle come the
start of the season (and beyond):
Nebraska coach Bo Pelini confirmed on Saturday that sophomore left tackle Tyler Moore has left the team and that his return is still in question.
"Tyler Moore has left the team temporarily," Pelini told reporters following a scrimmage on Saturday. "We'll see where that goes. I'm not exactly sure if that's going to be permanent or not permanent. He's working through some things personally."
Pelini would not go into specifics about why Moore had left the team but said he was leaving the door open for his return.
On Monday, Moore's father told the Tampa Bay Times that his son "just wasn't enjoying himself" and is taking a semester off.
He had some things he wasn't happy about at Nebraska, and he's going to come home to get his head straight," Moore told the paper. "He'll take classes at St. Pete College, and then in January he'll make a decision."
That's ... uhh ... odd. Anyway, Moore was the projected starter this year after starting the first four games last year at right tackle as a true freshman (!) and then giving way to Marcel Jones. Given the apparent unlikelihood of an immediate return, it appears that either junior Brent Qvale or junior Andrew Rodriguez will slide into the starting lineup, although it's possible that they'll do so at right tackle while Jeremiah Sirles slides over to the left side, where he started last year (Y U SWITCH SWIDES?).
BTW, Moore (according to his dad) plans to visit Florida and Florida State and does have a redshirt available that he'll presumably be taking this season.
On a related note, Nebraska redshirt freshman guard Ryan Klachko announced this week that he's transferring to Illinois, where Tim Beckman apparently is accumulating young linemen from around the Big Ten. Klachko wasn't on the depth chart at Nebraska but was a decently rated recruit (Nebraska offensive lineman duh), so his loss isn't totally irrelevant from a looking-way-ahead standpoint. He also used his redshirt last year -- hence redshirt freshman -- and thus will be down a year of eligibility come 2013.
Jon Embree has tabbed former Kansas quarterback Jordan Webb to lead the football program in the Buffs' 2012 quest for a bowl game.
After you're done laughing at that last segment, note that Texas transfer and former big-time recruit Connor Wood took all the first-team snaps in spring and was the presumptive starter even after Webb arrived over the summer following his graduation from Kansas. That apparently changed in 10 days of camp.
The thing Webb has that Wood doesn't: experience, even if it's not particularly exciting experience. Webb was one of the few decent aspects of last year's abomination of a Kansas team, completing about 64 percent of his passes for 6.7 yards per attempt with 13 touchdowns and 12 picks. His numbers as a redshirt freshman were similar, BTW. He wasn't awful. He wasn't great. He was OK. And (oddly enough) he's got two years of eligibility left even though he's already graduated; he redshirted in 2010 and got his degree in three years, which dang. FYI, Webb's presence at Kansas became unnecessary when Charlie Weis went ham recruiting free-agent-y quarterbacks, getting Dayne Crist (who's eligible immediately as a grad transfer) from Notre Dame and Jake Heaps from BYU in the span of a couple weeks.
Wood is a redshirt sophomore who was reportedly awesome in the spring game and had on his side that performance, a bunch of recruiting stars/hype and the allure of being 6-foot-3, 225 pounds with an NFL arm; Webb is somewhere in the ballpark of 5-foot-10 and not even much of a runner. This is from a Denver Post non-column thing after spring ball:
... you can likely pencil Wood's name in the starting lineup for the Sept. 2 opener against Colorado State.
Not so much.
The good news: Either guy/both guys will probably be at least as good as Tyler Hansen was last year, and the bar is set pretty low on offense after CU finished 109th nationally (guh) in scoring last season.
Former Houston coach Kevin Sumlin said Johnny Manziel will start Texas A&M’s opener against Louisiana Tech on Aug. 30 as the Aggies prepare for their first season in the Southeastern Conference.
Manziel is a redshirt freshman who beat out sophomores Jameill Showers and Matt Joeckel. Combined, the three of them have thrown five career passes, with all of those belonging to Showers last year and none of them being relevant. Manziel was relatively highly touted in his day (Rivals had him as the No. 14 quarterback in the country in 2011) but will still be getting thrown to the SEC wolves as a freshman, which yikes. At least he'll have some help thanks to Christine Michael, Ryan Swope, Uzoma Nwachukwu and the entire O-line returning.
So the offense should still be effective (albeit maybe not consistently). I'm less certain about the team as a whole.
The University of Idaho is hoping to join the ranks of college football teams with independent status. School officials on Friday will make their case to the Idaho State Board of Education that playing outside of a formal conference is in the best long-term interests of the Vandal football team.
Idaho athletic officials are also seeking permission to join the Big Sky Conference for non-football sports. The Vandals now play in the Western Athletic Conference, but the league has been withering amid conference realignment.
LOLOLOLOLOL. How is Idaho gonna get a TV deal that brings in any substantial amount (or at least an amount that's somewhat comparable to what the Mountain West schools will be pulling in)? And who will be on the schedule other than the various teams willing to shell out a million bucks for a sacrificial lamb during the nonconference portion of the schedule? I don't see how this is feasible for a school like Idaho that has zero national following and roughly the same amount of scheduling appeal. Just give it up and take it to the FCS, man.
Jinxy jinx: So some Michigan people got freaked out when SI put Denard on the cover of one of the regional preview issues because of the jinx and whatnot. Here's the picture:
And here's a picture of the last Michigan guy on one of the regional previews:
Yeeeaaaaahhh. But any concerns are no more because of this (note the captioning to the left):
BOOM JINX'D.
And just because: I'm gonna assume that this is every Alabama wedding:
Amazing. Also amazing is this, which is the best YouTube comment in the history of ever:
The groom later claimed the ring was 14 carats.
That's some EDSBS-quality zing right there.
The AP poll: There will be one Saturday. That is all.
I can't possibly come up with an appropriate intro so will just post these pictures of Notre Dame's uniforms for the Miami game (yes, they're real):
/head asplode
/insert kitten pitcure to cleanse mental palate
I mean ... like ... whaaaaa??? They're awful. Every part. There are no redeeming factors/qualities. Notre Dame = Maryland. I can't even look away but want to. I want to so badly.
NDNation is melting down in appropriate fashion. I'm not sure whether my favorite comment is this one (hat tip to Brian Cook) ...
As the last shreds of dignity are stripped from something I hold dear, I realize that I just cannot summon the energy for apoplexy any more.
I am increasingly embarrassed to be associated in any way with this program, however distantly and tangentially. And my emotional investment in the thing continues to wane. I am not alone in this.
The people charged with stewardship of this thing have failed and failed miserably for a very long time. It's just that in the past year, it's reached the realm of the absurd.
(sigh)
... or this one:
f history....let's be whores
And if we're going to be whores, let's go all the way. I also think we should let the students paint the Grotto once a year in whatever colors and with whatever graffiti they decide is appropriate. After all, it's about the kids. We're doing this for them.
So Denard (there's only one) made a seemingly-not-very-serious comment at Michigan's media day thing over the weekend that he could take Usain Bolt in the 40. Here's the exact quote:
"I've watched him run, and I'm pretty sure I can beat him in a 40-yard dash," Robinson said at Michigan's media day on Sunday. "I'd get a better start, and I could take him.
"At 60 yards, I'd be in trouble, and at 100 meters, he'd be gone, but I could get him in a 40."
This has resulted in people all over the internet being stupid since that's what people on the internet do. I do not like stupidity and prefer numbers, so I went seeking numbers and will now use them to produce a guesstimation (of undetermined value) as to whether Usain Bolt would only probably beat Denard in the 40 or would totally destroy him in the 40. The baseline hypothesis will be the latter since ... I mean ... obviously.
Disclaimer: I am not a physicist. But I do have a pretty good idea of how to work with numbers and like to actually use numbers/data rather than just making blanket statements that defy all logic because MORAN RABBLE. I also stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. So yeah.
There are basically two things to figure out. The first: How fast would/does Usain Bolt run the 40? The second: How fast would/does Denard run the 40? Figuring out the question(s) isn't difficult.
Let me start with this: Usain Bolt is very fast. He is the fastest man in the world at 100 meters and 200 meters and everything in between. He also isn't a great starter, which is backed up by the IAAF splits from the the last two Olympics. I haven't been able to find a 40-yard split (rather than a 40-meter one) from London, but I've got the raw numbers and can therefore produce a reasonably accurate one.
I'll even show the math. To start with, the Olympics people use meters and not yards; 40 meters obviously isn't the same as 40 yards, so some translation is necessary. Since a yard is 0.9114 meters, 40 yards is 36.576 meters. That's the distance we're looking at for an estimated 40-yard split. As for time, his 40-meter split won't do much good since that'd be too big; what I'm gonna do is start with his 30-meter split (3.765 seconds) and then get an as-close-as-possible time for the last 6.576 meters.
The IIAF numbers show he went from the 30-meter mark to the 40-meter mark in .87 seconds, but it's not realistic to use that number to calculate an average for only the first 6.576 meters because he was accelerating throughout; for reference, he ran the previous 10 meters in .90 seconds. Since I don't remember the calculus to get an exact acceleration number, I'm gonna figure that about the first half of an overall 0.87 split -- which, again, came right after a 0.90 split -- was run at an extrapolated 0.885 seconds. I realize that's not perfectly accurate, either, but it's the best I can do given my decade of removal from graphing calculators and whatnot, so that's the number we'll use to get a time for those 6.576 meters (again, this is a guesstimation since Bolt wasn't actually running the 40).
So if his extrapolated time for that subsection of the larger 30-to-40-meter section was 0.885 seconds, he'd have run those first 6.576 meters in 0.5819 seconds. And when added to his 30-meter time, that produces a 40-yard (not 40-meter) time of ... 4.347 seconds.
Given that Speed Endurance had previously calculated his Beijing split at 4.35, I'm satisfied with that as a realistic result. Bolt has been running the 40 (as part of the 100) in about 4.35 seconds.
BTW, this ESPN Radio guy is unequivocally wrong when he says Bolt could run a 3.73 hand-timed 40. No. The IAAF actually includes reaction times in the splits, and Bolt's was only 0.165 seconds; subtract that from his estimated time and you get about a 4.19 (more on that momentarily), so unless the guy doing the timing was drunk and/or full of Vicodin, the result would not be anything close to a 3.73 under any circumstances.
But here's the thing: Denard has never run an "official" 40, although his undoubtedly fake reported time coming out of high school was a 4.32. He also ran track his first couple years at Michigan, but he only ran the 60 meters and doesn't have publicly available splits since there aren't 7,000 cameras and IIAF monitors at a Big Ten track meet.
Could he run a 4.35? Probably. Chris Johnson ran a 4.24 at the combine back in '08, and freakin' 15 guys have run an official 4.3 flat or faster in the last dozen years. There's obviously a significant difference between the 40 and the 100; just take a look at those Bolt splits and realize that he reaches top speed at about 60 meters and then doesn't slow down at all until about the 90-meter mark.
But there's also a difference in timing, as mentioned above: The combine 40 times are electronic but are based on first movement, which eliminates reaction time. Cut reaction time off of Bolt's time and you get a probably-not-attainable-for-a-football-player 4.19 seconds. But (but but but) sprinters also use starting blocks; the guys at the combine don't. Those are obviously of some acceleration value that I can't calculate or even find, but it's not unreasonable to assume that they produce 0.1 seconds of an advantage (just imagine the hilarious unfairness if one of the eight guys in the 100-meter finals didn't get to use blocks).
With no better number to go off of, let's just use that as a ballpark figure for the blocks advantage and add it to Bolt's not-including-reaction-time number of 4.19 to try to replicate combine conditions. The result: 4.29. I feel pretty comfortable saying that his 40 time, in combine conditions and based solely on his 100-meter history, would be somewhere between 4.29 and the above-cited 4.35, give or take a couple hundredths of a second. So that's that.
Speaking of the 100-meter thing, Matt Hinton is a great writer but, IMO, kinda missed the point when he wrote this earlier today:
But even if you do fall for the superhuman times attributed to football players, the comparison to elite sprinters falls apart when you consider how much faster the latter could potentially cover that distance if they trained specifically for it, as football players do before the combine. ...
If Robinson and Bolt raced head-to-head, Robinson would likely fare much better over the first 40 yards of a 100-meter sprint than in a straight-up 40-yard sprint. But no coach anywhere would give him decent odds of actually winning at any significant distance.
The first sentence of that second graf is wrong. Bolt isn't pacing himself for the first 40 meters of the 100; he's just not nearly as fast out of the blocks as he is once he gets his gazelle legs going. That won't change regardless of whether it's a 40-yard dash or the first 40 of the 100, which is why Bolt actually specialized in the 200 before doing both.
As for the last sentence, that's exactly what Denard said: There's no way he'd beat him at 60 meters (Denard's best time of about a 6.81 would be almost a half-second back of Bolt's split of 6.45), and it wouldn't even be close at 100 meters (duh). The distance in question is 40 yards (which Bolt doesn't train for), and going back to the hypothesis-type thing toward the top of this post, a 40 time somewhere in the 4.29-4.35 range would definitely not fall into the "totally destroy him" category. It might even fall into the "lose to him" category, which was not what I expected when I started this exercise.
Unless I'm significantly off on some of my numbers, the fastest of the fast of the NFL dudes, most of whom ran short-distance track in college, could at least challenge Bolt and the other elite 100-meter guys in a one-off 40-yard dash. Justin Gatlin would probably back me up: The guy won gold in the 100 in '04 and won bronze last week and ran a 4.42 at the '08 combine in between, which provides a little reasonable-ness to my calculations above. Gatlin is world-class fast in the 100 and ran a 40 time that wouldn't have been among the top five at any combine in the last decade.
Whether Denard is one of those aforementioned fastest-of-the-fast guys isn't entirely certain without a 40 time, but Mythbusters would call this one plausible. Bolt probably would not. Either way, I'd be down to watch* and would even be willing to contribute to the Dave Brandon Memorial Give Michigan All Of Your Money Fund to do so.
*I'd even watch the two of 'em in the 100 just to have my mind blown by the reality of Denard looking like Rich Eisen.
The other poll: According to Jon Wilner, the Associated Press (which hasn't yet released its entirely meaningless poll but has already collected ballots) is requesting new and still-entirely-meaningless ballots following the Tyrann Mathieu crap. The deadline is Monday; expect a new poll Tuesday or Wednesday that will probably look almost identical to the coaches' one except with LSU third, which means Alabama will probably be first and USC will probably be second. The other one was close enough that even a couple votes here and there with LSU at No. 3 will be sufficient to make that happen.
On a related note: Mathieu apparently is going to one of the HBCUs and therefore the FCS:
Former LSU cornerback and 2011 Heisman Trophy finalist Tyrann Mathieu is considering enrolling at McNeese State, a source told ESPN on Saturday.
Former LSU kicker Josh Jasper caused a stir when he tweeted that Mathieu had already transferred to McNeese State, where he could play immediately, but that is not the case, sources said.
Mathieu also is considering Jackson State and Prairie View A&M after ruling out Southern because he wants to leave Baton Rouge.
Whateva. He'll probably be an FCS All-American but will be of no real interest until next April, when somebody takes him in the middle of the draft and ESPN shows all the videos that remind of what he was/should have been.
UCLA gets it over with: The moderately entertaining Kevin Prince era ended Friday when Jim Mora Jr. decided to stop pretending that there's a legitimate quarterback competition at UCLA:
What was clear about freshman Brett Hundley on the field is now official on the UCLA depth chart. He is the Bruins’ No. 1 quarterback.
Hundley, who sat out as a redshirt last season, was told Friday he would be UCLA’s starting quarterback, the school announced. He will assume that role the next time the Bruins take the field.
Hundley would've started last year if he knew the offense; UCLA instead redshirted him (which will be really nice in 2015) and gave Prince and Richard Brehaut a chance to stop being totally mediocre, which played out pretty much as expected.
FYI, Hundley was a relatively big-time recruit who's a dual-threat-ish guy at 6-foot-3 and about 220. I saw him in high school a couple times; he's got legit talent. UCLA might have a decent offense between Hundley and Johnathan Franklin, although Hundley's gonna have to create a lot on his own in the passing game given that only Shaq Evans returns from last year's top four wideouts (Nelson Rosario, Josh Smith and Taylor Embree have all graduated). Regardless, getting him some meaningful snaps in anticipation of being competitive a couple years from now makes a lot more sense than letting Prince get injured again play out the string for a team headed for an inevitable 6-6 finish.
Classic Kiffin: So ... Lane Kiffin hadn't done anything really obnoxious in a while and was kinda drifting to the back of the unlikeable-coaches pack until this happened:
Earlier this week, Kiffin said he "would not vote" the Trojans No. 1 overall when told that Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez mentioned he did. When USA Today caught wind of Kiffin's comments, the newspaper revealed Kiffin did vote USC No. 1, citing his providing of "false or misleading information" to the public and a desire to "set the record straight to protect the poll's integrity."
USA Today FTW. And blatantly lying (which was totally unnecessary anyway) apparently wasn't sufficient; USC released a response Thursday that called the USA Today story "disappointing," and Kiffin answered the inevitable follow-up questions Friday by bitching about an invasion of privacy that was only necessary because of a non-lack of through-his-teeth lies:
"Nothing stays private," he said. "This didn't stay private. They say it does, but it doesn't."
That's clearly the problem. Only Lane Kiffin (and probably Nick Saban) would respond to getting caught in a flat-out lie by complaining about the ethics of the person/organization doing said catching. Derps gonna derp.
The Penn State awfulness: The Penn State trustees who aren't complete morons have had enough of being grouped together with the ones who are and would like to put an end to all the appeal nonsense:
The Penn State University board of trustees will hold a special meeting Sunday and is expected to formally ratify the consent decree of sanctions agreed to last month by university president Rodney Erickson and the NCAA, "Outside the Lines" has learned.
Board chairwoman Karen Peetz called the meeting "so that there can be no misunderstanding as to where we as the board stand."
The resolution the board will consider states "the process followed by the (NCAA) was unfortunate and the punitive sanctions are difficult," and refers to the consent decree as "binding."
The outcome of Sunday's meeting seems almost certain, sources told "Outside the Lines," because two straw polls about whether to appeal the sanctions were taken by a quorum of trustees during a conference call Tuesday.
Clarifying that the four noobs who are promising a federal lawsuit (which would go nowhere anyway based on the Jerry Tarkanian ruling back in 1988) do not represent the board as a whole seems like a pretty wise move, which would be the first of those by anybody at Penn State in a while.
It seems to me that the only real debate is whether Erickson, as the interim school president, had the authority to sign the NCAA's consent degree without board approval. That's undoubtedly an interesting legal discussion to be had between a bunch of guys making $1,000 an hour but is purely a Penn State issue that has no bearing whatsoever on the NCAA (unless he didn't have that authority, in which case Mark Emmert could either unilaterally impose the planned four-year death penalty and let Penn State deal with it or offer the same settlement package and let the Board of Trustees vote on it). There is no scenario in which this gets better for Penn State.
Both the FBI and a criminal investigative division of the United States Postal Service are looking into the possible existence of a pedophile ring that involved Jerry Sandusky sharing boys with other men connected to Penn State.
Sandusky was recently convicted on 45 counts of child sexual abuse. "Investigators have interviewed at least one man who claims to have knowledge of Sandusky and a very prominent man, with strong ties to Penn State, both sexually abusing a boy."
Ughghgh. I didn't think it was possible for The Stuff to get significantly worse; I was wrong. I don't even know what the reaction/result would be if it turns out Sandusky was in fact involved in a child sex ring featuring major donors/boosters, which is what the story implies. The death penalty would be guaranteed but not even relevant since the Department of Education and Department of Justice would decimate the university entirely. I don't even know what else to say except that I hope (for the sake of the people allegedly involved) that the details in that story aren't accurate. Sadly, they probably are.
Alabama freshman wide receiver Chris Black will have shoulder surgery and miss 3-4 months.
Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban said Black was injured in Sunday's open practice at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Black was one of the top five-ish receiver recruits in the country last year but wasn't high on the depth chart (he was even with a couple other freshmen on the third unit) despite the fact that both Darius Hankins and Marquis Maze have shuffled off the eligibility coil. Kenny Bell, DeAndrew White, Kevin Norwood and Christion Jones should be the four guys getting regular playing time on the outside; Black might have been of some value in the slot but won't really be missed this year.
Travell Dixon has decided to leave Alabama Crimson Tide for family reasons. The junior college transfer from East Arizona Community College confirmed to TideNation his intent to transfer.
Dixon's loss is slightly more significant: He was a highly touted juco guy and thus was expected to contribute right away, being listed second to Dee Milliner at one of the corner spots going into camp. Deion Belue, another juco guy, is gonna start at the other spot, but after him, there's only one other corner with any experience on the roster (junior John Fulton). The depth is somewhat lacking. Alabama's pass D will probably still be respectable or something.
Louisville ouch: One of Louisville's top wideouts is done for the year:
Louisville wide receiver Michaelee Harris will miss the season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.
Coach Charlie Strong said Harris was injured in practice Thursday.
Harris tore his right ACL in December and had been attempting to fully recover in time for the season opener against Kentucky on Sept. 2.
Yeesh. Somebody get that guy a knee, stat.
Anyway, Harris had 37 catches for 455 yards and two touchdowns last year, which made him the obvious No. 1 guy heading into camp. The other projected starters coming out of spring were Scott Radcliff on the outside and Devante Parker in the slot; sophomore-to-be Eli Rogers had gotten bumped down the depth chart (despite putting up a pretty comparable 41 catches for 454 yards and a TD last year) and will likely just move over to Harris' spot, so the drop-off shouldn't be massive. It will still be something since Harris was the only unquestioned starter at the position throughout the offseason.
It's probably worth noting that Louisville was voted at media day as the favorite (by a lot) in the not-very-good Big East.
SEC woooo: Auburn freshman Jovon Williams, a top-100(-ish)-overall guy and a top-10-ish running back, may or may not have actually done anything in high school:
Auburn freshman running back Jovon Robinson is being held out of practice while the NCAA investigates allegations that his high school transcript was falsified.
Memphis City Schools said in a statement that NCAA officials contacted the school district Tuesday regarding allegations involving a former Wooddale High School athlete. The statement said schools superintendent Kriner Cash ordered an immediate investigation when a school guidance counselor resigned after admitting to creating the fake transcript.
Oh. OK then. I'm totally shocked that this happened at a Memphis school. This is my shocked face:
Anyway, it seems reasonable to assume that Robinson is gonna end up ineligible and therefore not at Auburn. Outside of losing a talented guy who might have been in line to start in a couple years, the damage should be minimal. This year's carries will presumably go largely to some combination of Onterio McCalebb, the not-quite-as-tiny Tre Mason and Florida transfer Mike Blakely, who sat out last season but was a relatively big-time recruit a year and a half ago. In the event that the ball needs to go to somebody who weighs more than 120 pounds, Corey Grant will probably be the guy.
And the down-the-road depth chart won't be totally lacking, either. Auburn already has four-star Jordan Wilkins in the 2013 class and is probably the favorite for borderline five-star guy Greg Bryant, who recently decommitted from Oklahoma.
So yeah: The Robinson story is probably more amusing from an "lol SEC" standpoint than it is from a meaningful-for-Auburn standpoint.
Oh that's OK I didn't want to watch anyway: The Pac-12 Network(s) acknowledged Friday that they probably won't have any deals in place with satellite providers by the start of the season.
"I don't expect all of them will be on at launch. I do believe that as we talk about our content over time, our fans that are customers of those distributors will get what they want."
Translation: Be prepared for lengthy negotiations that could easily last until next year, which is exactly what happened with the Big Ten Network when it was launched back in '07.
The rest of the quotes in that story are very corporate-y and not very informative; just know that if you have any intention of watching a lot of Pac-12 football beyond whatever games ABC picks up, you should either (a) have Cox/Time Warner/Comcast or (b) go to a place with one of those providers. My Dish Network ALL OF THE SPORTS package will be useless, which is pretty inconvenient since watching Arizona and Arizona State is kinda relevant to my job.
Big Ten humor: ESPN's Big Ten bloggers are in the middle of a series of polls of various Big Ten players from 11 of the 12 teams (Penn State isn't included because some of the questions are related to the Penn State awfulness). One of the questions: Who's the dirtiest player in the Big Ten? The results -- with former players removed since, I mean, they're former players -- are awesome:
Michigan State defensive end William Gholston -- 2 votes
Wisconsin linebacker Chris Borland -- 2 votes
Illinois' offensive line -- 1 vote
Iowa's offensive line -- 1 vote
Illinois center Graham Pocic -- 1 vote
Indiana center Will Matte -- 1 vote Anyone on Michigan State's defense -- 1 vote
Anyone on Purdue -- 1 vote
Nebraska defensive end Eric Martin -- 1 vote
Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o -- 1 vote
No one/don't know/declined to answer -- 12 votes
Yesssss.
Ballsy: This is a pretty inconspicuous sign in the middle of Austin:
Sure it is.
The television thing: Andy Staples put together an extremely long and equally fascinating story about the history of TV deals and their weird reversal in value over the 25-ish years since the legally mandated end of the CFA. I don't have much to say about it but highly recommend it if you've got some time to kill. Read it. Do it.
LSU has dismissed Heisman Trophy finalist Tyrann Mathieu from its football program for violating school and team rules.
"We extended ourselves personally and professionally to him," LSU coach Les Miles said at a news conference Friday. "He has really improved and has a chance to take some steps as a person.
"We extended ourself to the full length of the policy."
Miles would not specify the reason Mathieu was kicked off the team.
Wow? Wow.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume (which I can do since I'm not an LSU-credentialed press member) that the only thing that would qualify under both "school and team rules" and a specific "policy" would be drugs. Reminder: Mathieu and a couple other kinda-important LSU dudes were suspended for the Auburn game last year for failing drug tests that were presumably at least their second each based on this drug policy:
First failed test: No suspension
Second failed test: Suspended for 15 percent of that season's games
Third failed test: Suspended for one year
So yeah. Y U SO DUMB ARGH. The timing (from a personal standpoint) couldn't possibly be any worse since he missed the supplemental draft by like two months and can't transfer anywhere in the FBS without sitting out a year, a pretty impractical option (even though he's got a redshirt year available) since he could go to North Alabama or wherever and be eligible for the draft after this season. In other words, the meaningful portion of his college career is almost definitely over.
BTW, this ESPN poll question ...
Tyrann Mathieu's dismissal has sent shockwaves through the college football community. Did LSU just cost themselves a shot at a title?
... is similarly dumb. LSU didn't cost itself a shot at a title by dismissing a guy who's presumably failed three-plus drug tests; Mathieu might have.
As for LSU ... ummm ... ouch. Ouch a lot. Mathieu was personally responsible for eight turnovers (!!!) and four touchdowns last year, two of which were HUGE in games LSU was trailing early because of a complete lack of offense yet went on to win by multiple touchdowns. Remember this?
I have no idea how to quantify WAR-type numbers for an individual player with that; suffice it to say his would've been ginormous. And what the removal of that hypothetical WAR-type number means for LSU this year is even harder to say. The defense will be OK given the hilariously talented front seven and Tharold Simon as the No. 1 corner (keep in mind that he's taking over Morris Claiborne's spot and not Mathieu's), but the drop-off at the other spot will be massive: The depth chart goes 2011 Heisman Trophy finalist, redshirt freshman Jalen Collins, freshman Jalen Mills. All ur freshman-y Jalens belong to us. They (and whoever is supposed to take over on punt returns) are probably talented but won't be comparable to the sophomore version of Tyrann Mathieu, who was in turn comparable to the junior version of Charles Woodson.
Big picture: The offense will probably be better and the defense will probably be good but won't have that guy who produced almost a turnover a game and regularly put up points by himself last year when nobody on offense was capable of doing so against legit teams. I still think LSU can win it all but would definitely rank Alabama and USC (in some order) higher given the stuff I wrote in the previous paragraph.
So ouch a lot. Exactly how much "a lot" translates to will be determined in about three weeks (well, six weeks really since that's when SEC play gets real).
There are very few things I remember with any specificity from my school days. One of those very few things: standing at the bus stop. It was the worst. It was the worst because I lived in a place where it was below freezing on about half the days I had to drag myself out there in a pre-7 a.m. stupor.
I hated it. I hated the physical discomfort that accompanied sub-20 degree temps (toe numbness was a regular feature) and the social discomfort of shivering in silence with a bunch of equally uncomfortable and awkward teenagers and that feeling when the bus I thought was my bus would turn a couple streets beforehand, meaning my bus was still somewhere in the distance and not close to salvaging my toes from gangrene.
The way I passed the time was kinda like the way Peter Gibbons wanted to pass the time in Office Space ...
... except I didn't pretend to be fishing so much as I imagined being somewhere/anywhere hot. My brain typically interpreted "hot" as "a beach with the sun beating down just enough to compensate for that amazing beach-y breeze" since that seemed preferable to being lost in a desert or whatever, but anything beach-like would have done the job.
And that kinda worked. It didn't work for very long -- any horrifyingly high-pitched sound reminiscent of a school bus' 60-year-old brake system or any contact with an air particle whose temperature had dropped to roughly 0 kelvin would bring me back to the awfulness of reality -- but it helped kill some of the soul-crushing time spent standing there waiting for a freakin' bus.
. . . . .
It was hot out yesterday. It was disgustingly hot out yesterday. It was the kind of hot that results in instant sweat immersion upon the opening of any orifice built into whatever dwelling or work establishment you happen to be inhabiting at any given time. In other words, it was the same as every other day in this desert since the end of May.
One of the things I've discovered in the (almost) decade I've lived in Arizona is that the thing I used to do when I was waiting at the bus stop works reasonably well in the inverse: Thinking about being borderline-uncomfortably cold helps mentally mitigate that feeling of turning into a rotisserie chicken that's inevitable if standing outside at any point between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.
So I thought yesterday about being cold. And that wasn't hard seeing as how I've got a good 20 years (or at least the October-to-February portion of each of those 20 years) of experience of being cold to draw from.
. . . . .
My time as a student at Grand Valley State was relatively uneventful. I was hilariously unprepared (from a life-skills standpoint) to be a college student and really had no idea what to do with myself when I wasn't plowing through math/physics/engineering-related numbers. I went to a couple football games and a couple parties at which I was painfully uncomfortable; that was about it.
It wasn't until I was a sophomore that I knew enough people to actually, like, do anything other than hang out in my dorm and be pathetic. The timing was convenient since this was when Brian Kelly was coach and Curt Anes and David Kircus were putting up mind-blowing numbers and roughly 60 points a game. The entertainment value at football games went up significantly that year; my attendance did the same, especially late in the year when there playoff games (OMG ON-CAMPUS PLAYOFF GAMES) that promised something resembling competitiveness and meaningful results.
And so it was that three friends and I decided to tailgate before the national semifinals, which were at Grand Valley since GV was No. 1 and whoever else was not No. 1. The location: the back of my truck in a parking lot across the street from some academic buildings and kinda close to the stadium. There was a grill and there was plenty of meat to put on it: hot dogs, hamburgers, etc. Adult beverages were available but limited since we were in a very public place that wasn't as crowded as you're imagining. The only entertainment: a football that was used for about a two-hour-long game of catch to kill the time between talking about physics/football/whatever and kickoff.
And it was cold. It was December in west Michigan; of course it was cold. It was the kind of stupid cold that makes the snot in your nose start to come out but then freeze before it actually gets anywhere (you either know exactly what I'm talking about or have no idea what I'm talking about). It was cold and it was windy, which was a definite problem when trying to light the grill. I'm gonna guesstimate that it took us 20 minutes to figure out how to keep a match lit long enough to make use of it.
But here's the thing: The cold didn't matter when we were grilling and drinking and running imaginary routes in a parking lot and whatnot. The cold mattered a lot a couple hours later when I was sitting/standing in the endzone bleachers and that stupid wind was hitting me and hitting me and hitting me and hitting me. It was ... ummm ... something other than totally enjoyable.
I remember literally three things from that game: (a) Grand Valley won, (b) Curt Anes blew out his knee on a quarterback sneak at the end of the first half when Grand Valley was already winning by like three touchdowns, which resulted in a devastating title-game loss by a score of something like 19-16 and (c) AAAHHHH I CAN'T FEEL ANYTHING BECAUSE ACCORDING TO THE WEATHER THINGS ON OUR AMAZING NEW PHONES IT IS ZERO DEGREES FAHRENHEIT WITH A WINDCHILL OF MINUS-40. Yeah. That's right. Don't act like you're not impressed.
I don't even know what else to say about that. Minus-40 is ... I mean ... it's minus-40 (and don't give me any crap about windchill and temperature and yadda yadda; I know what I felt). I'm not sure when I lost feeling in my toes but know for sure that I couldn't move my jaw effectively by kickoff and couldn't feel my fingers by halftime. And none of those things were even unusual given the distances I had to walk to my classes across a campus designed specifically to produce a wind tunnel generating maximum velocity directly into your face at all times.
I don't remember getting home or thawing out or really anything after halftime, possibly because my brain function had ceased.
. . . . .
That was the last Grand Valley game I attended before moving to Arizona (Tempe, to be specific). That was also the coldest I've ever been in my life under any circumstances. It was minus-40; there are no other comparable circumstances since I don't live above the Arctic Circle and go entire months without seeing the sun.
Voluntarily spending five hours in it was undoubtedly stupid and probably unhealthy but does give me something to think about when I step outside and it's a hundred and whatever, with the "whatever" not even mattering since everything over 100 is similarly disgusting. I know: It doesn't make much sense to try to replace that stupidly hot feeling with a stupidly cold feeling that I just described as "something other than totally enjoyable" about four paragraphs ago; I can't really explain that except to say that I would pick a memory that involves less numbness if that memory weren't largely a good one. I mean, I know what numbness feels like but don't remember the numbness as much as I remember that I was there for the numbness and the tailgating and the football and the WOOOO and whatnot.
That probably makes either no sense or a lot of sense; hopefully it's the latter.
