Catching up howls at the moon for some reason

Storm Klein dismissed ... probably: Ohio State booted spectacularly named linebacker Storm Klein the other day after he was arrested and charged with assault and domestic violence. Details:

According to Columbus police, Klein "violently and purposefully" grabbed an ex-girlfriend – the mother of his child – by the arms and threw her against his apartment door during an argument, resulting in an abrasion and swelling on her forehead and abrasions on both forearms.

Klein was held overnight without bail on Friday, and ordered at his arraignment on Saturday morning to stay away from the woman (as well as alcohol, drugs and firearms) per his bond conditions.

Yeeeaaaaaah that sounds pretty bad. There's apparently a little more to the story, though; Klein claims the woman refused to leave his apartment (the "it was all her fault" defense works every time) and has a hearing later this month at which he'll be represented by attorney Larry James, who's making lots of confident remarks reminiscent of his defense of Terrelle Pryor (hahahahaha).

That might be relevant since Urban Meyer explicitly said in his press release that the dismissal will become something other than a dismissal in the event of a legal resolution:

"It has been made very clear that this type of charge will result in dismissal. If there are any changes in the charges, we will re-evaluate his status."

Whether Klein would be relevant in the event of a return is less explicit. He started 10 games last year as a junior and had 45 tackles but was generally regarded as a starting-by-default starter, and he lost his job in spring ball to Curtis Grant. Also complicating matters is the existence of 2011 uber-recruit Etienne Sabino, who would ideally be on the field somewhere on a somewhat-regular basis.

Translation: Klein was unlikely to be more than a part-time player this year regardless of legal standing.

The Robert Nkemdiche ultimatum-type thing: So ... this happened:

"I am waiting on Clemson to offer (teammate Ryan Carter)," Robert Nkemdiche told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "When that happens, it's locked ... it's a done deal ... it's over."

Nkemdiche "committed" to Clemson not even two weeks ago. Making said commitment dependent on an offer for a borderline high school teammate who has offers from only a handful of mid-major-ish schools was either a reasonable leverage move in a slanted system or the worst thing that has ever been done. I tend to lean slightly toward the latter; a commitment isn't a commitment if there are conditions that must be met in order to make it "a done deal," and there's a Spam-lubricated slope there related to big-time recruits demanding an offer for Teammate X and/or Friend Y since that could become demanding playing time or whatever else a couple years from now. I mean, if a guy makes it clear from the beginning that he wants to go to school with so-and-so, that's his decision, but presenting a public quid pro quo to a school that's already accepted your commitment just makes things really awkward if that guy isn't (a) worthy of a scholarship to the relevant school or (b) at a position of need.

FYI, Clemson already has four of Nkemdiche's teammates in its 2013 class; one more means a full 25 percent of the class will be let's-ride-the-big-guy's-coattails recruits. It seems to me that there's a value judgment to be made: How many scholarships is the No. 1 dude in the country actually worth?

As for Nkemdiche, he removed some of the awkwardness Sunday when he told the New York Times that he'll honor his commitment regardless of what happens with Carter:

"Of course I would want to play with him,” Nkemdiche said of Carter. “But if it doesn’t work out, I’ll still go to Clemson. ...

"I didn’t give Coach Swinney an ultimatum about anything,” Nkemdiche said. “I hope he doesn’t feel obligated to offer anybody a scholarship because of my commitment."

Fair enough.

You're still around? Montel Harris is probably (pending a knee that's made of paper mache) one of the top 10 running backs in the country and has reappeared at Temple after briefly dropping off the face of the Earth:

Former Boston College running back Montel Harris has transferred to Temple and is eligible to play this season. He arrived on campus Sunday and is enrolled in summer classes, which began Monday.

Interesting tidbit: Harris is the NCAA's active rushing leader with 3,375 career yards. The guy has legit ability. He also has played less than one full game since 2010; he hurt his knee at the end of the '10 season, blew it out in the first game last year and got a medical redshirt, hurt it again this spring and then got kicked off the team at Boston College in May because of repeated rules violations (whether those were of the weedy variety or related to a dispute over full-contact practices is a matter of debate). Word on the interwebs is that he was interested in Temple -- which is back in the Big East this year, according to the Big East -- because of the recent hiring of former BC assistant Ryan Day as offensive coordinator.

What makes this news particularly interesting (IMO) is that Harris will be eligible immediately because he's already gotten his degree. That's pretty convenient since Bernard Piece left early for the draft; the hilariously tiny Matt Brown has gotten pretty regular carries the last two years and has done pretty well for himself in the MAC but is no Montel Harris (at least not a healthy Montel Harris).

The Big East is slightly tougher since it had five of the top 20 rush defenses in the country last year, although how much of that was quality rush defense and how much of it was generally inept rush offense is hard to quantify. Regardless, Temple -- which finished seventh nationally in rushing yards per game last year -- should be able to move the ball on the ground pretty regularly.

Somebody actually gets a waiver: Philip Sims had his hardship waiver approved by the NCAA on Wednesday and will be eligible to play at Virginia immediately. I'm gonna be lazy here and Ctrl+C/Ctrl+P a paragraph from the thing I wrote when Sims left Alabama a couple months ago:

What happens next is hard to say given the presence of Michael Rocco, the returning starter who's of debatable quality (awful for the first half of the year, pretty good for the second half) and presumably has a much lower ceiling.

FYI, Rocco's also a sophomore, so regardless of whether or not Sims gets a hardship waiver for this year, they'll be in the same class going forward.

Sims was a big-time recruit (obviously since he went to Alabama) a couple years ago and played in eight games last year as the mop-up guy; he went 18 for 28 with no touchdowns and two picks while A.J. McCarron pretty well took hold of the starting job by, ya know, winning a national title. He might still be really good; there's just no meaningful data either way.

As for Virginia, they won't go 9-3 again this year but appear to be approaching consistent competitiveness in the ACC. Getting Sims some meaningful playing time/snaps this year would make sense in anticipation of upperclass years that might be of national relevance.

What's the problem, officer? Greg Reid channeled his inner Isaiah Crowell late Tuesday night and got himself arrested and hit with an amusing combination of charges:

Greggory Lamar Reid, Jr., age 21, from Tallahassee, FL was arrested Tuesday night in Lowndes County by the Georgia State Patrol during a traffic stop at the intersection of Georgia Highway 376 and Georgia Highway 7. A trooper stopped his 2000 Mercury Grand Marquis for window tint and seat belt violations around 8:45 p.m.

During an inventory of the vehicle, a suspected marijuana joint was located in a cup holder.

He was arrested and taken to the Lowndes County Jail. Mr. Reid is charged with possession of marijuana (less than an ounce), driving while license is suspended or revoked and seat belt violation.

Nice. Hilarious background info: Reid has been cited for seatbelt violations five times (!!!!!) in the last two years. I'm pretty sure that's impossible.

Reid is a pretty good corner and an utterly awesome return man; he's averaged 12.55 yards per return with three touchdowns in his career. I'm not expecting significant punishment for a couple misdemeanor charges -- not having a concealed/altered weapon in a school zone makes him not Isaiah Crowell -- but would probably advise him to start wearing his seatbelt and stop smoking weed while driving.

Speaking of Isaiah Crowell: The running back class of 2011 (the guys who showed up on campus, like, 11 months ago) is in pretty good shape. Via Matt Hinton:

Beware, Malcolm Brown (or beware Malcolm Brown, no comma).

This probably would have worked: An open-records request and a corresponding interview with Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson revealed the following hilarity:

The same presentation included several maps of potential conference mergers -- one of which was titled “Makes Too Much Sense” and proposed a 33-school superconference combining the Sun Belt, C-USA, WAC and Mountain West Conference.

“I had very quiet inquiries with (Mountain West commissioner) Craig Thompson and (C-USA commissioner) Britton Banowsky to see if, ‘Hey, would you be interested?’” Benson said. “But that was dismissed quickly. No interest."

No? Karl Benson gets all of the points for creativity and loses all of the points for ridiculousness. I actually kinda wish this would've happened if for no other reason than Hawaii and Florida International nominally being in the same conference.

A recognizable name?!? The game that used to be the Insight Bowl is now the Valley of Sun Bowl. There's been no official release about this, but a Google search turns up an option to buy tickets to the "2012 Valley of the Sun Bowl" on the Fiesta Bowl's official site and an FBA release that includes the "Valley of the Sun Bowl" on this year's list of approved bowls.

A couple observations: (a) yay it's a game with a non-sponsor-y, geographically meaningful name and (b) that probably means it is lacking financial support and thus will cease to exist by 2015. This would only be problematic on a personal level since it'd mean one fewer local (and Big Ten-affiliated) bowl within 45 minutes of my house.

Boo for rivalry hiatuses: Utah and BYU won't be playing in 2014 (or '15) for the first time since 1946. They will play again in 2016 but have nothing scheduled after that; Utah doesn't seem particularly interested in continuing things now that there's a Pac-12 schedule to deal with and nah nah nah nah poo poo.

On the schedule to replace BYU: Michigan, which is gonna have some weird nonconference schedules (basically a bunch of random Pac-12 opponents leading up to that whole Big Ten-Pac-12 scheduling thingy) in the relatively near future and doesn't play Notre Dame in 2018 or 2019. The same two-year gap was written into the contract in 2000 and 2001, BTW; that does provide some precedence but doesn't make it any less lame.

I hate you: Stop it. Stop it right now.

Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson sees positives in the recently announced four-team college football playoff, but said Tuesday he believes it will expand to eight teams sooner rather than later.

"I know we're saying four teams for 12 years," Thompson said. "But I don't see it as a four-team playoff for 12 years. I just don't see it. If there is success with four, I think we will go to what is most ideal, which is eight. That would double the access points."

The problem isn't so much that eight teams would be awful but that immediately expanding to eight would mean immediately taking a step toward 12/16/24/EVERYBODY, which would be unquestionably worse than what we had before. DO NOT WANT.

I'm also not taking Craig Thompson too seriously since the commissioner of the Mountain West has an obvious vested interest in expanding access as much as possible. Pro tip: Making it sound inevitable does not make it any more desirable (except to the stupid people who comprise 98 percent of the population).

Blair Holliday is in a coma: What the headline says:

Duke wide receiver Blair Holliday is in critical but stable condition after suffering head injuries in a jet-ski accident at Lake Tillery in central North Carolina on Wednesday.

According to Art Chase, Duke’s media relations director for football, Holliday collided with teammate and fellow wide receiver Jamison Crowder, who was not treated for injuries. Holliday was airlifted to the University of North Carolina Trauma Center where he remained Thursday night. Both players were riding jet skis.

Holliday was listed in critical condition in Duke’s initial news release Thursday afternoon, but was upgraded to critical but stable.

Yikes. He's since improved to the point that he has blinked; that's about all the info that's been provided thus far by his family (understandably). FYI, Holliday's a sophomore who had three catches last year and was listed as a starter on Duke's spring depth chart.

I have no idea what's going on here: I seriously have no idea what's going on here, what this is, why it exists or where it came from:

Explain, plz.

Catching up does stupid (and stripy!) things

This sounds painful and potentially significant: Devon Kennard might be out for the season:

USC defensive end Devon Kennard has suffered a tear of his pectoral muscle and is slated to undergo surgery next week, a source close to the player said Thursday night.

Kennard, a senior slated to be a starter, is expected to be out at least 2-3 months and could miss the entire 2012 season, depending on the severity of the tear, which will be determined next week.

That's bad-news bears for USC. Kennard was a mega recruit a few years ago who's had a bunch of minor injuries but got regular playing time last year as a nominal backup and situational pass rusher; he had a respectable two sacks, four tackles for loss and 29 tackles and was thus expected to step into the starting spot at defensive end that was vacated by early draft entry Nick Perry. It's worth noting that Kennard and other defensive end Wes Horton would've been the only guys on the D-line with any meaningful experience. Not so much anymore (at least not for the next two or three months).

The defense probably will still be better overall given that the back seven was hilariously young last year and returns intact other than at middle linebacker, where Chris Galippo's graduation has left somewhat of a hole, but whether "better overall" equals "national championship worthy" remains to be seen. USC gave up 35-plus points four times last year and was 64th in pass efficiency and 54th in yardage despite the presence of Perry and Kennard in most passing situations. There will be a must-score-40-points-to-win game at some point. In case you're wondering, the Oregon game is in L.A. on November 3.

Get a cab, man: Fitzgerald Toussaint. Argh:

Michigan running back Fitzgerald Toussaint has been suspended indefinitely from the team after being arrested Saturday evening on a DUI charge.

Saline (Mich.) Police Chief Larry Hrinik confirmed Toussaint's arrest. He said that at the time of the arrest, Toussaint's blood alcohol level was .12. Michigan's legal limit is .08.

Again: Argh. Toussaint finished with 1,041 yards and nine touchdowns last year despite splitting carries for about the first half of the year and then missing most of the Michigan State game with a relatively minor injury; he's legit and easily Michigan's best running back (unless you wanna count Denard, in which case OK).

The good news: He's never been in trouble before (he's a redshirt junior) and likely won't miss much time as long as he doesn't do anything stupid between now and the opener. The bad news: The opener is against Alabama. A suspension would be problematic. Vincent Smith is OK as a third-down type and Thomas Rawls is OK as a between-the-tackles guy; neither one is comparable at this point to Toussaint, although they'd probably be acceptable fill-ins against Air Force and UMass if whatever punishment ends up lasting for more than one week.

Brady Hoke coachspeak coachspeak coachspeak:

“I don't know yet. ... (He's) going to pay the price for poor judgments, which a lot of 18 to 23-year-old kids make, and then we'll make a decision down the road."

So we'll see. And on a related "decision down the road" note:

Michigan sophomore defensive end Frank Clark has been suspended from the football team after he was charged with second-degree home invasion, which is a felony.

Clark allegedly stole a MacBook Air laptop out of a Stockwell Hall dorm room. He has been arraigned and faces a preliminary exam on Aug. 2 in the 14th District Court.

Yeeeaaah that sounds pretty bad. Clark had one of those breakout-type things at the end of last year but was nominally backing up Brennan Beyer at weakside defensive end; his loss would be not totally insignificant but not exactly comparable to Toussaint's.

BTW, Michigan is now up to sixth in the Fulmer Cup standings (although Will Campbell's hilarious and relatively innocuous arrest counts for like half of the points). Gack.

More ANGAR: There's a uniform for the opener against 'Bama. Commence old-man-shaking-fist-at-cloud reaction:

/shakes fist at cloud.

Standard disclaimer: Michigan's road unis change all the time and are nowhere near as sacred as the home unis, which DO NOT TOUCH. And the changes above are relatively minor: (a) The typical maize piping around the numbers is missing and (b) the shoulders have a weird maize-stripe-and-block-M combo going on. The latter is a common theme with all the various alternate-ish jerseys that have been rolled out over the past year; Dave Brandon hates plain shoulders or something. I hate anything but plain shoulders. This is a war I'm not winning.

And one more Michigan-related item: Darryl Stonum is headed to Baylor:

Former Michigan wide receiver Darryl Stonum is transferring to Baylor for his final year of eligibility, according to AnnArbor.com.

A reminder from January, when Stonum got booted:

Stonum missed the entire season while on suspension because of a drunken-driving arrest (his second) but was expected back next year, when he would have nominally filled Junior Hemingway's spot as the bombs-away receiver. He was also a very good kick returner who was never adequately replaced. Sadly, he won't be back at all because he's apparently incapable of following simple directions like "show up to probation meetings" and "don't drive after losing your license."

Before he was doing a lot of inadvisable things, Stonum was a starting-caliber wideout with the talent to be something more; his production was always a little lacking because he didn't have that thing -- it'd probably be best described as ball-in-the-air body-adjustment ability -- that Braylon Edwards and David Terrell and all the other unstoppable guys before him did. But he's fast and tall and presumably still talented and will be eligible immediately as a grad-student transfer, which is swell for Baylor even if Terrance Williams (957 yards and 11 touchdowns) and Tevin Reese (877 yards and seven touchdowns) are back. Stonum will most likely take Kendall Wright's spot on the outside, allowing Reese to stay in the slot and Art Briles to put three All-Big-12-ish receivers on the field at the same time.

It should be noted that former Oregon uber recruit Lache Seastrunk is expected to start at running back after transferring last year; in other words, the offense should still be pretty ridiculous as long as RGIII replacement Nick Florence is anything other than bad.

It could have been worse: Penn States's alternative to getting reamed by the NCAA was getting eliminated by the NCAA:

If Penn State had not accepted the package of NCAA sanctions announced Monday, the Nittany Lions faced a historic death penalty of four years, university president Rodney Erickson told "Outside the Lines" on Wednesday afternoon.

In a separate interview, NCAA president Mark Emmert confirmed that a core group of NCAA school presidents had agreed early last week that an appropriate punishment was no Penn State football for four years.

Great googly moogly. A four-year death sentence would've been a literal, not-survivable death sentence; I was among the OUTRAGED and thought a year would've been sufficient. I'm undecided whether I'm more amazed that the actual punishment now looks not so bad or that Rodney Erickson got to choose his own death rather than having it piled on top of him.

Daily Silas Redd update: Silas Redd met with USC on Thursday but apparently has not yet made a decision on whether/where he'll be transferring. His next step: goin' places.

Penn State running back Silas Redd met with USC coach Lane Kiffin for three hours Thursday in Connecticut, and a source said "it went really well."

Redd will travel to California for a visit Saturday, a source said, and may decide on whether he will leave Penn State by Monday.

Redd, Penn State's leading rusher last season, is intrigued by the chance to compete for a national championship and that could overwhelm the emotional part of him wanting to stay for his teammates, the source said.

The standard "USC has 47 five-star running backs" argument doesn't apply anymore. The depth chart goes like this: senior Curtis McNeal (an average-ish starter), sophomore D.J. Morgan, nothing. Redd's probably better than either one of those guys -- he did put up 1,241 yards and seven touchdowns last year behind Penn State's mediocre line -- and therefore would probably get at least some regular carries immediately.

FYI, USC is at its scholarship limit (and the Penn State waivers don't apply to schools that have their own restrictions) but will likely have a spot open by the time the season rolls around due to academics/malfeasance/whatever. Redd would undoubtedly be worth finding a spot for since (a) he's got two years of eligibility left and (b) there's a lack of both talent and depth at running back. And as a reminder:

The NCAA has said players can transfer from Penn State and be eligible immediately.

BTW, Redd was supposed to be part of the (incredibly uncomfortable) Penn State delegation at Big Ten media days but bailed at the last minute; I wouldn't expect him back.

Tommy Rees gets his sentence: What the headline-type thing says:

Notre Dame quarterback Tommy Rees will perform 50 hours of community service after pleading guilty to misdemeanor counts of resisting law enforcement and illegal consumption of alcohol by a minor in connection with his arrest outside a party in South Bend, Ind.

Rees, 20, received a 30-day suspended jail sentence and 11 months of probation, and he must write a letter of apology to the officers involved in his May 3 arrest.

Upshot: No jail time (assuming no additional screwups). The suspended-sentence ruling was a fortunate one since 30 days in jail at this point would have completely removed him from fall camp and made him a non-option, which would have decreased the likelihood of seeing this on September 1:

Glorious.

Woo bowl names: Scratch that stuff about the Valley of the Sun Bowl:

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- The Insight Bowl has become the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl under a new sponsorship agreement.

The change was announced Monday by the Valley of the Sun Bowl Foundation, which operates the postseason contest played at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe.

The BCA's official list of approved bowls came out a couple weeks ago and recognized this year's game as the sponsor-less Valley of the Sun Bowl, which didn't seem to bode particularly well for its future. Having a sponsor is ... ummm ... better.

Insert joke here about controllable sprinkler heads and overtime and whatnot.

WTF is up with the stripe? Northwestern has new uniforms (wear-them-all-the-time uniforms and not alternates). They are purply and stripy:

Reaction: Meh. Northwestern has had a whole bunch of weird purple-and-black combos and would have to do something totally insane to get me shaking my old-man fist, and the stripe that at first appeared totally insane in fact has some historical relevance:

Under Armour included the design element as an homage to the "Northwestern stripe," the school's signature thin-thick-thin striping pattern that it pioneered in 1928, paving the way for it to spread throughout the world of sports.

Interesting. Photo evidence:

Stripy.

Elite 11 weirdness: Didn't the Elite 11 used to, like, have some meaning? Maybe I'm remembering wrong; I dunno. The 25 (!!!) participants threw 32 passes each (???) over a span of four days last week before some of them were officially recognized by the guys who run the camp (and by "the guys who run the camp" I mostly mean "Trent Dilfer"). The results were as ambiguous as expected.

Here's a list (put together by somebody with more time on his hands than I do) of the official "Elite 11" juxtaposed with the scouting services' rankings of the dudes' respective performances:

1. Asiantti Woulard (USF) / Rivals (1), Scout (3)
2. Max Browne (USC) / Rivals (3), Scout (4)
3. Christian Hackenberg (PSU) / Rivals (2), Scout (10)
4. Kevin Olsen (Miami) / Rivals (6), Scout (2)
5. Joshua Dobbs (ASU) / Rivals (13), Scout  (9)
6. Johnny Stanton (NEB) / Rivals (22), Scout (bottom five)
7. Malik Zaire (ND) / Rivals (7) , Scout (12)
8. Shane Cockerville (MD) / Rivals (12), Scout (16)
9. Jared Goff (CAL) / Rivals (9) , Scout (5)
10. Luke Del Rio (OKST) / Rivals (17), Scout (18)
11. Zack Greenlee (none) / Rivals (24), Scout (bottom five)

So Johnny Stanton and Zack Greenlee were either really good or among the worst quarterbacks there. And five-star Michigan commit Shane Morris was ranked No. 1 by Scout (woo) and No. 4 by Rivals but was apparently not in the official top 11. That's a massive discrepancy; explain, please.

The rankings are super subjective anyway (duh) but would be a little less so if the format were less ridiculous. I mean, one game's worth of throws spread out over four days while rotating with 24 other guys? Ridiculous ridiculousness. Take all assessments with a lick of salt.

Hot and cold and a game I barely remember

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.

Catching up hires all of the coordinators

I bet they used the Tigerettes in this recruitment: Auburn recovered nicely from the Mark Stoops thing this week by hiring spectacularly mustachioed Falcons defensive coordinator Brian Van Gorder, who was not in danger of getting fired after his D finished 12th in yardage and 18th in scoring this season. Getting a quality NFL defensive coordinator to be a college coordinator = win.

He also gets bonus points for being a former SEC guy: Van Gorder was the D-coordinator at Georgia from 2001-04 and won the Broyles Award in 2003, the middle year of a three-year stretch in which Georgia had a top-15 defense ever year. He then took an assistant job with the Jaguars, left to be be head coach at Georgia Southern for a year and then we back to the NFL with the Falcons, where he's been DC for four seasons. Fun fact: Van Gorder actually started his coaching career as defensive coordinator at Grand Valley State alongside Brian Kelly. #themoreyouknow

Anyway, Auburn's defenses were not particularly good the last couple years under Ted Roof (this year's version was downright bad at 79th in scoring and 81st in yardage), and Van Gorder would seem to represent significant improvement. Here's an odd tidbit from the AJC story:

In college at Georgia, he had a penchant for blitzing. But during his Falcons tenure, his unit played mostly zone coverage.

Those things aren't mutually exclusive, Guy Who Thinks He Knows About Football. The book is that his run defenses are swell and his pass defenses sometimes have issues, but that shouldn't be much of an issue in the SEC (zing!).

I've seen nothing about salary so far, but given that he just left a decently paying and decently successful NFL job for a college one in Pressureville, Alabama, I'm willing to bet he'll be raking in over a million bucks a year. Must be nice to have Bobby Lowder subsidizing an unlimited payroll.

Ted Roof's lengthy tenure at UCF is over: Speaking of the guy who wasn't very good at Auburn, Ted Roof's long and distinguished one-month career at Central Florida came to an end Tuesday when Penn State came calling.

Multiple sources confirmed to the Orlando Sentinel Ted Roof is leaving UCF after 33 days to take over as Penn State's defensive coordinator. UCF is holding off on officially confirming the news until Penn State formally introduces all its new assistant coaches, including Roof, later this week.

New Penn State coach Bill O'Brien and Roof worked together on (George) O'Leary's staff at Georgia Tech and at Duke. O'Brien and Roof remain very close friends.

So there ya go. That pretty much answers the question of whether he was forced out at Auburn or just had some fascination with working for O'Leary in Orlando.

I was still a big Roof fan a couple years ago but can't really get past the mediocrity at Auburn the last two years in an SEC full of crappy offenses. For a comparative point, consider that this year's D was 11th in the SEC (?!?) in both yardage and scoring (only the tire fire at Ole Miss was worse). That's bad. Roof does have one Big Ten data point: He was DC at Minnesota in 2008 and had a defense that finished 80th in yardage and 61st in scoring, numbers that are pretty good by Minnesota-in-the-2000s standards (that team went 7-6, BTW). That team also ended the year on a five-game losing streak in which the defense gave up 37 points per game against a murderer's row of bad offenses that included Northwestern, Michigan and Iowa.

Penn State has been very good for years almost solely because Tom Bradley is one of the best D-coordinators in the country; Roof probably was in that group seven or eight years ago but isn't anymore. Penn State will probably regress significantly on defense over the next couple years, even if it's by default, and only a major offensive epiphany is going to be enough to counter that.

Mike Stoops has a job: He's headed back to Oklahoma, according to everybody:

As first reported by Norman's Dean Blevins, former Arizona Wildcats coach Mike Stoops will be reunited with his brother Bob Stoops on the Oklahoma Sooners coaching staff, Joe Schad confirmed Wednesday. He'll reportedly take over as co-defensive coordinator, with Willie Martinez' exit making room on the staff.

No surprise there. BTW, Martinez (Oklahoma's secondary coach) is reportedly leaving to pick between the D-coordinator jobs at Kansas and Illinois.

Stoops was DC at Oklahoma back in the golden days of 1999-2003 before taking the head job at Arizona, and those defenses were good ... almost exactly as good as they've been under Brent Venables. Venables isn't super popular right now after the Baylor and Oklahoma State debacles but is still pretty highly regarded around the country and will probably be running his own program within the next two years. Here's some mandatory reading from Sooner Nation (gotta have ESPN Insider, though) about the oversimplification of the criticism by the torch-and-pitchfork crowd that wants Venables' head. Keep in mind that Oklahoma's pace of play (which has gradually increased to "ludicrous speed") and the general offensive explosion in the Big 12 skew the numbers a bit toward the negative for Venables.

In other words, Oklahoma will have two hilariously overqualified defensive coordinators. Whether that results in notable improvement remains to be seen, but I'd definitely take my chances if I could Mike Stoops on my staff as an assistant (to the) defensive coordinator.

Jeff Casteel is headed to Arizona (it's officially official): Best coordinator hire of the offseason? Maybe. Casteel is that good and that important to Arizona's big-picture success since having a good defense (the 3-3-5 being RichRod's preference) is kinda important. This is taken directly from the section of my Rodriguez-to-Arizona novel about the disaster that was Michigan's defense under Rodriguez:

Jeff Casteel could have changed that. A large part of West Virginia's awesomeness under RichRod was a kinda-unique 3-3-5 stack D that didn't get much recognition but was actually pretty good; they've now finished in the top 15 in total defense three times in the past six years and have been in the top 40 every year but one since Casteel became the full-time D-coordinator in '05. The guy knows what he's doing. He also had a deal in place with Michigan (just like every other member of that West Virginia staff other than totally illogical replacement Bill Stewart) before bailing at the last minute when Stewart offered him a significant raise and a three-year guarantee, something Michigan wouldn't match because Michigan is just so awesome that everybody should coach there for free (duh). If Jeff Casteel ends up at Arizona next year, there's a good chance I'll throw something at the wall and start questioning my existence. There's also a good chance Arizona will be really good in the near future.

My head would be asploding right now if Michigan hadn't just won a BCS game.

As for Arizona, Greg Byrne deserves some credit for being willing to pony up (insert Jeff Casteel's salary here) to get the guy RichRod spent the last three years wishing he'd have demanded, and I guess RichRod deserves some credit for demanding him and getting him. UA now has one of the top three coaching staffs in the conference. The "really good in the near future" thing might be overly optimistic but doesn't seem unreasonable with the guys Alabama wanted before hiring Nick Saban.

Marcus Coker is definitely gone: As you may or may not recall, Iowa suspended Marcus Coker indefinitely before the Insight Bowl loss to Oklahoma. He was dismissed this week, which ... I mean ... obviously. Starting at running back for Iowa guarantees doom (there's a reason BHGP has an "Angry Iowa Running Back Hating God" tag).

This also guarantees doom:

Iowa running back Marcus Coker played the final five games of the regular season while police were investigating an allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman, authorities acknowledged Wednesday.

Weeks after authorities decided not to pursue the case, the 19-year-old sophomore was suspended. And this week, he abruptly left the program.

Authorities said they decided to drop their investigation into Coker sometime in late November or early December. While they can bring charges even if victims do not cooperate, Johnson County Attorney Janet Lyness said it is her office's policy to defer to alleged victims and the woman "did not wish to pursue charges."

Hoo boy. That's not so good. It's a little unclear if he was actually dismissed or left somewhat voluntarily; the only person commenting publicly is Coker's attorney, who's assuredly unbiased and has no reason to spin anything.

Asked whether Coker's decision to leave was linked to the public release of the incident report, Coker's attorney paused.

"Any decision like this is bound to be complicated and thoughtfully considered," Spies said.

No doubt. Regardless, Coker's done at Iowa and there is no viable replacement because there are simply no running backs left. This rundown from BHGP is absurd and ends with a horrifyingly ridiculous summary:

That's fourteen defections by twelve players in seven classes of recruits, and that list doesn't even include Class of 2011 defector Mika'il McCall or Rodney Coe, who failed to qualify. Coker's class still includes DeAndre Johnson; should he leave, that would make it seventeen consecutive defections from fifteen consecutive players.

This is no longer funny. This is a plague, and it has no rhyme or reason beyond its indiscriminate effect on running backs.

Redshirt freshman Jordan Canzeri, who has 31 career carries (22 of them in the Insight Bowl for a whopping for 58 yards), is the nominal backup. As noted by BHGP, DeAndre Johnson also allegedly exists. That's the extent of the depth chart. Yikes.

Michael Dyer is headed to Arkansas State: As expected. I wrote about the Auburn impact last week, but as for Dyer, he'll have to sit out the 2012 season (unless he gets a hardship waiver) and then should dominate the Sun Belt for a year or two given. The guy was starting for Auburn as a freshman and will have more experience with Gus Malzhan's offense than anybody else on the team, even after sitting out for a year.

Speaking of which, Arkansas State went 10-2 last year to win the Sun Belt and now has Auburn's offensive coordinator, Pitt's defensive coordinator and the 2010 SEC Freshman of the Year at running back. That doesn't seem fair.

Brian Kelly is probably safe: Notre Dame gave Brian Kelly a two-year contract extension Tuesday. Contracts mean almost nothing in the world of coaching but do serve as a PR indicator of satisfaction, and the consensus among ND fans since the end of the regular season had been that Kelly would need a pretty good (like 9-3 or better) 2012 season to save his job. The extension means that's probably not the case, nor should it be given the schedule:

Sept. 1 Navy (Dublin, Ireland)
Sept. 8 PURDUE
Sept. 15 at Michigan State
Sept. 22 MICHIGAN
Oct. 6 MIAMI (Soldier Field, Chicago)
Oct. 13 STANFORD
Oct. 20 BYU
Oct. 27 at Oklahoma
Nov. 3 PITTSBURGH
Nov. 10 at Boston College
Nov. 17 WAKE FOREST
Nov. 2 at USC

Great googly moogly. ND will be favored in about half of those games and doesn't have a MAC-caliber team on the schedule. That's impressive from a scheduling standpoint but has to be horrifying from Kelly's standpoint since finishing somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-5 is likely.

Whether the extension means he's definitely safe is unknowable as of right now. I can't see him surviving a total disaster (like 4-8), which isn't out of the question given the schedule and the quarterback situation, but I think there's enough administrative support that even a crappy bowl game would be sufficient to keep him around for 2013, when the schedule eases up and anything short of a BCS bowl game will be UNACCEPTABLE RABBLE RABBLE. It'd probably be better for him to just win nine or 10 games this year and not have to find out.

The guys are leaving: ARGH SO MANY GUYS (and this list doesn't include the ones I've already mentioned) : Robert Griffin III (officially), LaMichael James, Luke Kuechly, David Wilson, Alshon Jeffery, Jerel Worthy, Donte Paige-Moss, Jayron Hosley, Ronnie Hillman, Brock Osweiler, Chris Polk, Bernard Pierce, Edwin Baker, Peter Konz, Ronnell Lewis, Orson Charles, Dwayne Allen and some others.

The list is currently at 41, which means we need about a dozen more to get to the typical low-50s quota. The deadline is January 15.

Bobby Hebert really liked LSU's gameplan: Mandatory video:


I will never understand how Les Miles didn't either (a) get up and leave or (b) let loose with a string of horrifying profanities. I award him 1,000 meaningless points for not exploding. BTW, standard media rules do not apply to Bobby Hebert. He's just that ... umm ... special.

Catching up is still engorged with holiday ham

So ... stuff happened and I felt zero need/desire to get off my couch long enough to write about it. Lo siento, happy holidays, etc. FYI, I'm avoiding actual game stuff (BAYLOR WASHINGTON WWWHHEEEEEE) and saving that for my post-bowl recap-type thing.

Justin Wilcox to Washington??? Wow. What's interesting here isn't so much Washington getting Justin Wilcox but Wilcox taking a lateral-at-best move just to escape the raging tire fire that is Tennessee. Everybody wants out: Four coaches have bailed in the past week, including Wilcox, whose defense was pretty much the one bright spot for UT last year. It's a disaster.

As for the Washington angle, Nick Holt got canned right after the Baylor hilarity and it took all of two days to bring in one of the most desirable D-coordinators in the country. Wilcox is good; he was being talked up as a candidate for the ASU head coaching job and some other lower-level ones but apparently didn't get a viable offer. He's also a Northwest guy: He came to Tennessee from Boise State and worked/played at Oregon before that, so Washington makes slightly more sense in terms of the "lateral move" thing. Steve Sarkisian is S-M-R-T.

Not so S-M-R-T: Derek Dooley. Between the DeAnthony Arnett debacle (more on that momentarily) and the pulling-scholarships-for-inexplicable-reasons thing ...

“After being committed for 11 months, the reason the recruiter Terry Joseph told Imani and then Derek Dooley told me was that they hired a new RB coach from South Carolina and don’t know if he’s a scat guy or spread guy, so they were re-evaluating backs and that Imani should look around at other schools.’"

... he's not making a lot of friends. He's also looking for a new D-coordinator, a new linebackers coach (Peter Sirmon is joining Wilcox at Washington), a new receivers coach (Charlie Baggett is "retiring") and a new special-teams coach (Eric Russell resigned to join Mike Leach at Washington State), and he's doing all that with basically zero job security following two craptacular seasons. Good luck with that.

DeAnthony Arnett headed in the general vicinity of home: DeAnthony Arnett was a relatively big-time recruit last year last year out of Michigan and ended up at Tennessee, in large part because his high school coach was Charlie Baggett (see above). He played up to his rankings as a freshman with 24 catches for 242 yards and two touchdowns but now wants to transfer closer to home, although his reasoning isn't exactly the same as Wilcox's:

His father, who was sick during the recruitment process, worsened and has had two surgeries -- one for his heart and one to place a permanent stent in his arm for dialysis -- since Arnett returned to Saginaw for winter break. Also, his family's economic situation worsened with a reduction in monthly Social Security checks, according to a family member.

Yikes. He asked to transfer to Michigan or Michigan State, both of which are within about an hour of Saginaw. Derek Dooley's response:

Tennessee and head coach Derek Dooley have granted Arnett a release, but only to Mid-American Conference schools, citing a policy that did not allow transfers to schools Tennessee recruits against and plays against.

In the last 10 years, however, Tennessee has not scheduled a Big Ten team, but in three of the past four years, the Volunteers have played a MAC school.

Nice. That was both petty and unjustifiable and resulted in everybody everywhere skewering Dooley, at which point he backtracked and granted Arnett a full release. I'll give him a little credit but not much since I'm guessing that was largely a PR move and had nothing to do with Arnett going home. Regardless, Arnett's now free to transfer to either school* and will probably be granted a hardship waiver by the NCAA, meaning he should be available to play in the fall.

*UPDATE: He's headed to Michigan State.

Notre Dame doesn't really need an O-coordinator: Brian Kelly promoted defensive backs coach Chuck Martin to offensive coordinator (?!?) over the weekend to replace Charley Molnar, who recently accepted the head coaching job at UMass.

Allow me to explain why this isn't totally inexplicable. First, Kelly is the playcaller and de facto offensive coordinator, so regardless of what the actual coordinator's role is, it isn't nearly as relevant as it is at most schools. Second, Martin was Kelly's successor as head coach at Grand Valley State and was promoted from D-coordinator to head coach and offensive coordinator. That went OK: Martin finished 76-7 with two national championships at GVSU. There's presumably some value to having a defensive background since it gives you a sort of reverse-psychology idea about what works best offensively. Kelly would know since he took the exact same path Martin did (D-coordinator to head coach and O-coordinator) when he got the head job at Grand Valley back in 1991.

So yeah ... Martin is basically gonna be the right-hand man on offense rather than having a relatively meaningless role on defense. Whether he'll actually have any effect on the playcalling or related results is tough to say; Grand Valley was definitely more run-oriented under Martin, FWIW. I'm pretty sure finding a competent quarterback is far more important than who gets the nominal title of offensive coordinator.

The Big Ten and Pac-12 are defining the distant future: I was slightly terrified when rumors started circulating the interwebz about some secretive Big Ten announcement. Possibilities: expansion, moving the Michigan-Ohio State game and moving the conference title game to Random City. That's pretty much an inclusive list of all Big Ten decisions worthy of a press conference.

The actual news:

The Pac-12 and Big Ten have agreed to a long-term interconference scheduling "collaboration" that, if successful, could have far-reaching ramifications for both of their memberships.

Intriguing. Upshot:

... by the 2017 season, the two conferences are expected to have a full, 12-game Pac-12/Big Ten schedule in place, meaning each Pac-12 team will play a separate Big Ten program on an annual basis.

There it is. Reaction: Ummm ... yay? I like the idea of forcing everybody in the conference to play an actual nonconference game against an actual team with some national appeal. I also like the idea of Michigan playing within driving distance. The downsides: This is actually in lieu of a ninth Big Ten game (the nine-game conference schedule was supposed to start in 2017), which would have helped balance some of the current scheduling oddities, and it pretty much eliminates the possibility of Michigan-Alabama or Ohio State-Texas or whatever. I probably won't see a regular-season game between a Big Ten team and an SEC team until Craig James is president, which will be never. But since those games are hardly happening anyway, I'm still giving whatever this deal is called a thumbs-up-ish. I'll also have forgotten about it by the time it starts.

On a semi-related note, Larry Scott wants a Pac-12 team playing in China. I'm not sure what to say about that.

What is Michael Dyer doing? As you may or may not recall, Auburn suspended Michael Dyer indefinitely about a month ago for a violation of team rules (what else?). Every Auburn message board immediately exploded on the assumption that Dyer would be transferring, which seemed plausible at first and much more likely when this stuff started coming out from Arkansas State players:

This status goes to my fellow Arkansas State guy Michael Dyer .. #WelcomeToThePack! #Winning!”

@RedWolforDie: Michael Dyer to ASU. Welcome to pack bro!!

Yeah, that's the same Arkansas State that hired Gus Malzahn two weeks ago. Bringing an elite-ish SEC running back into the Sun Belt doesn't even seem fair but would be swell for Malzahn if it actually happens. Whether it will is a matter of debate (this is from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette):

The rumors of Michael Dyer to ASU are false. He plans to meet with Chizik and remain at Auburn.

That's ... umm ... straightforward. We should know either way in the near future since he'll have to be enrolled somewhere for the spring semester to stay eligible.

Penn State is like coaching leprosy: There's a pretty good chance that Penn State will eventually hire a coach; I'm putting the odds at 99 percent. That coach will presumably be somebody from the NFL since all the publicly known (and legitimate) candidates are currently not working in college.

Titans coach Mike Munchak reportedly is at the top of the list but came out and said this ...

"I love my alma mater, but I have no interest in being the head coach at Penn State. I never want to leave Tennessee. I have a great deal of respect for Penn State, and I hope they find a great coach there."

... and then leaked this:

Mike Munchak has repeatedly stated he would remain at Tennessee, but a source close to him said Munchak is struggling with the concept that he can "fix and make right" his alma mater.

"He loves his school and his heart is torn," the source said Saturday. "He really fits what they want and need to a tee."

So yeah. The only kinda-for-sure thing is that Munchak can have the job if he wants it, which he might.

The other candidates (depending whom you believe) are Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien, Packers quarterbacks coach Tom Clements and 49ers O-coordinator Greg Roman, who worked at Stanford under Jim Harbaugh until this year. Some credible people were saying late last week that O'Brien had moved to the top of the list and was actually negotiating a contract, but that seems doubtful now given the lack of actual news and the latest stuff about Munchak.

I'm curious whether any current and respectable college coaches were considered or if the job is just so horrifying right now that nobody was even interested in interviewing.

We can't afford to, like, spend money and stuff: The NCAA put together a decent plan over the summer to allow ("allow" being the key word) schools to provide $2,000 in annual stipend money to scholarship athletes and guarantee multiyear scholarships, which really should be a hard-and-fast rule and would help mitigate a lot of oversigning shenanigans.

The stipend thing got overturned a couple weeks ago because of objections from 125 schools, most of which were lower-level ones that couldn't afford it and whined about the "competitive advantage" it would provide the schools that could. Response: duh. The point is that the schools that can do it should do it, because there's no reason the athletic departments and Texas and Ohio State and Alabama need to have a $40 million profit margin while the athletes are getting none of that. If you can't do it, don't. The idea that Eastern Michigan is on a level playing field with Michigan is laughable to begin with; that shouldn't stop the adoption of rules that benefit as many people as possible, which is more important than allowing Eastern Michigan and Western Kentucky and the like to continue pretending to be D-I teams.

And now there's this:

More than 75 schools are asking to override a plan approved in October to allow multiyear athletic scholarships rather than the one-year renewable awards schools currently provide. That's the minimum number of dissenters needed for reconsideration by the Division I Board of Directors when it meets next month in Indianapolis at the annual NCAA convention. The NCAA announced the change the Friday before Christmas.

Argh. Multiyear scholarships aren't even a competitive issue; everyone has the same number of scholarships each year, so it's just a matter of making sure they're used correctly and not available for reallocated on an annual basis a la Nick Saban. Here's a quote that could come from any SEC school (or Houston Nutt's agent) but actually comes from Indiana State:

"Problem is, many coaches, especially at the (Football Championship Subdivision) level, in all sports, are usually not around for five years and when the coach leaves, the new coach and institution may be `stuck' with a student-athlete they no longer want (conduct issues, grades, etc.) or the new coach may have a completely different style of offense/defense that the student-athlete no longer fits into. Yet, the institution is 'locked in' to a five-year contract potentially with someone that is of no athletic usefulness to the program."

Nice. It'd be a real tragedy if a kid who's of no "athletic usefulness" after a few years got a chance to finish his degree via the scholarship the school offered him out of high school. Boise State's objection is also pathetic:

... a "recruiting disaster" that would encourage a "culture of brokering" and pit wealthy schools with larger recruiting budgets against their less-well-heeled brethren.

That's already exactly what happens. Making scholarships a two-way deal (players currently can't get out without losing eligibility, but the school can stop renewing a scholarship and start using it again immediately) only makes things fair for the student-athletes.

The good news: Those objections probably won't matter, as the override can apparently be overriden with a five-eighths vote by athletic directors next month. Fancily titled NCAA vice president of governance David Berst said this:

"The overriding concern had to do with the time to prepare and plan (for a change) rather than objecting to the concept," he said. "I'm anticipating the rule will still be in effect (after the next board meeting)."

Hopefully he's right.

Independence Bowl trophy derp: There's something wrong with your lovely crystal football:

Nice. Blame Truman the Tiger, BTW. Blame him for everything.

Why are you doing that? The joke of a game that featured a meh Illinois team and a worse-than-meh UCLA team began with the ref flipping an Oreo instead of a coin. I don't know or care why; I just wanted to point out that it was an appropriately inexplicable start to a game between two teams that had no business playing in a bowl.

Jordan Jefferson is a walking pity party: Hey, remember how Jordan Jefferson got arrested after that bar fight and charged with a bunch of awful-sounding crimes? Here's what he learned:

“Whenever I was going through that, I was questioning why it had to be me to go through this. ...

"It’s a terrible situation for anybody to go through. I was mainly focused on getting the position back and finding ways to contribute to this team to help to get victories instead of answering questions about that situation."

“I’m back with my team, back with the coaches I love, playing the game I love, so there’s really no bitterness. We’re playing in the national championship game, so it’s all good.”

I really have nothing to add, but The Daily has a pretty good piece that spends about 1,500 words justifiably destroying his entitlement and lack of remorse. It's worth a read.

RGIII is probably gonzo: Unsurprising (there's no possible way his stock can go any higher) but still depressing. Also gone: Justin Blackmon, Vontaze Burfict, Jonathan Martin, David DeCastro, Riley Reiff, Whitney Mercilus and Mohammed Sanu.


I wasn't saying boo-urns.

I love the Iowa State Hawkbucks: Joe Arpaio's unwavering desire to annoy people doesn't stop at law enforcement:


What's the difference?

Gratuitous picture: I have no reason for posting this other than the obvious one:

Yup.