The FanHouse Walk: FOX May Walk Away From BCS a Year Early

Every Monday during college football's endless offseason, The FanHouse Walk will put last week's stories to bed and deliver the essentials to bridge that agonizing space between now and September.

Rejoice! Er, potentially rejoice -- Last week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported speculation that FOX might extricate itself a year early from its BCS coverage commitments. Besides the rarely disputed notion that FOX's BCS coverage is woeful -- thank you, Thom Brennaman and endless band shots -- the network seems to realize they've been dealt a weak hand for their 2010 games.

ABC/ESPN retains control of Rose Bowl rights and with this year's BCS championship game in the Rose Bowl, FOX is already out the two most compelling and lucrative BCS properties. Throw in another potentially uninspiring ACC/Big East matchup in the Orange Bowl and things are looking bleak. Observers fear the increasingly monopolized presence of ESPN/ABC in college football but FOX has been sufficiently incompetent enough for me to not care in this particular situation.

It Isn't College Football Without Notre Dame -- I'm not sure which is more annoying for college football fans, the constant drama and attention around Notre Dame when they're not successful and have a universally disliked coach, or when they are successful and have a universally disliked coach. We'll have to debate that at some later point.

Anyway. The Irish are back to playing football, hitting the field this week to begin spring practice. As reported nearly everywhere, aforementioned hated coach Charlie Weis will return to coaching on the field. After knee surgery last year he directed several games from the press box. We're again left to ponder between two bad choices, televised shots of Weis' irritated self on the field or behind plexiglass.

Oh, and coach Weis has made public his four main objectives for the spring. They are 1) meshing the newly revised coaching staff, 2) self scouting, 3) outright competition and 4) finishing games -- remember The Alamo North Carolina!

Thats Fine, For Now -- Virginia begins spring with defensive back Vic Hall listed as its No. 1 quarterback. He was actually quite successful in limited duty last year. Mind you he didn't throw many passes, but made their offense dangerous with his running skill and speed.

He's unlikely to remain there with the return of former castoff Jameel Sewell, but at least Virginia knows it has an interesting fallback when it settles on an actual quarterback trusted to throw the ball.

Overtime, Ball on the 25

-- Hilarious lampoon of the NCAA Tournament's never-ending desire to expand

-- Statistically Speaking puts Mike Bellotti's career at Oregon into proper and impressive perspective.

-- Connecticut's going to a more fast-break style of offense (Via College Football Talk)

-- Rich Rodriguez needs to work on his Twitter skills (Via Get The Picture)

-- New Washington coach Steve Sarkisian has a website to go with that Twitter account. Now about that whole football thing ... (via The Wiz of Odds)