NCAA Football Ncaa Basketball Rumors

Previously, Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen had announced that he was stepping down at the beginning of July. The Pac-10 with its usual speed and decisiveness have done little to suggest they have narrowed down their list of candidates. Instead the list appeared to be growing, and the candidates will not be narrowed until maybe the spring.

Since last week, there was a growing rumor that after signing with the William Morris Agency, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a candidate for the position of Commissioner of the Pac-10. This would be a shift from returning to Stanford to teach, write and lecture as previously announced.

Sure looks like it.

Several months ago, the Ohio State website BuckNuts left the Scout.com network. Not long ago, another top school's affiliate website left Scout when the Florida website Gator Country departed. And news comes in tonight that WeAreSC, the USC affiliate, has informed Scout they are leaving the network.

What gives? I don't know, but it's interesting. It's one thing for a random site operator to choose independence over network affiliation as has happened at both Scout.com and competitor Rivals.com. But this is an entirely different animal when three affiliates of high-profile schools leave like that.

I first remember hearing about BuckNuts' departure and thinking: ok, that's interesting. Maybe they had an independent streak in them. But not long after that I began hearing rumors that two other top 10 programs would soon depart. Well, today is the day that rumor came to realization. Something is officially rotten in Denmark.

Actually, you can add Michigan and Jim Delany to that list.

Here's the full story. University of Florida president Bernie Machen has been pushing for a playoff system for college football since before Florida was selected to play in the BCS National Championship against Ohio State. In fact, he started putting the wheels in motion before Florida won the SEC championship game against Arkansas in late '06.

That he still campaigns for a playoff today, despite the fact that Florida ended up being lucky enough to get selected to the title game instead of Michigan, says volumes about his passion for the subject. And in this recent CBS Sportsline interview, Machen used both barrels of his verbal shotgun to express his thoughts.

More after the jump. (You'll be entertained, I promise.)

With 7:54 to go in the second half of Florida's 86-60 rout of Ohio State, Urban Meyer was shown chatting with former Ohio State receiver Cris Carter.

Greg Gumbel: "That's Urban Meyer, the head football coach here at Florida. You don't think he'd like this game to be some sort of an indicator as to when these two teams meet for the BCS championship game, do you?"

Billy Packer: "Well, Thad Matta gave him a little message yesterday. He went over to his seat is and he wrote down on the seat, 'We're going to kick your butt in the BCS championship.' So I'm sure that was a very interesting little message he received when he sat down today."

"Interesting," indeed.

Note to Mr. Matta (and the rest): Thank you for demonstrating what Ohio State athletics is apparently about... all talk, no action.