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Virtually every college athlete in the country is on Facebook now. This makes sense, it's hard not to be on Facebook if you're under 35, impossible if you're under 25. But Facebook has become a public relations minefield for major athletic programs across the country. Whether it's players being kicked out of school for making a threat in their status message (Wake Forest), posting racist comments about the newly elected President (Texas), setting off an internet firestorm over whether or not you actually posted messages on another person's wall (Georgia) or just having your idiotic responses to quizzes posted all over for others to enjoy (Michigan). This is just the tip of the Facebook iceberg, every program is in danger at every moment of every day. All of this attention and all of this danger raises an intriguing question: Is it time for athletic departments to ban their athletes from having social media profiles on Facebook, MySpace, and the like?

Fresno State has just received the largest pledged donation in its history, $10 million dollars for the athletic department. Exactly how this pledge will be honored still seems shrouded in mystery.

The money is coming through a former Fresno State football player, Alphonso Bigelow, who played linebacker in the mid-90s. He got his MBA at Fresno State, and still lives in the city. He is also the CEO of a company called Nykel Bam International, LLC. That's where the mystery comes in, because what the company does seems purposefully vague.

I don't know if the NCAA will officially release a statement acknowledging that their Web site overloaded this afternoon at 2 PM CT when the penalties against Alabama were posted, but for one hour around that time, it was impossible to access the site.

It would be fascinating to see the data of where the site traffic was coming from. My guess is the state of Alabama in first place, and the state of Tennessee in second place. Third place? The state of Louisiana. Followed by Mississippi and Georgia in fourth and fifth place. Seeing data on a day like this would serve to objectively catalog the relative hate and strength of rivalries in the Southland once and for all. But that's too much to ask, the NCAA can't even keep their Web site functioning. This was the message on the front page of the site:

NCAA.org is experiencing temporary technical problems. Please try again in a few minutes. Some services can still be accessed through the links below.

Over the weekend Florida cornerback Janoris Jenkins became the 24th Gator football player to be arrested in the past four years. Jenkins was tased after fighting with men he claims were attempting to steal his jewelry. That happens to all of us when we go out. You should have seen this dude step to me over my pinky ring the other night.

Much of the nation, among them the Florida fan base, collectively shrugged their shoulders. Unless, that is, you happened to be a rival of Florida's who has lost to them on the field in the past few years. Then you were outraged. That's how it goes with college football arrests; we're all a bunch of hypocrites. If our team wins we don't care if the entire team gets sent up the river together, as long as they're back by Saturday. Any amount of off-field incidents can be brushed aside, so long as you're successful enough on the field.

It seems former Kansas State football coach Ron Prince and former athletic director Bob Krause struck a "secret" side deal last summer the school is now trying to get out of, according to a lawsuit filed by the university.

In addition to a five-year contract extension in August 2008 that paid Prince $1.1 million annually, the two apparently brokered a $3.2 million deal that would be broken up in payments between 2015 and 2020 that no one else in the athletic administration or anywhere else on campus knew about. Prince was forced to resign a few months later. Under the official contract, Prince is owed a $1.2 million buyout. That figure could jump to $4.4 million if Kansas State is forced to pay the secret contract between Prince and Krause.

The school has filed suit to fight the $3.2 million payment.

On May 5, 2009 former Arizona State and Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that EA Sports and the NCAA unlawfully used player images in their NCAA football and basketball video games. The lawsuit (read it here) received quite a bit of initial attention, but no one pointed out the most fascinating angle of the case, the NCAA is being accused of violating their own rules of amateurism, selling the rights to the players that they're supposed to protect.

Yep, the NCAA, baronial ruler of the collegiate landscape, investigator of impropriety from sea to shining sea, protector of amateur athletics, may be in need of investigation themselves. Oh, the delicious irony. What's at stake in Sam Keller's lawsuit? Only every game and every record featuring NCAA athletes in football and basketball over the past decade. Thankfully, this lawsuit falls right in my legal expertise; I'm a lawyer with a decent knowledge of NCAA regulations and a great knowledge of NCAA video games. As I read this lawsuit, I began to realize that it's much bigger than a video game, the lawsuit makes a really bold statement, it accuses the NCAA of violating their own rules of amateurism.

That's a huge story that no one is talking about.

It's been a year since the allegations broke of former USC basketball star O.J. Mayo getting a little something on the side from runners for an agent. And it has been over three years since the allegations against former USC football star Reggie Bush regarding some incompetent wannabe marketing agents fronting a lot of money and a house to Bush and his family.

Neither investigation has gone anywhere with respect to USC. Yet both are still open investigations by the NCAA. So for whatever reason, the NCAA is combining the investigations into one single investigation into USC's athletic department.

Wide receiver Eric Decker was a big part of the turnaround for Minnesota last year. The Gophers went from 1-11 to 7-6, and while they did lose their last five games, they were able to gain a bowl bid.

Decker caught 84 passes for over 1,000 yards and seven touchdowns in 2008. While his Gopher teammates take part in spring drills, he's off playing baseball for a Minnesota team that is nationally-ranked and a threat to make the NCAA Tournament. In June, there's a chance Decker will be drafted by a Major League Baseball team, and that could lead to a tough decision for him.

It hasn't taken very long, but the University of Minnesota's new on-campus football stadium is taking shape.

TCF Bank Stadium is set to open September 12, as the Gophers host Air Force, an unusually strong non-conference opponent by their standards. The facility is being built near their legendary hockey and basketball facilities, and it will fit in quite nicely.

Lane Kiffin has done a bunch of kind of silly things since he became the head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers. But none of them can really top his most recent behavior: his coaching staff started ripping their shirts in front of recruits, WWE style.

Seriously. Now, apparently Kiffin didn't actually rip his, but the whole point of the exercise was to get the players pumped. And it worked, according to some of the accounts, even if it started a little awkwardly after an assistant coach told the high schoolers how seriously they take special teams at Tennessee.