NCAA Football FanHouse

Live Blog: Notre Dame vs. USC

John Walters — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:24:00 EST

Filed under: Notre Dame, USC, Campus, Daily Domer

FanHouse writer John Walters is living in South Bend, Ind., during one of the most pivotal seasons in Notre Dame history. Check back daily for his dispatches on the Irish.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Flat-lined against a blue-gray sky...huh?

Greetings from the Notre Dame Stadium pressbox, which is filled with budding eulogists this afternoon. National scribes from publications and websites alike, many of them here to see whether USC will blow out the Irish and put the nail in Charlie Weis' coffin.

Sorry, I just don't see it that way.

Follow John Walters live blog after the jump.

If the Irish lose by four touchdowns or so, then yes, it is time to wonder whether Weis simply cannot motivate his team for the big games. Any other outcome, though, bodes well for his health.

Walking along the South Quad this morning, both Alumni Hall and Dillon Hall had hung bedsheets that had the names of all the blue-chip recruits who are visiting this weekend. Besides each name was a box and for those who had already verbally committed (e.g., Chris Martin), a checkmark inside the box.

That those signs were more prominent than the scattered "Fall of Troy" signs is telling. This game, for the Irish, is about much more than moving up in the polls and ending a seven-game losing streak. This is about the future of the program. This is about proving to those four- and five-star kids (honestly, they could stage the Army All-American Game as the halftime entertainment today) that, as Weis likes to say, "the arrow is pointing upward" in South Bend.

Whether or not that's true... tune in to NBC at 3:42 p.m.

P.S. The grass is short today.

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Live Blog: Notre Dame vs. USC originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:24:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gophers' New Stadium a Modern Beauty

Bruce Ciskie — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:20:00 EST

Filed under: Air Force, Minnesota, Big 10, Campus

MINNEAPOLIS -- For the University of Minnesota, this has been a long time coming.

In 1981, the Gophers played their last football game at Memorial Stadium. The decision was made to move home games to the Metrodome, which isn't terribly far from campus but is definitely not a "typical" college football stadium. By 2002, the university was looking into the feasibility of an on-campus stadium. In the spring of 2005, funding was finally approved. On Sept. 12, 2009, the dreams of many Gopher football supporters became a reality.

As TCF Bank Stadium opens with a game against Air Force, much history is being made. The Gophers are the first Big Ten team since 1960 (Indiana) to open a new stadium. Most Big Ten football facilities originally opened in the 1920s, though all have undergone some sort of expansion and/or renovation since then.

This, however, is a first of its kind. A truly modern college football stadium housing a Big Ten school. While it's modern in amenities, its look is decidedly retro. There is a large plaza overlooking the stadium and nearby Williams Arena, where the Gophers play basketball. The horseshoe shape of the stadium gives fans a chance to see downtown Minneapolis from their seats.

When the stadium studies began, talk was that the NFL's Minnesota Vikings would share this facility. Many years after those talks broke off, the Vikings are still seeking funding for their own stadium, while the university's dream has been realized.

One of the reasons those talks never got past the exploratory stage was parking. In traveling to the site, it's easy to see why there were concerns. If this facility were to house both the Gophers and Vikings, it would easily have in the area of 65,000 seats, as opposed to the 50,000 this stadium has. Even with 15,000 fewer seats than it could have had, parking is an absolute mess. There are fans parking in the area of two miles from the stadium, and then riding shuttle buses to the site. Only those with season tickets have access to ramps and lots that are a reasonable walking distance away.

On the bright side, this situation appears to have been handled very well by the university. Plenty of staff and buses are awaiting those looking for a ride, and they operate starting four hours before games.

If the rest of the season goes more smoothly than the first game has, fans should have little to complain about.

There is worry about the action on the field, though. Air Force is a pretty good team, and they come from a conference (Mountain West) brimming with confidence. The Falcons and their triple-option attack could prove troublesome for a Gopher defense that struggled mightily defending Syracuse last week.

The sold-out crowd should be in for a good show. If nothing else, the stadium they walk into is a lot nicer than anything the Big Ten has seen in a long time.

Gophers' New Stadium a Modern Beauty originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:20:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Derek Dooley Follows in Father Vince's Footsteps, Including Winning

Jim Henry — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:00:00 EST

Filed under: Georgia, Louisiana Tech, Campus

Derek Dooley thought he was happy practicing law at a private firm in Atlanta in the mid-1990s. Despite his football bloodlines -- he is the son of legendary Georgia head coach Vince Dooley -- Dooley believed his calling was the courtroom and not on the sidelines.

He was wrong.

"Football has been a part of my life, but I kind of grew up never really wanting to coach -- I am not sure why," Dooley told FanHouse.

"I did fairly well in school, I enjoyed the challenge of law school, and I went on to practice law. But I guess football was in my blood. It wasn't that I didn't like practicing law as much as was I just missed all the great things associated with athletics and football. I am really glad I made the switch when I did and it has worked out so far."

As the only FBS head football coach in the country who also serves as the university's athletics director, Dooley, in his third season at Louisiana Tech, is leading both the football program and the athletic department into a new era of unprecedented change.

Last season, Dooley led the Bulldogs to their first bowl victory in more than 30 years as Louisiana Tech defeated Northern Illinois in the 2008 Independence Bowl. Off the field, his work ethic and vision has helped ignite a complete overhaul in the infrastructure of the athletic department, from staffing to facilities to external operations.

"I love our coach," NFL Hall of Famer and Tech alum Terry Bradshaw said. "He is educating the community and the Tech family about thinking big. You have to create pride in your university. Derek does that. I like what I am seeing."

Of course, Tech fans may not necessarily like what they see on Saturday, when the Bulldogs open their season at Auburn. Tech and the Tigers last met Oct. 9, 2004, at Jordan-Hare Stadium with Auburn winning 52-7. But that's not to say the game is destined to be a total mismatch. Plenty of youth could be featured on both sides. Dooley said as many as eight freshmen will see the field for his squad, and first-year Auburn head coach Gene Chizik has 12 true freshmen listed on his latest depth chart.

"It certainly will get your juices going when you are going into an environment like Auburn and Jordan-hare Stadium," Dooley said.

"It's going to be an exciting day for our team. We don't play in that kind of environment very often and we are looking forward to playing it out. You know you are always going to face a good football team, a hard-nosed football team and they are tough to beat at home."

Dooley's family also has some strong Auburn ties. Vince Dooley spent his playing days at Auburn and graduated in 1954. In fact, both of Derek Dooley's parents and his wife's parents are Auburn alumni. Dooley's coaching staff also has an Auburn connection. Defensive line coach Jimmy Brumbaugh played defensive line for the Tigers from 1995-99.

Dooley was even rumored to be one of the top candidates to replace Tommy Tuberville as Auburn's head coach, though he never interviewed for the position. The job that eventually went to Chizik

Naturally, Dooley, one of the country's youngest head coaches at age 41, comes by his talent honestly. And he doesn't hesitate to telephone his father for advice. Vince Dooley also served in the dual role of athletics director and head football coach during his time in Athens, Ga.

"My father's always been an influence, just in the 18 years I lived with him," Dooley said.

"A lot of times I would call him up and I already know what the answer is. When you live with somebody for 18 years, he instills a lot of values in your work and how you do things. Certainly he has been a great sounding board when I got my head coaching job and my AD job. I would be crazy not to use him as a resource. Anybody who has been in the business for 40 years and been successful at it like he was, it's going to be a great resource."

Dooley arrived at Louisiana Tech in December of 2007 following a two-year stint as the tight ends coach for the Miami Dolphins. Prior to joining the Dolphins, Dooley spent the previous five years at LSU, including the 2003 season when the Tigers won the national championship. He also spent the 1997-99 seasons as wide receivers coach at SMU after a one-year stint as a graduate assistant at Georgia.

Dooley played football at the University of Virginia where he helped lead the Cavaliers to three bowl appearances and the 1989 ACC championship. He graduated from Virginia in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in government and foreign affairs, and went on to earn his law degree from Georgia in 1994. He practiced law for two years before he stepped back to evaluate his career choice.

Court was adjourned

"It was really a six-month process where I honestly I felt like I was missing something at work," Dooley said.

"I was practicing in Atlanta and I was attending the Georgia games on weekends. Over the course of a fall, I just realized that's what I missed. I missed working together with a big team, I missed the highs and the lows of competition and every year bringing in a renewed spirit in what you do. I just said, 'Why not?"

Louisiana Tech President Dr. Dan Reneau may have said the same thing when he named Dooley the program's athletics director in March, 2008. Dooley hasn't disappointed, either. A few of the many changes that have taken place include a new, 10-year multi-media contract with Learfield Sports; new facilities for tennis and bowling; new student housing; a new baseball scoreboard and press box; and new football locker rooms.

"It's certainly not a model that would fit at every institution but I think it's a model that works very well at our institution and I am really grateful for our president to show confidence in my ability to do that," Dooley said.

"It has worked out well. We've had a lot of progress in our football program and our athletics growth and I hope we can continue the pace we are on. We've done a lot in a short time and the key is doing it consistently over time. We just go at it day-to-day, roll up our sleeves each day, go to work, try to get a little bit better. I think when you do that and you look back five years from now, you are proud of the body of work that you did."

The same can be said on the field, where the Bulldogs have improved dramatically under Dooley, going from a 3-8 record prior to his arrival to an 8-5 season last year. Louisiana Tech enters the Auburn games as the only Western Athletic Conference (WAC) team to bring a winning streak into the new year. (The Bulldogs closed the 2008 season with two victories).

"I think this is the first time we have a little more stability across the board," Dooley said.

"We have a lot of guys returning, they understand our expectations as a staff. We do have a lot of new faces, but I think the challenge now is to learn to compete consistently and it's something that hasn't been done here in awhile. While it was a great season last year, one season doesn't make a program."

Well said counselor.

Err, coach.

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Oregons LeGarrette Blount (9) scores a point after conversion against the defense of Boise States Jeron Johnson (23) during the second half of the NCAA college football game on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009 in Boise, Idaho. BSU went on to win 19-8. Blount was involved in a post game fight where he threw a punch at a Boise State player. (AP Photo/Matt Cilley)

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BOISE, ID - SEPTEMBER 3: Boise State fans watch the video board as LaGarrette Blount #9 of the Oregon Ducks is shown punching a Boise State Broncos player after the game causing quite a commotion and talk of him being arrested on September 3, 2009 at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho. Boise State defeated Oregon 19-8.(Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** LaGarrette Blount

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BOISE, ID - SEPTEMBER 3: Jeremiah Masoli #8 of the Oregon Ducks watches the clock as it winds downs and the Boise State Broncos defeat Oregon 19-8 on September 3, 2009 at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** LaGarrette Blount

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BOISE, ID - SEPTEMBER 3: LaGarrette Blount #9 of the Oregon Ducks watches the clock as it winds downs and the Boise State defeat Oregon 19-8 on September 3, 2009 at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho. Blount punched a Boise State Broncos player after the game causing quite a commotion and talk of him being arrested. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** LaGarrette Blount

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BOISE, ID - SEPTEMBER 3: A Boise State Bronco coach instructs players Dan Paul #47 and Daron Mackey #45 to get back after LaGarrette Blount #9 (not in photo) of the Oregon Ducks punched a Boise State Broncos player after the Boise State defeated Oregon 19-8 on September 3, 2009 at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Dan Paul;Daron Mackey

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BOISE, ID - SEPTEMBER 3: LaGarrette Blount #9 of the Oregon Ducks is escorted off the field by head coach Chip Kelly after Blount punched a Boise State Broncos player on September 3, 2009 at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho. Boise State defeated Oregon 19-8. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** LaGarrette Blount;Chip Kelly

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Utah State running back Robert Turbin (6) breaks a tackle by Utah defensive end Nai Fotu (42) during the second half of their NCAA college football game Sept. 3, 2009 in Salt Lake City. Utah beat Utah State 35-17. (AP Photo/Steve C. Wilson)

Utah State quarterback Diondre Borel (12) works to break loose from Utah linebacker Stevenson Sylvester, left, as Utah's Derrick Shelby, right, closes in during second half action of their NCAA college football game Sept. 3, 2009 in Salt Lake City. Utah beat Utah State 35-17. (AP Photo/Steve C. Wilson)

BOISE, ID - SEPTEMBER 3: Jeremiah Masoli #8 of the Oregon Ducks throws a pass in the first quarter of a game against the Boise State Broncos ton September 3, 2009 at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Jeremiah Masoli

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BOISE, ID - SEPTEMBER 3: Kellen Moore #11 of Boise State throws a pass against the Oregon Ducks in first quarter of the game on September 3, 2009 at Broncos Stadium in Boise, Idaho. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Kellen Moore

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Derek Dooley Follows in Father Vince's Footsteps, Including Winning originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sports Illustrated to Demand Coaches' Ballots

Chas Rich — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:33:00 EST

Filed under: ACC, BCS, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Pac 10, SEC, Campus, Coaching, Media Watch

When college football coaches decided that their little shred of transparency -- making each coach's final ballot public -- was just too much sharing, there was some outcry over the decision to go back to anonymous balloting in 2010. All accountability and openness of the votes appeared to be out the window.

Sports Illustrated has decided that it will go to court to force the ballots to be opened to public scrutiny. Starting this week, they intend to file state-level Freedom of Information Act requests at each public institution where there is a participating coach.
Sports Illustrated's reason for this action according to Andy Staples:

Why are we doing this? Because, as South Carolina coach -- and public school poll voter -- Steve Spurrier so eloquently put it to CBSSports.com after learning the 2010 results would remain cloaked, the looming secrecy allows "a chance for some real hanky-panky." If the AFCA [American Football Coaches Association] learns through this exercise it can't keep the ballots secret, it might choose instead to embrace transparency rather than risk damaging the integrity of the poll.

The basis for the filings are that at each state institution, the coaches are essentially public employees. Many are and do participate in public employee pension systems. The state institutions are generally subject to each states' version of the Freedom of Information Act, and this includes the athletic departments. This will not apply to participating coaches at schools that are private institutions like Duke's David Cutcliffe and Charlie Weis at Notre Dame.

As the article points out, the door to this opened when news organizations in Florida took Florida State and the NCAA to court this year over a records request concerning the NCAA's investigation into the FSU academic fraud case. FSU, while a defendant, actually supported the open records, as did the Florida state attorney general.

The NCAA lost, though they are all appealing. It will be interesting to see how FSU differentiates this view when they get the request for Bobby Bowden's preseason ballot this year.

There's a little bit of turning the tables on institutions here. Again, the article points this out.

In May, the Columbus Dispatch's fantastic investigation into athletic departments' sometimes fraudulent use of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to hide records provided a wake-up call to schools in every state.

Programs shadily employed a federal law to hide when players get in trouble from getting out to the public. Now they appear to be on the other end of the public records law.

Clearly the reason to file the requests now, is to get this into court this year. Get the court challenges out of the way as soon as possible. At a minimum, force the AFCA to repeal their decision for 2010 rather than continually go through this

While this does seem a little silly and not the intent for public records laws, there is a valid claim to be made on making the records public, beyond claims of public interest in the ballots themselves. The Coaches Poll is one-third of the formula used to determine the BCS rankings. Those rankings determine the teams playing for the national championship and in BCS bowls. All of which involve a lot of money that go back to the athletic departments.

Whether or not those various athletic departments receive state monies or are financially self-sufficient is irrelevant. They are still part of the state institution. In other words, the ballots have a financial impact on the state institution. Something for which public records laws were intended.

Sports Illustrated to Demand Coaches' Ballots originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:33:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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San Diego State Ex-Coach Doing Busy Work

Chas Rich — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:44:00 EST

Filed under: San Diego State, Mountain West, Campus, General CFB Insanity

Former San Diego State head coach Chuck Long really wants to collect his $715,900 salary from the school. The Aztecs and Long's attorney still have not worked out an arrangement for Long to get most of his money from the contract after being fired in November. Instead he is doing "special projects" for the school. In grade school, this would have been considered "busy work."

Long's first assignment was to write a report on ways to improve the football program. Specifically, "streamlining admissions for student-athletes, housing of football players and attracting youths and families to SDSU with sports camps." He turned it in at the end of July and his recommendations appear to have come from repeated viewings of the first half of "Revenge of the Nerds."

The capsulized version of the 23-page action plan: lower admission standards for football players -- especially for junior college transfers, give them the best dorm housing on the campus (it has a pool, grill and the best dining hall), and let them join fraternities if they desire.

Hard to believe it only took him about six months and 23 pages to come up with these recommendations.

San Diego State Ex-Coach Doing Busy Work originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:44:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Party On, Football Schools

Clay Travis — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Arizona State, Colorado, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Penn State, Tennessee, Texas, ACC, Big 10, Big East, Pac 10, Campus, Fans, General CFB Insanity

Penn State garnered top party school honors this year in the annual Princeton Review's ranking of top party schools. The top 20 schools are listed, and as I wistfully scanned the list and daydreamed about a time when all I had to worry about was whether the kegs would make it through the night or whether we'd have to scramble for more cases of Natty Light, I came to a startling conclusion: It's almost as if major college football and partying go together.

Shocking, no?

So in honor of college football's apparent impact on the most important ranking this side of the Harris Interactive Poll, let's run through the 20 party scenes -- including one college you've never heard of, ClayNation style.

1. Penn State

People have already started drinking in Happy Valley because they think it will make their arguments better as to why an undefeated Penn State team should get to play Texas over a one-loss Florida team.

2. Florida

I've had a lot of fun with Gator girls and their bingo wings. But the school knows how to party. Except on football Saturdays when the cops turn into fascists and will arrest you for having an open container on University Boulevard.

And if you get arrested you have to spend the night in jail. Talk about a kick in the ass. This is definitely going to happen to several SEC fans this fall. They're going to roll into Gainesville, get put in jail, and listen on the radio as their team loses by 50.

Come to think of it, I just hope this doesn't happen to me.

3. Ole Miss

Anyone who has ever been to Ole Miss is jealous that they aren't on Ole Miss's campus right now. Even at this exact moment when it's 438 degrees in the Delta and all the coeds have decided to spend the day drinking by the pool in their bikinis ... I can't go on.

I'm already plotting my trip to Oxford this November. This is something you have to do since there are only 14 hotel rooms in the entire Oxford area. So we're compromising by staying in a Tunica casino. Basically I'm trying to lump all my sinning into the same weekend.

How wild is it at Ole Miss? They have raves at the library.

4. Georgia

I've called Athens the Cleavage Capital of the South and suggested that the tagline for the city should be, simply, Athens: Where Boobs Are Fun.

I don't know how any football recruit in the country visits Athens on a weekend and ends up going to another school.

Honestly.

It's that much fun.

Now imagine if Bulldawg undergrads could drink for enjoyment instead of to dull the pain of another collapse by the Georgia defense under Willie Martinez.

5. Ohio University

Long overshadowed by their neighbors in Columbus, the Bobcats of Ohio toil in comparative oblivion in the MAC. Which explains why they party so hard.

If you drink enough you can almost convince yourself that you're a student at Ohio State.

6. West Virginia

The Deadwood of college campuses. Remember how Yoo fed all of Swearingen's victims to pigs? At West Virginia they do this if you can't finish an entire bottle of Maker's Mark before a football game.

WVU: "We put the riot in party."

7. Texas

Austin is purportedly the greatest city in America that doesn't lie on either coast. I don't know, I've never been. But I have seen the girls in those chaps and orange shorts on the sideline of games. Which does enough for me.

If Texas and Florida end up playing in the BCS title game this fall, doesn't this just seem unfair? How much better does any college kid's life at Florida or Texas deserve to be? It's warm all year round, your teams never lose, and both teams are going undefeated?

8. Wisconsin

True story, one of alcohol's many great powers is that it makes you feel less cold. That's important in a place like Madison, Wis.

Second true story, if your parents want to buy you a beer in a Wisconsin bar, you're allowed to consume it with them. Even if you're 11 or 12.

It's such a surprise that kids raised like that end up liking to party in college.

9. Florida State

Remember when the cameras panned to the crowd and landed on Jenn Sterger wearing a bikini in the student section? And even Brent Musberger, Brent Musberger!, couldn't avoid commenting on her. That's what life is like in Tallahassee. All those girls who don't have good enough test scores to get into UF anymore, yeah, they're here.

10. University of California-Santa Barbara

Have you ever been to Santa Barbara? You can't live in the city for less than a million dollars. It's probably the last place on earth where you need to dull the pain of college with alcohol. You live in paradise and you're in college. The people are so good looking in this town, and this is true, that when you apply for a job as a waiter, most restaurants ask if you have a head shot.

How much better can your life get?

Can I re-enroll and major in PE?

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Kansas State quarterback Carson Coffman is shown during Big 12 Media Day in Irving, Texas, Wednesday, July 29, 2009. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)

Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford talks to the press during the Big XII media day in Irving, Texas, on Tuesday, July 28, 2009. (Louis DeLuca/Dallas Morning News/MCT)

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Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops signs his autograph on some commemorative footballs during the Big XII media day in Irving, Texas, on Tuesday, July 28, 2009. (Louis DeLuca/Dallas Morning News/MCT)

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Baylor head coach Art Briles autographs a commemorative helmet during the Big XII media day in Irving, Texas, on Tuesday, July 28, 2009. (Louis DeLuca/Dallas Morning News/MCT)

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Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops talks with the reporters during the Big XII media day in Irving, Texas, on Tuesday, July 28, 2009. (Louis DeLuca/Dallas Morning News/MCT)

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Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford is shown during Big 12 Media Day in Irving, Texas, Tuesday, July 28, 2009. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)

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Missouri football coach Gary Pinkel gestures as he speaks during Big 12 Media Day in Irving, Texas, Tuesday, July 28, 2009. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)

Kansas coach Mark Mangino gestures during Big 12 Media Day in Irving, Texas, Tuesday, July 28, 2009. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)

Oklahoma State University head football coach Mike Gundy answers questions from reporters during media day at the Dallas-Fort Worth Westin Hotel in Irving, Texas, Monday, July 27, 2009. (Brandon Wade/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT)

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11. Colorado

Boulder is kind of like utopia. Everyone is rich, everyone is nice, and everyone parties all the time. So what if their athletic teams always lose. Your life ends up pretty nice anyway.

Now if only LenDale White hadn't gotten away to USC ...

12. Iowa

Iowa is another state I don't know much about. I've never been. I get the impression that everyone drinks here because they wish they were somewhere else.

Also, they always have white wide receivers. Iowa seems to breed fast white boys. I don't know why.

On the positive side, the state's unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the nation. Maybe everyone's drinking to celebrate ... and to create more jobs for people who pick vomit out of things.

13. Union College

Old fraternity training teaches me that the first fraternities in America came from Union College. Our first school that doesn't have major athletic programs. Outside of UC-Santa-Barbara. Let's be honest, 95 percent of the drinking associated with this school is based on how much fun it is to attempt to pronounce Schenectady after six beers in an hour.

You try.

It's impossible.

14. Indiana

You'd drink if you had to put up with the Kelvin Sampson era as well. Point of demarcation here, this represents the first BCS-level basketball-first school to make the list.

Either that or Indiana football fans (don't those three words together make your skin crawl with discomfort to read?) are dulling the pain of the early fall by whiling away their time ignoring the team.

15. DePauw

Several of my friends went to DePauw which is not to be confused with DePaul in Chicago. DePauw is a tiny college in the middle of nowhere Indiana. What do they do for fun?

One of my best friends once walked into his fraternity house to see a fraternity brother who was involved in a sex act while watching ... wait for it ... Major League. It's unbefitting a family Web site like this to go into further detail, but let's just say that, like Pedro Ceranno in a fit of frustration with Jobu, he did it himself.

He, of course, blamed alcohol.

As well he should.

16. Tennessee

Tennessee leads the nation in the number of women who wake up in the morning and think, "Wait, I went home with him?"

Which means if you're looking at colleges and you're male, UT should be on your list.

17. Sewanee: The University of the South

My best man went to this school. About 1,200 kids go to college on top of a mountain surrounded by a 10,000-acre campus. Once I showed up to visit him and found him cutting strips of old dark brown shag carpeting in the front yard outside his dorm room.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Making clothes for the viking party," he said. "Everyone makes their own outfit and you have to wear it there to get inside."

Some girls made Viking bikinis.

Needless to say, the party was awesome beyond words.

18. North Dakota

I don't know a single thing about North Dakota that isn't Mount Rushmore related. And I just Googled Mount Rushmore and found out it's actually in South Dakota.

Who knew? Other than South Dakotans?

19. Tulane

Remember in the wake of hurricane Katrina when everyone worried that Tulane would vanish as a school that anyone wanted to attend?

Wrong.

They buckled down and did what they had to do, kept shutting down the school for Mardi Gras and battening down the hatches for drinking. Good for them.

20. Arizona State

The Daily Show referred to Arizona State as "the Harvard of date rape." That was unfair.

A football player who shall remain nameless informed me that they had to institute a no tanning rule on the quad near campus because there were too many car accidents from drivers ogling the women.

Party On, Football Schools originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rutgers Stadium Expansion Gets Lounge, Whining

Chas Rich — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:32:00 EST

Filed under: Rutgers, Big East, Campus

Nothing worse than a planned construction project running headlong into a recession. Financing shrinks, credit gets tighter and there is just less money available. It does not matter if it is for a private project or a public deal. Rutgers was dealing with just that problem as they started to expand their stadium.

The plans were not quite grandiose, but they did have a lot of extras beyond simply expanding the seating capacity. There were suites, expanded facilities, all sorts of amenities that have become standard in modern stadiums. Of course, with New Jersey facing a major budget crisis, donations running way behind projections, layoffs on the academic side of the university, tuition hikes and even cutting some sports from the athletic department the expansion of Rutgers Stadium was suddenly limited to expanding the seating.
That is until Rutgers was given $5 million by two private donors earmarked for one specific extra feature in the stadium. A "recruiting lounge."

The Brown Football Recruiting Lounge and Welcome Center will be named for one of the donors, Motorola CEO and Rutgers alumnus Greg Brown. The second donor, also an alumnus, requested anonymity, officials said. They said both donors explicitly directed the money toward the recruiting lounge, whose project budget is estimated at $4.85 million.

Board members voted in December to scrap the lounge -- along with other extras such as locker rooms and media facilities -- when faced with a $30 million shortfall in the $102 million project that will add 11,500 seats.

The lounge will feature a private elevator to access the lounge, plasma TVs, along with other features. It will be able to accommodate about 300 people -- or roughly a big recruiting weekend including the family and friends of the potential recruits.

An extravagant, but nice extra that did not add to the public cost of the expansion. At most places, that would be the end of it.

Instead, there has been a small but vocal contingent outraged by the money being given to a specific item that Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano had been lobbying to be restored to the project. Some wanted the money used for the general stadium expansion debt, restoring lost athletic programs, or even giving it back rather than use it this way.

All in all, some rather comical bloviating and inability to comprehend the idea of specifically targeted donations, coaches that don't stop agitating for the things they think are necessary to help them, Added bonus, neither of the donors were elected officials in New Jersey or Rabbis in the NY/NJ area.

Rutgers Stadium Expansion Gets Lounge, Whining originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:32:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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San Diego State Defines Incompetence

Chas Rich — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:33:00 EST

Filed under: San Diego State, Mountain West, Campus

There's always an endless fascination with finding programs that can be considered "sleeping giants." Those are the schools where it seems that with a little work and the right coach, the program could go from bottom feeder to ranked and respectability.

Rutgers is the most recent example of a football program that had the natural recruiting territory and finally made the move from historical laughing stock to good program. The mistake is assuming that it all related to simply hiring and retaining the right coach to recruit, coach and change the culture. There's no denying the importance of that. The other component, though, is just as important: a competent and committed athletic department. Without the latter, no real change will happen -- no matter who is hired.

On the West Coast, San Diego State holds the distinction as the program most commonly considered a "sleeping giant." Often just slightly below .500 and occasionally competent there was much working for them.

California, and particularly the San Diego area, is a particularly valuable recruiting area. San Diego is a beautiful city. The Aztecs play in the Mountain West, which has some very good programs but is not so strong that a program like San Diego State could not rise quickly and sustain the progress.

The problem is that the San Diego State athletic department does not have the competence to finish a job. Whether it is the debacle of the lease conflict still going with the city of San Diego over Qualcomm Stadium, or the ongoing mess with the former head coach the Aztecs .

When San Diego State decided to fire Chuck Long, the issue was not about whether they should or not. After three seasons and a Greg Robinson-esque 9-27 record, there was no question that Long had earned his termination. The issue was money. SDSU still had to pay the remaining two years on Long's contract at a total of $1.4 million. For an athletic department that had already been running yearly deficits, this was a problem.

Luckily, the school raised student fees and private donors kicked in nearly a million towards the buyout. Long was fired and Brady Hoke was brought in following a successful run at Ball State. Yet, somehow that was not the end.

It turns out that the braintrust at SDSU had worked Long's contract so that rather than actually firing him, they removed him to work on "special projects." Something Long is not particularly interested in doing, but will do because he doesn't collect $700-thousand this year and next without doing it.

It took San Diego State over six months to figure this was not a healthy plan. The school did not do the simple thing, and work it out so that they could pay him the difference between $700,000 and what he would get as an assistant coach somewhere (admittedly a little late to do that this year), or simply work out some plan where Long gets his money and leaves the campus.

Instead the school that already had money problems in the athletic department, and like most California universities is facing a major budget crunch, has decided to spend more money. They hired an outside consultant to negotiate a deal.

Dan Kelley, former labor relations manager for the city of San Diego, has been brought in to mediate a way out of an awkward contract situation for Long and SDSU.

"The only thing I'll say about that is we are negotiating, and we're hopeful of a good outcome," SDSU Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel said.

Long was fired as football coach last November but is being paid $715,900 per year until his contract runs out on Dec. 31, 2010. In the meantime, Long is being required to keep office hours on campus and do "projects" through the remainder of his contract.

The goal is to get Long out of the arrangement while saving SDSU some of the money. Which again, if they had let him pursue assistant coaches jobs, could have resulted in that deal. The plan now is hiring an outside consultant at $125 per hour to make the deal happen.

Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel previously argued that Long's contract was better for SDSU "because we don't have any obligation to pay the difference."

The defense of the contract was laughable at the time, and clearly is shown to be idiocy in light of the present negotiations to end that clause.

For new coach Brady Hoke's sake, hopefully he's got nearly as good a contract. Even if Hoke does the surprising thing and starts turning around SDSU, the competence and questionable commitment from the Aztec athletic department makes it likely that Hoke will be poached by another program before long.

San Diego State Defines Incompetence originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:33:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Time for Colleges to Ban Facebook?

Clay Travis — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Arizona, Campus, General CFB Insanity

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?

This week the University of Arizona took action to combat the dangers of Facebook, announcing that all of their athletes in every sport must set their profiles to private. Setting the profile to private means that only those people you select as friends can see your profile. Otherwise the profile remains visible to the entire network (generally your college). How serious is Arizona about the new policy? Athletes who don't comply risk losing their scholarships if their online conduct fails to "reflect the high standards of honor and dignity" expected by the school.

But Arizona's policy reflects a tenuous middle ground, once a student accepts a friend request from anyone, their profile becomes accessible. Putting this into context, while researching my new book, one University of Tennessee official confessed to creating fake profiles and then friending the athletes to keep tabs on them. How did he get the athletes to add him as a friend? He took the best looking girl he could find on the internet and built a fake profile around her. When the attractive girl's profile picture showed up in their friend requests, bang, they all accepted.

Fish meet bait.

The official would then monitor the page to find out if there was anything controversial there. But this was just a cursory check, officials can't monitor hundreds or thousands of athletes every minute of every day. Inevitably things slip through the cracks. It's why the athletes I trained with for the NFL Combine in 2008 all talked about what a tremendous issue Facebook had become for them. Quoting from the link:

"Thursday morning begins with talk of Myspace and Facebook. Specifically how much of a danger both of these networking sites are for college athletes. (Arkansas wide receiver) Marcus Monk and (Purdue wide receiver) Dorien Bryant lead the discussion. "We used to have these parties called Edward Fortyhands at Purdue. You had to have a forty taped to each of your hands, and have them finished before you could get them untaped. Everybody went to the parties, and there was a picture of me doing it. One day we got in trouble because Coach Tiller had a manager put all the pictures up on a slideshow, and then had us sit down and watch the pictures that they'd found of us. At the end Coach Tiller said, 'I want every single one of these pictures gone in two days or you have to answer to me.' We cleared that s**t up right fast."

Monk joins the conversation. "Same with Coach (Houston) Nutt. He walked into the front of the room with a big stack of pictures and papers and stuff and slammed it all down on the top of the table and said, 'I've got stuff on all y'all. Get it cleaned up.' That's why I'm not on none of them. Myspace, Facebook, none of them."

Antwan Stewart, combine trainer and former Tennessee defensive back, chimes in, "Oh man, Coach Fulmer killed us about that. One day he walked into the meeting room with the newspaper in his hand-they were doing a story about the pictures we had up -- and said, "Which one of you dumba***s -- that's the way he always started talking when someone got in trouble -- has been putting pictures up online? I want them down and I want them down now."

"The only guaranteed way to stay safe is to voluntarily abstain from Facebook. And we all know how well abstinence works for college kids."What's more, it's not only the things that an athlete might say on their page, it's what their friends might write on their wall. Athletes not only have to be responsible for themselves, they have to police others. And as if that weren't enough, they have to worry about whether or not photos of them are being posted by others online. Once they've been "tagged" in a photo, they have to remove the tag or it becomes visible to everyone. For colleges, they have to worry about undesirables: agents, stalkers, those with ulterior motives being able to easily contact their most popular players. Finally, many athletes include their email addresses, physical addresses, or even, amazingly, their cell phone numbers. It's a willful blindness that comes from being raised in a digitally public arena. I've argued before that at some point the prevalence of Facebook heralds a new social order, Mutually Assured Facebook Destruction. My thesis being that if you have a Facebook profile something could destroy you as easily as you could destroy someone else. So everyone has equal deterrence and minor controversies don't become major.

But that's not the present day case with celebrities, and make no mistake, major college athletes are celebrities. I'm waiting for something that I know is coming, when a rival student holds incriminating information on an athlete and waits to unleash that information on the blogosphere in the week leading up to a big game. Can you imagine the ethical issues raised? What if a Michael Phelps-esque bong photo finds it's way onto facebook featuring a star quarterback? It rapidly disappears, but a rival fan has saved it. For a couple of months all is silent, and then that fan heads out to Las Vegas and drops a good amount of money on the line. Then he or she releases the photo online and waits for the inevitable suspension to ensue. Bang, he pockets the difference on the line, his team wins, and he walks away with a kiling.

I guarantee you that a story line similar to this will happen in the next three years. Guarantee it. Just wait.

As a lawyer, I can tell you that a college has the right to make this Facebook exclusion rule for its student-athletes so long as it's applied evenly. That's why I think a college would need to restrict all athletes, from ladies lacrosse goalies to quarterbacks, to ensure that it's being applied fairly. I think singling out specific sports would reap a whirlwind of first amendment issues. As is, scholarship athletes at many schools sign a code of conduct agreement that is more stringent than that of a general athlete. This would be similar. Unpopular, but similar.

Kent State University has already flirted with an outright ban of Facebook for student-athletes. They backtracked after public criticism, choosing to encourage their athletes to embrace the site's privacy filters. Being the first college to announce an outright ban would bring media attention, much of it unfavorable, but is it the responsibility of a university to be popular or right? Would most parents really mind?

That leaves us with what is probably the ultimate question: First, is it fair to make all athletes at a school take an action because some of their fellow athletes are likely to cause problems for them? And, second, has Facebook become so fundamental to the collegiate experience that restricting access to it only leads to further isolation of athletes from their campus peers? I think both of these are really tough questions that don't have easy answers. And I think policies like the University of Arizona's, which is no doubt motivated by the dangers discussed above, while well-intentioned, are akin to being halfway pregnant. Either you are protected from Facebook revelations or you aren't. Right now, despite Arizona's new policy, their student-athletes are still a posting away from public danger and the university isn't much better protected from embarrassment or worse. The Arizona policy relies upon a more antiquated notion of what a "friend" is. Many people have Facebook friends they wouldn't even recognize in public. How do you know who is a snake in the grass and who's no threat at all?

Colleges are trying to come up with policies that work for social media, but right now their answers aren't really answers at all. More scandals are coming. Until then, the only guaranteed way to stay safe is to voluntarily abstain from Facebook. And we all know how well abstinence works for college kids. Right now, the ball is entirely in the college administrator's court.

Time for Colleges to Ban Facebook? originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fresno State Gets Mysterious Donation

Chas Rich — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:07:00 EST

Filed under: Fresno State, WAC, Campus

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.

Roughly, Bigelow says the company is involved in brokering private commodities transactions. Emphasis, apparently on the private since the company does not maintain any public Internet presence. According to Bigelow, while he decided on where to give the money, the company's board of directors decided the amount.

He says the board of directors came to him this year and said they needed to give away $10 million for tax purposes. He could choose to whom. Bigelow says that he and all the board members have a goal to someday give away 80 percent of Nykel Bam's earnings.

So in the largest recession in decades, there is a privately held company that no one really knows about that had to give away $10 million dollars for tax reasons?

Frankly the story being told sounds like something from a comic book or a cheap conspiracy flick.

So here's the story: A few years ago, Bigelow owned local group homes. He had a master's degree in business from Fresno State, so he was trying to do some brokering on the side. He flew to Hong Kong to try to complete a gold transaction, but couldn't get it done.

While at a cocktail party in Hong Kong, he started talking to an elderly man from London, who took a liking to him and started mentoring him on the ways of international brokering.

Bigelow did not tell this story at the news conference Tuesday, partly because he wants to keep his business and the details of how he makes money as private as possible. ("I don't need more competition," he says.) And, frankly, it would have been too much to explain. Maybe too much to believe.

The unnamed man from London got him started, introduced him to the people who are now the board of directors for Nykel Bam LLC.

Let's see. A mysterious, elderly Englishman takes the young, handsome, charismatic ex-jock under his wing to learn the mystic ways of private international brokering. Then set him up and introduced him to other individuals that ultimately became the unknown, unnamed board of directors for the new, private company with the young man as the public face. All the while, the company is virtually invisible with no internet presence or public awareness until this sudden gift.

What are they? A front for AIM? Hydra? An ancient order of commodites trading vampires? H.I.V.E.? SPECTRE? I think Dan Brown has the shadow organization for his next book.

Fresno State Gets Mysterious Donation originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:07:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In Internet Era, Vacated Wins Do Sting

Clay Travis — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:50:00 EST

Filed under: Alabama, SEC, Campus, Coaching, General CFB Insanity

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.

In all, the NCAA found that 201 Alabama athletes were guilty of violating NCAA rules, but that only 22 athletes in football, men's and women's track, and men's tennis took "intentional" advantage of the textbook situation to provide additional textbooks to girlfriends, boyfriends, or other associates. (Basically, Alabama athletes took their textbooks to a special exit and were not challenged about whether the books they took were necessary for their own studies. Football players rang up the four highest totals for excess use from $2,714.62 to $3,947.19.) You can read the full report yourself here. (After over an hour, the NCAA Web site is finally functioning again.)

Now we're left with several questions, namely, does vacating wins really serve any purpose? Certainly most Alabama fans are arguing the penalties don't matter at all. I got this e-mail shortly after the news broke of the penalties, "Clay, the NCAA taking away wins is like a girl trying to take away sex after she finds out you lied to get her in bed. You still had the sex."

Well written.

But, and maybe it's because I've just spent the past six months looking up stats and records for Tennessee football as research for my new book, I do care about vacating wins. It's not a debilitating penalty, but it is a nice smack in the face that's hard to ignore in the modern era. In the Internet age, looking up school records takes no time at all. These penalties actually sting much more than they did in the past when they were only reflected in musty old media guides.

Sure, it may not sting as much for those who remember the actual on-field victories themselves, but this is extremely shortsighted. Especially for a sport like college football where season and rivalry records are so important to the historical record. For people who never experienced the games, they'll just review the win or loss in the record books and not think twice about the circumstances surrounding them. That's the vast majority of fans. Even if you witnessed the game yourself, in seven or eight years games start to run together and all you have to see are the records themselves.

For instance, while I was doing research on the 1993 Alabama-Tennessee game, I came across the Wikipedia page for the Third Saturday in October which chronicles the Tennessee-Alabama rivalry over the years. Editors have put Alabama wins in red and Tennessee wins in orange. Ties are left in white. Staring at a color-coded rivalry page is strangely mesmerizing. As I worked my way through the games, I winced or I grinned as memories of each game flooded back over me. The years from 1986 to 1992 were like repetitive computer paper cuts. (Note: I had no idea that you could feel your hand getting papercuts while typing on a keyboard before this moment.)

Then I got to 1993. In 1993, Alabama's David Palmer scored on a two-point conversion run that tied the game at 17. I'd never been more defeated by a football game. Even without losing. And there it stayed lodged in my memory, I thought for all eternity. But then, lo and behold, the game was changed to orange and a note added to the bottom of the page, reflecting ensuing NCAA sanctions on Alabama.

I can't tell you how much immeasurably better my life would be if we'd actually won that game on the field. But seeing it colored orange on the computer screen? I'm not going to lie, it made me feel a little bit better. And that's when it hit me, vacation of wins is a much stronger penalty in the Internet era than it ever has been in the past. Sure, I'd read about Alabama's probation, but I hadn't actually seen it physically in front of me. Today those changes are easy to find.

One day my son is going to grow up and I'm going to tell him about the great game that Tennessee won over Alabama back in 1993. And he'll believe me once he checks it on the Internet.

Now, the distinction between a vacated win and a forfeit is something of a metaphysical NCAA mystery. Alabama doesn't win games, but their opponent doesn't either. What a mess. Only an NCAA rule would even allow a vacated win category to exist. It's like the games never happened at all for one side? How does this make any sense at all? As a result every school will have a lopsided record book with Alabama, the opponent counts the loss on their books but Alabama can't count the win.

Ultimately though, fans and players die, records don't. That's why, if you're an intelligent college football fan, you should care about wins being vacated. Even if vacated wins are a weird NCAA construction. In fact, and I may be in the minority on this, I'd rather give up a few scholarships in the future than have to give up the wins my team actually garnered on the field.

Some other things to ponder as the probation dust settles:

Who Actually Won the Florida State-Alabama game in 2007?

On the field, Florida State won 21-14 on Sept. 27, 2007, but now Florida State is likely to be forced to vacate this win. So Alabama lost this game but Florida State didn't win it. Imagine the metaphysical mystery of this game if Florida State was forced to forfeit. Then they'd try to give the win to Alabama but Alabama couldn't take it. Seriously, vacating wins makes my head spin.

Legal Issue: Coaching Contracts and Wins Clauses

What happens if a coach isn't implicated in any wrongdoing, but his wins are stripped and as a result his contract hits a snag when it comes to negotiating a required pay increase tied to wins? Can you retroactively take back the pay increase? Has litigation like this ever ensued? What about when it sets off a triggering mechanism in other coaching contracts? Like if a coach's contract requires him to be among the top three highest paid coaches and someone passes him with a record that later gets vacated? Can you imagine the legal complexities since so many coaching contracts are intertwined now? It makes my head swim just thinking about it.

No One Wins?

On the vacating of wins, only the NCAA would design a system where teams can manage to lose a game that no one wins. That's what happens for anyone who lost to Alabama during this time frame. According to the NCAA:

To record vacancies for regular season contests, the wins but not the losses of the penalized team are dropped from its overall record. This affects season records, all-time records and coaches' records. ... All records that are changed should be asterisked with the footnote stating something to the effect of "Later vacated by NCAA action."

The won-lost records for each of the opposing teams are not changed when games are vacated.

So doesn't this change the record books for the teams and put them on two different tracks in the series history? Yep. For instance, Tennessee gives Alabama credit for a win that Alabama can't claim? And maybe two wins. So Tennessee has the series record all-time as Alabama with one or two more wins than Alabama has themselves having. How does this make any sense at all? It's like being a little bit pregnant. Somewhere Mike Shula is kicking things. As if his era of Alabama football didn't look bad already, they are taking away some of his wins. From his best year as a coach? Ouch.

Fortunately the NCAA offers this helpful note:

It is suggested schools and conferences denote such games by using an asterisk and a footnote, but continue to list the actual contest results.

Crystal clear.

Repeat Offenders

This puts Alabama in the system for five years as an NCAA violator. Meaning any additional penalties they might face would be looked at even more stringently. This is perhaps the most lasting danger to the Crimson Tide. Maybe by then the NCAA Web site will stand up to the site traffic.

In Internet Era, Vacated Wins Do Sting originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:50:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Admit It: You Don't Really Care About Football Players Being Arrested

Clay Travis — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:02:00 EST

Filed under: Florida, SEC, Campus, Fans, Police Blotter, General CFB Insanity

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.

Urban Meyer knows this. It's why he said the Gators would only recruit "the top one percent of the top one percent" which is, I guess, a tricky way of saying ".01 percent." (Although it would be interesting to hypothesize what percentage of Gator players could correctly come up with the above number. Hell, I'm not even completely sure my math is correct.) Gator fans chomped to their heart's content when they heard the statement, Tim Tebow probably circumcised an indigent child, meanwhile the top .01 percent were out terrorizing students on University Avenue. Turns out The Swamp is not just a field, it's where Gator ethics go to die.

But don't fool yourself, your program could do the same. How? By following a handy three-part recipe: 1. Recruit God's gift to football and play him at quarterback 2. Win 3. Pillage, rob and loot to your heart's content.

As for No. 1, Tebow can't be overlooked. He's a saint. If you're a man, you wish you were Tebow. If you're a father, you wish Tebow would marry your daughter. If you're a woman, you wish Tebow would impregnate you instead of your husband. Everything that Tebow touches turns to gold. Even his teammates' mugshots. Because here's the deal, 99 percent of all national media and sports fans equate Florida football with Tebow. Period. It doesn't matter what anyone else does, Tebow is perfection on and off the field. So the program is perfect as well. Sure it's a lazy and harebrained way to judge a team, by projecting Tebow's moral code onto the rest of the team, but clearly it's happened. Tebow is a stand-in for the entire Gator team.

You have to wonder whether Tebow ever looks around the locker room, shakes his head, and thinks, "Man, an awful lot of these guys are going straight to hell."

Step two, Florida has won. And won big. One SEC athletic director told me, "Urban Meyer changed everything when he won his second national title in four years. Everything." Including, evidently, all normal standards for off-field behavior.

Three, let your players turn Gainesville into the wild west. Let them use the credit cards of dead woman (Jamar Hornsby), let them fire an AK-47 into the sky after a traffic dispute with a fellow student (Ronnie Wilson), let them steal a laptop and then throw it out the window when suspected of theft (Cam Newton, allegedly), let them choke a girlfriend (Jacques Rickerson). That's just boys being boys. Gator chomp. Yep, winning cures everything in the mind of fans.

Latest NFL Images

Denver Broncos running backs Correll Buckhalter, front, and rookie Knowshon Moreno run during drills at football camp at the Broncos' headquarters in the south Denver suburb of Englewood, Colo., on Wednesday, June 3, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Denver Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton runs during drills at football camp at the Broncos' headquarters in the south Denver suburb of Englewood, Colo., on Wednesday, June 3, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Denver Broncos wide receivers Jabar Gaffney, left, and Chad Jackson confer during drills at football camp at the Broncos' headquarters in the south Denver suburb of Englewood, Colo., on Wednesday, June 3, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Denver Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels directs his team during drills at football camp at the Broncos' headquarters in the south Denver suburb of Englewood, Colo., on Wednesday, June 3, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Denver Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels, back, observes quarterback Kyle Orton during drills at football camp at the Broncos' headquarters in the south Denver suburb of Englewood, Colo., on Wednesday, June 3, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Denver Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey takes part in drills at footbal camp at the Broncos' headquarters in the south Denver suburb of Englewood, Colo., on Wednesday, June 3, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Denver Broncos secondary coach Ed Donatelli directs players during drills at football mini-camp at the Broncos' headquarters in the south Denver suburb of Englewood, Colo., on Wednesday, June 3, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Oakland Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell throws a pass during NFL football training camp in Alameda, Calif., Wednesday, June 3, 2009. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Oakland Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell stretches during NFL football training camp in Alameda, Calif., Wednesday, June 3, 2009.(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Oakland Raiders first round pick Darrius Heyward-Bey goes through catching drills during NFL football training camp in Alameda, Calif., Wednesday, June 3, 2009.(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Look deep within your fan's soul, you feel the same way. The only time you're really outraged by anything off the field is when a rival program has a player who commits a felony and he doesn't get suspended for the game against your team. Otherwise you talk a big game about how you want your guys to be good citizens, but you'd much rather win a rivalry game than avoid every player being arrested for a weekend.

For example, Tennessee hasn't had a football player arrested in a year. But guess what, we lost seven games last season and our coach got fired. Most Tennessee fans would gladly send a half-dozen players to the local Knoxville precinct if it meant we were going to win a single national championship in the next decade. Much less two.

My point isn't to pile on the Gators, successful football teams always have an awful lot of arrests. Because guess what ... they can. Most college kids do whatever they can get away with. See enough of your gridiron compatriots back on the field after a booking, and you start to think you're bullet proof. Back when Colorado won the national championship in 1990, the Boulder police kept the football media guide on hand so they'd know who they were arresting. Seriously.

Almost 20 years later, nothing's changed.

Why? Because deep down none of us really care about the arrest records of our favorite teams. At least not anywhere near as much as we care about the won-loss record. Coaches like Meyer know this. It's why they pay lip service to the alums with their bogus top one percent of one percent lines. Coaches know if they say the right things publicly while shaking their heads every time a player gets arrested that fans will forgive them. And they're right.

I'm asking this question with all honesty, how many player arrests would it take for you to say, "You know, I don't think this championship is really worth it?"

I can't think of a school that has ever hit that number. Chances are you can't either. But, man, that team that beats your team all the time, boy, they sure are a bunch of thugs, right?

Admit It: You Don't Really Care About Football Players Being Arrested originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:02:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kansas State Set to Fight 'Secret Deal' Payments to Former Coach Prince

Terrance Harris — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Kansas State, Big 12, Campus

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.

"This deal was apparently constructed as a further supplement to the buyout provision contained in Prince's employment contract," associate athletic director Jim Epps said through a statement released by the university on Wednesday. "I do not know why any additional supplement was justified, or why Bob Krause concealed this agreement from everyone until it was inadvertently discovered last week."

Krause was reassigned in March as the director of the Kansas State Olathe Innovative Campus. He has since resigned. K-State president Jon Wefald, who is set to step down next month, said in a statement released Wednesday that he first learned of the secret deal May 11. He obviously believes the deal should be invalidated because Prince and his attorney worked around university attorneys to get the secret agreement done.

"After Jim Epps and I learned about the secret agreement, we spent several days explaining to Ron Prince and his agent why they should consider the agreement was null and void," Wefald said via a statement. "That failed. We believe that this secret agreement made between Bob Krause and Ron Prince's attorney is null and void and we will act accordingly."

Kansas State introduced John Currie as its new athletic director on Monday.

Kansas State Set to Fight 'Secret Deal' Payments to Former Coach Prince originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Wed, 20 May 2009 20:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EA, NCAA Lawsuit Could Be Huge

Clay Travis — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Campus, Fans, General CFB Insanity

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.

Here's the crux of the matter in four sentences: The NCAA prohibits players from being paid anything for their participation in collegiate athletics. Yet if the NCAA appropriated player likenesses on these video games then they must pay something of value to the players whose images they appropriated. Only then they'll be paying players for their participation in collegiate athletics. Yep, the NCAA will be violating NCAA rules on amateurism.

Let's unpack that further.

First, take a step back and explain what these video games do for people who don't play them. The NCAA video games seek to replicate the college game in as vivid of a fashion as they possibly can. As anyone who has ever played the game can testify, the reason you buy them is so you can play with your team and the players on your team. The player names are not used, but top players are identified by height, weight, jersey number, visible appearance -- skin color for example -- and, most importantly, talent. Fast and shifty running backs are fast and shifty, strong-armed quarterbacks can complete laser passes, dominant wide receivers are impossible to cover with only one defensive back. You get the picture. So does every college football player when they gather in their dorm rooms and at team facilities to play against each other. In fact, the games are so accurate that EA even designs training programs for college athletes to use for perfecting their own offense and to prepare for opponents.

The only fig-leaf for the protection of player amateurism is that the NCAA video games don't use the actual player names. But, as you can see, we all know who those players are. It's why we buy the games. Last week I wrote about how ludicrous sellings college jerseys is. Namely, that the universities and their sponsors make so much money off the players by not putting their names on the back. The NCAA collects the money for licensing the rights to the teams and the players, but the players get nothing. So they remain amateurs.

This is a false and hypocritical system that coincidentally benefits the NCAA.

Lots of attention has been focused on Sam Keller for filing this lawsuit. People have ridiculed his college career, even opined that the court filing will be intercepted on the way to the courthouse. But what all that mockery has missed is that Keller is just the tip of the player iceberg, the named plaintiff in a potential class-action lawsuit. How many players is that? Well, if this class-action suit is certified, Keller is seeking to include every player on every EA game that has had their image, number, and likeness used. Most media accounts have solely focused on the football game, but what's at stake here is every major NCAA athlete for the past decade or so in football and basketball.

So what happens, if Keller et. al. are right and the NCAA is appropriating the player likenesses to make more money than they otherwise would? Then the NCAA has violated their own rules of amateurism. Think the NCAA and their lawyers aren't extremely nervous about this suit? Think again.

Their legal options are limited. They'll fight the class-action certification and attempt to get the lawsuit dismissed via summary judgment. It's my legal opinion that they'll fail in both arguments. Typically, if the class-action lawsuit is certified and the lawsuit isn't dismissed, parties enter into a protracted litigation that takes years. But here's the deal, do the NCAA and EA really want to go through discovery when it can potentially reveal how much they conspired to create this game? Generally when they fear what might come out through discovery, settlement becomes the goal.

Only, say the NCAA and EA decide to pay out $20 million (this number is hypothetical, any sum would suffice) to settle this lawsuit. There are at least 10,000 or so players (85 scholarships multiplied by 119 top division schools) on every NCAA football game, at least 4,000 on every NCAA basketball game. Figure that your average player is being reproduced on four different games over the course of his career. EA's NCAA Football series, for example, began in 1998. So you're talking about 11 years worth of players being eligible for the class-action settlement in football alone. (Basketball is more complicated because there were competing games from different companies. But if I'd filed this class-action, I'd amend my complaint to include Take-Two Interactive and other companies that have signed licensing deals with the NCAA for basketball games.)

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Josh Halter is swarmed by family and friends after being named the drum major for The Ohio State University Marching Band in Columbus, Ohio, Tuesday, May 5, 2009. (Jeff Hinckley/Columbus Dispatch/MCT)

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Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, speaks to the media in Arlington, Va. on Tuesday, May 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Penn State football coach Joe Paterno speaks to reporters in Arlington, Va., on Tuesday, May 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, speaks to the media in Arlington, Va. on Tuesday, May 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Taylor Stokes wears his letter jacket on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., Friday, May 1, 2009. Stokes was the first black scholarship football player at Vanderbilt, and has returned 40 years later to finish his degree. He will graduate on May 8. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Taylor Stokes wears his letter jacket on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., Friday, May 1, 2009, in front of a statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the founder of the university. Stokes was the first black scholarship football player at Vanderbilt, and has returned 40 years later to finish his degree. He will graduate on May 8. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner and Bowl Championship Series coordinator John Swofford, left, and West Mountain Conference Commissioner Craig Thompson, right, are sworn in before giving their testimony before the House Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing on the football Bowl Championship Series on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, May 1, 2009. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner and Bowl Championship Series coordinator John Swofford, left, testifies before the House Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing on the football Bowl Championship Series on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, May 1, 2009. Also testifying on the panel are, from left, West Mountain Conference Commissioner Craig Thompson, President and CEO of Valero Alamo Bowl Derrick Fox and Boise State Athletic Director Gene Bleymaier. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Boise State Athletic Director Gene Bleymaier, right, testifies before the House Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing on the football Bowl Championship Series on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, May 1, 2009. Also testifying on the panel are, from left, Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner and Bowl Championship Series coordinator John Swofford, West Mountain Conference Commissioner Craig Thompson, and President and CEO of Valero Alamo Bowl Derrick Fox. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner and Bowl Championship Series coordinator John Swofford testifies testifies before the House Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing on the football Bowl Championship Series on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, May 1, 2009. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

But, as we've stated, the NCAA forbids the use of player images for commercial gain. So current players would have a settlement from the NCAA that they couldn't accept if they wanted to remain eligible under NCAA rules.

Even if the payments went to the players after they graduated, they'd be retroactively rewarded for their play. That, too, is still illegal, because they're being paid for something they did while playing the collegiate sport. What's the end result? If the NCAA follows their procedures, the entire NCAA record book for the past 11 years would have to be wiped clean because every player featured on the video games accepted improper benefits.

You want to go even further down the rabbit hole? How about the NCAA being forced to investigate the NCAA for violating NCAA rules? How delicious would college coaches find this? Fans? Everyone who has ever thought that the NCAA rules on amateurism didn't make a lick of sense?

So I don't think the NCAA and EA can settle and I don't think this case will get dismissed. Meaning gird up for an interesting ride on the class-action express. After all the outrage provoked by their policies over the years, wouldn't it be the ultimate dose of irony if being greedy over a video game upset the NCAA apple cart? If the NCAA itself became the most egregious violator of NCAA amateurism rules?

That's why this case matters. A ton. Even if no one is yet taking note.

EA, NCAA Lawsuit Could Be Huge originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Tue, 12 May 2009 16:00:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NCAA Combines Impotent Investigations Into USC

Chas Rich — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:06:00 EST

Filed under: USC, Pac 10, Campus

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.
Both Bush and Mayo have denied any of the allegations and claimed innocence. At the same time, neither has been willing to speak to NCAA investigators. Both had already left USC for professional leagues, so the NCAA has had no authority to compel them to cooperate with the investigation.

Bush is accused of accepting thousands in cash and his family for failing to pay rent on a home owned by a fledgling marketer while he was playing for USC in 2004 and 2005. Mayo is accused of accepting cash and other benefits from a middleman representing a sports agency before and during the one season he played for the Trojans in 2007-08.

The allegations against Mayo were made by Louis Johnson, a former associate of Mayo and Rodney Guillory, who Johnson says received more than $200,000 in cash and gifts from a representative of the Northern California-based BDA Sports Management agency, funneling some of it -- including a flat-screen television, meals, clothes and other gifts -- to the player.

Despite the documentation supplied by Johnson in the Mayo matter and the court case filed by the marketers against Bush, the NCAA has been unable to do much. They have not been able to show any link to the USC football or basketball program.

Both programs have denied any wrongdoing and responsibility. USC athletic director Mike Garrett, football coach Pete Carroll, and basketball coach Tim Floyd have all claimed to have known nothing about what happened or how.

Presumably the combined investigations would be into whether the USC athletic department lacks institutional control. That these were not isolated incidents of rouge players, but that the USC athletic program turns a willful blind-eye and at least passively permits the access and violations.

Proving it in separate cases has been fruitless. Other than saving some costs in a combined investigation, it does not seem like the NCAA will get much further.

NCAA Combines Impotent Investigations Into USC originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:06:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gophers May Lose Decker to Baseball

Bruce Ciskie — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:30:00 EST

Filed under: Minnesota, Big 10, Campus

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.

Decker was drafted in the 38th round by the Brewers in 2008, but decided to return to school for his junior year. If he goes higher in this June's draft, there's a chance he'll play baseball.

"There's a greater chance of me coming back (to play football) for sure than me leaving," said Decker, who is batting .326. "When that day comes, I'm going to have to make a decision. I don't want to make a decision, but I have to. That will be something I will make with my family and people close to me. I'm getting some good advice, and I have good people around me, so I'll be fine when the time comes."

There may be no need at all for alarm. After all, Decker himself says there's a good chance he'll stay with the football team.

His baseball coach, John Anderson, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that Decker's stock has greatly improved since last year's draft. Decker is left-handed, athletic, and he can hit.

There are plenty of hooks to keep Decker in football. He has the size and speed to be a solid NFL prospect. He can catch the football, is a good leader on this Gopher team, and he knows the team has a chance to make some noise in 2009.

Oh, and there's that new stadium being built on campus. It would certainly be special for Decker - from Cold Spring, Minn. - to help open the new facility that is being billed as a difference-maker for this program.

It's the kind of stuff you can't manufacture in minor-league baseball.

Gophers May Lose Decker to Baseball originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:30:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New Minnesota Gophers Football Stadium Coming Along Nicely

Bruce Ciskie — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:05:00 EST

Filed under: Minnesota, Big 10, Campus, General CFB Insanity

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.

I was in the Twin Cities over the weekend to attend some college hockey games at nearby Mariucci Arena. It's the first time I've been on the Minnesota campus since last March, when TCF Bank Stadium was nothing but a bunch of beams and hadn't taken any kind of shape.

Driving up to it, you can see the seating bowl taking shape. The plan is for the stadium to seat 50,000 at first, but it's being built in a fashion that makes it expandable, should the Gopher program ever attract enough interest to justify an expansion.

I know there is genuine excitement among Gopher fans for the opening of the stadium, but it's hard to tell if they are thrilled to have an on-campus stadium, or if they're just happy to get out of the cavernous and downright ugly Metrodome.

You can see the large press box and suites being built on the south side of the stadium. This is a very impressive-looking structure from any angle.

One major issue the university has to deal with is parking and traffic. Crowds of around 10,000 showed up at Mariucci for the games between Minnesota and Minnesota-Duluth. Even with crowds one-fifth the size of a capacity crowd for a football game, many people had to park several blocks from the arena, and it took nearly a half hour to navigate the nine blocks from our parking space to Interstate 35W.

It might not sound like a big deal, but imagine what will happen when that crowd of 10,000 becomes 45,000 or 50,000.

This will be a new era for the Gophers. A program that has for over 20 years had a poor off-campus facility to use as an excuse for poor recruiting no longer has that crutch. Instead, coach Tim Brewster has a state-of-the-art field to showcase to his kids. Beginning in September, recruiting will no longer involve artist's renderings and virtual tours.

New Minnesota Gophers Football Stadium Coming Along Nicely originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:05:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lane Kiffin Rips Shirts to Help Recruit

Will Brinson — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:35:00 EST

Filed under: Tennessee, SEC, Campus, Coaching, Media Watch, Recruiting, Rumors, General CFB Insanity

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.

"That coach said they get real fired up on special teams and yelled for everybody to 'Get up, get on your feet, and get fired up about special teams.' Then this other coach ripped off his shirt Superman style. It was crazy."

Many in the crowd weren't sure how to react. "The coaches told us to stand up, but nobody really knew what to do. We started clapping, sort of like one of those 'Ah, this feels awkward' kind of things," Volger said.

At this point, apparently the coaches all left and started beating down the doors to the room after dimming the lights (I couldn't make this up if I tried) and when the doors finally opened, "three or four" coaches came running in with their shirts ripped, followed by "around 10" Tennessee players who proceeded to form an impromptu moshpit in the middle of the room.

They were soon joined by the recruits who, apparently, thought this was cool. And maybe it was; but if you're Lane Kiffin and you're going to accuse Urban Meyer of recruiting violations, the least you could do is probably make sure that stories about you having your coaching staff skin up aren't leaking to the media at large.

Lane Kiffin Rips Shirts to Help Recruit originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:35:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alabama Engages in Expansion

Chas Rich — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:34:00 EST

Filed under: Alabama, SEC, Campus

Proving that some programs are simply recession-proof, Alabama has announced another expansion of Bryant-Denny Stadium. This expansion will raise the capacity from 92,138 to about 101,000, making it the second largest stadium in the SEC. The only on-campus stadiums that can hold more people are Ohio Stadium (102,329), Tennessee's Neyland Stadium (104,079), Penn State's Beaver Stadium (107,282) and Michigan Stadium (107,501).

This is the third expansion of Bryant-Denny in the past twelve years. The cost is expected to be nearly $81 million. It should be completed for the start of the 2010 season, with Penn State visiting.
Alabama's athletic director stated that the Crimson Tide have a 12,000-deep waiting list with an estimated demand for 35,000 tickets. The demand has skyrocketed since the hiring of Nick Saban as head coach. The performance by the team this past year only reinforced the decision to pursue expansion.

Even before the Alabama Board of Trustees gave their official rubber stamp to the decision, construction activity was already underway. The City of Tuscaloosa had closed off Paul Bryant Drive to redo the water and sewer lines for increased capacity of over 9000 more people using the restrooms.

The new expansion will be in the south endzone for 8000 upper deck seats, 1700 South club seats and 36 new sky boxes. Just for good measure two additional corner video scoreboards will be added. Alabama plans to raise the money through private donations and bonds based on the expected added revenue from the additional seating. The school will be taking in money in advance to reserve the right to purchase the luxury boxes.

Alabama Engages in Expansion originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:34:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Preston Parker Allegedly Falls Asleep in Drive-Thru, Gets DUI Charge

Will Brinson — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:45:00 EST

Filed under: Florida State, ACC, Campus, Fans, Police Blotter, General CFB Insanity

Update: Parker was dismissed by Florida State Monday. Apparently Bobby Bowden's getting tougher in his old age: Nowadays you only get three strikes before you're kicked off the Seminoles roster.

Earlier: There's been a disturbing trend of athletes/people falling asleep in the cars after getting drunk ... while driving. Preston Parker, a Florida State wide receiver, is the latest "victim" of the trend, and most embarrassingly, he was in the McDonald's drive-thru when he got busted.

According to police, Parker had fallen asleep with his car's engine running and the transmission in drive. When he woke up, according to police, an officer smelled alcohol on his breath.

Parker, 21, needed to lean against his car to find balance, struggled through a field sobriety test and admitted that he had smoked marijuana either Friday night or early Saturday morning, police said.

Oddly, Parker still "passed" a breathalyzer test, registering only a .054, which is below the Florida legal limit (even though he failed a field test; I assume this is the grounds for the DUI).

Even more oddly, he told police he smoked the potweed! You just don't ever do that, even if you receive a "presumptive positive" for a marijuana test ... or whatever that result might be called .... your honor.

Preston Parker Allegedly Falls Asleep in Drive-Thru, Gets DUI Charge originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:45:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Preston Parker Allegedly Falls Asleep in Drive-Thru, Gets DUI Charge