NCAA Football missouri Tigers

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

There's an unnerving, repetitive theme to the first four items in this week's FanHouse Walk -- lawyers. Maybe its just the offseason or an odd week, but they seem to be everywhere related to college football right now. Today's headliner finds Florida's Attorney General Bill McCollum threatening the NCAA and its president Myles Brand with a $1,000 fine or even jail time if it doesn't make public documents related to its confidential investigation into Florida State athletics.

College Football Spring Storylines 2009 looks at the key developments and big news from spring ball.

The Big 12 stood up and challenged the SEC for the title of One Conference to Rule Them All in 2008. They didn't exactly succeed, but the conference gave us a lot of great football last season.

However, that was then and this is now. The postseason was not entirely successful for the conference, with a 4-3 overall record in bowl games. How will that carry over into this fall? Who's on the rise? Who's hitting the skids? We'll talk about the big stories after the jump.

You would think with the success of Missouri in the last couple years, the Tigers would really start to see more dividends in recruiting. Instead Mizzou has not had it that much easier. Even with the in-state talent.

Despite being the only 1A program in the state, it took until December for the state's top player, defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson, to give a soft verbal to the Tigers. Even then, he still seemed intrigued with heading to Miami. The last weekend of January saw him take a recruiting visit down south.

Today, however, the state's top player and one of the best defensive tackles in the country signed with the home state team. Missouri gets a 6' 4" and nearly 300 pounds beast, that will very likely rise in the Tigers two-deep with the graduation of Ziggy Hood.

FanHouse takes you into the belly of the college football beast that is recruiting. We'll be around before, during and after Signing Day '09.

When the NCAA football season ends, the NFL draft really starts heating up -- Beanie Wells declared today that he was peacing out on life as a Buckeye and going to collect cash as a pro. Yesterday it was rumored that Sam Bradford would be leaving school early as well. Now, the same people (NFP) that claimed Bradford was gone are reporting that Michael Crabtree and Jeremy Maclin, wide receivers from Texas Tech and Missouri, respectively, will be entering the NFL Draft as well.

Trusted sources close to the National Football Post have just informed me that Texas Tech wide receiver Michael Crabtree, Ohio State running back Beanie Wells and Missouri wide receiver Jeremy Maclin all intend to declare for the 2009 NFL Draft in the very near future.

Now, as you can see, they were correct on Beanie Wells bouncing early. Given that information, I'm going to refrain from using a similar (and somewhat sarcastic) analogy to the one I inked yesterday about their Bradford claim.

Instead, I'm going to point out that both Crabtree and Maclin would be expected top 10-15 selections in the NFL Draft, and now is a pretty good time for them to consider becoming financially set for the rest of their lives.

FanHouse gathers around the TV to bring you insights from Bowl Season '08.

Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel has had a wonderful career, but tonight was not his night telling a sideline reporter "my teammates had to win this game in spite of me". Harsh but spot on, as heavily favored Missouri weathered Daniel's three interceptions in gutting out an overtime victory against Northwestern, 30 to 23.

Daniel's line was brutal, completing 27 of 44 passes for just 200 yards and a pair of touchdowns against three interceptions. His accuracy was off all evening, perhaps due to a tremendous defensive effort by Northwestern that held Missouri to just 311 yards, perhaps due to shocking last game jitters. Daniel did gather himself late, completing 5 of 8 passes for 42 yards including the game-winning overtime touchdown pass to teammate Jeremy Maclin.

Northwestern badly outplayed Missouri throughout the game, but was damned by a missed extra point and Maclin's electrifying punt return touchdown just before halftime that evened the game at 10-all.

Turkey Legs to Go is FanHouse's complete travel guide for all of the 2008-2009 college bowl games. Here, we cover the Alamo Bowl (San Antonio, Texas), which pits Northwestern against Missouri.

Overview / Matchup: The Alamo is another example (like the PJ Bowl) of a lower end second tier bowl that lucked out with a pretty beasty matchup; Northwestern and Missouri both finished in the top 25 for the season. And while Northwestern might be a touch overmatched on offense (Chase Daniel is straight sick, son), Mizzou isn't known for stopping anyone. So, at the very least, you can expect a pretty explosive shootout. Which works well given the historical nature of the San Antonio venue.

Hotels: The Marriott Rivercenter is probably the finest hotel in San Antonio and is definitely the most recognizable. The hotel's imposing step-back design and 38-story towers dominate the San Antonio skyline. The Sheraton Gunter Hotel is slightly pricier than our usual midrange suggestion; nevertheless it's the best overall balancing luxury, with cost and stadium proximity. The Red Roof Inn Downtown offers meager accommodations, but more than makes up for it with rooms less than US$100 a night and a location just blocks from the stadium and Riverwalk.

It's the final evening for the final night of college football before all the bowls. Naturally we couldn't resist one last chat.

It's time for the latest in the "Game of the Year" games. The BCS is not something I like. I'm not even going to start that debate. What I will say is that it does have the feel of semi-final games, with the SEC Championship and Big 12 Championship games.

There are and were a few other games of note. The Conference-USA and ACC had their championship games. There are the 1-AA playoffs. The Pac-10 and Big East even had a few season-ending games just for fun.

So join us around 6 pm EST for plenty to discuss.

The Big 12 has used a North Division-South Division format and played a football championship game since 1996. In 10 of the 12 previous editions of the Big 12 Championship, one of the two teams involved has been ranked in the top five of the Associated Press poll that preceded the game.

In those 10 instances, the top-five team is only 5-5, and there have been a couple notable upsets.

In 1996, an unranked Texas team took down second-ranked Nebraska 37-27 in St. Louis.

In 1998, it was tenth-ranked Texas A&M shocking second-ranked Kansas State 36-33 in double-overtime.

2001 saw Colorado, rated ninth, edging third-ranked Texas 39-37. Then, most notably perhaps, Kansas State blew out top-ranked Oklahoma 35-7 in 2003.

Last year, Missouri fell out of the top spot in the polls after a blowout loss to ninth-ranked Oklahoma.

Can Missouri return the favor this year, and knock Oklahoma out of a spot in the BCS title game?

Turns out Texas Tech's Graham Harrell isn't the only one who has a messed-up non-throwing hand.

Oklahoma has announced that quarterback Sam Bradford has torn ligaments in his left hand and will require surgery. Bradford played the second half of Saturday's win at Oklahoma State with the injury. As a result, he only took one snap from under center, otherwise operating from the shotgun.

Head coach Bob Stoops says Bradford will wear a soft cast for this weekend's Big 12 Championship against Missouri, but should be just fine to play.

Bradford will then have his surgery next week, with the prognosis good for him to be at full strength in advance of the Sooners' bowl game (or the BCS title game, whatever).

If you watched the second half of the Oklahoma State game, you probably couldn't tell he was hurt. Bradford did drop a couple of snaps, but he was his usual insanely accurate self throwing the ball, and OU topped 60 points one more time in an amazing offensive season.

And as Shane Bacon pointed out earlier, a win Saturday likely sends Oklahoma to the title game against the SEC champion.

Challenge extended, Oklahoma-Oklahoma State. All eyes are on Stillwater for tonight's gigantic Sooner State showdown, but man oh man, did Kansas and Missouri turn in a spectacular opening act.

For a bit, the Jayhawks looked like they would simply stuff Missouri's powerful offense - opening up a 19-7 first-half lead using some stout defense. But those who have followed the Big 12 all year knew the offenses would eventually start cooking and did they ever. When all was said and done, Kansas had a thrilling 40-37 upset win.

After KU pushed out to a 26-10 lead early in the third quarter, Mizzou finally started cooking with the help of burner Jeremy Maclin and tight end Chase Coffman, who was fighting injury.

Oh right, and Chase Daniel too. The Tigers QB, en route to a four-TD day, hit Maclin, Tommy Saunders and then Coffman for scores - giving Missouri a 30-26 lead.

But the teams were just getting started.