NCAA Football Sun Belt

Every week 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.

U've Been Bad -- It seemed dormant for a while with the mediocrity coming from Tallahassee and Coral Gables, but perhaps rivalry football in Florida is back. A University of Miami commit was kicked out of a Florida-run football camp last week for supposedly flashing Miami's famous "The U" hand signal after several drills. Its unraveled into a he-said he-said drama concerning Florida's handling of his alleged actions, and his right as a paying participant.

In all honesty, this story shouldn't be viewed as one of sadness, anger, bitterness, or back-stabbing.

Instead, it should serve as a cautionary tale. After all, the pressures and rigors involved with big-time college football aren't for anyone. As offensive coordinator Tony Franklin learned last year at Auburn, it certainly isn't for him.

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.

You Can't Be Bad All of the Time -- First-year Tennessee football coach Lane Kiffin has built up a tremendous amount of antagonism this offseason. There's nobody to blame but himself, of course, but sometimes you have to give the Devil his due. For all his transgressions, try not to read too much into the story that Tennessee has been witness to 11 player departures. Wherever possible in college athletics, you want to look out for the best interest of the athletes but healthy, successful coaching transitions at big-time football programs almost require a good dose of roster turnover. Whether he's handled it right is up for debate but the raw numbers themselves should not be an indictment of Kiffin.

You have to hand it to Howard Schnellenberger -- he may be really, really old but he also is really, really good at winning bowl games. We're talking historic good. In defeating Central Michigan to capture the bailout-free Motor City Bowl, the wannabe Captain Kangaroo pushed his bowl record to 6-0.

No, it didn't come with a national championship as happened with Miami in the 1983 Orange Bowl, a 31-30 classic over Nebraska. However, it did come with the sweet feeling of restoration as this moustachioed legend guided awkward sounding football novice Florida Atlantic to its second bowl victory in four years of D-I play. For reference, Notre Dame's second most recent bowl victory prior to this week's triumph over Hawaii was in January 1993.

Last night's victory came about with a little good luck and some questionable decisions by CMU.

Turkey Legs to Go is FanHouse's complete travel guide for all of the 2008-2009 college bowl games. Here, we cover the New Orleans Bowl (New Orleans, Louisiana), which pits Troy against Southern Miss.

Overview / Matchup: Southern Mississippi, Brett Favre's alma mater, will have a short drive to the game; Troy, which won the Sun Belt with a win over Arkansas State in the league's championship game, won't have much further to go from in its campus in southern Alabama. The two teams meet down in the Byaou on Christmas Eve.

Hotels: The stadium is close enough to the center of New Orleans that you could stay anywhere in the French Quarter or central downtown and only be a short cab ride away. The Omni Royal Orleans Hotel features a rooftop pool that's open year round. Even if you're not much of a swimmer, the views are worth a trip topside. The Hilton New Orleans Riverside is located just across from the Harrah's and the Riverwalk Festival Marketplace. It offers the best all around value for bowl travelers. Budget-minded fans should consider the Chateau Dupre French Quarter. The Chateau has nice accommodations for the price and is adjacent to the House of Blues.

Restaurants: Our only advice about visiting New Orleans... eat, eat and eat some more. New Orleans is one of the only cities in America with a truly unique blend of cultures and cuisines you can't find anywhere else in the world. Bon Ton Café serves great Creole food, specifically crab, crawfish, redfish and bread pudding.

My colleague, Chris Burke, noted Penn State's struggles in the first half against Indiana coming off their loss to Iowa. If LSU was merely struggling with Troy after last week's gut-wrenching loss to Alabama it would be a similar hangover.

It is nothing like that. At halftime, Troy has a 24-3 lead over LSU in Tiger Stadium. This game was originally supposed to be played back in September but was postponed because of Hurricane Gustav. Apparently the Tigers weren't told of the new day because LSU has simply been a no-show for this game.

The Tiger offense has 63 yards and the defense has allowed Troy to throw for over 200 yards in the first half. The Trojans also intercepted a Jarrett Lee pass (who hasn't this season) and returned it for a touchdown.

LSU still has a whole 30 minutes to pull out a win. They have the far superior talent. The questions are: did they dig too big a hole and do they have those cliched intangibles to actually do it?

With North Texas off to their worst start in school history, 0-8, one thing is very clear. No one on that team is taking steroids. However, the Mean Green (HA!) are taking drugs at what seems to be an alarming rate.

North Texas coach Todd Dodge has acknowledged that 15 of his players tested positive for "street drugs" this season...The 15 players have apparently not been suspended, but they have been placed on university probation for one year and forced to attend drug and alcohol counseling. The players will continue to be tested, and additional positive tests could cause a player to be placed in a rehabilitation program. The players would reportedly not be kicked out of school or off the team until a fourth violation, in accordance with university policy.

"The NCAA tests for performance enhancing drugs," Dodge said. "We test for performance 'de-hancing' drugs. The stuff that we tested for is not performance or life enhancing. ... As long as I am the head coach here, we will continue to test."

There is a serious lack of commitment at North Texas. They've adapted to the rock star lifestyle without, you know, actually being rock stars. It's real easy, guys. You've got it all backwards. You take the performance enhancing drugs now, impress people, THEN the mind altering drugs later. That way you can draw on the sympathy of the American public when you tell them you needed the illegal drugs to numb the pain from taking the performance enhancing drugs.

The price will keep going up for guarantee games as the Sun Belt Conference starts pulling teams off the market.

Florida Atlantic received $900,000 to open the season at Texas, its biggest payday ever.

Florida International turned down an offer of $1.2 million to play at an SEC team next year.

And Sun Belt Commissioner Wright Waters told the conference's athletic directors not to even consider an offer to play a road game against a BCS conference team for less than $1 million.

"A million is cheap to those guys," Waters said. "They ought to be paying us $2 million."

Increasingly, the only way to get a couple home games with a 1-A patsy at an affordable price is to either cut a full conference deal like the Big Ten did with the MAC or teams are going to have to swallow hard and accept a 2-for-1 deal.

In an ideal world, this would encourage more teams to actually schedule more games against better teams and do home-and-homes. Sadly, the reality will be even more 1-AA opponents put on the schedule since they are cheaper.

Well at least UNC-Charlotte will join the patsy ranks. Perhaps sometime in 2013.

The Arkansas State Red Wolves are off to a pretty good start. In their season opener they upset Texas A&M at Kyle Field, and they routed Texas Southern last weekend to improve to 2-0 on the season. It's because of this that Red Wolves fever is breaking out all over the state of Arkansas (may not actually be true, could just be the clap), but that fever could put one man out of business.

Hoppy Hoffman, who has one of the greatest names ever, also owns a store called The Design Shoppe in Jonesboro Arkansas, and he was running a promotion this season. For every Red Wolves victory in a home game, Hoffman would take 1% off of the price for Arkansas State apparel for every point the team won by on the following Monday. If they win by 10 points, fans get 10% off.

Unfortunately for Hoffman, he had no idea that Arkansas State was going to be beating Texas Southern by 73 points on Saturday.

"It got crazy. We opened at 9:30. The people who probably got in line by 10 checked out about 1:30," he said. "When the door opened at 9:30, I know at least 200 people filed in. It was hilarious. ... It looked like they were waiting to buy rock concert tickets.

"I think I'm going to go to practice one day and have a chat with my team," Hoffman said. "Beat 'em, but don't run it up on me that bad any more."

Hoppy then asked the reporter for $20 so he could afford dinner and a cab ride home. No news on whether the reporter gave it to him.

When last we heard from rap impresario Josh Jarboe, he was being dismissed from the Oklahoma football team for having bad timing, questionable rapping skills, and a moron of a friend who posted the rap video on YouTube. Fine, Oklahoma felt they took a chance on the kid after an arrest for having a firearm. He showed more bad judgment in rapping about more firearms and using foul language, embarrassing the school and football program. Okay, time for everyone to move on.

Well, Jarboe did. He decided to go play for Troy in the Sun Belt Conference. Closer to home. Less attention. In a way, it makes sense as Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops in the announcement that Jarboe was dismissed from the football team said, "We hope he can move forward in a positive manner."

Probably not a bad idea. Of course, Oklahoma isn't making it that easy.

According to Troy coach Larry Blakeney, Trojans wide receiver Josh Jarboe currently is not eligible to play this season after transferring from Oklahoma earlier this week.

Because OU told Troy officials that they didn't refuse him admission for the fall, Blakeney said, Jarboe is now being treated as a transfer student by the NCAA, with this season being his sit-out year.

Nice. Technically the NCAA rules are the problem, and Troy is appealing to the NCAA. After all,the NCAA is so reasonable about these things.

Still Oklahoma doesn't seem too interested in making it easy for Jarboe to "move forward in a positive manner." They dismissed him from the team -- which means losing the scholarship -- but also says since he was admitted, he is a transfer.

Again, he was dismissed from the football team. He didn't quit the team. No scholarship. Left Oklahoma before the fall semester as expected. So, now he's a transfer. Kafka sends his regards.