The ESPN/USA Today coaches preseason bowl came out and there’s no surprise with Oklahoma notched at number 1.  That happened a couple of years ago and they lost their first game.  Yup, it doesn’t matter who’s where right now, but what matters is that it’s the horn blasting the announcement that the college football season is ramping up for real now.  Another thing to note, the Big 12/0  has half of their teams in the Top 25.  Usually they have 6 but since a couple of teams left, they can only muster 5.  Fair enough, on to this week’s Crib Sheet:

• Bubba Starling is doing his best impersonation of The Bachelorette with the Kansas City Royals and Nebraska Cornhuskers.  He hasn’t decided yet and because of that, he’s yet to practice on the field.  I figured Bo Pelini would be the hard ass kind of guy he is and kick the kid out for not practicing.
• Notre Dame wide receiver Michael Floyd is now back with the team after his suspension due to his arrest from a DUI earlier this year.  He’s been in trouble before, too.  This is a clear sign that Notre Dame wants to compete on the field and not just produce quality people from the school.  I’m torn on this.  On one hand I like to see them win, but on the other hand it’s pretty ridiculous to give a screw multiple chances.  We’ll find out of it pays off later this season.
• A man fell to death while working on Bill Snyder Family Stadium last week.  Our condolences goes out to his friends and family.
• It seems that Ohio State players have been wearing ‘JT’ wristbands in support of fired coach Jim Tressel.  It seems now school officials are asking the kids to giving them back.  This is more indication of a lack of institutional control than anything else.  Tressel was thrown under the bus and the school administration is still bumbling around.
• The Humanitarian Bowl is no more.  It is now The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.  Finally, spuds are getting the proper respect they deserve.  I can’t wait for the day that I start out with the The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, move on to the Corn Cob Bowl,  snack on some T-Bone Steak Bowl, then finish with a nice Tres Leches Bowl.  That’s a tasty day of football!
• The Big 10 will move to a 9 team conference schedule in 2017.  It’s a move they needed to do with the addition of Nebraska.  You can’t get away with finding out who’s best when you only play 2/3 of the conference.
• LSU assistant coach Steve Kragthorpe announced that he has Parkinson’s disease and will be unloading his responsibilities on the staff.  He’s not quitting, he just won’t be calling the plays.  He stopped coaching for a bit a couple of  years ago because his wife had multiple sclerosis.  Man what a rough ride that family is going through.  I hope things get better for them soon.
• It seems now fired North Carolina coach Butch Davis offered his son, Drew a scholarship.  Nobody else knew about that.  It’s a good thing that the school avoided a Dan Hawkins situation.  What’s funny is that chancellor Holden Thorp broke NCAA rules by talking about an unsigned recruit.  It’s a gallery of fools over there.
• Kansas head coach Turner Gill has banned the Twitters.  It’s kind of weird that they let the AJ and DP show to continue yet they are killing the tweets.  It’s hard for a school to stay on top of things but Kansas needs to be more consistent when handling social media.
• Malcolm Williams, Texas wide receiver, left the team to deal with family issues.  This knocks down the core even more this season and it may force the Longhorns to lean on the run more.
• Cops in Opelika, Alabama duped some deadbeat parents into showing up for free Iron Bowl tickets.  The result?  The deadbeats got pinched for unpaid child support.  Wah wah wahhhhhh.
• Speaking of Alabama, Nick Saban is so ticked off at the media for reporting on the rumors of the internet, that he threatened to log onto message board sites and post fake information to jack with them.  I love the idea and I’m wondering if some of these coaches haven’t done it already.  It’s a perfect ruse to fake out not only the media but the opposition.
• Kellis Robinett has an interesting article about the status of Kansas State’s defensive line.  They had the Big 12’s worst average for run defense last year.  Any kind of improvement would help the Wildcats.
• Joe Paterno got blind sided at practice and walked away with a hairline hip fracture.  The Penn State head coach is just too damn resilient.  I wonder if he drinks alot of 5 Hour Energy Drink.
• NCAA president Mark Emmert took some college official buddies on a retreat last week to discuss important issues and stuff.  What I think really happened was a raging float drip that ended up with a dozen beads given out and an empty sack of slapped around Franzia.  The hangover led to the call for more funding for scholarships.
• USA Today had a piece about an obvious stream of revenue: beer.  You know back when I was in school, it was banned from within the stadium and you had to sneak your beers on the parking lot.  There were even rumors that the school used to allow kegs IN the stadium.  Granted it was Kansas State and in the 80s, but to go from that to banned to possibly allowed again makes me just a little bit dizzy.
• Oklahoma lost Travis Lewis due to a broken foot.  He was the main dude on defense at middle linebacker.  He’ll be out about 8 weeks, so they may be in trouble against Florida State and Missouri.  My guess is number 1 will go down soon.
• Much like what they did in limiting full contact practices, now the Ivy League is telling officials to target head to head hits.  The Ivy League is leading the charge in protecting our nation’s geniuses’ noggins.
• So on one hand, you have coaches banning Twitter and Facebook.  On the other, you have coaches getting on these sites to recruit the kids.  Seems kind of lame to me, no matter how hard it is compliance wise, to encourage the use of social media to bring in kids and then lock it down once you snatch them.  Coaches are fumbling this one away.
• Former presidential hopeful Ralph Nader is going after college football.  Playoffs, right?  Nope, he wants to gut the whole thing.  Nader relaunched the heroic sounding League of Fans to make it fair for athletes and fans across the world.  You know he ran for president five times, right?  I’m not sure how far this one will go.