This week’s drama is Miami and the Ponzi schemed Nevin Shapiro who was making it rain all over the place. Among the accused, two new Alabama assistant coaches, a former Husker, newly minted K-Stater’s Bryce and Arthur Brown, Missouri head basketball coach Frank Haith, and 15 current Miami players. This summer has been brutal for college football on the public relations side. It’s been all about the money and breaking the rules. It’s like NASCAR. Or worse yet, baseball. Winds of change will be blowing real quick. Maybe it means the players will finally get paid. On to the Crib Sheet: Continue reading Crib Sheet: Winds Of Change (Pocket) Blowing In Miami →
Halloween is Sunday and we are cooking up various items around the place with pumpkin in them. The roasted pumpkin seeds with cinamon and nutmeg were awesome but so where the pumpkin muffins. Grab your favorite pumpkin related food and check out this week’s Crib Sheet:
Continue reading Crib Sheet: Nice With Pumpkin Spice →
So I just found out today that I have at least 2 more road trips to go this year for the KCCGD crew. This year has been by far the most travelled and will be the most Stadiumspotted. It’s a nice change of pace from the last couple of years as we have begun to run out of new and cool places to Barspot. One of the new road trips just happens to be tomorrow night. Tune in tomorrow to find out here, but you won’t have to think hard if you want to guess. In the meantime, let’s catch up to the news items in this week’s Crib Sheet:
- Coach Mark Dantonio of Michigan State had his health issues and that apparently inspired a fan to postpone surgery to watch the battle for Paul Bunyan’s Trophy last Saturday. Major Hester put off getting a pacemaker installed to watch the battle. Okay, that’s hardcore. I would pick life over college football, but it would be close.
- Looks like the move to the Big 10 will support a stadium expansion for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. The newly approved plan will cost about $56 million and put the capacity at around 90,000 seats. How much do you want to bet that they will try to build Memorial Stadium up to be bigger than the Big House?
- Meanwhile, the Rose Bowl has expansion plans of its own. The $152 million expansion will keep the lease going with the bowl through 2043. They have an upcoming BCS National Championship Game so they need to spruce things up a bit.
- But while the two stadiums have expansion competition going, the locker room just got better for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Ndamukong Suh donated about $2 million and as part of that, the players get iPads installed in the locker room. Man they need to put that in the toilet, not the locker. You’re not going to get much use out in the open with those things.
- Baylor receivers Willie Jefferson and Josh Gordon got busted with pot after they were found passed out in a Taco Bell drive through. The whole 4th meal thingy from the Bell targets potheads anyway so it was a no brainer that these guys were found with weed. They’ll more than likely miss a couple of games.
- Neither of those two were involved last week in one of the shortest kick returns in history. Texas Tech hit an onside and it didn’t go 10 yards. Terrance Ganaway nabbed it and ran 38 yards for a touchdown. It wasn’t the shortest, but it was awesome to see the special teams fail on the Red Raiders.
- Don’t dump on Texas Tech too much though, they are getting kick ass camouflage uniforms for a game against Missouri in November. Any kind of camo works for us as we miss the old Army ones. If you want to dump on uniforms, check out Texas A&M’s refresh. It’s almost exactly the same. Yawn City.
- Floida quarterback John Brantly played with broken ribs and thumb against LSU last Saturday. That’s pretty tough, especially for a quarterback. You know what’s tougher? Virginia Tech offensive lineman Greg Nosal didn’t realize he lost the tip of his pinky in his glove and continued to play the game until it was out of reach. His pinky tip was on ice and was reattached after the game. Football is tough, real tough.
- This bit of news is confusing so bear with me on this. A former agent said an agent friend of his, Gary Wichard, used ESPN’s Mel Kiper, Jr. to recruit college players. Kiper’s released statement says he talked to players by going through agents. I’m having a hard time finding where the fault is. I think it’s the fact that agents are pushing players to Kiper and his Big Board. But I don’t know it’s players after college or during. This does smell fishy.
- College football is cyclical. Power programs come and go and the traditional ones always swing around back into power. Much like the seasons, power programs have summers and winters. For Penn State’s winters, that also includes the usual cries for Joe Paterno to retire. This guy is going to die on the field, in anything to fulfill my prediction. He’s not going to retire and Penn State will be good in a couple of years.
The only other thing this week’s Crib Sheet needs is bacon. Grab some and check it out:
- Notre Dame’s Dayne Crist played the rest of the first drive of the game against Michigan with blurred vision out of his right eye. It was just enough blurry vision to keep him out of the rest of the first half. It was a great game and we wonder what the score would be like if he was healthy for the whole game.
- The Heisman Trust will leave Reggie Bush’s recently forfeited trophy vacated. It was the 0nly thing to do. We wonder how many other Heisman winners will give up the trophy because of money they took?
- Oh by the way, speaking of illegibility, Texas tailback Vondrell McGee is out for the rest of the year due to academic illegibility.
- If it will ever happen, Liberty Mutual will give $1 million to a charity for a penalty free college football game. The last time it’s happened was way back in 1986. Not a bad bit of promotion juice for an insurance company.
- Much like Wrigley Field of baseball, the Big House will get permanent lights for night games. Will we ever see the docket of Big 10 games go well into the night? Since the Big 10 Network is around you can bet on the conference trying to expand all of its games throughout the day and weekends.
- Speaking of stadiums, the Richmond Spiders will actually get to play a home game in their own stadium for the first time in 82 years. It seems the city owned the place they were playing at and it wasn’t even on campus. This should help Richmod realize its full potential and become a powerhouse in football for years to come.
- We see some players go from college football to major league baseball but it’s rare when the other way happens. Welp it happened with Nick Doscher. He’s playing at quarterback for Wagner College after a stint as catcher in the farm system for the Kansas City Royals. This guy must be able to manage the game because of his catcher status. If he was a pitcher we would guess he would throw all over the place in a passing attack.
- Phil Fulmer put the full frontal audible attack on Lane Kiffin last week. He used to be Tennessee head coach before Kiffin came on. He’s wondering how Kiffin uses his mojo to get the cush coaching jobs. It’s a good thing he used his smack talk on his now current CBS analyst gig. Let the media war begin.
- The Chick-fil-A Kickoff will now have two games starting in 2012. We already knew that Tennessee will take on N.C. State but now Auburn will take on Clemson, too. All this does is make me more hungry for Chick-fil-A sandwiches.
- Here’s a lesson: When you talk with an ESPN reporter, more than likely you will be on record. Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian learned the hard way when he talked about Reggie Bush and not apologizing for the Heisman/eligibility problem. Serves Sarkisian right. He was an offensive coordinator during this debacle and he should get some negative rub it too.
- Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio was so thrilled about his overtime fake field goal for the win against Notre Dame last week that he had a heart attack. He’s okay, but we think he needs to lay off the coffee a bit. Notre Dame’s not looking to good this year anyway.
- Houston, we have a problem. (I’ve been waiting so long to say that!) The Cougars quarterback Case Keenum and his backup Cotton Turner are out with season ending injuries. Keenum has a bum knee and Turner has a broken collarbone. Houston lost to UCLA in a blow out and they probably won’t recover from these damages.
- Missouri defensive end Aldon Smith is out two weeks with a broken leg. A broken leg? That sounds like more than a two week thing. Is this guy some kind of cyborg or something?
- Colorado head coach Dan Hawkins was so pumped about the Buffaloes games against Hawaii that he head butted a player and cut himself. They needed that emotion to come from behind and win but we’re not sure if it will save the Hawk’s Big 12 campaign.
- The olny Ohio player to show some emotion and gusto against Ohio State was the mascot. He jumped Brutus Buckeye and now he’s banned from being a mascot again. It also turns out that he planned to do it all along. Now that’s some mascot grudge.
- Looks like there is a deal in place for Colorado to jump ship to the Pac 10 in 2011. It’s been a back and forth report regarding the Buffaloes. The move will be costly but not as costly as Nebraska’s.
Okay the holidays are over and we are in the middle of summer. College football is so close right now we can taste it. You know how we can tell? We have a buttload of news to go over in this week’s Crib Sheet. So enough jibba jabba, here’s the sheet:
- The Big House expansion set the new stadium attendance capacity at 109,901 for the Michigan Wolverines. Now all they need to do is actually when games to get it filled up.
- The hottest game coming into this year has to be Texas at Nebraska. David Ubben runs over the list of candidates for the name of this somewhat rivalry. Our pick? The Big Beef. The winner? The Big Beef.
- Speaking of the one time rivalry, Nebraska removed the end part of the video they put out earlier this year for their fan video. It said “Beat Texas.” The smack talk is already beginning and it’s not even the start of training camp yet.
- Dontavius Jackson will be transferring from Georgia after summer school following his DUI arrest. Goes to show folks, don’t get caught breaking the law if you are a football player. You might get your scholarship dumped.
- The two Kansas dudes who were indicted last week have plead guilty in court for the ticket scandal they covered up. Hopefully for Jayhawk fans, this will blow over and they can start focusing on rebuilding for the football season. Or focus on the start of basketball season.
- We’ve been trying for the last couple of days to come up with something exciting to attach to the release of EA Sport’s new NCAA College Football 11 game. It’s out. That’s it. Nothing exciting here.
- Lambeau Field and the Packers want to host a potential Big 1o Championship Game. Okay, this would be sweet. Lambeau embodies the Big 10 better than Indianapolis by far. The closest next match is Chicago with Soldier Field, but we think a title game in icy weather trumps all.
- Bob Krause, former Kansas State Athletic Director, described in a deposition how he got duped by Ron Prince at the last second, which then gave Prince a tasty buyout from his contract. So Krause was out of his league big time and now we see why.
- Ex Florida Gator Maurkice Pouncey was the subject of an investigation that addressed and allegation that he took about 100K from a middle man to an agent. If the investigation finds it to be true, Florida could lose the Sugar Bowl victory last year. It doesn’t matter to Pouncey because he is in the NFL right now. It seems agents have found a loophole to exploit kids in their senior year. The kids get paid and leave before any repercussions. Kinda like pulling a Pete Carroll. Stewart Mandel points this out and we just found out from Nick Saban that Alabama is investigating its own issue too.
- Missouri linebacker Tyler Crane was kicked off the team for violating team rules. Neither Crane or Missouri will say just what he did. It seems like he was a back up so it shouldn’t affect the Tigers this year that much.
- 11 Notre Dame athletes were arrested for underage drinking at a party last week, including Joe Montana’s son Nate. Doh! It’s nice to see the Fighting Irish are with the times in terms of off the field troubles. This tells us that they might be competitive this coming year.
- It seems an investigation will open in Arizona to see if current and former Fiesta Bowl employees made campaign contributions to politicians whom supported the bowl. The major issue is not the contribution but the reimbursement from the bowl. Ya, that’s a no no.
So here ware trucking through our Big 10 Expansion, running over our introduction and Big 10 history along the way. Today our focus beams toward why the Big 10 wants to expand. Like we said yesterday, money is a big part but not the whole pie. Other slices include the silver bullet of television, the need to grow, scratching the itch that’s been bothering them the past 20 years, channeling baseball’s New York Yankee style of athletic competition, and the dust collecting on their trophy shelves. Think of money as the crust that keeps the filling in the pie. It’s alot to handle so we’ll try not to drive you crazy with the reasons.
Continue reading Magnifying the Expansion Part 3: Methods to Their Madness →
For the first time in about 6 months, the KCCGD headquarters opened up the windows to let the weather in. The first signs of warm weather and great tempatures can mean only one thing. No, not the start of baseball, but the start of spring practice. The recruits are signed and the players that can practice are on the field. Start the clock, we have about 5 months to go before the start of another football season. In the meantime, check out this week’s Crib Sheet:
- Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez was named in yet another lawsuit involving home deals. This shouldn’t affect his on the field coaching much this season. He’s still avoiding the hot seat, but if he turns out another poor performance, then these kind of lawsuits will be used as ammo against him.
- Meanwhile, the grounds crew and security detail for the Big House needs to get its act together. Someone broke into the stadium and lifted a big chunk of the ‘M’ in the middle of the field. What would you do with that? Make a jacket?
- Urban Meyer is back to Florida and is already spitting fire. He lashed out at Orlando Sentinel reporter Jeremy Fowler for reporting the comments that Deonte Thompson made about exiting quarterback Tim Tebow. It’s nice to see the fire is back so quick for Meyer, let’s hope he doesn’t drop 20-30 pounds because of it.
- Kansas coach Turner Gill is open to positions changes for the new football season and about 9 players have taken advantage of it so far. It’s time to rebuild the program and what better way to do so than with kids playing the positions they want. At least they’ll be more motivated.
- Another football player was stabbed to death. This time it’s Kendall Berry of Florida International University. This, of course, was a result of an argument and retaliation. Hopefully, they will find the guy that did it. When will players see enough of this and not get involved with off campus thugs. And a suspect has been arrested in the case.
- After much fanfare and celebration, the loved International Bowl is closing up shop. Well, there were really only around for about 4 years. The Big East team that ran over the MAC opponents will now face stiffer competition in the Yankee Bowl.
So I’m just now getting back into the swing of things now that I’m back from the SXSW conference. The yearly Music/Film/Interactive conference can take a toll on your body and even though I got back Monday, I’m still feeling the effect. The drive there uses I-35 and actually hits up a couple of college towns. Big 12 wise, we sped through Oklahoma’s home in Norman and landed in Austin, the home of the Texas Longhorns. Which one is better? It’s not fair, really. The conference was in Austin and I only drove through Oklahoma. Now here’s this week’s Crib Sheet:
- Speaking of Texas, apparently they are hitting the eiquette skills as well as the plyometric skills down in Austin. If you are going to be a football dignitary, the I guess you would need to know how to flaunt elitist like chops. Do they really need to know how to hold a fork right when tearing into some ribs from the Salt Lick, however?
- Much ballyhooed recruit Bryce Brown has left the Tennessee program, due to either personal issues or the fact that Lane Kiffin left. So let the rumor mills begin again! First one out of the gate: Bryce’s brother left Miami and is heading the K-State. So that means there may be a chance Bryce will come play for Bill Snyder 2.0 and the Wildcats. I hope the second round of hype around Bryce is faster.
- Weakened and ill coach Urban Meyer returned to the Florida Gators and practice last week. If you remember he quit the team due to health reasons but then came back when he realized that he could get better. Or at least put on some poundage. This year will be a nice off year for Meyer so he can reload next year, both on football and his health.
- Just like when baseball’s Chicago Cubs shocked everyone and had its first ever night game a decade or two ago, now the Big House in Michigan will be doing the same. What better way to do so than against the Notre Dame Fighthing Irish? This should be a close game, with a new coach on one side and another almost on the hot seat.
- Nick Saban is your first ever Bobby Bowden national collegiate coach of the year. The Over the Mountain Touchdown Club is in Bowden’s home town of Birmingham, Alabama. Not much surprise here. The coach that wins the national title for the school in the home state of the award title’s name. Zlam Dunk.
- Expansion or not, the Pac 10 may be looking into instituting a conference title game. Commissioner Larry Scott mentioned that when going over all expansion possibilities with CBS Sports. There’s an NCAA rule that states you need to have 12 teams to have a conference title game. So if they do want to do it without expansion, then they need to change that rule.
College Sports, Kansas City style
