Man I don’t even know where to start. The reports are spinning right round, baby right round about anything and everything related to conference alignment. Everyone knows what’s going on as of now. I would dump here in the Crib Sheet, but going over my starred items in Google Reader is proving to be a fruitless endeavor. Stuff as new as earlier this afternoon is now wrong. I just can’t drop it in here as a developing item when it will more than likely be false. The Crib Sheet is just too good for that. The only thing I can say is that the Big 12 is in huge trouble and will more than likely go away next week. That’s about it. No links or nothing. There’s plenty out there to read from. If you’re looking for something other than conference Armageddon then check out this week’s Crib Sheet:
- A booster from Ohio State admitted that he helped give some cash to Ohio State players that missed the first two games of the season. You know, if there were more legitimate ways to pay players, we wouldn’t be seeing this kind of stuff.
- Okay, is everyone getting on the uniform bus. Maryland had some crazy ones and now Michigan State is getting some snappy ones. It’s too much. Just look at the dude covering it for ESPN. He’s the uniform watch columnist. Yes, there is a position like that. I just threw up in my mouth a little.
- Minnesota head coach Jerry Kill left the hospital last Thursday, after suffering a seizure on the field last weekend. I think he coached the game. I wish him all the best.
- The College Football Hall of Fame flooded its basements over the weekend due to an improper sprinkler fitting. Doh! It’s located in South Bend, Indiana so I guess bad luck is going on all over around there.
- This is how rivalries should be between fans: A Notre Dame fan had a heart attack at the Michigan game and was revived via CPR by another fan in the stands. Take note, everybody, it’s just game. Rivalries should be held in high respects but not to the point where you wish damage on the other.
- How fans should not act: The kid who wore the Iowa State mascot uniform known as Cy fell from the stands an broke his arm. He didn’t say anything happened to the cops, but he posted on Facebook that some Uconn fans pushed him. Wow, not cool people. Not cool.
- A Texas associate athletic director Cleve Bryant was canned for sexually harassing someone. Yup, you can’t go and do that even when you think you run the state, partner.
- So Nevin Shapiro apparently ponzied Miami and now Luther Campbell, former 2 Live Crew kid and Miami booster, wants to sue him. The charge? Defamation. Apparently the guy who rapped about being so horny doesn’t like other people raking his name through the mud.
- Osceloa, Kansas wants the University of Kansas to drop the name ‘Jayhawk’ because of its Civil War connotations. Too early? Um, too late. The response was hilarious though. I mean come on, they need to keep that name. How else can I call them Chickenhawks?
- So you know how War Eagle flew into a window during Auburn’s pre game last week? Welp, PETA assembled and is scratching for some publicity by calling out against having any eagles during Auburn’s pre game. What a shocker. Go back to funding your porno website PETA, nothing to see here.
- A former Northern Illinois student sued the NCAA for its concussion rules. Apparently he suffers from the classic chronic symptoms of concussions and blames the NCAA for not doing a good job. You think conference alignment is going to change football, wait until the concussion stuff bubbles up. 7 on 7 two hand touch, I’m not kidding.
- Oklahoma State linebackers coach Glenn Spencer left the team during the three hour weather delay to be with his family. His wife died shortly after the game started. My condolences go out to his friends and family.
- South Carolina athletes were accused by the NCAA for receiving over $55,000 in impermissible benefits. Again, it’s getting to the point that ESPN (and Disney really) is pumping money out the yang for television. These players are the ones doing all the work. This kind of stuff would go away if they actually got paid.
- Bob Stoops got a seven year, $34.5 million extension Monday. He’s sitting prettier than alot of the schools in the Big 12 right now.
- The Sugar Bowl revealed that they may have made a couple of illegal donations to a politician in the mid 2000s, and the Playoff Pac jumped all over it. That’s right, the almighty complaint to the IRS will strike down on the Sugar Bowl and slowly but surely ruin any chances for the current BCS system to service. Check and Mate for the Playoff Pac.
- The New York Times has an interesting article about a South Korean kid named Seung Hoon Choi who started for the Nebraska Cornhuskers over the weekend. I usually thought it was Samoans from across the seas that get line work. South Koreans? I didn’t know. Fascinating.
- Ho man, chalk one up to Texas A&M and the creative billboard they dumped in Waco, the home of the Baylor Bears. Now as much as it sucks for the Big 12, it still is pretty funny.
It’s that time of year. It’s time to pop open the windows and enjoy the weather a bit. Summer is just right around the corner and I’m happy that I’m not breathing recycled air at night. It’s a good time of the year for college football, too. The bones inside the players, the coaches, and the fans are just starting to itch. Warmer weather means practice is getting closer and games are not that far off. It’s especially exciting with the prospect of being the only kind of organized football on in the fall. Tune in later this year but in the meantime, hit up the Crib Sheet:
Continue reading Crib Sheet: Pop Open Your Windows →
Another regular season over and another bowl season is set. I like the matchups for the Big 12 this year. Yes, no two teams are in BCS bowls but there is a chunky 8 teams going bowling. I don’t want to hear the yipping from Missouri fans this year as their game against Iowa is way bigger than the game Nebraska has against Washington. Kansas State’s in the first ever Pinstripe Bowl against Syracuse. That should be a fun one too. We have the Army vs Navy game and then the week after is all bowls. Right now, it’s the Crib Sheet:
- Oklahoma State wide receiver Justin Blackmon is your Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year and Oklahoma defensive end Jeremy Beal is you Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year. I knew about Blackmon’s dominance but wasn’t so sure about Beal’s. Congrats to both.
- I was ignoring it but, but now I can’t help but comment on the Miami coaching situation. Randy Shannon was canned and a couple of candidates have cropped up. That’s not exciting. What IS exciting is that Donald Trump wrote a letter to Miami to hire Mike Leach. The U might just become pirates.
- Beano Cook is the 2011 recipient of the 38th Bert McGrane Award, which I guess goes to football sports writers each year. I listen to him on the ESPN College Football Podcast each week and has quickly become one of my favorite sports media personalities. Congrats to him too.
- Cam Newton is cleared of any allegations by the NCAA. Looks like his dad can’t hang around the program now, though. It looks like the sabotage job by Mississippi State didn’t work too well. I’m now pegging Auburn as the favorite to win the BCS title game.
- I didn’t pay attention to the RichRod situation at Michigan until now. He’s crying again and this time it’s about how happy he is being the head coach for the Wolverines. I ignored the talk before because I thought he was pretty much safe, but this latest crying makes me wonder if he’s in trouble. He may be.
- It’s one thing when an undefeated non-AQ conference team doesn’t make a BCS Bowl, but it’s another when a 6-6 AQ conference team like Arizona State gets denied a bowl appearance. I thought the slots were so abundant this year that there might have been a 5-7 team in a bowl? Oh well, it looks like they needed one more game.
- The site for a new College Football Hall of Fame will be by Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia. It will open around March of 2013. Make plans now!
- Just in case you were wondering, the expansion search committee for the Big 10 that they will not actively engage in expansion for awhile. Yeah, right.
- The Cincinnati Bearcat was citied for starting a snowball fight during the Pitt game last Saturday. It’s a good thing they had a backup mascot ready for the rest of the game.
- The Bowls are set! Here’s the Big 12 version. I wonder how many Missouri Tigers fans will complain. Oh I know Nebraska fans will, but they are gone after this game so their voice is a little quieter.
- Coaching changes are starting to fire up now that the regular season is over. First off, outgoing Colorado hired from Washington Redskins assistant coach and alumni Jon Embree. On the flip side, long time Texas offensive coordinator Greg Davis resigned due to the poor performance on the field that saw the Longhorns miss a bowl for the first time in forever.
- Rob Long of Syracuse has a benign brain tumor and will undergo surgery. He will not play the Pinstripe Bowl. As being someone who’s had someone close go through the same thing, all I can say is that my thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family.
- I was wondering when this would happen: two men stole the mascot head of Lee Corso. It’s now back and the dudes are in trouble.
Much of the staff for the KCCGD (all one person of it) is knocked down under injury this week. Lower back pains are not an easy ailment to handle. Granted it’s no puke inducing concussion, but we know how limiting an injury can be. Usually a team would be lucky enough not to have any of their stars miss a game or two during the season. Usually you rest them at halftime or have them skip the easy games. In this BCS culture today though now you have to play your top guys all the time, even when hurt. So in that spirit, we achingly bring this week’s Crib Sheet:
- The College Football Hall of Fame is moving from South Bend to Atlanta. The promised attendance was never met in Irish-land and now they are moving down to Bulldog country. So let’s get this straight, they are moving from one program where expectations of a once great team were never met to another place where expectations of a once great team were never met? Hey, at least they’ll avoid nasty winters.
- Michigan University will no longer allow purses into the stadium for games. Sorry, RichRod, you will have to find something else to carry all of your crying tissues.
- The college football world gasped a big ole sigh when Tim Tebow went down with a concussion over the weekend against Kentucky. Apparently he was aleady sick when he took a sick hit from a Kentucky player. It’s a good thing Florida has the week off. Not for Tebow to recover, but the for the rest of the sports media to talk about the games. Hopefully.
- Sports Illustrated is attempting to bring playoff brackets into the mainstream with a half-cocked bracketing system to rank the top 16 teams and then place them in a bracket. Are they bummed that USA Today has the Top 25 Coaches’ Poll, the AP has their own poll, but they have nothing? That’s what we think. And this is the only ink we’ll give them.
- Baylor’s hope for a rise to bowl-dom blew up in their face Saturday when Robert Griffin went down last Saturday with a torn ACL in his knee. A veteran QB in Blake Szymanski will take over the helm as Baylor gets ready to head into conference play October 10. It really sucks for the Bears but will make thing easier for the North teams playing Baylor this year.
- Twitter rears its ugly head again as a couple of tweets from some Texas Tech players caused Mike Leech to ban it from the team. This was, of course, in reaction to some awesome tweets from newly suspended offensive lineman Brandon Carter and linebacker Marlon Williams. We miss it already.
- Speaking of Twitter, Houston head coach Kevin Sumlin is using his handle to retrieve 3 helmets stolen from Cougars players while storming the field during Houston’s dramatic win over Texas Tech. Twitter and Texas Tech just does not mix.
- Stafon Johnson, tailback for USC, had emergency surgery on his throat after a freak weightlifting accident. I’ve seen some bars fall with very heavy weight on them in the gym and it does not look pretty. How did it get on this guy’s throat? We hope he turns out okay.
- New Mexico head coach Mike Locksley pulled a Buddy Ryan (or a Tom Caple) on his assistant and busted his lip. We’ve seen some punches so far on the field at least once a week during the season, now we’re seeing it during coaches meetings. Oh wait, football is a violent sport. Check.
- Kansas will have condominiums in the stands in the form of seat mortgages. So while the kids are fighting on (and off) the field, the snooty rich people will be in the stands. Live sport spectating is becoming the privilege of the elite. This isn’t good at all.
- Ladies and gentlemen, we present the Yankee Bowl. The Big East #4 team and the Big 12 #7 team are signed up to meet at Yankee stadium beginning in the 2010-11 season. Granted they still need approval, but if you have the mayor of New York and the owner of the Yankees behind it, the proposal should pass. I for one wish that any ‘home’ team in New York gets beat.
- Missouri gets the dunce cap this week as the athletic department sold a box of old cell phones. Without wiping them. Hey, hook me up with an email address or phone number over here. I want some coaches to know about the blog.
We were starting to get worried here at the Crib Sheet that this week’s news would be weak. Wednesday rolled around and we were totally saved. Perhaps Easter had something to do with the slow news over the weekend. This week we sift through some practices and look at some red tape a danglin’ around. Here we go:
- Bo Pelini is spitting out chewing gum again in Lincoln. He’s fired up after a bad practice and is telling everyone on the block about it. It seems to work fine up there as Nebraska is turning the corner and it’s nice to see some passion from a coach when you’re living with the Pinkel/Mangino/Snyder non speak on a daily basis.
- Mike Leach is a definite oddball and his practice tactics are proving it. Making players study on the field in the snow and some high balancing is unique enough. Still I’m not sure if it will work this year after losing Michael Crabtree.
- Glen Winston is going to jail for 6 months for kicking the tar out of fellow Michigan State athlete A. J. Sturges. I thought hockey players were supposed to be tough? I guess not. Then again, he was up against Winston and Michael White from the football team. Two football players > one hockey player.
- Texas is trying to lure the College Football Hall of Fame away from South Bend, Indiana. Both Dallas and Arlington have put together proposals to build a hall as well as convention center in support of the move. Traditionally Notre Dame is king for football but recent years have shown the Fighting Irish’s prominence waning. Now is a good time to snatch the hall, especially in a state where people eat, sleep, and crap football.
- Other universities are interested in Kansas Atheltic Director Lou Perkins and the Jayhawks are willing to pay up to keep him. That makes sense. The guy produced a national champion basketball team and built and honest to goodness football team down there in Lawrence. So another $750,000 goes to Lou. I’m sure it will eat into Mark Mangino’s Ho Ho fund.
- Bill Snyder still has no clue who’s gonna quarterback the Kansas State Wildcats. It’s a tough job to replace the overrated Josh Freeman. Chances are we’ll see all three start next season and the one who does a better job with the option will get the nod.
- Legal documents stuffed in the AP’s pocket show that the Missouri Tigers officials and staff failed to follow proper steps to keep Aaron O’Neil from collapsing and eventually dieing back in 2005. The director of sports medicine for the athletic department apparently even rejected suggestions from concerned players to check up on O’Neil. Yet another example of the Tigers dropping the ball, off the field even.
- Former Duke basketballer Greg Paulus, after trying out for the Green Bay Packers, sat down with Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez to explore the possibility of using his one year of eligibility to play college football. So the Rich must be feeling the heat already because even the Duke football doesn’t want him. Both Paulus and Rodriguez are starting to look a little silly here.
College Sports, Kansas City style
