No, I’m not leaving. But apparently alot of other people and organizations are. This week’s PYR will go over the very tiny sample of games I watched over the weekend and also talk about what’s moving and shaking outside of the field. That includes Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Trevor Knight, Blake Bell, Tommy Reese, LSU, Clemson, NCAA, Penn State, Big 10, Jim Delany, EA Sports, Mark Emmert, Texas, Mack Brown, and DeLoss Dodds. Continue reading Purple Yeti Roar 88: Lots Of Goodbyes This Week →
Two weeks to go and there’s one last trickle of non football stuff to talk about before the start of the college football season. Yup, it seems the NCAA and its member schools are running scared from this autograph thing. I’ll talk about that, Tulsa, EA Sports, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Missouri, James Franklin, and Gary Pinkel. Continue reading Purple Yeti Roar 82: Running Scared →
It’s not _here_ here but the season of college football kicked off last week with Media Days. Yes, it’s that time of year where the sports media and college football types get together and talk an enormous amount of smack. Watch me chime with that, SEC, Johnny Manziel, Florida, Antonio Morrison, FIU, Big 12, Kansas State, Bill Snyder, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, TCU, Texas, NCAA, and EA Sports. Continue reading Purple Yeti Roar 78: Let The Media Days Begin! →
With tornadoes blowing down south and southeast, wildfires burning all of Texas, rain and hail pelting the land, and Missouri levees falling apart, it seems like the whole world is falling apart. But it’s merely weather changing bits and pieces of the land. There can be bigger changes afoot across the land. I have one coming up very quickly. But first let me spit out a kind of late Crib Sheet. Take notes and then take cover:
My only memory of this week’s Mascot Monday’s team was always seeing them pop up on the random play for EA Sports NCAA College Football 2003 on the Playstation 2. Yeah, I just dated myself there. Anywho, the Akron Zips aren’t exactly the best when it comes to football but somehow, they’ve managed to put up a successful, yet awkward, mascot named Zippy. This week, we’ll explore the world of Zippy, including the origin of the school name and the decision to choose a kangaroo as the mascot. It won’t go too fast as we’ll try our best not to zip through this (har har).
Continue reading Mascot Monday: Zippy The Kangaroo →
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 some news outlets are saying that May is the black hole of news for college football. We here at the KCCGD are diligent in digging up interesting news and actually found enough to fill a column this week. We’ll weather this storm together and hopefully ride out into June when practices start. For now let’s do our best to ignore all of this lame-o baseball, weak basketball and hockey playoffs, and a post NFL draft hangover. Here’s this week’s ration:
- Holey Toledo! Some football players including some basketball players from the University of Toledo were indicted on point shaving charges. Nobody likes to see players go at it light. Especially if they are getting paid for it. Okay, I give in. I just wanted to say Holey Toledo!
- The Big 12 coaches decided to keep the tie breaking rule. Huh? Bo Pelini goes on the comment about how no matter what the 3rd team left out will get the shaft. Okay, that’s understandable. Is there a better way to break the tie? We say rock, paper, scissors.
- It looks like the Utah Attorney General is trying to push for a Senate run with his latest comments about the BCS. Let’s look at it from a point of view perspective. An undefeated team in football and no national title. They have the right to be upset. The way they are going about it? Mmmm not so much. A more clever way would be to rally support from all the non BCS conferences and begin to push as a whole on the BCS conferences. If you really wanted to shake their boots, don’t schedule games with them. Play outside of the BCS. The BCS conferences would then freak becauces of the lack of weak team warm ups at the beginning of the season.
- Sam Keller, a football alum from Nebraska, is suing EA Sports and the NCAA for using the likeness of athelets to make money off the games. This is a hard one to call. More and more the argument is growing for student-atheletes to be paid for promoting the school through sports. While there is a pandora’s box of enabling that, surely the least they can do is up the stipend in terms of the scholarship and toss in a couple of Xboxes to boot.
- ESPN blogger Tim Griffin takes us on a trip to the past and review a lesson taught to us by Mark Mangino of Kansas. The old quote talks about how Mangino wanted to keep the spirit of the rivalry in tact. Now that the tables are turned it seems that maybe this rivalry will be alive an well in Manhattan this year. Snyder and Mangino go at it again. I was at the game last year and as a Wildcat fan it stung hard. Now there’s a fresh start and we hope that at the very least it is competitive because Kansas is the definite favorite.
- So someone is selling a 2005 Rose Bowl ring belonging to former Texas Longhorn lineman Austin Sendlein on eBay, including his 2004 ring. It looks as though he left it in the hotel room he was staying at in Columbus, Ohio to watch his brother play. Seems that Buckeye fans don’t take to kindly to Longhorn folk. Although he did goof and leave it in the hotel room. Linemen are supposed to be smart.
College Sports, Kansas City style
