Here we go! Bowl season starts tomorrow and we got your Bowl Pick It and Stick It ready to go! It’s the somewhat the same format as the regular season. For each of the 34 bowl games, you will need to assign confidence points. So for whoever you think will win the strongest, should get the highest confidence points and vice versa for the weakest. What’s different is the you need to pick the winner straight up. There is no spread points to play off of for the bowls. So head on over to Yahoo! Fantasy Sports and sign up! We’ll go over the bowls after break but first, here’s the info:
As expected, there is a ton of news this week. Conference championships are over, coaches are fired, kids are leaving for the NFL, and the bowls are lighting up. Here’s this week’s Crib Sheet while we go do some Christmas Shopping:
Mark Mangino resigned last week from his head coaching position at Kansas. They negotiated a fat deal for him to walk away. It was bound to happen. Stories upon stories show how quickly alot of people were ready to turn on this guy. The moral of the story? You can be a big bully until you start losing. And being a bully as a head coach can be hard to do.
As for Mangino’s replacement, the rumor mill is churning big time. Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt was rumored but declined. Last real talk we heard was Buffalo’s Turner Gill interviewing for the job. No matter who they get, they will have an uphill battle due to teams rebuilding from this year have improved and have a year head start.
Wisconsin settled a lawsuit with the family of an ABC cameraman who fell from a platform and died at a game in their stadium. Alot of people think the danger is only on the field, but it can also be on the sidelines and in the stands. The Badgers goofed by not properly setting up a rail for the guy to catch onto. They do need those stinkin’ rails.
Colorado head coach Dan Hawkins has a super secret email address because of all of the hate email he’s been getting. If this guy puts his money where his mouth is and actually produces, he wouldn’t be bombarded with nasty grams between the Viagra spam.
What about the Heisman? Yes, the race is still on and Nebraska’s Ndamukong Suh and Texas quarterback Colt McCoy are among the finalists. We also have Florida weeper Tim Tebow, Stanford running back Toby Gerhart, and Alabama running back Mark Ingram. It’s a tight race and it would be cool to see a defender get one. Meanwhile, Suh won the Bronko Nakurski Award.
Hofstra’s ending it’s 72 year old football program. Alot more of these smaller schools are axing them due to cash and lopsided scheduling with bigger schools. It’s a shame too. If there are no more small schools, how will the big boys practice for their conference? What about upsets? Let’s hope this slows down.
Bobby Bowden got his farewell wish and is playing his old school, West Virginia, in the Florida Gator Bowl. We don’t think there will be a group of kids more pumped up to finish out a bowl than the ones that will take the field for this legendary coach. West Virginia should be favored but who knows? They may lay down for the coach.
A marine accidentally shot another marine to death because of a fight over the Texas and Nebraska Big 12 Championship game. Apparently, there was a tussle and a gun went off. Yikes, aren’t these guys trained to be weapon experts? We’re guessing they were pretty drunk when it happened.
We’re getting back on the treadmill to work off last weekend’s Turkey gauntlet. The timing is perfect as he have lots to feast on this weekend with conference championships going on all over the place. Hopefully the belt won’t be too tight to enjoy the big games filling up the screens. As an appetizer to the weekend, we have a Crib Sheet spilling over with news this week. So without further ado, here’s this week’s Crib Sheet:
It’s a short week here at the KCCGD. We gotta pack up tonight and get ready to hit the highway big time for Turkey Day. We still have some time to get pumped for college football. Usually when you think of football and Thanksgiving, it’s the NFL games with Detroit and Dallas. But, there is even a bigger tradition for Thanksgiving and college football. Rivalries are all over the place and it’s spread out nicely across the whole weekend. So while the travel may be plentiful for us and maybe you, we are guaranteed some live college football at some point. Happy Thanksgiving and here’s the Crib Sheet:
ESPN Page 2 columnist Matthew Iles talks about some of the more goofy rivalry trophies in college football. We like the Old Brass Spittoon the best. I wonder if, at the end of the game, whether or no the winner spits in it and if it makes a ba-doing noise.
Florida State barely got bowl eligibility last weekend by edging out Maryland 29 – 26. Bobby Bowden may end up being forced out anyway at the end of the year. The guy has been getting from all sides down there.
Some Big 12 coaches are jumping to the defense of Kansas coach Mark Mangino. Mike Leech and Bob Stoops are covering for him, even though they are alot like him. The surprising one was Bill Snyder 2.0. Coaches need to look out for each other and we’re seeing a pretty good case of this right here.
Jimmy Clausen could have used some defense when he was cold cocked by a fan in front of a South Bend restaurant. Not very Catholic-like indeed. Jimmy’s out at the end of the year and heading to the NFL. This incident merely sealed the deal.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg for Notre Dame. Charlie Weis pretty much said it himself when we stated that there is no surprise if the Irish can him at the end of the year. Urban Meyer keeps telling the press he’s out, signaling the start of a new coaching search for the Domers. No more vaunted, Charlie Weis led, Notre Dame Fighthing Irish.
Taylor Potts last week wore ‘Nick’ on the back of his jersey, now we know why. Mike Leech talks about his man love former Kansas linebacker Nick Reid. He never met him but for some reason he’s always thought Reid was the ultimate football player. We’re still trying to figure this out. It did help inspire them to a win though.
Western Europe meets the western Kansas City area as we trucked way the heck out to Shawnee to view Saturday’s selections at J. Murphy’s Irish Pub and Grille. The games lined up for the afternoon seemed like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The traditional fare sprinkled the joint so well we were waiting for a Contra Dance to bust out. And the food, well the food was all it was cracked up to be, Irish wise. But there was so much more than really cheesy Irish references (which we will stop as of now) at J. Murphy’s.
Okay, everybody is fairly settled in on the new changes for Pick It and Stick It. Now we get a chance to turn our focus from the rules of the game on to the actual game itself. Usually you see pick sets float around the office or in the college dorm. Typically on top of that you will see a wager attached to sweeten the deal. What we like to do here is get feedback from you to see what the wager or prize should be. Now it can be a pitcher of beer, or it could be making the loser(s) wear the other team’s colors. So read on through and drop us a comment to let us know what you want as the prize for the champion this year.
This is a little embarrassing. We’re getting all hyped up for another great year of college football and stumbled a bit in our preparation. You see, we naturally assumed that in the last two years of this fine and dandy operation that we actually had a barspot at a Tanner’s Bar & Grill location. This is not true. So to make up for it, we are kicking off our 3rd season by hanging out in one of the storied sports bar traditions for the Kansas City Area. Join us at the Waldo district to kick the season off in style and welcome to another year of KC College Gameday! Continue reading Barspotting: We Almost Forgot About Tanner’s→
Here we go people! We’re strapping on the helmet and hunkering down for another season of college football. To get us ready, we have a cavalcade of previews and a new redesign coming down the pipe. Until then we’ll produce another news heavy Crib Sheet for all of you to digest. Depending on the schedule, we may be dropping the Crib Sheet here and there during the season. There’s always news to munch on. So grab a bib and some silverware and chow down on this week’s Crib Sheet:
It’s the wave of the future for the Texas Longhorns and monitoring football players. They make select players swallow temperature pills to make sure their body temperature doesn’t get too high during practice. The NCAA should take a look at these little doo-wops for all of the players that have a high risk for sickle cell disease.
There’s a big jumble and shuffle going down in Manhattan. Kansas State coach Bill Snyder is moving around transfer Daniel Thomas from quarterback to running back, among other movements that also saw running back Logan Dold moving to safety. It seems that ‘Wildcat’ might mean more than just a team this year in Snyder-land.
It seems Florida State is getting a head start on the 2 game series with Oklahoma by being the snitcher on old guy type linebacker Mike Balogun. Balogun is suing the NCAA for eligibility because of some issues with semi-pro playing before he joined Oklahoma. One of the Seminole officials noted the story of Bolgun during last year’s national championship game and dug further after the Big 12 was okay with Oklahoma’s ‘light’ investigation. Ruh roh. Seems like there will be some major unsportsmanlike penalties in this two game series.
Oklahoma State has gone dark until the week of their opener against Georgia, at least to the media. They need to prepare all they can for the big game because it will set the tone for the Cowboy’s whole season. It should be a great game and has the potential for being the game of the week.
Oklahoma backup linebacker Tom Wort went down with an ACL injury and is out for the season. Combine that with the questions of Tom Balogun’s eligibility and we’re looking at a depleted linebacking core for the Sooners. This may affect their chances of going all the way this year.
Joseph Kassanavoid, redshirt freshmen quarterback for Kansas State, up and got arrested for domestic battery. Officials for Kansas State stated that the incident will be handled internally. We won’t be surprised if this guy gets booted from the team. Tune in to find out.
The Associated Press Top 25 Preseason Poll came out over the weekend and in the biggest non-surprise of the year, the Florida Gators are number one, followed by the Big 12’s Texas and Oklahoma. Everyone and their mother are picking the Gators but the ball is up in the air for who will meet them in the title game. We’re not sure who will be there, but tune in for our preview in the next couple of days.
Meanwhile, Lou Holtz gives his analysis on the AP poll and pulls a prediction of all predictions out of his always sounding drunk mouth. According to Holtz, Notre Dame will be in the national title game. Give to Lou for being a homer. He makes a good case pointing to 11 returning offensive starters, 7 home games, and a weak opponent’s schedule. The schedule is going to kill them and we’re not to sure they are that big on offense. Nice to hear Lou slur his words again, though.
Husker running back Quentin Castille was dismissed from the Nebraska squad due to team rule violations. That’s a shame as it will hurt their chances to live up to the preseason Big 12 North title prediction. Even ESPN Big 12 blogger Tim Griffin is switching his prediction. Indeed, maybe the media were drinking the red kool-aid, but there are questions all over the North this year. Again tune in for our Big 12 predictions in the next couple of days.
Practices are rocking this week as the schools are getting ready for some real hitting here in a couple of weeks. Some may think that we’ve been practicing every week in this but column but it’s been prime time, every time. We are still deliberating as to whether or not we’ll continue the Crib Sheet in the regular season. Feel free to drop a comment below to let us know. Here’s this week’s Crib Sheet:
The Michigan Defense couldn’t mow him down last year, so Appalachian State’s quarterback Armanti Edwards did it himself. Yup he’s out a couple of weeks with a foot injury.
The 12th Man talked a Montana punter to transfer to Texas A&M. Ken Wood was big on the NFL Seattle Seahawks and when A&M sued them for the use of the 12th Man moniker. Wood saw this and fell in love. It’s great, too, because the punter will probably be the MVP on that team this year.
The USA Today Top 25 Coaches Poll for the preseason came out today and Florida eats the top spot. Big 12 wise we have Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Nebraska at 2,3, 11, and 22 respectively. That’s great and all, but the better poll/list for the week was put out by Fox Sports in their Top 10 most annoying fans list. Oklahoma’s number 4 on that one. It’s a good list even though it trends to teams that have been traditional powerhouses, sans Clemson.
Speaking of Clemson, they are docked two practices for a non conforming uniform modification under NCAA rules. The crime? Wearing girdles at practice. Let’s hope they don’t catch them wearing leggings or panties. Yikes!
Dezmon Briscoe from Kansas is no longer stupid. Er, no longer too stupid not to play football that is. He completed summer courses and can play this fall for the Jayhawks. He’s sorely needed, too, as he is expected to be a top receiver in the conference this year.
Bobby Bowden wants another national title before he retires from Florida State in a couple of years. Bobby, it’s not gonna happen but we wish you the best of luck. If only your conference was stronger.
There’s a great article about Kansas State quarterback Carson Coffman. Carson comes from a long lineage of NFL tight ends, with his dad Paul and now his older brother Chase. So this version of Coffman will try his hand a quarterback this year, but don’t be too excited because he has alot of transferred competition coming his way.
Utah spend the offseason crying to everyone that would listen about how they were screwed out a title game and now they a shutting off communication for ‘instantaneous reports’ from any staff and media. BYU is doing it too. So, are they breeding whiners or hypocrites up there?
Everybody is high on Notre Dame this year, but Charlie Weiss is more interested in walk than talk. That’s kinda paradoxical when you think about it. Then again, he was running his mouth from day one so let’s see if a quieter Weiss will help the Fighting Irish live up their hype. Maybe he’s learning all about walking from his new-found buddy, St. Louis Cardinals’ player Albert Pujols.
Ron Prince and his lawyers are asking for an additional $3 million on top of the $3 million he’s already owed by Kansas State after they canned him last year. The reason? They state that the school knew of the buyout terms and even went as far as saying that the school wanted Prince to keep terms of the contract confidential. With that much money on the table originally, it would seem very weird that top brass overlooked that. Plus it’s punitive. The way K-State is trying to weasel out of the deal forced Prince’s hand. This is very ugly indeed. A contract is a contract no matter how insane it is. The quicker this goes away the better it will be for the school. With this lawsuit, the chances are it will stick around for a long, long time.
It seems recovery from the float trip took longer than expected. Well, that and KCCGD headquarters purchased a new laptop that’s in the middle of indoctrination. The radio shows are starting to talk more college ball and the preview magazines are popping up on the stands. We have about a month and a half to go for the big show and the new laptop will help us in getting ready for the relaunch. In the meantime, here’s this week’s belated Crib Sheet:
Looks like people are making bank from student athlete autographs on eBay. The NCAA is trying to lock it down but we don’t see the issue. They are already building a fortune off of these kids, why not let some other small entrepreneur make a couple of bucks from an autograph?
As expected, the cheap ticket deal for K-State and Bill Snyder’s return blew up all over. John Currie commissioned more tickets and it looks like they were snatched up fast too. I’ve been to games there and a $9 ticket versus a $50 tickets makes a world of difference. Currie should really do more tickets because the game wouldn’t sell out otherwise.
Erin Andrews will now skirt the sidelines in video game form for EA’s NCAA College Football 2010. Apparently she spend days recording insightful comments to be dropped during the game. That’s great. We wonder if they did her up a 3D modeling suit for better precision on microphone holding. Oh to be that suit…….or in the hotel room.
Graham Harrell is heading to Canada. After not getting a sniff from the NFL, he will be smelling the brisk Canadian air for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Many say he’s a product of the Texas Tech system but we’d like to think his career path is going down the same road that Warren Moon went.
Get your tickets fast, folks, Notre Dame will play Army at Yankee Stadium. This has been rumored before and now they will play in 2010. Around the Kansas City area, Arrowheads plays host to some college games as well as the Big 12 Championship every once in awhile. Hopefully this will lead to more and more big time games being played in a large enough stadium.
University of South Florid kicker Maikon Bonani fell 35ft off a Busch Gardens ride. An employee was injured too while holding on to the door that he thought was unlocked. Apparently the ride took off and Bonani and the employee fell. Yeah, the Purple Yeti will not go on roller coaster rides.
When coming up with this week’s mascot, we decided to go with a somewhat big time program. How we settled on Florida State’s Chief Osceola and Renegade was much more of a journey. Was it the recent news of sanctions the NCAA put on Florida State that would vacate some victories and take away from Bobby Bowden’s record? Nope. Was it former player and WWE wrestler Ron Simmons and news of his induction into college football hall of fame? Nope. Actually it was the pit stop we made on the way down to our annual float trip. Yup. Thank you Osceola Cheese for this week’s Mascot Monday. DAMN!
Wow, we’re still feeling the effects from last week. As a matter of fact, last week’s festivities led to a nasty little cold. That’s better than some of the after effects some college football players ran into last week. Never fear, the Crib Sheet remedy is here! We’re dropping this in some Sprite and popping some NyQuil so hold on and go for the ride. Hopefully we’ll be 100% next week.
In the descendant department, Joe Montana’s kid Nick tackled some scholarship offers from Alabama, Flordia State, and Notre Dame. The son of a qb who’s a qb too might get better luck if he goes somewhere other than the Fighting Irish. The shoes would be too big to fill and so far the quaterbacks coming out of dome town aren’t living up to the past. Nick Cool doesn’t work, how about Nick Sweet?
Somehow Columbia, Missouri landed in the top 10 on Forbes list for top college sports towns. Well I guess Lawrence was too pretentious and Austin is more of a party town. Manhattan doesn’t even come close. I guess it’s cool that they are on the list, but they need to win a championship somewhere to deserve top 10 status.
The Bryce Brown saga continues after a couple of swerves. The NCAA is investigating Brian Butler, the mentor for Brown, to figure out if he’s more of an agent than a mentor. The former rapper has been representing Wichita football players and pimping them on his website. Not sure there’s much mentoring there. Meanwhile, some rumor mongering points to Oklahoma being on the sweepstakes for Brown. I’m not sure they’ll pull him in late, but the fact that Kansas State is on the list still is laughable. Maybe Brown will lose so much cred out of this that he’ll walk on to Wildcat territory, only to regain his rep. In my dreams. In my dreams.
Speaking of Wildcat territory, it seems some old friends are coming back to Manhattan to help Bill Snyder 2.0 out. Jonathan Beasley and Joe Gordon are coming back to fill out some spots left open by some movements. Thankfully, Bill is going to former players to help rebuild the tradition (however small it may be) of the Kansas State Wildcats.
So a Division II school in Newberry dropped their mascot name, Indians, under pressure from the NCAA. That’s fine and all, but where is the pressure for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish? If the NCAA is going to go with regulating names then it needs to be consistent across the board. Now Illinois dropped it, but Florida State got the write from Indians to use it. So is it really worth going after, or is it a PR stunt to make everyone feel good about themselves?
Let me tell you somethin’ dude, the Kiffster is gonna run wild over you! Well, maybe not that but one of the tactics he’s using at Tennessee is encouraging his coaches rip off their shirts a-la Hulk Hogan. So whatcha gonna do? WHATCHA GONNA DO?
What’s up with all of the footballplayersbeingarrestedin theoffseason. Yeah they’re young and in college, but they’re the leaders of the campus. There’s a time to party and a time to get ready for some football. The way I see it, the only players that can party now are the ones from Florida.
So we finally figure out why Andy Ludwig left Kansas State after 2 months to go back to Cali. His family all lives on the coast out there. I would call shenanigans if Tim Griffin didn’t point out that he’d be eating some salary in the deal (cost of living wise). Oh well.
It’s signing day and the Crib Sheet is trucking along. Apparently this is like the NFL draft for colleges. What I’m thankful for is Mel Kiper is busy preening his hair to care about the high school kids. This is the first time we’re covering signing day and there is an interesting culture surrounding the event. One thing I noticed was how the scouting reporter guys on the sports radio all sound like they lived in the trailer next ot Randy the Ram from the movie The Wresltler. Here’s the sheet:
Bobby Bowden’s got another year in him. Florida State made it to a bowl this year and things are looking up. His contract expired and they brought him on for another year. But seriously, I think it’s some kind of sick bet between Bobby and Joe Pa to see who will kick the bucket on the field first. Tune in next year I suppose.
Jim Halley reminds us signing day is more like signing year. The interesting thing to note is that the number one recruit for running backs, Bryce Brown, committed to Miami o’ Florida, but he’s still shopping around colleges. Yup he’s from Wichita, so K-State still has a chance. I’m not holding my breath.
Another violation by Sarkisian and Washington. They’re saying that this time it’s minor but the demerits are already piling up. Yeah the Huskies were winless last year, but are they going to be handcuffed from winning a game next year?
Walk ons are back for the Nebraska Cornhuskers agian. It’s good to see they are bringing back that tradition. It’s no Rudy, but hey, the whole state is Big Red so you might as well bring some kid on that has the passion.
Now that Bowden’s back, the players are celebrating in the tradition of Florida State football players and getting arrested. Preston Parker fell asleep at the wheel in a McDonald’s drive thru around 5am on January 24th. He blew under the limit, but admitted being drunk and stoned to the cops. He didn’t hurt anybody so this is hilarious.
The Sporting News counted down the top recruits for 2009. Bryce Brown is number one and no one else close to the KC area is in the Top 25. We should be seeing many of the top guys sign today but rumor has it Bryce is holding out a little bit longer.
Ohio State lineman Alex Boone pulls a ‘Don’t Tase Me Bro!’ after yielding a tow truck cable tyring to break stuff. Yup he was D-Runk. I’m not sure if this guy’s stock will fall in the draft this year. Maybe the Dallas Cowboyws will pick him up.
A clinical study shows that football players out of high school are getting bigger, the Homer Simpson way. Instead of doing the GNC Multi Grain Protein Gut Buster, they’re pigging up on fatty food. Unless they’re doing the Atkins, the study says they are on the way to big time shock. Good thing college programs straighten out. Still, the graph’s pretty cool about how big theses guys are getting
Condi Rice says no to the Pac 10 and keeps making the cheddah on the speaker circuit. That makes sense, get money for fluff instead of defending the ridiculous position on the Rose Bowl year in and year out. Please let’s keep politics out of college football. I’m looking at you President Obama.
