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.
College Sports, Kansas City style
