We have a full plate here this week on the Crib Sheet so in the interest of avoiding any more food references we stuffed into the last couple of posts, here’s this week’s Crib Sheet:
Steve Spurrier, South Carolina head coach, complained about tape on the field after their shilacking they took from Alabama last week. So Alabama head coach Nick Saban says they won’t do it again. The kickers were using to place kicks and now the need some other guide to help the ball find the way. Southeastern Conference: Home of the Ticky Tacky Whining.
Orrin Hatch is poking an prodding his trident in the direction of the Justice Department and President Obama, trying to get a probe of the BCS system again. Hey, it’s an easy target in Utah and we hope he gets relected for all of this posturing and grand standing. Once again, this shows that people from Utah suck.
The officiating crew from last week’s Florida and Arkansas game were suspended due to a blown personal foul call against an Arkansas player. When you are Florida and on top, the calls will go your way. Southeastern Conference: Home of Protecting the Frontrunners.
While LeBron James is busy kicking out professional football players, he’s also giving advice to Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor. James says he’s trying to help Pryor handle being a super star athelete. What? You have to win games, and more importantly championships, to be a super star. Right now Pryor is the head guy for a lame-o offense. An offense that just got upset by Purdue.
When Texas Tech loses bad, count on Mike Leech to say something witty about it. This time, it was something about fat girlfriends. We love him even though his team usually rolls Big 12 North teams.
The Dallas Fort Worth airport and American Airlines are now doing direct flights to Manhattan, Kansas. What does that mean? Recruiting trips for Kansas State will be less of convenience. The Wildcats had to cut costs for private flights which meant planes going to Topeka or Kansas City held recruits. Will this help? Who knows.
Goldy Gopher got the slap down for mocking prayer at the beginning of a game last week. I can see that happening if they played Notre Dame or Boston College, but doing it before a Penn State game is a little ridiculous. His punishment? 10 Hail Marys and a bad football team.
Bob Griese will have to sit a game for making a taco joke on a latino NASCAR driver. Was it because it was racially insensitive or because it was a really bad joke? Griese did get his education at Michigan, you know.
Speaking of Michigan, there’s a letter of inquiry from the NCAA about the whole practicing too long trouble some players kicked up a month ago. How could the Wolverines be practicing too hard? They’re terrible. Maybe if they were undefeated but they stink too much to be practicing too long. If anything, they are not practicing enough.
Much to no one’s surprise, Sam Bradford will have a season ending shoulder surgery and then enter the NFL draft. It seemed a little awkward when Bradford left the Texas game a couple of weeks ago. The hit wasn’t as massive as the first injury. Right then I think we all knew Bradford wasn’t gonna chance it. So will he do well in the NFL? Tune in and find out if we ever kick up a KC GameDay blog.
Iowa Governor Chet Culver goofed up and congratulated only Iowa in a historic win over the weekend. Yes, the Hawkeyes are 8-0 for the first time in forever, but it seems he forgot the Iowa State win over Nebraska in Nebraska for the first time since 1977. If the Cyclones make a bowl, this guy will be elected out of the office.
The NCAA ruled that Oklahoma State wide receiver Dez Bryant will be suspended for the rest of the season. He lied to the NCAA when they went sniffing around a visit he had with Deion Sanders. This seems a little harsh. With other players punching people and coming back, you’d figure they would let him come back and play. To bad for the Cowpokes as they could use him against Texas this weekend.
Whoah nelly what a smelly game the Red River Rivalry was. The bigger upset for the Big 12 was Colorado over Kansas over the weekend. Either that or Kansas State’s 62 point thumping of Texas A&M. At any rate, guess what? Those Wildcats happen to be first in the Big 12 North. Coming into the beginning of the year, no one expected Kansas State to be in that position or Oklahoma to have 3 losses hung on them by this time. Just goes to show that in college football, anything can happen. More importantly this week, we have an expected birth of the first BCS standings. First, here’s the pick it standings:
Now this is a Big 12 and Kansas City blog but today we are going to dip into the hype and look at the SEC. Everyone in the country says the Southeastern Conference is the best college football conference on the planet. Many people, especially around here pooh-pooh that notion. But when looking at the numbers and opening conference play this week, it’s kind of hard to argue against that. The SEC has 4 undefeated teams. Every other conference has at most 2 (including the Big 12 and the Big 10). Now you might complain that the non conference schedule for the SEC has been weak, but they handled teams like Virginia Tech and the some what surprising Washington. Even so, they didn’t trip up like the other conferences and beat the teams they are supposed to. Yet they still get the ire of others. That kinda reminds me about how little brothers look at big brothers.
We were unfortunate last night not to witness the Nebraska and Missouri game. Though the radio was on, we couldn’t get a good grasp of just how muddy and mucky it was to play. 2-0 at halftime is a wacky score. But we didn’t expect Missouri to choke away the game and 27 points in the fourth quarter. What did we find out? Nebraska has the fast track to the Big 12 North title. Missouri is much like their new quarterback Blaine Gabbert: young, inexperienced, talented, but not yet ready. The Tigers did reload this year, but the bullet jammed up a bit last night. Let’s jam on to this week’s Pick It and Stick It:
What’s wrong with a little celebration? We here at the KCCGD like to shimmy and shake here after an especially tasty nacho dip or greasebuger. So why is it so hard to let the college football players jump up and down? Granted we don’t zebra striped dudes follow us to the Golden Tee table and inspect our reaction to making a great save putt. But that’s where the problem is. The referees are subjectively deciding whether or not the celebration might be offensive to him or the other team. That seems just a bit too wacky. There’s already enough pressure on the refs for actual blown calls. Don’t let them blow it on stupid rules.
Looks like there’s a chance that LeGarrette Blount may be reinstated sometime this year. He cold cocked a Boise State player during one of the first games of the year and was subsequently suspended for the rest of the season. Similar infractions in different conferences only yielded a game or two suspension. It looks like he’s taking the right steps to get back on the field.
Kansas University police will open up an investigation to the fight that took place between the football and basketball players. The media hype around this is now big enough for some posturing by the law enforcement there. So a hand will be slapped and money will be given under the table to keep this guys on the field.
Texas Tech’s Taylor Potts suffered a concussion last week and he may be out this Saturday for their game against the Kansas State Wildcats. The stars may be aligned for the Wildcats as they are coming off their last second win against Iowa State and Farmageddon. Good thing suspended offensive lineman Brandon Carter is back. Hmm maybe that’s why Potts got banged up?
It looks like they nabbed the guy accused of filming ESPN’s Erin Andrews nude. They dude’s an insurance salesmen and pretty well off. Go figure. The most surprise part of the article is that there are eight videos. We thought there was just one.
Oklahoma Sooners’ Ryan Broyles is out four to six weeks with a broken shoulder. Broyles is their leading wide receiver. Oklahoma’s BCS chances are pretty much shot and least injuries will be a sufficient excuse.
The SEC admitted they blew the excessive celebration call against Georgia when they took the lead over LSU with about 1:05 to go in the game. LSU came back and won. Now Georgia should’ve stopped LSU, but their chances were seriously hurt with the penalty. What’s up with refs deciding outcomes for more important teams? Indiana’s screwjob at Michigan and now this? It’s like the refs want the bigger names to win for the conference. If Georgia won the game, would we see this much hype for LSU and Florida this weekend? You know stuff like this makes me think twice about how clean these conferences really are.
Speaking of this week’s Florida vs LSU matchup, it seems the Gator players are getting threatening texts from LSU fans. Ho boy, let the hype machine crank up to full power. JK LOL!
The non conference schedule is over and the Big 12 is limping out. Oklahoma losing another close on to Miami capped off a 34-14 non conference schedule with one more game remaining. The Arkansas rout of Texas A&M Saturday especially stung because it was from a SEC team. So it looks as though that the Big 12 won’t end up being the 2nd strongest conference. That can hurt Texas if they notch a loss and there’s no undefeated team in the conference. Heaven forbid USC or even Ohio State sneaks into the national title game again. One thing is for sure, the SEC is living up to the hype this year. Now it’s time to figure out if we lived up to our Pick It hype:
Well hard and cold. Hard because the teams are starting to even out and we are actually seeing tougher calls for the spread. On top of that, the confidence points don’t work out too well anymore. There won’t be hardly anymore Off bets to drop the big points on. Cold because of the weather. It’s getting nippy out folks. Bundle up and bring the Irish coffee.
Okay so the only Off just happens to be Boise State. The BCS Bronco Busting Broncos are riding there way to a somewhat cake conference schedule. Will they make it? UC Davis will help. Cincinnati is supposed to roll Miami of Ohio even though it’s a rivalry game. The other Miami is hosting Landry Jones and Oklahoma. Looks like the loss to Virginia Tech was enough to put the Sooners out ahead on the spread. Georgia and LSU have the smallest spread because, well, it’s the SEC and it’s Defense. Did you see LSU last week? Yeah it will be close. The other close game will be the Paul Bunyan Trophy contest that pits Michigan against Michigan State. Last week’s gift for the Wolverines is why the are favored 3. It’s 3 points from the referees and the Big 10.
It’s the last Mascot Monday of the offseason and the KCCGD offices are all over the place. We’re getting ready for the start of a new season and we have time for one more send up to our favorite distractions, mascots. We had some crazy mascots, some hardcore mascots, and some live animal mascots paraded across every Monday. For our final one, we will take a look at a mascot from a preseason top 25 team in Ole Miss. Except that there isn’t a mascot, or at least not an official one.
This week finds us smack dab in the middle of Big 12 Media days. This is the week of the year where all of the schools congregate and spit words into a hungry set of microphones in preparation of a new college football season. Next week camp starts and before you know it, it’s football time! But to sum up this week so far, Kansas was media voted #2 in the north and they have a chip on their shoulder, Missouri is regrouping, Nebraska doesn’t feel like number 1, the South teams are the bomb, and nobody is really interested in the new head coach for Iowa State (Paul Rhodes). We’ll talk a little about the teams left next week. For now, hold on tight because we just exited the gate and are starting to build steam to a new season. Here’s this week’s Crib Sheet:
Pittsburgh State football player Joe Windscheffel is out for the season with an arm injury due to a Zebra charge. He needed to paint a fence and had to move some zebras. The male zebra charged and he’s out for the season. Be careful childrens, animals are wild.
If you are tired of SEC talk, then cover your eyes for this one. The SEC is striking deals with regional television stations to broadcast games, most notably in regions that cater to the Big 12 and the Big 10. The hype machine is in full swing and they have the national titles to back them up. I guess we’re gonna see more and more of the SEC until some other conference pins them down.
So last week, we talked about Army playing Yankee Stadium in 2010. Welp a couple of days after news of that came out, they announced that they will be playing there for the next 4 out of 5 years. Great stuff. They used to play there every year and now they are bringing back the tradition. Let’s hope they keep the new tradition of camouflage gear.
Our favorite analyst Kirk Herbstreit is suing the IRS for taxing Herbsreit on a burnt down house. So Kirky wanted to build a new house on his current and caught wind of the local fire department needing some training. He ‘donated’ the house to the fire department and they promptly torched it. Now he thinks he should get the tax credit for the donation but the IRS is saying no way. What a dumbass. Quoting Kritter, “He should fire his accountant.”
Looks like some team from the Mountain West Conference manned up and is scheduling some big time schools. Boise State will play Virginia Tech next year. Welp if the Broncos go undefeated next and beat Va-Tech, then they should have a shot at the title game.
Lou Holtz and his Notre Dame alumni beat up on Japan this year in the Notre Dame Japan Bowl. It’s nice to see some aged alumni hit the field and play again for the Irish. We wonder if the folks over in the land of the rising sun though Lou was drunk the whole time he was there. Don’t worry guys, he sounds that way all of the time.
The Rose Bowl tweaked some rules with the current BCS contract to allow non BCS schools to play in to the bowl. If one of the automatic qualifiers for the Rose Bowl goes to the national title game, then the slot is open to anybody. That’s a break from how things were done in the past. It used to be only Big 10 and Pac 10 teams. This is a good first step and this should help to even things out just a little bit more.
The heavy loaded week of allergies couldn’t stop the KCCGD crew from sneezing and coughing their way through another week of news. We’re loaded up on all sorts of over the counter goodies to help bring you the latest in the greatest sport ever, college football. Bring some kleenex, because either the fantastic writing or huge pollen count will bring tears to your eyes. We hope its the former. Here’s this week Crib Sheet:
Ron Prince, former Kansas State head coach, must be laughing pretty heartily right now. Kansas State made known the details of a ‘secret agreement’ that would dump an extra $3.5 million on a company that Prince created in the case that he would be fired without cause. This was signed with his contract extension last year by former athletic director, Bob Krause. Krause resigned because of the situation. Prince’s lawyer says the lawsuit is without merit, and Prince couldn’t be contacted for comment. Because you can’t really talk while gut-laughing to the point of puking. This whole situation makes me want to puke. Wefald’s legacy is tarnished and K-State as he gave his ‘old friend’ the job in the first place. What ‘old friend’ keeps this part of the deal secret? I talked about how much of a dunderhead Krause was when they fired Prince and know we’re seeing just how far and deep his ineptness set the program back. The Kansas City Star also has filings. It’s sad day to be a Wildcat fan.
The Big 12 athletic directors (the real ones) met last week and decided to punt the 3 way tiebreaker rule that the coaches passed to them on. So it seems the rule is here to say, while they open up for more discussion and waffling on the issue. The chance is so small anyway that once the season starts and ends, people will forget about the unique rule.
Meanwhile, the SEC coaches are bickering down in Florida for their annual meeting. The main mouth work comes from Tennessee’s Lane Kiffin and South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier. Yes the New Ball Coach versus the Ole Ball Coach. They are still duking it out over the cheating question Spurrier asked. The other coaches ducked and it seemed like they were heading to the bars to scope out the chicks or something. Very strange comradery indeed. Time to circle the matchup on the schedule.
Looks like the Big 12 won’t sit down the officials if they perform poorly. That’s a shame really because after the last couple of years of bad calls, the Big 12 could use some consequence over there.
The Big 12, however, will pay out a record $130 million earned last year in athletic payouts. It seems being the 2nd best conference in football and having a national champion in basketball helped. Let’s hope they use that money to make them number 1 in football.
The final USA Today coaches poll next year will be anonymous. Typically that final vote helps to decide who will play in the national title game. Chances are that’s a good thing for the coaches. It will help avoid any death threats for deciding votes.
In case you didn’t notice, the professional baseball season is under way. Isn’t that great! Just like what Beano Cook says, it just means that the football season is getting closer! We here at the KCCGD do not cover college baseball but we’re sure it’s really exciting. If the major leagues didn’t draft all of the real talent first, we’re sure it would be better. This is the same problem basketball suffers from. Which we don’t cover too (yet). At some point, once the staff gets filled out, we’ll cover the more important college sports for the Kansas City area. Until then, here’s this week’s college football news:
The vaunted, Charlie Weiss led, Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football Head Coach, er, Charlie Weiss confirmed that we was thinking about leaving the program. He asked his family about after weighing options and a major lumping from USC to close out last season. Last year, they were 7-6. If they can bump that up a win or two and win the bowl, he should be safe. If he dips, he’s a goner.
Michigan was offering Greg Paulus a chance to vie for quarterback this year. Paulus, who didn’t even toss a ball around when he was visiting the campus, now has the option to join the graduate program and the football team. This is turning into a crazy situation. Is Rich Rodriguez desperate? Or does he see a golden opportunity. This story wasn’t done, however. Paulus skipped the Wolverines and now is visiting both Nebraska and Syracuse. Good luck to whoever wastes their time on the guy.
The Big 12 comes in at number 3 in terms of attendance broken out by conference last year. It’s a 3% jump whereas number 1 SEC grew by about 2% and number 2 Big 10 dropped by about 1%. It looks like that trend may continue next year, which will keep this writer happy and bring hope to eventually passing the Big 10 in attendance.
Oklahoma can’t surf the internet as much, due to NCAA voliations and a new policy from the administration. If you are an Oklahoma Sooner, athlete or alumni, this site is safe to use. Tell your friends and family. We are So0ner friendly. Kinda.
Colby Whitlock from Texas Tech gives major props to wrestling, as Tim Griffin writes. As a former high school football player/wrestler I can attest to how much more an athlete can gain by participating a wrestling. Balance, speed, and endurance will raise up, which is important for the the fat middle guys like myself. The actual wrestling part I didn’t like, but the condition part was great.
It was a big week of news and the Crib Sheet is back this week to tell you what mattered. It was Signing Day last week and the ouija board nearly broke from producing signatures sprinkled out across the whole nation. There were some surprises, but most of what was expected came to be true. We mixed in some political goobery and a little bit o’ smack talk to keep things fresh. My guess is the next couple of weeks are going to be dry news wise, so let this be the spike before the long lull. Here’s the crib:
Newly appointed Jesus of Tennessee Lane Kiffin is crying wolf over Urban Meyer trying to hit up one of his recruits. Lane still got the guy, but maybe the rub off from Al Davis’ fragile shoulders are showing up in Volunteer-land. It’s nice you got the recruit, Lane, but talking smack on Urban will produce some nasty results. Just talk to Georgia. Oh and he apologized.
Missouri too, had a pretty good recruiting class. They promised some tight end play to Sheldon Richardson but realy this kid is defensive tackle all the way. At any rate, look for them to compete for the North and then choke at some point.
Nebraskasigned about 21 kids to fill out the black shirts. Look out for these guys. With the walk on program back on and some key pick ups, Nebraska will be well on their way to almost going back to the Big 12 Championship game.
Conference wise, Texas and Oklahoma went 1 and 2, again. Hey they do that every year so get used to it. Colorado had a top 4 conference recruiting ranking last year and look at how they finished. Sleep tight, Texas A&M.
Bryce Brown is hanging out and making everybody speculate the hell out of him. Everybody else is down and signed but this guy just likes making everyone wait. Also, the big rumor is he might turn pro in some other league. Really, Bryce is a huge tease.
James Franklin, the Maryland offensive coordinator, was named last Thursday as the successor to Ralph Friedgen. Overlooking the fact that Maryland has done crap the last couple of years, this pick makes sense. If the school is satisfied with mediocrity then they should continue in it.
Mike Leech is culling his old lawyer skills and is still banging out a contract with Texas Tech. So the Red Raiders are apparently pulling a Boston College and telling Leech he can’t talk or interview with other teams during his contract. If they break off now, look for him to be somewhere else after this year. Come Texas Tech, fumble this one away!
Okay, this is getting redonkulous. Now all of Utah’s lawmakers are sending a resolution to PrezBama to blow away the BCS and give in to the power of playoffs. Now with football players on hand! Please somebody tell the whole state of Utah to get over it and focus on getting the Mountain West the automatic bid. Going the political route won’t work.
Missouri pulled in LSU tight ends coach Josh Henson. It looks as thought some SEC cred might be seeping into the Big 12. Recruiting wise, this will help out the Tigers immensly. Tim Griffin’s already saying they’re going after Bryce Brown too.
Dana Dimel is coming back to K-State. So he did a great job for Mike Stoops and reviving some offense and it looks like he’ll be doing the same at K-State. Let’s hope that it will be more than Ron Prince’s “Throw-everything-up-and-see-what-sticks” offense.
In sign of bi-partisanship, Rep. Joe Barton (R) from Texas is siding with PrezBama in setting up a college football playoff. Does he really need the votes? Plus, this guy’s an Aggie. Shouldn’t he be working more toward making Texas A&M a real football team instead of playing up to the playoff people?
