It's a Long F*ckin' Offseason: News Articles and Notes

RJ Esq · Jun 6, 2008

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td class="col0">Heavy rain makes Indiana's Memorial Stadium field unplayable

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It's a mad dash to get it fixed before Indiana's season-opener Aug. 30
The problems began when the Bloomington area was hit with flash flooding
The estimated damage, Greenspan believes, could cost $750,000 to $1 million

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</td></tr></tbody></table>BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) -- Indiana University's Memorial Stadium football field turf was severely damaged by heavy rain and strong winds this week and has been ruled unplayable.
Now it's a mad dash to get it fixed before Indiana's season-opener Aug. 30 against Western Kentucky.
"We're bringing in some turf specialists to see if it can be salvaged or whether it's totaled," Indiana athletic director Greenspan told The Associated Press on Friday. "We have to do this in about six or seven weeks, and it very well might be totaled. I've never seen anything like it."
The problems began Wednesday when the Bloomington area was hit with flash flooding, turning the football field, which rests beneath the parking lot level, into what some eyewitnesses described as a floating island of green turf.
When the water finally drained, a hole about 10 inches deep ran from the middle of the field, just inside the end line to the fence separating the field from fans.
That was only part of the problem.
Greenspan said the south end of the field, from the end zone to about the 30- or 40-yard line, was lumpy and he's still uncertain how much it will cost to fix. The estimate, Greenspan believes, could be $750,000 to $1 million.
"It needs considerable work, and we've got to get this done," he said.
The washed-out field comes as Greenspan and other IU officials prepare to defend the school next week against NCAA allegations that former men's basketball coach Kelvin Sampson made impermissible phone calls to recruits. A hearing on the matter is set for June 13 in Seattle and IU could be punished including losing additional basketball scholarships.
Finding a quick-fix for the field won't be easy, either.
Greenspan said it normally takes three to four weeks to install new turf, but the school must first determine whether it can be repaired or will need to be replaced. Then they must find a company available to do the job, and it could require additional work to smooth out the lumps -- all before Aug. 30.
"From start to finish, in my experience, it's usually been about four weeks," Greenspan said.
The damage is already causing scheduling conflicts.
Football players have been instructed not to practice on the field and this weekend's football camps are being moved to another venue. In August, before the Hoosiers' opener, Memorial Stadium is also scheduled to host the national drum and bugle corps competition.
Still, Greenspan believes it can be repaired before the Western Kentucky game.
"At worst, I think we have to do extensive repair or replace it," he said. "I don't know what it (the water damage) means to the resiliency of the field, the subsurface, how much has broken down underneath there, that sort of thing. We've got a guy coming in early next week and he'll give us his educated opinion."
For Greenspan, fixing the field has become priority No. 1.
"The closest thing I've seen to this was when I was out at Cal in '89 and they had the earthquake," he said. "The turf just kind of rode along like a wave. I've never seen water or the volume of water get underneath carpet like that and destroy the turf like that."

RJ Esq · Jun 9, 2008

Quarterbacks Teams Cannot Afford to Lose

<small class="postauthor">Posted on 2008 under BCS Conferences, Big 12, Big East, Commentary, Mid American, Non-BCS Conference, SEC | </small> <small class="day">9</small> <small class="month">Jun</small>

 Like it or not, some teams’ win-loss record rides on the shoulder of the man under center. If he gets hurt or has a bad year, that team could go from having 10 or 11 wins to only 7 or 8 wins. Looking through the teams, I have found at least 5 quarterbacks who have to stay healthy all year if their teams want to have a chance at success this season.
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</center></td> </tr> <tr> <td><center>Gator Fans cringe at the
thought of a hurt Tebow</center></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Question, how do you go and find a replacement for someone who threw for 3200 yards, 32 touchdowns, ran for 895 yards and 23 touchdowns? The answer is you don’t. With an improved defense, the Gators have all eyes set on the SEC Championship and another BCS Championship. The one person that could derail all of those plans is the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow.
With the type of offense that Urban Meyer runs, Tebow takes a lot of hits. Luckily last season, when Tebow had his broken, non-throwing hand, the Gators had a few weeks off before their Bowl Game. I suspect this year, Meyer might not be as liberal with Tebow late in games with the lead. He might come out and rest because as Gator fans know, he is the horse that will pull Florida’s buggy this season.
On the same lines as Tebow, this player led his team in both rushing and passing in 2007. Pat White threw for 1700 yards and 14 touchdowns while running for another 1300 yards and 14 touchdowns. Under new head coach Bill Stewart, the Mountaineers can expect to run the same type of offense as in years past with the coach whose name I will not mention. West Virgina did lose Steve Slaton to the NFL draft, but expect Noel Devine to pick up on his missing productivity.
Now if you take a look at the two losses West Virginia had last season, South Florida and Pittsburgh, there is one thing that stands out in each of those losses. In both of those games, the Mountaineers lost Pat White for the majority of that game due to injury. That right there tells you how important he is to their offense. In those two games they combined to score 22 points. So needless to say, Patrick White must stay healthy this season if West Virginia wants to go BCS bowling and possibly play for the BCS Championship.
One final, dual threat quarterback that has to stay healthy this season is Central Michigan’s Dan LeFevour. The Chippewas were the 2007 MAC Champions and it was due mainly to the play of LeFevour. In 2007, like Pat White, he was the leading passer and rusher for the team throwing for 3600 yards and 27 touchdowns while rushing for 1100 yards and 19 touchdowns.
The Chippewas have three decent BCS teams on their schedule, at Georgia, at Purdue, and at Indiana. If LeFevour can put a good showing up against those teams, he will get some serious main stream media attention. Even so, with him in the lineup, one would have to expect that CMU is one of the favorites to win the MAC this year and head back to the Motor City Bowl. Without him and his offensive production, Central Michigan will be lucky to get the needed 6 wins to become bowl eligible.

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</center></td> </tr> <tr> <td><center>Tech fans hope Harrell’s arm doesn’t
fall off from all the passing</center></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Moving away from the running and passing quarterbacks, to the traditional drop back quarterbacks, the first person on this list is Texas Tech’s record setting passer Graham Harrell. Harrell’s passing numbers last season are seriously mind boggling. In 2007, he threw for 5700 yards, 48 touchdowns, and a 71% completion percentage. It helps to have a great go to receiver like Michael Crabtree who caught 134 balls for almost 2000 yards.
It isn’t a secret that the Red Raiders are going to air the ball out when you play them. Sometimes Harrell will put the ball in the air upwards of 70 times in a game. They use the short passes to supplement their lack luster running game. This will be Graham’s 3rd year as starter for Texas Tech, and it would be hard to believe that their backup could put up numbers half as good. The Red Raiders are on a lot of lists to be a surprise team this year, and the only way they will do that is if Harrell stays healthy all season.
Moving from a possible surprise team of 2008 to one of the surprise teams of 2007, the Arizona State Sun Devils. It was a big joke around the college football world when former coach Dirk Koetter listened to his players and named Rudy Carpenter the quarterback in 2006. Koetter got fired after the season, but Carpenter continued to shine. In 2007, Rudy threw for 3200 yards and 25 touchdowns for an Arizona State team that went 10-3.
Carpenter is back for his senior season and the Sun Devils are hoping not to repeat the end of the 2007 season where they lost 3 of their last 5 games. One can’t really blame Carpenter for those losses because he played well in all of those games. He brings 3 years of starting experience to the table for Arizona State and with a schedule that has Georgia coming to town and traveling to USC and California, Carpenter has to stay healthy for the Sun Devils to come close to repeating what they did last season.

RJ Esq · Jun 9, 2008

Mid-Major Monday: Kaho'ali'i's Revenge

by SMQ on Jun 9, 2008 10:31 AM EDT
Players come and go everywhere, and coaches, too, but two teams go into the season facing a unique kind of disaster, personnel-wise: it’s probably not possible for any outfit to look as different from one fall to the next as Michigan and Hawaii will this year.
The difference, of course, is that Michigan’s forthcoming season of truth is by all appearances a temporary, circumstancial setback, a natural – albeit extreme – part of the cycle. Not so much Hawaii’s. In January, when I musically offered the day after Warriors were trashed in the Sugar Bowl that they should learn to live with what they are, I couldn’t foresee just how substantially that was about to change. At that point, UH was losing two central figures from the record-breaking offense to graduation: receiver Jason Rivers and, essentially, Colt Brennan. It still had a couple 1,000-yard receivers, and certainly more behind them, with a fifth-year quarterback who’d earned a little starting experience, a lot of garbage time cleanup and automatic entry to stat paradise in June Jones’ run-and-shoot.

Well, that was fun. Up for some duck a l’orange? I know a place.
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Within weeks, the only element of that equation still in the picture is the new quarterback, Tyler Graunke, who with Jones’ hop to SMU and the early exits of Ryan Grice-Mullen and Davone Bess looks less like the heir apparent to a deluge of touchdowns and more like the merely competent, physically limited career back-up who threw two picks apiece against Northern Colorado and Charleston Southern and almost lost to Nevada in his only full start against a I-A team. Their draft ambitions came up empty (surprise: both Bess and Grice-Mullen are listed under 5’11"), but the top four receivers accounted for 70 percent of the offense’s yards for scrimmage last year. Attrition lopped off the Warriors’ head, arm, hands and feet in one fell swoop.
For the time being, the run-and-shoot qualifies as a traditional battle technique (the Warrior tattoo of the future might be the mark of the fearsome Rip 60 Z Go), and along those lines, UH is hewing close to the tree: Jones’ replacement as boss is a career defensive guy on the staff for the last two years, David McMackin, but the new offensive coordinator, Ron Lee, signed on with Jones in 1999, and the new quarterbacks and offensive line coaches came up in the system – although Nick Rolovich and Brian Smith both graduated just three years ago, meaning they were teammates with some of the older members of the groups they’re now bossing around. But the system itself shouldn’t change on any fundamental level.
You’d have to be an insanely wild optimist to assume there won’t be an immediate dropoff from Jones’ expertise and playcalling, before the personnel losses are even taken into account. When you add it up, June Jones or not, the exiting horde – and its ringleader, specifically – was a special group even within the system:

Don’t be fooled by outrageous numbers born of sheer volume. Stripped of the inflated attempt and yardage totals that drew much attention to the likes of Timmy Chang, the passing game was only average in terms of efficiency before Brennan wafted across the Pacific. Colt was, by any realistic model, only a temporary messiah, in the right place, at the right time, with the right coach, against the right teams, to crush the hapless defenses of the WAC under his carefree, lightly-goateed, shirtless brilliance. Record-smashing draft picks don’t flee the stigma of sexual assault charges every day; Graunke, by all appearances, is just a guy, and will probably be lucky with untested receivers to match the pre-Brennan average. Scoring will fall by at least a touchdown per game, for a team that won half its game last year by a touchdown or less.
Oh, the right teams. The other crucial element of the perfect storm was the schedule, a creamy blend of vulnerability that struck the right note for a BCS run, but which is now followed by a relatively hellish slate out to collect on the debts run up by last fall’s gluttony. Hawaii does not seem to have a real "road warrior" mentality to begin with – most of its close games last year were on the mainland (Louisiana Tech, San Jose State, Nevada), as were two of three losses in 2006 – and the upcoming schedule alternates should-be-automatic home wins (Weber State, San Jose State, Louisiana Tech) with the toughest four games on the schedule, all on the road: at Florida, at Oregon State, at preseason favorite Fresno State, at co-preseason favorite Boise State, all in the first month and a half. The Warriors will be underdogs in all four, likely by a lot, and probably in the last two, as well, when Washington State and Cincinnati fly from bleak snowscapes to end their respective seasons in style. That’s a long, long way from the September stretch of Northern Colorado, UNLV and Charleston Southern that raised so many eyebrows and blogger ire through the rest of ‘07.
What goes around, comes around, I guess. You build and build and build until everything falls into place, the road is cleared and the mountain is topped at last, however briefly. Then you take the money and run. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Of course not: let the young ‘uns handle the heavy lifting this time. Spending a year or two as New Mexico State can only build character.

RJ Esq · Jun 9, 2008

Freshman Quarterback Review, Part Three: Big Ten

by SMQ on Jun 9, 2008 2:23 PM EDT
A quick review after the weekend:
• Part One (ACC)
• Part Two (Big 12)
• Part Three (Big East)
The working hypothesis, rather than the conventional wisdom of steady improvement, is that most quarterbacks are who they are from the beginning: initially good passers tend to decline or level off after a strong, mediocre players tend to stay mediocre, and bad debuts are followed with some improvement, but generally level off. The exceptions are the really physically gifted, probably draft-bound players, like Philip Rivers, Vince Young and Pat White, who might (or, in White's case, might not) look bad or mediocre to begin but evolve quickly into much stronger players.
From that perspective, the Big Ten is a mixed bag:

To be fair, after four years, the cortisone does kind of go to your head.
- - -
Two of the three highest-rated freshman passers disappeared as sophomores but had later lives: Kirsch occasionally spelled Kyle Orton over the next two years before assuming the starting job as a senior in 2005, throwing more interceptions than touchdowns and eventually being replaced by a young, interception-prone Curtis Painter; Beutjer left Iowa and had decent numbers as an upperclassman on a couple very, very bad teams at Illinois. The other immediately successful youngster, Chad Henne, kept one pattern by declining in year two but defied long-term projections of mediocrity by rebounding as a junior (passer rating over 140) and senior (over 130). You could say Henne was Henne from the start and didn't improve much over the years (his freshman numbers were about the same as his injury-depressed senior numbers), but he was one of the top quarterbacks taken in the draft and had a better career in the end than his sophomore inconsistency should suggest under our hypothesis.
The book is not closed on Kellen Lewis, Curtis Painter or Juice Williams, but their improvement from mediocre-to-bad freshmen to very competent sophomores was predictable; Painter improved slightly across the board as a junior, but he is projected high in next year's draft and is expected to have a bang-up finish. Williams and Lewis both improved in every area except interceptions, and as neither shapes up as a stud slinger, can probably be expected to level off with a reduction in picks going forward.
Brett Basanez and Jeff Smoker, though, are anomalies in different directions: Basanez declined badly as a sophomore before finishing with a solid career and a strong senior year; Smoker was off the charts in 2001, with the aid of T.J. Duckett and Charles Rogers, and faded out with a relative whimper – injured as a junior, a ton of yards as a senior, but not much substance, efficiency-wise. This is not very conclusive.
Next: Pac Ten.

RJ Esq · Jun 10, 2008

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td class="col0">Mizzou's Alexander reinjures knee

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Alexander will be sidelined at least until the start of the Big 12 season
He reinjured his left knee, the same one he hurt in the Big 12 title game
Alexander had 37 receptions for 417 yards and two touchdowns last season

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</td></tr></tbody></table>COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) -- Missouri wide receiver Danario Alexander will be sidelined at least until the start of the Big 12 season after reinjuring his left knee.
Alexander, a junior who had 37 receptions for 417 yards and two touchdowns last season, was scheduled for surgery on Monday to repair a retorn ligament. It's the same knee he hurt in the Big 12 championship game in December, with resulting rehab sidelining him most of spring practice, and he was held out of the annual Black and Gold game.
An MRI showed that a graft taken from a human cadaver had retorn.
"We're really not sure how or when it happened, and Danario can't pinpoint one precise moment when he felt something was wrong," trainer Rex Sharp said. "We know that he was doing great with his rehab work during the spring and was ready to have a great summer in preparation for the season, and this is a really unfortunate situation."
Missouri opens conference play at Nebraska on Oct. 4.
"This is a setback certainly, but with his work ethic, I think our timetable is realistic," coach Gary Pinkel said.

RJ Esq · Jun 10, 2008

A Reasonably Anticipatory Assessment of: Central Florida

by SMQ on Jun 10, 2008 10:34 AM EDT
A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason.
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What’s Changed. One wonders the extent of the unbreakable will and body of Kevin Smith, who obliterated all preceding notions of the limits of running back endurance with a painful-to-contemplate 450 carries as a junior, then wisely limped off to the pros before he could be slated for the glue factory (Orlando Glue! Made From People!). Forget the yards, which come naturally with this workload: Smith went over 25 carries eleven times, and averaged 36 during UCF’s seven-game conference win streak to end the regular season, during which he also scored 18 touchdowns and the team averaged 43 points.

Philip Smith: Remember him before he turns purple.
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That’s another thing that lightens the impact a little: defenses from Marshall, UAB, SMU, UTEP and Tulsa didn’t lay all that many malicious hands or helmets on him. If there’s a bright side to losing one of the top statistical backs in D-I history, and a couple first team all-C-USA linemen with him, it’s the strong likelihood that the snuggly soft defenses of Conference USA will be nearly as forgiving toward new tailback Phillip Smith, who got in some hits during blowout time in wins over Memphis, Marshall and SMU. The Knights ran on two-thirds of their snaps last year, and with the new quarterback (see below) are still likely to pound it as often as they think they can, but for the sake of balance and the future of the whirlpool, that number won’t approach 670 attempts again.
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The least you should know about Central Florida...</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007 Record • Past Five Years</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007: 10-4 (8-1 C-USA; 1st/East; Champion)
2003-07: 25-37 (20-22 C-USA/MAC)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*-</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2004-08: 87 • 71 • 72 • 61 • 56</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Returning Starters, Roughly</td> </tr> <tr> <td>13 (5 Offense, 8 Defense)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Best Player</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

The team's fortunes in Conference USA have followed Joe Burnett's: in 2005, Burnett picked off five passes in a five-game winning streak to end the regular season and ran two punts back for touchdowns in the Knights' from-nowhere run to the league championship game. He was disappointingly empty on both counts as a sophomore (just one INT), missing the all-conference team altogether while UCF plummeted to 4-8. Last year's return to the postseason coincided with Burnett's return to freshman form: six picks, a punt return score in the C-USA Championship, another first team all-conference vote and a nice boost to his draft status. Unless the on-again, off-again bit is a cyclical thing in election years.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>The Short-Timers</td> </tr> <tr> <td>UCF is the beacon of upward mobility among the mid-majors: it's geographically convenient for the Big East, in a major metro market, in an infamously talent-rich state; it has a new on-campus stadium that outdrew Miami and a slew of other major schools in its first year; it's grown into a huge school in 40 years; and it's a proven entity competitively in a very short stay in C-USA. Unless the administrative point men are completely politically inept (they've massively expanded the enrollment, moved into a solid position in I-A football and built a new stadium, right?), the next, inevitable round of major conference expansion everyone is so certain about will include the Knights – although it would probably help if they came up with a more prominent basketball team. And change the uniforms, please (white on gold? What is this, prom?)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>- - -
* According to Rivals.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> What’s the Same. There’s not much glory in leading C-USA against the pass (no other defense in the league finished in the top half of the country in pass efficiency D), but the Knights were well ahead of the curve and should be again: they intercepted more passes (24) than all but two other defenses in the country, put both starting corners on the all-C-USA team and get back five DBs who finished among the top seven tacklers on the team, including the top two. Joe Burnett and Johnell Neal tied for the conference lead with six picks apiece; Burnett has thirteen in three years and all things considered is probably the best athlete anywhere in C-USA.
Chickens and Eggs. Ah, but UCF is facing the exact opposite situation on the defensive line, which led the conference in sacks, was second against the run and will be replacing its best player, all-conference end Leger Douzable, and another three-year starter, ex-Canadien wrestling champ Keith Shologan. Which came first: the front line pressure that regularly kept the heat off the secondary, or the coverage that gave the rush all that time? I think it’s better for the Knights if it’s the latter – the offense is much less likely to build the kind of leads that let the rush tee off in must-pass situations than it was last year, or to milk those leads at the ends of games without K. Smith. This D shouldn’t have the luxury of allowing 27 points per game again.
Overly Optimistic Spring Chatter. One of the two or three quarterbacks duking it out to replace one-year wonder Kyle Israel is redshirt freshman Joe Weatherford of the buttery hamlet of Land O’Lakes. Just guess who he’s related to. Go on, just guess...
During individual drills, current starting quarterback junior Michael Greco was sharp throwing short passes, but mostly erratic throwing the football on deeper out patterns, as many of his passes sailed high and wide, and he couldn’t seem to get in rhythm with his wide receivers.

Redshirt freshman Joe Weatherford was sharp on underneath routes, but missed on the deeper outs, just as Greco did. Weatherford, who normally throws a tight, pretty pass, had many of his balls wobble and flutter, and he couldn’t seem to get on the same page as many of the receivers.

Redshirt freshman Andy Slowik may have been the most accurate of the quarterbacks in these drills, as he showed plenty of velocity on his passes, and certainly showed enough arm to throw the out pattern safely. Fellow redshirt freshman Nate Tice seemed to struggle on intermediate and longer routes in the one-on-one and individual portions.
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Yes. If the name didn’t give it away, the description of wobbling and fluttering deep routes and struggling to get on the same page as his receivers was a dead giveaway. If only UCF and FSU played – underthrowing every route deeper than ten yards could be a heartwarming, family affair, which is what Pop Warner had in mind, I think. With a little forsight, the rag-armed Weatherford-on-Weatherford action could have saved football from corporate greed hounds who lost sight of the soul of the sport decades ago. Alas, the schedule-makers hate family values, and America – UCF plays USF on a Friday night, which is going to get on everyone’s nerves since they could be known less-aggravatingly as ‘Orlando’ and ‘Tampa,’ respectively, and then Miami. But no ‘Noles.
Actually, the state has been lousy with Weatherfords for more than a decade – there was Will in the nineties (now a state rep), then Sam (played at Fordham, moved to China), Drew and Joe, and now John, who’ll enroll at West Georgia in the fall under Drew’s old FSU quarterbacks coach, Daryl Dickey, after missing his entire senior year to a knee injury. Little bro Stevie will apparently quarterback Land O’ Lakes High through 2010, extending the Weatherford run there into its third decade, almost uninterrupted. Maybe one day one of them will be president.
Tice has a pedigree, too: his dad is Mike Tice, ex-Saints tight end and deposed coach of the Vikings. And neither one of these born-and-bred types could beat out a juco mutt like Michael Greco?
Central Florida on You Tube. Every now and then, you have to suck it up and check out what the kids are up to. Here, UCF film students provide a perfect blend of aspiring cinema cliché: unbearable pretension, banal social commentary, less-than-shoestring budgets, utter weirdness, Stan Getz, huge amounts of satirically-deployed pasta and more than a few moments of surprising competence:

<object height="294" width="345">
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WGCM_p24Q5M&hl=en" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WGCM_p24Q5M&hl=en" height="294" width="345"></object> </p> Shirly’s Victory Spaghetti. You only wish you’d thought of it when you were a junior (you did put it on letterboxing, right? Cuz otherwise it’s completely ruined).
See Also: That kid from the Facebook group rides his bike into Lake Clair for Homecoming. ... I find every person appearing in this video particularly loathsome. ... Mere questions and common decorum cannot contain George O’Leary. ... And they start making zombies pretty young these days. Class of 2028...that’s about the time the structurally unsound stadium will come crashing down in a hail of death, yes? Only the undead will survive.

Hey, it’s all good: you may have beaten us by 50 points, but at least I’m not at Notre Dame right now.
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Best-Case: The Knights have three tough but not outrageous non-conference games, with Boston College, South Florida and Miami. UCF will probably be an underdog in all three, and given the hellacious beating it took last year at the hands of a mostly intact USF team, should probably write off an upset against the Bulls. But B.C. and Miami are both ushering in new quarterbacks amid a lot of uncertainty, and one of them can potentially be had if the Knights show up on defense and control the clock, etc. But the three biggest games are the midseason run against Tulsa and East rivals East Carolina and Southern Miss. UCF needs to win two of those three to come out in front of another conference championship race; even with a lot of key attrition, the rest of C-USA is still vulnerable enough the Knights could steal another nine-win regular season.
Worst-Case: Quarterback issues could easily leave the offense in a lurch, with no stars to bail it out this time – sans Kevin Smith, the returning playmakers are a pair of mediocre receivers with a potentially disastrous situation under center. It would be beyond disappointing if UCF slipped below .500 in-conference after convincingly running off eight wins last year. Given the non-conference heavies, though, just breaking even within C-USA won’t be good enough for a bowl bid. Because Tulsa, ECU, USM and Memphis are conceivable losses before sniping from the bottom of the league even comes into the picture, five wins doesn’t seem too off the mark.
Non-Binding Forecast: Throw a Blanket on 'em or Bust. None of the prognostoscenti to date thinks UCF will repeat as East champion without its offensive engine, but the Knights remain in some respect the overall favorite along with East Carolina because of their experience on defense. Based on the quick turnaround under George O’Leary, they certainly project as one of the top three or four teams in the conference again. I don’t think there’s any chance to make noise in the polls – go ahead and consider the South Florida, BC and Miami games losses until further notice – but UCF can split the four toughest C-USA games and claw its way back into the championship, as long as it beats the right teams to hold on in a tiebreaker. It’s going to happen with defense this time, though, or it’s not going to happen: even if they win eight in the regular season, the margins won’t be as wide as last year’s. Without looking too closely at the Pirates, I’m higher on East Carolina (ECU also has nine back on defense, and a quarterback, and emphatically dealt the Knights their only conference loss last year), so 7-5 and second place for UCF seems like a good bet to me.

RJ Esq · Jun 11, 2008

DIRECTV Launching MountainWest Sports Network Aug. 27

<script type="text/javascript"> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script><iframe name="google_ads_frame" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-0237893561790135&dt=1213219933952&lmt=1213219932&format=300x250_as&output=html&correlator=1213219933952&channel=0603066557%2B5452098552%2B3119009114&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fanblogs.com%2Fmountain_west%2F007590.php&color_bg=FFFFFF&color_text=333333&color_link=003399&color_url=999999&color_border=FFFFFF&ad_type=text_image&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Freader%2Fview%2F&frm=0&ui=rc%3A10&cc=100&ga_vid=1766361056.1213219934&ga_sid=1213219934&ga_hid=1569160388&ga_fc=true&flash=9.0.115&u_h=1024&u_w=1280&u_ah=1024&u_aw=1280&u_cd=32&u_tz=-420&u_his=1&u_java=true&u_nplug=22&u_nmime=85" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" vspace="0" hspace="0" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="250" scrolling="no" width="300"></iframe> The first network launched to exclusively cover an NCAA conference will be on DirecTV channel 616 starting on Aug. 27, in time to kickoff the conference's 10th season.
The channel will be on Choice packages and above in Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and the cities of Dallas/Fort Worth and San Diego.
Elsewhere it will be available with DirecTV's sports pack.
Finally, I will get to watch MWC games here in Panama City Florida.
This, combined with the deal already worked out with the second network to exclusively cover an NCAA conference, sets a precedent for future conference networks. They will be in choice packages for the region they represent and in sport packages outside that region.
This model could work well for cable companies, but here politics appears to be playing a large role. Comcast is to blame for the contractual tangle and price war. On the one hand they want to avoid paing high prices for the Big Ten Network and on the other they want high prices for MountainWest Sports. They can't have it both ways.

RJ Esq · Jun 11, 2008

Respect the Depths

by SMQ on Jun 11, 2008 12:16 PM EDT
One of the hardest things this time of year is to separate the "brand" from potentially harsh realities – what we know from the past against what we can see coming, at least in the short term. In the balancing act between outgoing success and upcoming, unproven talent, how far down is the safety net?
What we know about Michigan from the past is that eight wins is so automatic, mere winning records can feel like stretching the net dangerously close to the rocks at bottom. It’s only come up short of eight wins twice in 40 years since Schembechler sired the modern program.
But it’s not Bo’s show anymore, nor that of any of his seed, for the first time since 1968. And what we see coming with the Wolverines is a year in the wilderness:

About this, so far, everyone agrees: the earliest online polls excluded Michigan entirely, as have all of the magazines released to date, most of which pick the Wolverines in the middle of the pack in the Big Ten. With the offense facing a worst-case scenario – no experience, no projected stars, no line, no quarterback, a new, completely different system, and ill-suited personnel for that system, on top of it all – that’s probably the worst they can imagine from Michigan. It looks about like 2005. Which for Big Blue partisans, is pretty bad.

Wait, who's my quarterback? Dammit, can we get the ‘09 recruits in here early?
- - -
But it’s not outrageous. Athlon thinks games with Utah, Notre Dame, Michigan State and Purdue are virtually certain wins – they put the ‘W’ next to them in ink – and Wisconsin, Illinois and Penn State are toss-ups, about which the magazine is noncommital. Only unanimous favorite and current conference juggernaut Ohio State is a certain loss. Worst-case in that scenario: 8-4. Best-case: 11-1. That had better be one hell of a defense – but then, it’s Michigan, right? How bad can it be?
The main reason I’m so much more skittish about the Wolverines, maybe the sole reason, is because of their nearest parallel entering the season: 2007 Notre Dame. This is not a logical comparison based on probabilities. ND was in the same kind of woeful shape, personnel-wise, heading into last season, and everybody knew it; the Irish didn’t get a vote in anyone’s preseason top 25, either, off back-to-back BCS games. Losing a slew of quality career starters will do that for a team. But it won’t necessarily result in the worst record in school history, or one of the worst offensive performances of all time; there are no demerits for failure to predict depths so completely outside of anyone’s experience. Applying the same pessimism to Michigan based on one nearby, at-the-ready example is beyond hyperbole, if for no other reason than the Wolverines won’t be facing ten straight bowl teams to open the season; even if they did, two of them would play in the MAC and another from the Mountain West. It’s not the kind of schedule that will let any halfway respectable outfit bottom out that quickly.
But then, that’s what the Wolverines almost did last year, after losing a game that looked much friendlier than Utah, a team Phil Steele ranks in his top fifteen. If they meet Notre Dame halfway – on the way down, with the Irish inevitably on their way up – the game in South Bend is a toss-up, at best, as it always is. The first three Big Ten games are against the teams every poll out now has finishing 2-4 in the conference behind Ohio State: Wisconsin, Illinois, at Penn State, all close games for Michigan last year either without Henne (Penn State), without Hart (Illinois) or without both (Wisconsin, which really was not even as close as the 16-point margin suggested), and all games UM seems certain to enter this time as an underdog. An 0-3 conference start is not only conceivable: it borders on likely, with Michigan State and Purdue waiting to pounce on a demoralized group in the next two. The Spartans have lost six straight in the series, but they’ve led in the fourth quarter three of the last four years. They won’t have a more obvious chance to break that streak.

I don't see any way the bubble around a pair of BCS teams doesn't burst here in fairly spectacular fashion. Again, Notre Dame has taken so many of its close games the last two years – 3-0 in games decided by one score in '06 – but hasn't been nearly as competitive in losses. That's a potentially ugly trade-off: two or three close, come-from-behind wins can become losses with such little experience on hand, but there are no corresponding close losses to "turn" that might balance that.

I wrote that last summer about Notre Dame, and not much has to change to apply to Michigan a year later. The Wolverines have a few built-in wins (the Ohio-based Miami, Toledo, probably Utah and at least one of the ND/Purdue tandem, each of which they’ve crushed two years in a row), but they were 3-1 in games decided by ten points or less last year (Illinois was really a closer game than the 27-17 margin), and none of the three non-App. State losses were all that competitive (by the fourth quarter, the final 11-point OSU lead might as well have been by 30 in the conditions). They are staggeringly green on offense. They don’t know who the quarterback will be. They don’t know who the playmakers will be. They may not know how to run the plays. The same warning I leveled at the Irish applies here: it's not reasonable to expect such a young team to do much better than breaking even through the first seven games, maybe through the first nine. And then there’s Ohio State, waiting at the end to snuff out whatever’s left.
Again: not logical, and certainly not a prediction. The idea should be taken for what it is, which is an extreme form of paranoiac pessimism. A kind of hypochondria. The defense looks like a normal, generally rocking Michigan defense that, at worst, will keep the bottom from falling out. Most likely. All I’m saying is, for the next year, anyway, some of the symptoms are there.

RJ Esq · Jun 12, 2008

Mandate For Change: UCLA

by SMQ on Jun 12, 2008 8:43 PM EDT
The Catalyst: As late as Halloween 2001, Pete Carroll’s first season at USC and the next-to-last for Bob Toledo at UCLA, the Bruins were the class of the town. Seven-and-a-half years later, LA has lost more games by double digits to unranked teams since 2002 (11) than SC has lost, period. When the record is that lopsided, there are only two possible reactions: OMG U$C is teh cheaterz and Fire Karl Dorrell.

You'll get 'em next time, big guy.
- - -
The drive for mediocrity is truly the stuff of legends, or at least of things in filing cabinets that keep for a really, really long time. Dorrell's first two seasons, the Bruins were 6-7, then 6-6, and came in 4-4 against the rest of the Pac Ten each season. The league's admirable move to a round robin format in 2006 allowed him to pick up an extra game to go 5-4 that year, and 7-6 overall, a mark balanced (of course) by the 6-7 record last year. It’s like chi. Bowl games included the Silicon Valley, Las Vegas, Sun, Emerald and Las Vegas again. Even the Bruins' lone interesting season under Dorrell, 2005, was one that veered to the middle in the balance of its extremes: fantastic on offense, horrible on defense, a consistent winner but almost always in close, skin-of-the-teeth fashion; a rare loser but in grisly blowouts each time, once to a team that finished 3-8 and once by 47 points to the hated Trojans, who gained a mere 679 yards.
The gap is too big. UCLA does not have a history of contending nationally, but it does expect Rose Bowls: it played in six of them between 1975 and 1998 – three in four years from 1982-85 – and in two Fiesta Bowls and two Cotton Bowls. It won eight of those ten games. Dorrell, though, never came close to a January game. He didn’t have the players. By Rivals’ count, from 2004-07, USC signed as many five-star recruits (23) as LA signed four-star recruits, when there are about nine times as many of the latter to be had. The only question is why it took another year to pull the plug.
The New Guy(s): Rick Neuheisel has a long way to go to escape the long shadow of charlatanism: he left Colorado with more than 50 rules violations and two years’ probation in 1998, was investigated for illegal recruiting visits, reprimanded by the board of the American Football Coaches’ Association and compared to Al Capone in Slate (the NCAA got him, but only for a technicality – gambling on basketball. like Capone got nailed for tax evasion – instead of the meat of his transgressions). Even Neuheisel’s record is hard to pin down:

These were both short stays, but the pattern was the same at both: fast start, second year peak, slight decline, resignation/termination under controversy. In years one and two at both stops, Neuheisel’s teams were 38-10, and a tremendous 25-6 in-conference; in years three and four, they were 28-20 and 17-15 in conference games. Colorado was 11-1 the year before Neuheisel took over and hadn’t lost a conference game to a team that wasn’t Nebraska since 1984; the Buffaloes lost to Kansas his first year and were quickly relegated to mediocrity within the Big 12. In relative terms, his term at Washington was more successful on the field – the team he inherited was not as strong as the one he took over at Colorado, and he won that elusive Rose Bowl – but ended the same way: with the Huskies at .500 in the Pac Ten and Slick Rick dodging accusations on his way out the door.

Pete doesn’t tuck his shirt in, and neither do we.
- - -
But this is much too brief and too mixed of a record to draw any certain conclusions, other than that he can be good – three ten-plus-win seasons in eight years and a Rose Bowl is proof of that. And he has no record of producing a worse product than Dorrell. For his recruit-friendly charisma and Trojan-baiting chutzpah alone (hello, Norm Chow), Rick’s an upgrade. He’s more confident, he’s at a job he can make his own for a long time, and at least it looks like he’s trying.
Immediate Impact or Slow Burn?: Chow has the reputation of an ‘instant impact’ kind of coordinator, if he had any healthy players. Starting tackle Aleksey Lans left the team with knee injuries. Of the most experienced Bruin skill guys, Kahlil Bell missed the last five games last year, Marcus Everett missed the last nine, and the quarterbacks...my god, the quarterbacks: Ben Olson was the starter in 2006 until he was knocked out for the season; Patrick Cowan finished the year in underwhelming fashion. Olson started last year, got knocked out in the third game; Cowan started the next week and was knocked out for the following two weeks, during which Olson returned until he was knocked out of the game against Notre Dame and inept walk-on McLeod Bethel-Thompson came on to commit seven turnovers against the Irish. Cowan started the next three games, until he was knocked out against Arizona. Osaar Rashaan moved from wide receiver to start the next two weeks against Arizona State and Oregon, until he was pulled for extreme ineffectiveness in favor of a gimpy Olson. Cowan returned to start at USC until he was knocked out in the fourth quarter and replaced by Olson. Bethel-Thompson played the entire bowl game but left the team after the season. Cowan won the starting job in the spring, before he went down for the season with a non-contact ACL injury. Olson broke his foot the same day and will be out for most of the summer.
Got it? For brevity, with a little commentary from the O.C.:
Cowan missed eight games last season because of injuries to his left hamstring, right knee and left knee. He underwent arthroscopic surgery on the left knee in February. Olson missed six games because of headaches and a left knee injury.
[...]
"...The frailness of these two kids is crazy…All of a sudden you go from two senior quarterbacks to not knowing what the heck is going to happen."
- - -
Welcome to UCLA! Fully healthy, Dorrell’s team were only about average by Pac Ten standards, maybe slightly above, and inconsistent at that. Banged-up, as they frequently were, and as they’ve started the new regime, it’s vulnerable to even the lowliest outfits in this parity-driven league, as it’s proven time and again.
That aspect – the regular, usually lopsided losses to seemingly inferior teams – Neuheisel should change. His first recruiting class was second in the Pac Ten according to Rivals and within a few spots of SC in the site’s national rankings. They’re years away from narrowing that chasm on the field, but Neuheisel gives them a chance -- a the illusion of a chance, anyway, which might be the same thing. Even if he’s more Tommy Bowden than Pete Carroll, the resemblance gives the stale cross-town bit teeth for the next few years.

RJ Esq · Jun 12, 2008

I See Now That What We Did to Hawaii Was Wrong

by SMQ on Jun 12, 2008 1:28 PM EDT

by Knowshon Moreno
- - -
First, you should probably read this, via this.
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The night of the Sugar Bowl approximately 8 o’clock I received a handoff in my hands so I proceeded to run for a touchdown as usual. When I got to the end zone, a safety was cussing me and I asked him what the problem was. He said the beating was too hard and asked us to turn it down, so I went back to the sidline and my coaches and I willingly kept myself out of the end zone the rest of the night. After the middle of the third quarter, some other starters and I left the game so we could make sure there would not be anymore humiliations to their big game.
Approximately three hours later we received notice outside a club on Royale Street saying we had violated Hawaii’s dream season with an excessive blowout. We were confused by this notice because this event took place on a football field which is where it’s all right to be knocking heads. My teammates and I are very aware of this. It did not seem as if we were being dominant enough that people could cuss us or fear us on the other sideline; we were merely expressing our excitement to be playing in a big game that night, but not to the point where we making crying in the people around us.
<object height="167" width="215">
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0CedgC0NWwQ&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0CedgC0NWwQ&hl=en" height="167" width="215"></object> A few of the harmful effects of exposure to Knowshon Moreno and his teammates.
- - -
After taking time to listen about the harmful effects of excessively beating an undefeated team, it was lame and a waste of time, yet educational. It was little ridiculous to stand outside da club and listen about how bad we made Hawaii feel because it is common sense only winners feel good, but I continued to listen about their self-esteem. Self-esteem is considered as an overall self-appraisal of their own worth. This is obviously a correct statement because the Hawaii people did not feel very worthy that night because of my touchdowns. My touchdowns occur continuously throughout everyday and disrupt many people at all costs, like Auburn and Florida. On a more serious note, out excessive blowouts had been tested, and shown to affect the central nervous, immune, cardiovascular and championship selection systems. The disruption of these systems can cause many negative outcomes. Even while undefeated, sudden blowouts can cause stress reactions to the whole body. Being exposed to blowouts over a period of time can lead to certain coaches getting fired or resigning, which I was most shocked by.
In conclusion, I learned a lot about excessive blowouts and their effects on others around me. To show the responsibility that I had gained over this situation I was asked outside da club if I could beat the living dog crap out of the Hawaii clowns talking noise. My answer to this was yes because I can, but I kindly stated that I would not be able to perform this act at the time because I did not want to further disturb someone whose self-esteem I had already severely damaged. If I had the chance to experience this whole situation again I would have kept myself out of the game after the first quarter and inform my teammates to keep the beating down. I put much though into my actions and I discovered that if I was beaten by several touchdowns I would be upset too, especially if I barely got the ball. Overall, the moral of the circumstances that took place in the Superdome one past New Year’s Eve is, beat others as you would like to be beaten. I am sorry for ruining a smaller program’s once-in-a-lifetime season and therefore I’ll be facing a much better team in the BCS next year.

RetroVK · Jun 12, 2008

Better delete that one before hawaiiguy sees it.

RJ Esq · Jun 13, 2008

A Reasonably Anticipatory Assessment of: Oklahoma State

by SMQ on Jun 11, 2008 10:23 PM EDT
A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason.
- - -
What’s Changed. Five regulars on the front seven ran out of eligibility, and they were pretty long in the tooth: collectively, Marque Fountain, Nathan Peterson, Donovan Woods, Maurice Cummings and Jeremy Nethon had 49 starts last year and more than 100 through their careers. Theirs is not the kind of exodus one generally mourns, though:

The least you should know about Oklahoma State...</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007 Record • Past Five Years</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007: 7-6 (4-4 Big 12; T-3rd/South)
2003-07: 34-28 (17-23 Big 12)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*-</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2004-08: 37 • 42 • 22 • 30 • 26</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Returning Starters, Roughly</td> </tr> <tr> <td>14 (8 Offense, 6 Defense)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Best Player</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

Dez Bryant might seem like an odd pick here – he spent last season in Adarius Bowman’s shadow, and the magazines love all-Big 12 tight end Brandon Pettigrew. Zac Robinson had better stats; tackle Russell Okung is probably a better pro prospect. But Bryant was the star of the ‘07 recruiting class and, with Bowman slowed, ended the year as the team’s go-to receiver: 28 of his 39 catches were in the last five games, when he had 100-yard efforts against Kansas and in the bowl win over Indiana. He’s one of these leaping, body control guys – and soon, the team’s highlight reel.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Bizarre Tradition</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

Oklahoma State is the only major university I’m aware of that shares its mascot: the terrifying "Pistol Pete" was originally modeled after cowboy Frank Eaton, leader of an Armistice Day parade in Stillwater in 1923 (42 years after he allegedly shot one of his father’s killers in Albuquerque). It was later, uh, appropriated by both Wyoming and New Mexico State, which briefly took Pete’s pistol away, replacing it with a lasso. "Lasso Pete," uh, he didn’t last too long.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>- - -
* According to Rivals.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Historically (that is, recent history), last year’s merely subpar effort against the run is as well as the Cowboys should expect to do – this is the defense, after all, whose average yield to Texas alone since 2000 is 42 points on 525 yards. As the front gets younger, though, it might also get more athletic: Tonga Tea, Derek Burton, Ugo Chinasa, and Richetti Jones haven’t made much impact their first year or two, but they’re all ex-four star recruits, and their promotions – alonside another former four-star guy, Patrick Lavine, who started most of last year at linebacker, and Swanson Miller, a three-hundred-something-pound JUCO tackle who’ll probably slide right in to the rotation – means at least a talent upgrade If the defense is even average, it will be the first time in most of their lifetimes.
What’s the Same. The flip side is the consistently high-flying offense, which has managed to be both explosive and balanced – identical 243.2 rushing and passing averages last year (which had to be intentionally manipulated somehow), after the 2006 averages were just seven yards apart – despite the constant yo yo on the Quarterback of the Future. Donovan Woods did it in ‘04 before he moved to defense, Al Pena took over in ‘05 before he transferred to Houston, and Bobby Reed moved in in ‘06 before the critique of his eating habits and possible mommy complex made him the subject of the infamous Gundy rant. He transfered, too. Prior to that, Zac Robinson seemed to beat Reid fairly for the job and wound up with a TD:INT rate of almost 5:1 in Big 12 games (14 TDs, 3 INTs), besides scrambling for 900 yards (before sacks); he set school records for total offense in a season and in a game (a loss, by the way, though a heart-crusher to Texas courtesy of the defense’s fourth quarter collapse). He’s a keeper, if he doesn’t get hit by a bus trying to help an old lady cross the street or something.
If there’s a dropoff from last year’s prolific production, I think it’s more likely a yearning for departed coordinator Larry Fedora than for Adarius Bowman and/or Dantrell Savage, the leading receiver and rusher, respectively, the last two years. Both thrived under Fedora, but they were also ignored in the draft and are followed by young ‘uns who thrived as backups and should have no problem moving up: Keith Totson and Kendall Hunter have been back-to-back freshman terrors behind Savage (‘06 phenom Totson yielded the No. 2 role last year to Hunter) and Dez Bryant was worth the hype by the end of his first year at receiver; huge tight end Brandon Pettigrew beat out half a dozen bigger names and draft picks (Martin Rucker, Martellus Bennett, Jermichael Finley, Jermaine Gresham, Derek Fine) for the coaches’ first team all-conference slot, and came back to school. This is actually a much more experienced group than last year, Savage and Bowman notwithstanding, operating behind a completely intact offensive line – they’re going to score in the mid-to-high thirties on a weekly basis, and the new "co-coordinators" (Gunter Brewer and fast-rising Trooper Taylor, from Tennessee) should both be looking over their shoulder already if somehow they don’t.
Overly Optimistic Post-Spring Chatter. Any time a defense starts blowing big fourth quarter leads, as OSU did last year to Texas A&M (up 17 at the half) and Texas (up 21 in the fourth quarter), it usualy gets chalked up to "depth." At least, the Cowboys hope it’s depth, since depth is something they can fix, via a truckload of junior college guys expected to class up the joint pronto:
If their performance this spring is any indication, the JUCO-infused Cowboys should be much tougher in 2008.
"We're a better defense," head coach Mike Gundy told The Oklahoman. "It's really hard for me to predict how much better until we start playing in September. But I do feel we're better from a depth standpoint, from a toughness standpoint. And we're faster."
The transformation began on signing day. Oklahoma State's 27-member recruiting class included a half-dozen highly regarded players from the junior-college ranks.
[...]
"I've seen a lot of progress and I'm proud of how we're playing," second-year defensive coordinator Tim Beckman told The Oklahoman. "They're buying into the system. We're taking baby steps. We're tackling better, getting off blocks better. I like the effort and the enthusiasm."
- - -
Well, anything is worth a shot. Again, I doubt OSU has ever fielded a quality defense in the history of the program (that’s right, GoPokes.com, never), so any new approach is worth a shot. It’s like a terminal cancer patient agreeing to go on an experimental drug. Half the defense is JUCO guys? What do we have to lose?
There’s one on offense, too: Beau Johnson led the team with 60 yards in the spring game, prompting USA Today to praise "his quick comprehension of the complicated Cowboys offense and his combination of tackle-breaking power and breakaway speed." Well, what’s not to like?
Oklahoma State on You Tube. A couple OSU alums tell y’all how the real ‘pokes get along:

<object height="284" width="345">
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/o_5x-aVZ_sw&hl=en" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/o_5x-aVZ_sw&hl=en" height="284" width="345"></object> That’s odd. I didn’t realize Bruce Pearl, Deion Sanders and Crush were Cowboys.
See Also: Watch Dez Bryant get on up. ... The entire second half of the Cowboys’ comeback over Nebraska in 2006. ... And easily the most vulgar of the ever popular Gundy rants.

Robinson: Good player, should watch his back.
- - -
Best-Case: No doubt the Cowboys expect to be 4-0 at the end of September, maybe 5-0 going into Missouri if they can finally make up the digit separating them from Texas A&M (TAMU has taken two straight over OSU by one point). The key stretch will begin a few weeks later, with three road games in four weeks: at Texas, at Texas Tech, at Colorado. OSU won’t win all three, but if it can score enough to win two of them, it can get through to Oklahoma at 9-2 and maybe – depending on who’s lost to whom, if the Sooners have lost at all – a flickering shot at taking the division. I don’t give them a realistic chance of beating OU, a serious mythical championship contender, but including the bowl game, the Cowboys can ring up ten wins for the first time in 20 years, since Barry Sanders was scooting around at record-breaking pace. Again, many of the current players weren’t alive then, but they are that good on offense.
Worst-Case: A slow start by the new faces on defense or under the new coordinators, or both, could cost OSU a should-win game in September, as it did last year at Troy; the Cowboys get the Trojans again (albeit a bit de-fanged compared to last year’s edition), after Washington State and Houston, potential snipers all. OSU will probably be an underdog against Missouri, Texas and Texas Tech – all of them can score in demoralizing bunches – and Texas A&M and Colorado are toss-ups. If they bite the dust there (say, 1-4), Oklahoma becomes a must-win for .500 and a bowl game, which most likely leaves State shut out at 5-7.
Non-Binding Forecast: A Six-Shooter Between Your Eyes or Bust. I’m a little surprised this team has received no top 25 love whatsoever – iffy record notwithstanding, it was a couple points away from nine wins last year and looks like the perfect "sleeper" bet with the likely stars on offense and promises of a revamped, readymade infusion bringing the perpetually lame D up to par. I’m not sure you’d have to be a sucker to take it, either. The defense may be too far away to put the Oklahoma-Texas hold on the South in question, but if they can take one of the four tough Big 12 road games – at Missouri, at Texas, at Texas Tech, at Colorado – I think the Cowboys are throttling their way to an eight-win regular season. At the very least, I’d be careful before I swallowed the unanimous nodding toward Texas Tech as the presumed upstart in the division.

RJ Esq · Jun 13, 2008

Freshman Quarterback Review, Part Five: Pac Ten and SEC

by SMQ on Jun 13, 2008 1:18 PM EDT
A quick review after a couple days since the last edition:
• Part One (ACC)
• Part Two (Big 12)
• Part Three (Big East)
• Part Four (Big Ten)
I'm going to handle the Pac Ten and SEC at once today, because of sample size in the former and because they both present a pretty good picture of the working hypothesis: rather than the conventional wisdom of steady improvement, most quarterbacks are who they are very early in their careers and quickly find that level. Aside from the very best quarterbacks, they also tend to progress toward the middle: initially good passers tend to decline or level off after a strong start, mediocre players tend to stay mediocre, and bad debuts are followed with some improvement, but generally level off in the below-average range. The exceptions are the really physically gifted, probably draft-bound players, like Philip Rivers, Vince Young and Pat White, who might (or, in White's case, might not) look bad or mediocre to begin with but evolve quickly into much stronger players, while faster starters without as much of a future (Chris Rix, Riley Skinner) tend to regress.
In the Pac Ten, there was precisely that tendency among first-year wonders Rudy Carpenter and Willie Tuitama, who have not been so wondrous:

Carpenter and Tuitama have held on and will probably be remembered fondly by their respective partisans as solid four-year starters (actually, three-and-a-half year starters), but unless one of them is preparing to spend his senior season singeing the eyelashes off Pac Ten secondaries, they're both just a guy. They both rebounded to an extent as juniors, but neither all the way to freshman form.
But at least Carpenter and Tuitama, like eventual draft picks Alex Brink and Trent Edwards, hung around. Jeff Krohn improved dramatically in 2001 and led the league in pass efficiency, but wound up transferring from Arizona State to UMass in 2002 because of injuries and maybe because of the perception that "his arm and playmaking ability weren't of Pac-10 caliber." His efficiency as a sophomore suggests otherwise.
The SEC is fun because every freshman starter with enough attempts to qualify for this project this decade has gone on to a good or great career as a four-year starter, and the conference has had more than its share of "instant impact" guys:

Showed promise under center, sure, but not like he shows when he's closing an account.
- - -
Grossman and Clausen break the pattern of regression following outsized debuts, but then, Grossman probably should have won the Trophy Which Shall Not Be Named in 2001 and went on to start a Super Bowl, so he falls into the "special player" category – at least under Spurrier, anyway. Both Rexy and Clausen's numbers declined substantially as sophomores (and Georgia took the division for the first time with David Greene, who also regressed slightly from a fine freshman effort in 2001).
This is a really strong group of players over their careers: Campbell went undefeated as a senior, led the nation in pass efficiency and was a first-round of the draft; Leak leveled off after peaking as a sophomore but won a mythical championship; Cutler was a first-rounder; Lorenzen has eked out a pro career; Ainge was drafted; and Stafford, by all projections, will be a top choice either next year or in 2010, whenever he gets around to it. All but Ainge were dramatically better from year one to year two, and after a wild over-correction in 2006, senior Ainge had a virtually identical passer rating to freshman Ainge. But with he and Greene, we still see how difficult it is to follow up on a really strong debut.
Next: Pattern-watching. Did we learn anything at all?

RJ Esq · Jun 15, 2008

Jerrell Powe May Finally Be Coming to a Football Field Near You

Posted Jun 15th 2008 9:53AM by Brian Cook
Filed under: Mississippi Football, SEC, Featured Stories

Back in 2004, Jerrell Powe was a heavily recruited planetoid defensive tackle from Mississippi. A five-star recruit, Powe was a much ballyhooed addition to Ole Miss' 2005 recruiting class... and 2006 class. And 2007. And 2008.

You see, Powe is one of those unfortunate souls who, while blessed with enough size to survive a head-on collision with a Honda Civic with only a thigh bruise and a vague desire for almond boneless chicken, simply can't get right in the NCAA's eyes.

As his Scout profile laconically noted back when Powe was a baby-faced highschooler:

Powe has not yet qualified academically for freshman eligibility.

Understatement of the year, that. Four years on, Powe is still struggling towards eligibility. Powe spent 2005 at a prep school and 2006 wandering in the desert before finally getting some sort of wavier and attending classes at Ole Miss last year. Hypothetically, he should be eligible this fall.

Buried in an article that tries to spin an SEC rule change that would allow more kids like Powe to try their hand at college -- irrelevant for him since he already got in -- as a positive for his chances is a brief summary of his current status:

"We think this paves the way that should Jerrell meet the NCAA's academic requirements, he would also be allowed to play by the SEC at the commissioner's discretion," [Ole Miss AD Pete] Boone said.

Not sure why this rule change means the SEC won't deny a hypothetically-eligible Powe his hard-earned playing time, which would seem purely cruel, but there you go. Maybe we'll finally get to see the Loch Ness monster of football recruiting.

RJ Esq · Jun 15, 2008

A Reasonably Anticipatory Assessment of: Wisconsin

by SMQ on Jun 14, 2008 10:11 PM EDT
A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason.
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What’s Changed. As you can tell from the huge number of returning starters, very, very little. Typically, the prospects to do much on offense outside of a punishing running game, if necessary, are slim and circumstantial, at best. The Badgers have gotten by with limited, within-the-offense types at quarterback for years, and figure after just one year with Tyler Donovan to make do with another in a long line of managers, be it Allan Evridge or wholly inexperienced Dustin Sherer. Neither stands out: Evridge barely played as a backup last year and completed less than 50 percent of his passes as a part-time starter at Kansas State in 2005 – in his last four starts at KSU, he completed a dreadful 43 of 107 (40 percent) and threw four picks to one touchdown; the Wildcats only recovered when he was pulled after starting 2 of 10 in the finale against Missouri – and Sherer’s only career completion was to an Indiana defensive back in mop-up duty in ‘06. Tight end Travis Beckum is probably the most dynamic receiver in the Big Ten and a grenade to defensive gameplans, but his success, too, starts up front: he’s most lethal off play-action and won’t save a mediocre passer if defenses aren’t overly focused on the run.
What’s the Same. Outside of Ohio State (and maybe Michigan State, depending on the circumstances), Wisconsin’s is the only other offense in the Big Ten now that Michigan, Minnesota and possibly Penn State have gone spread still willing to define itself almost entirely by way of a conventional, straight-ahead running game. It’s already the most consistently run-oriented team in the conference on an annual basis:

The least you should know about Wisconsin...</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007 Record • Past Five Years</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007: 9-4 (5-3 Big Ten; 4th)
2003-07: 47-17 (27-13 Big Ten)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*-</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2004-08: 39 • 33 • 42 • 34 • 41</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Returning Starters, Roughly</td> </tr> <tr> <td>19 (10 Offense, 9 Defense)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Best Player</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

Travis Beckum came to Madison as a linebacker but has been their go-to receiver instead: he has seven 100-yard efforts in two years since moving to tight end, including four of last year’s most crucial games, against Michigan State, Illinois, Ohio State and Michigan. He could have been the first tight end off the board in April and definitely will be next year if he improves his blocking just a little. </td> </tr> <tr> <td>Alright, Coach Bretmeister</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Three reminders that, as a coach, Bret Bielema is more like your older brother than your dad. One: he’s been romantically connected to Erin Andrews. Two: he’s a longtime fan of a not-terrible band that’s been culturally relevant at some point in the last decade-and-a-half, but not so relevant that I’ve ever heard of them. And three, he has a tattoo, of a rival school's logo, no less, and you can go to hell if you don’t like it. But at heart, he’s all coach, bro:
"My house, as sad as it may seem, is set up for recruiting purposes more than anything," he said.

It has all the essentials, video games, home theater and the "closing room," where charm precedes the dotted-line signature.
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"Recruiting," eh? Looking for a "signature," on "the dotted line"? In the "Closing Room"? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
</td> </tr> <tr> <td>- - -
* According to Rivals.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> This is good and right, since Wisconsin is synonymous with a) an unrivaled cow population, and b) manly iso runs. The Badgers’ streak of 1,000-yard rushers stands at 14 in 15 years, carried on the last two years by P.J. Hill and potentially extended this year, if not by Hill, then by impressive backups Zach Brown and Lance Smith – Brown plowed through Michigan for 108 yards and the far more generous turnstiles of Minnesota for 250 in Hill’s place at the end of the regular season. If depth isn’t intimidating, maybe sheer size will do the trick: the three returning starters on the line, Eric Vandenheuvel, Andy Kemp and Craig Urbik, all weigh in upwards of 320 pounds, in front of 250-pound fullback Chris Pressley; listed at a very stingy 225 apiece, Hill and hyped redshirt freshman John Clay are thicker, not quicker. UW has led the conference in time of possession two years in a row and should be bringing the beef with even more rugged enthusiasm than usual.
Data Does Not Compute. Before last season, Brian Cook at MGoBlog came up with some startling numbers re: Bret Bielema and defense, namely that Bret Bielema’s defense always kicks ass. As D-coordinator at Kansas State, his defenses finished in the top ten nationally in scoring and total defense every year from 2000-03. Upon Bielema’s hop north in 2004, the Wildcat D immediately tanked and Bill Snyder went into retirement; meanwhile, the Badger defense suddenly went from very mediocre every year from 2000-03 to rockin’ upon Bielema’s arrival in 2004, finising in the top ten in, yes, both scoring and total defense. After a bizarre collapse in 2005, the Badgers were right back in 2006 in the top five in both scoring and total D. Six elite units in seven years at two different schools, neither of which approached the same numbers before/after his departure/arrival, is a trend. An impressive trend.
But last year defied that trend, mainly because of one ghastly stretch in October, when Michigan State, Illinois and Penn State easily went over 200 yards each on the ground, with sky high per-carry averages, and scored nine touchdowns altogether; Ohio State added 211 and three touchdowns a few weeks later, most of it after Wisconsin had come from behind to take the lead in the fourth quarter, and the Buckeyes decided to get serious. Michigan State’s Javon Ringer had over 140 yards on just ten carries; Rashard Mendenhall and Juice Williams combined for 267; Rodney Kinlaw and Evan Royster had 184 in Penn State’s romp; and Beanie Wells had his way with 173 and a couple long touchdown runs that put UW under. The streak was only interrupted by catching Michigan with both Chad Henne and Mike Hart on the sideline. The Badgers were below average by Big Ten standards in every major defensive category, and on the awesome:eh scale, Bielema’s units here are now only batting .500.

Bielema’s secret: It’s all in the lean. Who says playing the Wii instead of sleeping doesn’t pay off?
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But: the defense rebounded dramatically off its last bad season, and if there’s a candidate for bouncing back, it must be the unit with nine starters back. That includes a much more athletic set of linebackers than you usually see from the Badgers, who were 1-2-3 on the team in tackles; a pass rusher (Matt Shaughnessy) pro scouts seem to like; and the leading interceptor in the conference (Shane Carter, who grabbed seven – though five of them were against UNLV, The Citadel, and Minnesota). If two-time all-Big Ten corner Jack Ikegwuonu hadn’t left for a disappointing slide in the draft, I suspect everyone would be scratching their chins with intrigue and projections of grand recovery. As it is, the two best players are gone (Ikegwuonu and run-stuffing tackle Nick Hayden), and my confidence in such a volatile group went with them until proven otherwise.
Overly Optimistic Depression-Inducing Post-Spring Chatter. Increasing the skepticism about the defense’s return to form was the absence of half of it with injuries in the spring: both starting corners, both starting tackles and one starting end didn’t practice at all. And then the other starting end got the worst of it – Shaughnessy’s broken fibula still might keep him out for part of the fall; reports sound optimistic but uncertain. Dude had 18 tackles for loss last year, eleven of them in the last five games (only one in that dominating stretch was a sack, so there is no redundancy: he was in the backfield a lot). Apparently the injury was an ugly one on-site, according to linebacker DeAndre Levy: "When I seen it my stomach dropped." Not as far as it will drop if converted linebacker O’Brien Schofield has to fill in for the team’s defensive MVP through September.
As for quarterback: unsettled, and not because Evridge and Sherer both blew the coaches away. Evridge competed with Tyler Donovan for the job last year and should have every advantage, but he only split time with Sherer and neither of them showed any separation. They’re going to duke it out into the fall, until one emerges, like a butterfly, or is chosen basically at random, like a lobster. I’m betting lobster.
Wisconsin on You Tube. In the rousing sis-boom-ba fashion, Wisconsin students enthusiastically lead a traditional Big Ten chant during Illinois’ trip to Camp-Randall last October. Listen closely (unless you’re at work, in which case turn it down and listen extremely closely):

<object height="284" width="345">
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pEqHchy3WB0&hl=en" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pEqHchy3WB0&hl=en" height="284" width="345"></object> </p> See Also: Badgers through the years, backed by Tom Petty. ... Brian Butch drunk in high school, or, you know, something like that. ... UWPD officers chase a Krispy Kreme truck. ... And the most fun tradition in football, until the Song Girls get more, uh, fan friendly: get on your feet and jump around.
Best-Case: Quite obviously, the only thing keeping the Badgers out of the top ten is the radioactive question mark at quarterback, but they run into this problem every couple years or so, and consistently – think Brooks Bollinger, Jim Sorgi, John Stocco, Tyler Donovan – find a way to integrate an underwhelming but heady passer into a functional system. It’s like the Texas Tech of wiry, unimposing white guys. Despite new projections of doom with every change, the system QB has not kept Wisconsin from winning New Year’s Day bowls, and if Evridge is in that tradition, you won’t find a weakness anywhere else. The schedule presents four stiff tests: at Michigan and against Ohio State, Penn State and Illinois at home. If they win three of those – especially if one of them is against the Buckeyes, a night game in Madison – and avoid a snake in the grass (Fresno State, Iowa, Michigan State), there’s every reason this bunch ought to have its sights focused on its first Rose Bowl in a decade. I want to say it’s a darkhorse mythical championship snake in the grass itself, but there is virtually no way to realistically guess the defense will be that improved, or that Evridge will be good enough to provide enough balance in the offense.
Worst-Case: The defense showed enough chinks that a frustrating quarterback situation could ruin everything. In that case, three of the four big conference games could just as easily turn up losses as wins, as could one of the aforementioned snakes – Michigan State’s offensive outburst in Madison last year makes it a serious candidate at home. With this team’s experience, off four straight January bowls in Florida, 8-4 and Christmas in San Antonio shouldn’t sound very appetizing.
Non-Binding Forecast: ... or Bust. Both the preceding "ceiling" and "floor" are the highest for Wisconsin in years, and the sum of the parts correspondingly rivals 1999 and 2000 as the best-looking on-paper accumulation here since the program’s postwar heyday. Aside from the ‘99 Rose Bowl season, though, high expectations haven’t worked out so well:

Preseason rankings courtesy Stassen's preseason consensus.
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This year’s consensus on the Badgers, so far, is mixed, from just outside the top ten (11th by Athlon) to just outside the top 20 (21st by Phil Steele), but they look like a very strong BCS at-large candidate to me. This is entirely dependent on Evridge, who’s in position to sink the whole ship. Given the consistent emphasis on taking the game out of the quarterback’s hands, though, and the deep well of talent and experience in the running game, the offense should still be able to control the vast majority of games. I think this is the second-best team in the Big Ten, a ten-game winner, and if not a BCS team, then one that’s likely to be incensed with the snub.

RJ Esq · Jun 16, 2008

Wonk Watch: Passing Downs vs. Non-Passing Downs

by SMQ on Jun 16, 2008 2:44 PM EDT
For obvious reasons, there aren’t many inroads into the Sabermetric side of college football, which is more naturally inhabited by, you know, drankin’ and vitriol, etc. The limited sample size, vast differences in schedules and wildly varying numbers based on opponent strength don’t help, either. But Missouri fan Bill Connelly, aka "The Boy" at Rock M Nation, has spent the offseason adding some of his own ideas to the increasingly relevant formats developed by Football Outsiders in an effort to build a similar system for the amateurs. You can start with parts one, two and three.
Bill’s most immediately applicable contribution, though, might come from the latest edition, posted in the "FanPosts" section to the right, especially his look at success of passing downs vs. non-passing downs, and what those results mean for offenses strategically.
To get there, you have to get through some of the wonkier elements of the earlier posts, which are focused on finding value in individual plays, based on how likely those plays are to contribute points. One of the ways he did this was to develop a "points per play" average, based on how likely a team was to score from any particular point on the field (i.e., what was the average number of points scored on drives when the ball was at each yard-line). Like so:

Anyone can tell you the chances of scoring increase as the offense moves closer to the defense’s goalline, but this shows that yardage becomes more valuable along that track. That is, all 20-yard gains are not created equal: a 20-yard gain from your own 1-yard line to your own 21-yard line is worth almost no value on the scoreboard –– less than half a point, on average. But a 20-yard yard gain from your own 41-yard line to your opponents’ 39-yard line is worth about a full point. And it only increases from there: it’s worth a full point, on average, to move the ball from your opponents’ four a few feet to the one. Yards gained on the offense’s side of the 50 count as much as any others in the box score, but they’re much less likely to lead to points on the scoreboard.
These averages vary, though, depending on down, which Bill also charted. If you add up all the gains in any given game according to the values in the "free-floating" chart above, then add them up according to the down-dependent chart, then average those two numbers together and subtract turnover costliness (calculated here at –3.17 points per turnover), you get something pretty close to the actual point totals of a game –– by his count, Bill’s numbers reflected the Missouri-Kansas score last year exactly.
Another part of the measure is a standard "success rate," based on down and distance:
Success Rate is the standard for a lot of the stats I use. It’s a slightly-altered version of a Football Outsiders measure. On any given play, there’s a roughly 44% chance of ‘success.’ Here are the rules according to down:
1st Down: 50% of necessary yardage. If it's 1st-and-10, you need 5 yards for 'success.' Football Outsiders use 40 percent for 1st down, but with the games I've entered, that led to a 1st down success rate of about 51%. Bumping the requirements to 50% led to the 44% rate for which I was aiming.
2nd Down: 65% of necessary yardage (rounded up to the nearest yard, of course). If it's 2nd-and-10, you need 7 yards for 'success'. 2nd-and-15?10 yards. This makes sense, really, because to succeed regularly on 3rd downs, you need to stay at 3rd-and-5 or less. Getting most of the way there on 2nd downs sets you up infinitely better for 3rd down. Football Outsiders uses 70%, but the success rate for that was around 42%. Weakening the requirements slightly got me into the range I was looking for.
3rd and 4th Downs: 100% of necessary yardage. I figure this requires no explanation.
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But Bill wanted one all-encompassing number, similar to the widely-used OPS in baseball, that could quantify a player’s or team’s "average" play in a way that correlated strongly with scoring points. So he added "success rate" to "points per play" –– again, following the OPS method in baseball, which adds on-base average and slugging average (bases by batter per at bat) –– and emerged with a number he calls "S&P." Read more about this in his glossary.
Okay. All of that is a necessary prologue to the best part of Bill’s latest entry to the series, which breaks down the success rate, points per play and S&P numbers in a myriad different ways –– in blowouts, in close games, by down, by quarter, by half, etc. Most interesting by far is his statistical assessment of success rates on "passing downs" vs. "non-passing downs," when a passing down is defined thusly:
• 2nd-and-8 or more
• 3rd-and-5 or more
• 4th-and-5 or more
In those situations, Bill’s methods provide some pretty stark results:

Plays in favorable down-and-distance were almost twice as successful as plays run in passing downs. Later on, Bill finds the same ratio for sacks –– passing downs were almost twice as likely to result in a sack than "on-schedule" downs.
In real-world terms:

<object height="304" width="375">
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5cX5aXqpUkE&hl=en" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5cX5aXqpUkE&hl=en" height="304" width="375"></object> </p> Check the down and distance on those plays, and also here, here, and here, for starters.
I welcome this, personally, as an empirical base that bolsters my usual emphasis on keeping the entire playbook open: outside of talent, predictability is the number one killer of offenses, and defenses that stop the run and make offenses one-dimensional are, well, see above. Usually, I invoke this intuitively (or with YouTube videos). Now, there’s research and stuff that puts the difference in high-contrast black and white. Kudos, Bill.

RJ Esq · Jun 16, 2008

Whatever Happened to Great Expectations?

by SMQ on Jun 15, 2008 11:30 PM EDT
One of the really entertaining things about UCLA partisans Bruins Nation is how staunchly on-message it is at all times. It’s apparent some of its founders have political backgrounds. When the message was "Fire Karl Dorrell," no opportunity was missed, no sentence was written that might weaken the campaign. Not even after a 26-point win. Not even if it was November and L.A. could still potentially make the Rose Bowl. Nothing could stand in BN’s path.
Now that the message is "Head Coach Richard Neuheisel Is the Best CEO in America," the tone of the rhetoric has changed completely –– it’s all positive, all the time –– but the commitment to the message is as staunch as ever. Take the site’s official expectations for Neuheisel’s first season, for example.
BN always held Dorrell to a high standard. It was clear about this in 2006, when ringleader Nestor laid out the expectations for that season: No Room for Regression in 2006: 9 Wins & MUST BEAT SC. The loss of Ben Drew Olson, Maurice Drew and four of the five leading receivers would not be counted as an excuse for a backward step after scraping through a string of last-second wins en route to a 9-2 regular season in 2005:

...anyone who has been closely following this program knew that we would have to have to deal with the loss of our top seven or eight players. You didn't need to be a D-A [sic] head coach to see that coming. ... to make the excuse of losing top players for a bad record next season is just ridiculous.

The Bruins upset SC, but clearly did regress overall, to 7-6 and a meh 5-4 in the conference. Off that disappointment, Nestor was equally clear about the expectations of a more veteran team in 2007: win 11 games, beat Southern Cal, and win the Pac-10. His standards came from the mouth of AD Dan Guerrero himself:

After four years Dorrell still hasn't been able to put together that season in which UCLA wins the Pac-10 and beats Southern Cal. However, I do believe he is boxed into such a corner at this point that this season decidedly will emerge as the "show me" season for Karl Dorrell, that will decide his ultimate fate in Westwood.
Morgan Center has already sent out clear cut signals laying down the expectations that they are expecting a football season in which UCLA will win the Pac-10 and beat Southern Cal (by 20 points) in that last game of the season. And this comment from DG (after winning [the school’s 100th all-time NCAA championship]) is consistent with that signal sent out earlier this spring:
Guerrero says when one of his coaches wins a title, it motivates the others. "There's always a buzz in this department," he says. "And the expectations here are very, very high. We expect to win national championships."
Obviously we expect DG to hold KD to same standards he holds our other magnificent athletic programs.

Obviously. And obviously, now that UCLA has a real Head Coach rather than an unqualified Doofus, for which BN lobbied so tirelessly, the excuses employed by the Dorrell apologists for the team’s mediocrity over the last five years will not do. Not with a team that returns its leading passer, leading rusher and five of its seven leading receivers –– to make the excuse of losing players for a bad record is just ridiculous, and the Bruins aren’t losing many. No, Head Football Coach/Amateur Guitarist/Innocent of All Charges Richard Neuheisel is the Head Football Coach who will finally push the Bruins over the top and fulfill Nestor’s high expectations in '08:
So, to sum it up right now at this snap shot of time, I expect UCLA to lose against Tennessee, BYU, Oregon, California, Washington and Arizona State.
I see three toss up games against Arizona, Fresno State, Oregon State and three wins against Stanford, Washington State, and Southern Cal.
So depending on how the toss up games go, the Bruins could finish either 6-6 or 3-9/4-8 (depending on which "conservative" projection we take as we go through the list above).
In other words, I will be ecstatic if somehow, despite all the questions surrounding this team, the program manages to finish with 6 wins and a victory over Southern Cal.
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[Emphasis mine]
O rly? That’s, uh, quite a change of opinion of the Bruins’ potential in a single year, with a much better situation on the sideline: 6-6 at best?
Look closely at the expected losses and toss-ups. In the former category is BYU. Before the 2006 opener against Utah, Nestor was clear about his expectations of the result against a team from the Mountain West:

*09/02 Utah (w) - there is no excuse for not being able to get a win against some MWC team at the Rose Bowl. I will count this as a must win game for KD
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[Emphasis mine]

About the Cougars, specifically, he was every bit as confident before last season:

BYU (w): BYU has a nice football program. But it has no business winning against UCLA at the Rose Bowl. Considering UCLA footballs teams tossed around BYU football teams even during their halcyon days with Ty Detmer, this game should serve as nice little season opener for Karl Dorrell’s football program ... they should face a huge uphill battle at the Rose Bowl as they will be working with a brand new QB (Max Hall, a transfer from ASU) to replace John Beck. Again this shouldn’t be a much of a game.
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[Emphasis mine]

That confidence was warranted. Healthy, the Bruins beat the eventual MWC champion, as expected, 27-17. In December, extremely banged up, under an interim coach, they outgained the Cougars in the Las Vegas Bowl rematch and only lost on a blocked field goal on the last play. Clearly, a healthy team early in the season under a more competent coach should expect to beat a team that had no business competing with the Bruins under the old, lame duck regime that outperformed the Mormons, anyway:
@ BYU (L): ... BYU will be coming in this game fired up with returning stars such as Max Hall (3,848 yards passing) and Harvey Unaga [sic] (1,227 yards). This will be another close game. However, I think the Cougars will pull this one out based on their home field advantage. I expect the Bruins to fall to 0-2...
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Er. Well, okay, BYU is getting some nice preseason love, and the game is in the hostile confines of, uh, Provo. But Arizona offers an obvious win, right, since Zona is eight games behind UCLA in conference games in Mike Stoops’ tenure, and since Nestor wrote convincingly (and correctly) prior to 2006:

10/07 Arizona (w) - we need to get this win getting revenge for the embarrassment of last season. Not only was there no excuse for the embarrassment in Tucson last season, there simply was no excuse for losing to the Mildcats.
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[Emphasis mine]

...and in 2007:

at Arizona (w): As the Bruins stumbled into Tucson everyone is going to be talking about what happened last time Dorrell’s team marched in with a gaudy record. If Dorrell has truly learned from his previous stumbles as a head coach, we expect him to have his team mentally ready and pull out a tough win. ... If he is truly worth the money (almost a million bucks a year) UCLA is spending on him, Bruins will bounce back...

Obviously, if HFCAGIOACRN is expected to earn his salary –– which with perks is triple what Dorrell earned –– he’s expected to trounce the still-struggling Mildcats and their injury-prone, pocket-bound quarterback in ‘08:
Arizona (T): ...Arizona beat up on the Bruins last year in Tucson by beating up on a hobbled Pat Cowan and running rough shot [sic] over DeWayne Walker’s offense [sic]. It will be interesting to see how the Bruin D with its young cubs matchup against the 'Zona offense and whether Walker has an answer for an athletic, multi dimensional QB like Tuitama. The optimistic part of me thinks that the Bruin D will rise to the occasion and the offense will click a little in its third game under Chow. But, still, this is a toss up game in my book.
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[Emphasis mine]
Well, UCLA has lost to Arizona twice in three years, albeit both times on the road, but okay. What about last year’s tenth-place finisher, Washington, which has barely a third of UCLA’s conference wins since Ty Willingham took over in 2005, and about which Nestor wrote in 2006:

09/23 @Washington (w) - there was no excuse for the pathetic performance against Washington at home last season when we eeked out a win. ...their lines are still a joke. This is a game the Bruins should be able to win on the road against one of the lower tier teams in the Pac-10.
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[Emphasis mine]

.. and in 2007:

Washington (w): ...this time if Bruins find a way to choke like they did in Seattle, DeWayne Walker and his colleagues in the coaching staff will not be able to get away by playing a pathetic blame game. We will expect another Bruin win...

The Bruins did win, convincingly, scoring 34 points in the second half. Without question, a team with a real Head Football Coach for a change will be expected to have his team prepared to sustain that success against the worst team in the conference:
@ Washington (L): The Bruins head up to Seattle where the entire Husky nation will be out for CRN’s blood. Willingham may be fighting for his coaching life and the Huskies will be anxious to feel better about Barbara Hedges’ follies by exacting "revenge" (in their minds) against Neuheisel. They will get their wish.
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There’s Oregon State, then, about which we know from 2006:

*11/11 Oregon St (w) - ...a well-coached UCLA football team should never lose to Beavers at home.

Accordingly, Dorrell’s team beat the Beavers by 18 points that year, then demolished OSU by 26 last year in Corvallis. Dorrell easily out-recruited Mike Riley every single season according to Rivals. Almost every magazine picks UCLA to finish ahead of the Beavers. Obviously, an easy, easy win in the Rose Bowl...

Oregon St (T): ...If the Beavers live up to their pre-season hype, they should be the favorite to win this game. But the Bruins have had their number in recent years. Again, this is a toss up game and right now I am not sure what to expect.
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So, uh, California, which lost six of its last seven conference games, including a nine-point loss to Dorrell’s incredibly mismanaged Bruins?
@ California (L): ...By this game, I would assume Jeff Tedford’s QB situation will become clear, in which (IMHO) Kevin Riley should emerge as the unquestioned number 1 QB in Strawberry Canyon. I think Cal is positioned to have a decent season next year, but in this game IMHO they will be the favorites at home. The Bruins fall...
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And so on. Nestor’s own tally says it all: whether UCLA wins three or six games, it would only match Dorrell’s worst season at best. Whether it wins three or five Pac Ten games, it would only match Dorrell’s worst season at best.
My first thought when Neuheisel was hired was, "How long will it take for Bruins Nation to turn on him?" Obviously, with an all-out investment in coach-worship of this order, it’s going to be a long, long time. Most fans have high hopes for immediate improvement under a new coach, but they don’t understand how to protect that investment. Nestor does. People don’t give a motorcycle gang of angry sumo wrestlers this wide a berth.
Specifically: A loss to Washington must be a regression. After all, there is no excuse for losing to one of the lower-tier teams in the Pac Ten (the lowest tier, actually). A loss to BYU would be directly in line with the underachieving mediocrity that generated so much vitriol through the last four seasons. So would a third loss to Arizona in four years. After all, there is no excuse for not being able to get a win against a Mountain West team, and no excuse for losing to the perpetually lame Mildcats (again). A 6-6 regular season would be another sideways step in the unacceptable status quo. After all, obviously Bruin fans expect Dan Guerrero to hold CRN to the same standards to which he holds UCLA’s other magnificent athletic programs.

No, my child, we don’t expect any better. Great question, though.
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It’s not that these projections are destined to be wrong –– without going into the returning roster in extreme detail, I happen to think, as BN has always maintained, that L.A. should always expect a winning season, including this season –– but in context, they are staggeringly hypocritical. Karl Dorrell never had a regular season worse than 6-6. He never had a losing record in Pac Ten play. Inheriting a team that finished 4-7, 6-5, 7-4 and 7-5 from 1999-2002, he was not given a mulligan for a 6-6 debut –– his record was 10-10 when the current clan at BN first took the drumbeat virtual at Fire Karl Dorrell midway through the 2004 season. The subhead of that blog, summarizing the worst losses of the early KD era, was, "12-13. FRESNO STATE. WYOMING. UCLA DESERVES BETTER." Three years later, the same folks appear very willing to accept losses to the high end of the Mountain West and to Pac Ten bottom-dwellers –– teams Dorrell’s last team defeated, as expected –– as a natural step in the rebuilding process. Six-win seasons were completely unacceptable for Dorrell, but HFCAGIOFACCRN can take all the time he needs.
What this is, really, is an admission that the "expectations" for Dorrell were ridiculous –– intentionally constructed to be beyond not only any independent projections but beyond the realistic grasp of anyone in his position. They were entertainingly obsessed with the subject, often mean about it, but I never disagreed with Bruins Nation that Dorrell should probably be canned. I still don’t. The hyperbole wasn’t necessary to reach that conclusion. But where did I get the idea they expected progress as a result?

RJ Esq · Jun 17, 2008

Freshman Quarterback Review, Part Six: Conclusion

by SMQ on Jun 17, 2008 12:34 PM EDT
A quick review after a couple days since the last edition:
• Part One (ACC)
• Part Two (Big 12)
• Part Three (Big East)
• Part Four (Big Ten)
• Part Five (SEC and Pac Ten)
The working hypothesis, rather than the conventional wisdom of steady improvement, is that most quarterbacks are who they are from the beginning: initially good passers tend to decline or level off after a strong start, mediocre players tend to stay mediocre, and bad debuts are followed with some improvement, but generally level off. The exceptions are the really physically gifted, probably draft-bound players, like Philip Rivers, Vince Young and Chad Henne, who might (or, in Henne's case, might not) look bad or mediocre to begin but evolve quickly into much stronger players.
With this sample size, I don’t think that prediction held up under much scrutiny. It seems pretty clear most teams are starting a freshman quarterback out of necessity, not because he’s destined for stardom, and since even the most hyped freshmen sit a majority of the time, young ‘uns who do play immediately don’t have much greater eventual success than guys who don’t start until later in their careers. But as far as an identifiable trend goes, there’s this among the 41 guys with qualifying numbers as freshmen and sophomores:

The path of both lines is based on freshman passer rating, so follow the invisible vertical lines from year one (red) to the fluctuation in year two (blue). The two lines don’t show much relationship to each other, sequentially –– you could bet that a kid who started out with a rating below 100 would not explode as a sophomore, or that a guy who was over 150 as a freshman would not completely collapse, but for the great majority of quarterbacks in the middle, better numbers as a freshman did not correlate at all to better numbers as a sophomore.
In fact, the most obvious trend in year two is a movement toward the mean, in both directions. Bad and mediocre passers improved, sometimes greatly, but guys who were hot out of the gate almost universally regressed. And it just so happens that the point of departure for diminishing returns is right at last year’s national average for pass efficiency: 136.6. Of the 31 guys performing below that mark as freshmen, 26 improved as sophomores, most of them substantially, although the majority remained below average. Of the ten players who outperformed the average as freshmen, eight regressed in their second year, six of them falling below the average. To paraphrase Big Ten Wonk, the lesson here would be: whatever you think of him, for predictive purposes, regress your view of your young quarterback to the mean.
But as far as who’s progressing and who’s regressing, there are no great insights. Among the guys who improved their efficiency by 15 points or more from year one to year two:

All in all, the Lefty we met in 2000 is an enduring success.
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• Jeff Smoker Michigan State: Up from 113.4 to 162.8 (+49.4); just obliterated his freshman numbers as a sophomore in 2001, when he also led MSU to wins over Notre Dame and Michigan in the same season. The Spartans were 0-2 against mediocre teams when he didn’t play or might have won eight games. Regressed as a junior along with the team –– even with Charles Rogers in his Destroy Everything season –– and missed the last three games. Led the Big Ten in passing yards as a senior, but with a very meh efficiency rating under 130. Pretty decent college quarterback, but never approached his sophomore numbers again.
• Jeff Krohn Arizona State: Up from 118.6 to 153.4 (+34.8); mediocre freshman, led the conference in efficiency as a sophomore. Had some injury problems and transferred to UMass as a junior.
• Juice Williams Illinois: Up from 91.8 to 119.2 (+27.4); everyone saw this coming. The most erratic freshman of his generation got a receiver (Arrelious Benn), a home run threat at running back (Rashard Mendenhall), matured a little and was the most improved quarterback in the country last year, on the most improved team. The sky is not the limit –– Juice is probably not destined for the pros –– but with the attention he commands with his running ability and Benn rounding into superstar form, he has no excuse for regression. Might flatline, but he should remain an abover average, generally feared player.
• Pat White, West Virginia: Up from 132.4 to 159.7 (+27.3); a much savvier passer early in his career than other runners like Brad Smith and Vince Young. Like Young, White started about average as a passer, but unlike VY, he immediately improved his rating as a sophomore. He kept the number above 150 last year as a junior. No chance of becoming an NFL quarterback (wide receiver/kick returner, probably), but easily one of the best college players of the decade.
• Alex Brink, Washington State: Up from 113. to 140.0 (+26.7); wound up setting all kinds of school passing records, but never took Wazzou to a bowl game and his rating hovered a little below his sophomore number his last two years. Good college starter and a seventh-round draft choice.
• Mike Teel, Rutgers: Up from 94.0 to 120.6 (+26.6); truly awful in spot duty as a freshman (1 TD to 10 INTs) and still below average during the Knights’ dream season in 2006. Improved dramatically again last year (rating above 145), but largely with huge games against very bad defenses like Norfolk State, Navy, Buffalo and Syracuse –– he still threw more picks (9) than touchdowns (7) in Big East games, where his rating looked about like it did as a sophomore. Would be very surprised if he improved overall as a senior.
• Jay Cutler, Vanderbilt: Up from 112.4 to 127.7 (+25.3); just another scrappy Vandy quarterback until his senior year, when he almost singlehandedly ended the team’s decades-long streak of losing seasons. His efficiency that year was actually almost identical to his sophomore number (126.1), but good enough to get him drafted in the first round. The only quarterback on this list currently starting in the NFL.
• Josh Freeman, Kansas State: Up from 103.5 to 127.3 (+23.8); huge, highly-recruited player improved dramatically from interception-filled debut. Jury’s still out after two years, but he projects well to the pros because of his size and arm. Probably has not peaked and might be sitting on a huge season.
• Bret Meyer, Iowa State: Up from 117.3 to 138.9 (+21.6); vast improvement from year one to year two, and led ISU to seven-win regular seasons and bowl games both years. One of the better quarterbacks in the Big 12 as a sophomore. His rating plummeted along with the team’s fortunes in 2006, and was nine points worse last year, as a senior, than it was when he was a freshman.
• Jared Lorenzen, Kentucky: Up from 116.5 to 136.6 (+20.1); almost identical sophomore and junior seasons, but the rating dropped more than ten points his last year, along with Kentucky’s win total (1-7 in the SEC). Hanging on in the pros.
• Matt Stafford, Georgia: Up from 109.0 to 128.9 (+19.9); jury’s still out, obviously, but Stafford "got it" toward the end of his freshman year, when he stopped throwing game-killing interceptions and led low-scoring wins over three straight ranked teams (Auburn, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech). Given his progression so far, his initial recruiting hype and the drooling of the scouts, should be sitting on a very strong season. Even if he doesn’t throw for a lot of yards in a run-oriented system, the efficiency could be through the roof. All projections are extremely positive.
• Thaddeus Lewis, Duke: Up from 106.9 to 125.7 (+18.8); improved in every category across the board. Only just entering his junior year, so the jury’s still out, but the passing game was the only aspect of Duke’s team last year that was not rock-bottom horrible.
• Mike Schneider, Duke: Up from 96.5 to 114.4 (+17.9); awful freshman season followed by very subpar sophomore season. Only played about half the year as a freshman and lost the starting job to Zac Asack as a junior in 2005. Off the team by 2006.
• Kellen Lewis, Indiana: Up from 118.1 to 134.2 (+16.1); great athlete had one of the best receivers in the country (James Hardy) to throw to, and is likely to regress or flatline without him. Definitely matured, but still more of a runner with essentially no pro prospects. Should be fine his last two years, but just fine.
Pick a trend from that group, other than that they all tended to hold onto their jobs for all four years. Only Mike Teel continued to improve as a junior, and that under some asterisk-able circumstances; only Cutler has really stuck in the pros. The only all-American candidate of the group (so far) is White, which has more to do with his running ability. If Stafford, Freeman and Williams follow the same path, there’s nothing here to suggest that veteran juniors and seniors give an offense anything it didn’t have when the same player was a sophomore.
What that means for current sophomores going forward: I'd expect Sam Bradford's sky-high freshman numbers to come plummeting to earth, with an efficiency in the 135-145 range; ditto Case Keenum at Houston, who opened up with a rating last year over 145. Cody Hawkins, T.J. Yates and Adam Weber are all still at least nominally competing for their positions, which says something in and of itself. They might improve slightly, but by and large will probably look the same inconsistent/consistently mediocre quarterbacks they were as freshman. The big movers should be a couple highly-rated guys who got off to shaky starts: Pat Bostick at Pittsburgh and Jake Locker at Washington. Everybody was impressed with Locker's Tebow-like athleticism, despite his abysmal results as a passer, but Bostick is in great position to be the most improved quarterback in the country, if he's worth even a fraction of his recruiting ink.

RJ Esq · Jun 18, 2008

A Reasonably Anticipatory Assessment of: Florida Atlantic

by SMQ on Jun 18, 2008 11:12 AM EDT
A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason.
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<table style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); float: right; font-size: 10px; height: 1px;" width="189" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td>

The least you should know about Florida Atlantic...</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007 Record • Past Four Years</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007: 8-5 (6-1 Sun Belt; Champion)
2004-07: 24-24 (15-12 Sun Belt)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*</td> </tr> <tr> <td>(Unranked 2004-06): 118 • 101</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Returning Starters, Roughly</td> </tr> <tr> <td>14 (8 Offense, 6 Defense)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Best Player</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

It’s true his eyes are positioned too far down his face, but Rusty Smith might soon be destined to be richer than you’ll ever be: he’s 6’5", in the 220-230 range, and arguably didn’t have a bad game as a sophomore. By the last month of the season, he was on a tear: Smith completed over two-thirds of his passes in the last four games (one of them at Florida), for ten yards per attempt, with 12 TDs to 2 INTs., peaking with a 5-TD evisceration of Memphis in the bowl game. He led the SBC in efficiency, set a new record for yards, and is a runaway favorite to be all-conference again. As far as the Sun Belt is concerned, kid spits gold and cries $1.50 gasoline.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Words to Live By</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

A slogan like TO BELIEVE IS TO BE STRONG is inherently empty, since it places no restrictions on the nature of the belief. A false belief, for example, should subsequently lead to weakness. For a person who believes he’s weak, clearly that belief doesn’t foster strength. The conclusion is tenuous at best. But it’s worked for Howard "The Wizard" Schnellenberger, dating back to his championship days at Miami and ingraining itself so tightly in the fledgling FAU culture that Ho-Schnell guaranteed it would be inscribed somewhere on the forthcoming on-campus stadium. The designers of the virtual tour of "Innovation Village" didn’t include it, though, so I guess Owl fans will just have to close their eyes and believe: You’ve always had the power to build an on-campus stadium... just click you heels together three times and repeat after me...</td> </tr> <tr> <td>- - -
* According to Rivals.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> What’s Changed. Expectations, mainly. Even by Sun Belt standards, FAU has dwelt in near-total obscurity its first three years in I-A football. To whatever extent possible, that shouldn’t be the case this year, the first time in the program’s young history it starts a season with anyone paying much attention. The Owls turned in as solid a campaign in ‘07 as any SBC team could expect: a conference championship, a win over a BCS conference team (even if it was Minnesota, taking a break from its one shot at recruiting south Florida to allow five touchdown passes), a legitimately close call with a ranked instate rival (South Florida), a year-end upset over the unanimous league favorite (Troy) and the first bowl win in school history. After finishing near the bottom of the national rankings at a skimpy 13 points per game in 2005 and 15 in 2006, FAU found its quarterback, Rusty Smith, and doubled its output to 31 points per game last year, the most substantial offensive turnaround in the country.
Every piece of that offense returns, including Smith, and you’ll have to search far and wide to find any set of Sun Belt forecasts that doesn’t put the Owls at the top. As recently as 2006, FAU was a near-unanimous choice for last place in the preseason, and never better than middle-of-the-pack –– which, historically, is generally where you want to be in this conference in the summer: since 2001, the consensus preseason favorite is only two for seven in actually capturing the title, and the eventual champion each of the last three years was picked fourth or lower off a losing season the previous season. The view is very different from the top.
What’s the Same. Personnel-wise, just about everything. Smith had the best single season by a quarterback in the league’s short history. Between D’Brickashaw Onyenegecha frontrunner DiIvory Edgecomb, 1,000-yard receiver Cortez Gent, leading rusher Charles Pierre –– the only running back named after an influential 19th Century French philosophe –– versatile, productive fullback William Rose and Jason Harmon, Chris Bonner, Lestar Jean and Conshario Johnson rounding out the depth at receiver, the core of FAU’s offense was responsible for 88 percent of the yards per scrimmage last year, with most of the rest returning in the form of lesser-used guys. The offensive line was almost suspiciously intact all season, only losing two starts to a player not in the regular five –– and that player, Kevin Miller, moves into the lineup full time this fall. Between them, the four returning starters all started all twelve games in ‘07 and with Miller combine for 97 starts over their career.

From all transgressions, from all snares, they save,
Towards the Path of Joy they guide my ways;
They are my servants, and I am their slave;
And all my soul, this living torch obeys.
– Charles Pierre
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This from an offense that was arguably one of the best the Sun Belt has produced –– it terms of yards and touchdowns, no passing attack has come close, and no SBC team prior to FAU and Troy last year had ever averaged 30 points per game. Given its humble beginnings, it might be easy to dismiss ‘07 as a fluke, destined to descend to somewhere nearer the mean. Maybe, but all indications by the end of the year were that Smith is well above that mark for this conference.
Overly Optimistic Spring Chatter. New starting safety Greg Joseph won praise for ignoring his long-term health and demanding to go through full-contact drills with a torn tendon in his hand, but a gutsy safety on a team with very few question marks in the lineup is no match for the circus surrounding Brooke Hogan, who was lurking around practice, drawing bigger crowds than the basketball team and inducing –– nay! forcing –– middle-aged newspaper bloggers to shoot borderline inappropriate snapshots more suited for the shameless gossip circuit in her quixotic quest for a college that will accept her. Cleavage notwithstanding, Florida Atlantic said, "Thanks but no thanks," along with Florida State and Central Florida, all huge public schools that, judging from their enrollment, generally accept almost anyone with the bare [hur hur –– ed.] minimum qualifications. Hey, FAU’s got more than 20,000 coeds already, which is well over 40,000 tits. And none of them are surrounded at all times by a reality show camera crew. It won’t miss one more opportunity to oggle.
Also: speaking of cheesecake, you can never beat cheerleader fundraising calendars. At least then your desperate leering can go to a cause.
Florida Atlantic on You Tube. When you’re the best-dressed man in college football, every little thread has to be in place. :

<object width="365" height="294">
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gec9IIJEU2E&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gec9IIJEU2E&hl=en" width="365" height="294"></object> </p> No shame –– you gotta do what you gotta do. At least he didn’t get caught being knocked head over heels by one of his players. Again, I mean.
See Also: Rusty Smith tries out his French before the New Orleans Bowl. ... Ho-Schnell rouses the masses for the Owls’ game with South Florida last October. ... And for some idea of what he’s up against, a quick panorama of Lockhart Stadium in last year’s opener against Middle Tennessee.

The media at spring practice. Football team’s in the back, in case you were wondering.
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Best-Case: On paper, the Owls could be the best team the Sun Belt has fielded in eight years, a possibility most of the preseason magazines acknowledge (Phil Steele ranks FAU No. 40, definitely a new high where the SBC is concerned). Everybody’s writing off losses at Texas and at Michigan State, as they should, and I’m willing to say even the optimist should count another L somewhere along the way –– if not at must-be-better Minnesota, the most likely candidate, then to Troy or Middle Tennessee in the conference. If it sweeps the SBC schedule as expected and repeats in the New Orleans Bowl, this could be the Belt’s first double-digit winner.
Worst-Case: This league has a history of strange year-to-year flops (see above). Besides the three expected losses to far more talented BCS teams, FAU isn’t necessarily more athletic than UAB, either, its most forgiving non-conference test. An 0-4 start outside of the league would be disappointing but isn’t outrageous, and would leave the Owls in a precarious state with the two toughest SBC games (Troy and Middle Tennessee) at the front of the conference schedule. A start on the order of 1-5 means they’d have to recover very quickly to get back to .500 over the softer second half, but crushed dreams early could reduce this to a middle-of-the-pack outfit pretty quickly. In the Sun Belt, that’s about 5-7 overall.
Non-Binding Forecast: Bourbon Street or Bust. The Owls probably feel like there’s no reason they shouldn’t win ten games, and if they carry over the momentum from the end of last season, they will, and probably put a scare into Texas (which struggled with SBC also-ran Arkansas State to open last year) or Michigan State in the process. Smith’s start and potential project him as the biggest individual star the conference has produced, at the helm of possibly the most prolific offense. I’d expect a slow start in September, which is just par for the course against bigger schools, and running the table in this league has been very tough –– ask Troy, which was in the same frontrunner position last year and opened 6-0 before running into the Owls in the finale. Eight regular season wins would be a high mark for the school, and for the conference since 2003, and with all the firepower leaving Troy, FAU is the favorite by a mile to repeat as champion.

RJ Esq · Jun 19, 2008

Mandate For Change: Ole Miss

by SMQ on Jun 18, 2008 9:25 PM EDT
The Catalyst: Every year, Phil Steele flips out in his "Baylored" section over the axe that fell on David Cutcliffe in 2004 after his first losing season, only a year removed the Rebels’ best season in more than 30 years. Three years and one canned Cajun later, Phil, David and David’s new employer in Carolina look like the smart ones:

Ole Miss will never again be the national power it was in the fifties and sixties, and in place of that, it’s hard to imagine it being more successful over any period of time than in Cut’s six-year run –– no other coach since the sainted Johnny Vaught averaged seven wins here, or took UM to five straight winning seasons. Was that streak overly dependent on the genetically inevitable glow of Eli Manning? To some extent. But even as the legend of Eli is certain to obliterate the bounds of the reality (he was a very good college quarterback, but rarely great, especially prior to his senior year) as the years go on and the fluky Super Bowl wins amass, his last hurrah was Ole Miss’ seventh winning season in a row and its ninth in eleven years. Billy Brewer, Tommy Tuberville (impressively, in the wake of the recruiting shenanigans that cost Brewer his job, cut available scholarships almost in half in ‘94 and ‘95 and banned TV and bowl games both years) and then Cutcliffe consistently fielded competitive teams –– not contenders, but respectable outfits that could be counted on to hover around .500 in the conference and pay off in a bowl game. I don’t know if the goal in firing Cutcliffe was to take "the next step" or what, but after the disastrous experiment in diminishing returns under Orgeron, .500 in-conference and a steady diet of shady bowl games would get Houston Nutt coach of the year (it worked for Sly Croom! Eventually!)
The New Guy: At least Nutt, unlike Orgeron, is a known commodity in these parts, and –– coming from a program that looks exactly like Ole Miss in terms of resources and recruiting –– probably a more accomplished addition than he generally gets credit for:

"Big Three"=LSU, Auburn, Alabama
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Nutt never took Arkansas over the top, but he almost broke even against the alleged division overlords and had the Hogs in a non-shady New Year’s Day game as often as not. Ole Miss hasn’t been close on either front, and went 3-7 against Nutt’s teams. If you consider Arkansas and Ole Miss basically the same school (again, Rivals’ database shows they’ve recruited almost identically since at least 2002), Nutt is an immediate improvement over Orgeron (that much is obvious) and at least the equal of Tuberville and Cutcliffe based on his record.
At least until they feel the itch for the "next step," anyway. But there is no precedent for a 1-7 disaster on HN’s watch, and ending their relationship with those sorts of seasons is the Rebels’ first priority.

If the first guy’s not open, Jevan, it’s okay. You’ve got six other receivers to check to. We don’t have to gain all 110 yards at once.
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Immediate Impact or Slow Burn?: The one improvement Der Orgeron did make to the program was the overall talent level, thanks to top 30 recruiting classes from 2005-07 and a top 20 class in ‘06. And he won’t even get to reap the benefit of his best sell, Jevan Snead, the hot shot out of Texas –– Rivals’ third-ranked quarterback in the class of 2006 –– who bailed on the ‘Horns when it was clear he’d spend his career behind Colt McCoy. Nutt never had a quarterback with pocket presence at Arkansas: Clint Stoerner was a competent manager, Matt Jones was an athlete but an erratic passer and Mitch Mustain just tried to get the ball to the running backs and get out of the way. So the Nutt offense we’re used to has always been heavily reliant on big backs plunging between the tackles.
That’s not the talent he has here, though, not at the moment. Massive tailback Cordera Eason had a lot of hype coming out of high school a couple years ago, but the leading returning rusher is a wide receiver who had six carries, Dexter McCluster. Snead can allegedly move a little, but the initial book on him is that he’s a strong-armed, pocket guy, moreso than anyone Nutt had at Arkansas or than any of the ineffective flops that manned the position for Orgeron. Last year’s top five receivers return, too, and the new coaching staff favors opening things up a bit: the new offensive coordinator is former Rebel quarterback Kent Austin, who comes from two decades as a player and coach in the always high flying CFL. Presumably he remembers how to draw plays with only eleven men instead of twelve.
First-year starter in a new system, with familiar but rather generic receivers and no proven running threat? Taken with "most generous defense in the conference," which this one was last year almost across the board, five SEC losses seems assured, not including toss-ups with Arkansas and Mississippi State; then there’s Memphis and Wake Forest out of the league. Under the circumstances, any bowl game this year would be an enormous success. In three or four years, they can start worrying about which one.

RJ Esq · Jun 19, 2008

Now, Tommy, Things Get Interesting

by SMQ on Jun 19, 2008 4:21 PM EDT
Almost everybody making money on the matter thinks Clemson will win the ACC Atlantic, at least, and probably the conference, since the same people seem to think the Tigers are destined for the top ten:

Doug at Hey Jenny Slater took a more expansive look at all the preseason rankings floating around and found the same thing: through a dozen mainstream polls, the Tigers came out at No. 8. Doug –– and certainly he’s reflecting a huge portion of general opinion here –– thought that reflected badly on the ACC more than it did positively on Clemson:
By contrast, the ACC -- with three teams in the top 25 and one more receiving votes -- looks like it's still going to struggle in its attempts to be taken seriously as a football superconference. Let's put it this way -- when your standard-bearer is a Tommy-Bowden-coached Clemson team, you're probably not ready for The Show just yet. The Tigers, incidentally, are pretty consistently pegged in the high single digits to low teens across the board, but let's be honest, most of us have heard this song before.
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We have, but not for a few years: the Tigers haven’t been ranked in the top 15 overall since 2000, Bowden’s second season. What Doug’s reflecting is the widespread notion (spread by my own commenters) that Clemson has regularly underachieved. Which is true, to an extent:

* Preseason rank based on Stassen Preseason Conesensus
** In games w/ line greater than +/– 3, based on Phil Steele listings; N/A for 1999-2000
*** Arbitrary, but generally: games w/ final margin 2X greater than line
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Clemson has regularly underachieved, the last three years it began the season in the polls. This takes different forms –– the team collapsed in ‘01 (2-5 following a 4-1 start) and ‘06 (four losses in last five after a 7-1 start) but had to rally to salvage Bowden’s job in ‘03 (win in five of the last six, including over No. 3 FSU and No. 6 Tennessee in the Peach Bowl) and scrape into a bowl game in ‘05 (six wins in the last seven, the only loss by one point, after losing two overtime games in September).
But Bowden’s teams have just as often overachieved, based on preseason expectations. Measured in terms of winning the conference championship, "underachievement" is not the criticism when the team has never been expected to achieve a conference championship –– that crown belongs to Florida State, which has been picked by the vast majority of polls to top the conference or division every year since it joined the ACC, even after its run of immutable dominance ended in 2001, and even though Tommy has taken four of the last five from Papa Bobby. In the big picture, the real criticism for Clemson is "inconsistency." It regularly wins games it’s not supposed to win, sometimes by wide margins –– think of the nighttime beatdown it put on Georgia Tech in ‘06, two weeks after beating eventual conference champ Wake Forest on the road –– but there’s no question it’s also lost too many games in the last two years it was not supposed to lose, and can’t lose if it’s going to be a player: two straight to Virginia Tech, three straight to Boston College, three out of four to Georgia Tech, with scattered slip-ups against Maryland, Wake and even Duke since 2005. The blow fourth quarter lead against B.C. with the Atlantic title on the line last November, at home, was a handy summary for the ‘choke’ narrative.

What’s holding Clemson back? Nothing it can't break through.
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This team has easily the highest expectations of the Bowden era, and is probably the most talented, based on the marked improvement in recruiting over the last three years. That stems directly from beating Florida State on a consistent basis and contributes to sustaining the cycle, and the biggest difference between this outfit and its predecessors is that it’s finally supposed to be better than FSU –– significantly better, in fact, since FSU’s stock has fallen to the point that even Wake Forest is projected in front of the ‘Noles by most of the polls so far. Clemson is the big, fast team the league needs to fill the post-FSU power vaccum. It’s easy to sympathize with the pundits on personnel alone: nobody who watched the Tigeres run out in front of Florida State in the first half last Labor Day can doubt that they look the part now, athletically, and on paper. The defense finished in the top ten nationally in scoring and total defense, with the entire (probably entirely NFL-bound) secondary and three-fourths of the starting line back and one-time recruiting freak Ricky Sapp moving into the Gaines Adams/Phillip Merling role off the edge. The offense is frighteningly balanced: for all the attention heaped on the running backs, the Tigers ran 300 times and passed 300 times in ACC games, and were only slightly run-oriented in the neck-and-neck games with South Carolina and Auburn. Cullen Harper led the ACC in passing efficiency, and threw less than a third of the interceptions Matt Ryan did (at leastsome people think Harper can be a Ryan-like pro prospect). Aaron Kelly led the league in receiving and passed up the NFL.
But balance is not a substitute for consistency. Clemson prefers to run, and when it does, the results are obvious: in nine wins last year, the Tigers averaged 202 yards per game on the ground, compared to 69 yards in four losses, at more than double the per-carry average. The fruits of those efforts are evident in Harper’s stats: his touchdown:interception ratio in wins was a terrific 28 TDs to 2 INTs; in losses, when Harper threw far more often, it was two scores to four picks. Three new offensive linemen means James Davis and C.J. Spiller are destined to run into a few walls. What happens to Harper then? Woody Dantzler didn’t have the defense; Charlie Whitehurst didn’t have the running game; Will Proctor didn’t have the arm. Harper has the whole package. Bowden, probably for the first time, has the whole package –– Clemson should win the ACC. That you haven’t heard before. Depending on how it goes with the ‘consistency’ thing, you may be hearing it for most of the next decade, or else not again for the forseeable future.

E.T.G. · Jun 19, 2008

Spurrier Q&A: QBs, Jr. and the future

390-spurriersmile.lead_art_vertical.prod_affiliate.74.jpg

Steve Spurrier
C. Aluka Berry/caberry@thestate.com

<HR style="VISIBILITY: hidden">
Written by Joseph Person

The State

Posted on 06.19.08

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier spoke with GoGamecocks The Magazine's Joseph Person during the SEC spring meetings in Destin, Fla., about the upcoming season, his decision to let Steve Spurrier Jr. serve as the primary play-caller and his unwavering goal to win an SEC championship at USC.

Q: You’re coming up on your fourth season. Is the South Carolina job harder than you thought it would be?
A: It’s about what I expected it to be. We’ve made progress. We’ve got better players and hopefully we’ll coach better. We’re looking forward to seeing what happens this year.
Q: You’re a guy who likes to win, expects to win. Have you reached a frustration point?
A: Well, no. There’ve been reasons we’ve not been quite as successful as we had hoped. And we’re trying to correct those areas. We’ve got some new coaches. I know we’ve got better athletes. So we’re going to kick it off and believe we’re going to have a very good team this year.
Q: Are you surprised you have not settled on a quarterback at this point?
A: Well, that’s one thing that we’ve not had, amongst other things, in three years, and that’s a quarterback that we can really hang our hat on and clearly be the leader. Blake (Mitchell) played pretty well at times. Other times (he) struggled. And the offensive line has struggled. Defensively, we’ve struggled. We’ve not been a real good team. So we’ve got a lot of room for improvement. Again, I’ve not done a good job coaching, and I don’t think our coaching staff has been super. So we’re going to try to be a lot better. And we’ve got to get guys to play harder and play with more discipline and make plays when they’re in position. It’s a total team effort, and we’ve not quite been as good as we’d hoped. Yet.
This is our fourth year. And everybody knows our big recruiting class was two years ago. The other recruiting classes were pretty good. Kenny McKinley making (Playboy) preseason All-American, and Jasper Brinkley will, in all likelihood, be preseason all-conference, along with Kenny. And we haven’t had many guys make those kind of teams. So we’re making some progress.
Q: Your defense has all kinds of returners.
A: We’ve got returners back that might get beat out by some freshmen and sophomore guys that we have. And that’s a good sign. Some of those guys that started on defense last year may not be starters this year. Same as on offense. We’ve got competition for playing time at a lot of positions.
Q: Why the decision to let Steve Jr. get more involved in the play-calling?
A: He’s not going to call all the plays. He called a bunch of the plays last year. He suggested a lot of plays here and there. The only thing I’m trying to do is allow him to be sort of the principal guy. But I’ll interject often. It’ll be sort of a two-man effort as far as calling the plays. So I’m still the offensive coordinator, and I’m going to get much, much more involved with the quarterbacks. This spring I tried to spend more time with the offensive line and do this and that. But our quarterbacks need a lot of coaching. If Tommy Beecher’s going to come around, then I’ve got to really invest a lot of time with him. And see if we can’t try to get a quarterback that’s, shoot, a guy that can maybe be all-conference someday. I’ve had a whole bunch of all-conference quarterbacks. Haven’t had one at South Carolina yet. So hopefully maybe Beecher or whoever can develop.
Q: How much of that was done to help Steve Jr. further his career?
A: Nah, he’s doing all right in his career. My job is to help us win at South Carolina. My job is not to promote our coaches. All the coaches promote themselves if their players play well. As far as what Steve Jr.’s done, gosh, Sidney Rice and Kenny McKinley have set all kinds of records. They’re wide receivers. So he’s got a track record going for himself. He’s proven he’s a good coach.
Q: You’re 63, but in better shape than most people your age. How much longer do you think you’ll do this?
A: I always work on the four-to-five-more years principle. I really want to see all these guys through and keep recruiting. And (freshman quarterback) Aramis Hillary - watch out for Aramis Hillary. This young man loves football and he loves everything about playing quarterback, loves South Carolina. So who knows what all’s going to happen this year.
Q: ‘Why not us’ is what you asked when you were hired. Do you still think you can win a championship here?
A: Yeah. You look at what we’ve done. The four big teams are Florida, Clemson, Georgia and Tennessee. That’s our big four. OK. We’ve beaten all of them once. We’ve lost a heartbreaker to all of them once. We got blown out by Florida this year. I call it blown out because we couldn’t stop ‘em. But all the other games we’ve been in there, but we can’t quite make the play. So we’ve got to coach better and play better.
We do have better players, I know that. We’ve got better athletes this year than we’ve ever had. But we’re not talking until we do something. I probably overestimated our team last year as far as saying we had a chance if we were in a position to win the conference. Realistically, we had one guy drafted, Cory Boyd. So we didn’t have the team to do it. That was my mistake of trying to think maybe we could. So this year we’re not going to do anything, except to say, 'Hey, we’re looking forward to playing N.C. State' and trying to become a good team because we’ve not become one yet.

RJ Esq · Jun 20, 2008

Terrelle Pryor shall not run thy scout team, notes SMQ. The Tebow/Leak hydra will rear its head again in Columbus, indicating that if their is a hot fashion from three years ago or more, you may still find it pumped as haute couture in Central Ohio. Have you seen these cargo shorts, man? The pockets! They’re unbelievable. And, you know, it’s embarrassing, but we can’t stop listening to this when we do shrugs.

It’s catchy, right? And totally doesn’t make us Yag for liking it, man. Now I gotta go do shrugs.

RJ Esq · Jun 20, 2008

Antonio Henton, On the Midnight Train to Georgia

by SMQ on Jun 20, 2008 7:10 AM EDT
Terrelle Pryor arrives on campus this weekend to enroll in the summer semester, carried by hordes of shirtless, grunting slaves on a platform flanked with statues of roaring lions to clear his path and golden calves kneeling while turning in humility from his splendor, and preceded by an army of hundreds of thousands dedicated to the expansion of the power, influence and absurd wealth of the divine prince among them. Verily, the earth shall quake at his presence, nations and skirts shall fall with a wave of his hands and the strongest men must bow before their master or flee a certain doom.
As the rest if Columbus quivers in fear and awe, Antonio Henton has chosen to escape his bench-bound fate before the competition costs him his freedom or his head, or at least his second year of eligibility:

Henton: out. At least they can't say he didn't look interested.
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Ohio State quarterback Antonio Henton is expected to transfer to Georgia Southern soon, according to several sources close to the team.

Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel refused to confirm the move today, saying only that Henton, "is a good kid."

Henton would be the second OSU quarterback to leave the program since January, when Rob Schoenhoft transferred to Delaware. [...]
Attempts to reach Henton and his family were unsuccessful. His high-school coach at Peach County (Ga.), Rance Gillespie, is now the offensive coordinator at Georgia Southern. He did not immediately return a call.
- - -
Henton his own self forced Rob Schoenhoft's transfer in January by securing the top backup role to Todd Boeckman, but never did anything from his vantage point on the sideline to aid the Buckeyes' mythical championship run aside from the requisite shenanigans: Antonio, you'll recall, was the guy who was stung by a an undercover cop posing as a hooker last September, all the more reason to get the hell out of this town. The demons, man.
Pryor is the only quarterback in the incoming class, leaving ex-minor league baseball player Joe Bauserman as the only warm body between Terrelle and the bottom of the depth chart, such as it is. Bauserman will remain, by decree: Terrelle deigns not to run your scout team.

RJ Esq · Jun 20, 2008

A Reasonably Anticipatory Assessment of: South Florida

by SMQ on Jun 20, 2008 8:49 PM EDT
A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason.
- - -
What’s Changed. Mike Jenkins and Trae Williams gained the reputation as the best set of corners in the country last year, and there’s plenty on paper to back that up: USF led the Big East and was eighth nationally in pass efficiency defense, and the pair were credited with 22 pass breakups (a sketchy statistic, I think, but a very high number, for what it’s worth) and nine interceptions between them, three of those taken back for touchdowns by Williams. Jenkins went in the first round in April, Williams in the fifth. The defense also lost first-team all-Big East linebacker/derelict husband, father and student Ben Moffitt, but there’s likely to be a much bigger gap in athleticism from Jenkins and Williams than a "big heart" guy like Moffitt.
<table style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); float: right; font-size: 10px; height: 1px;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="189"> <tbody> <tr> <td>

The least you should know about South Florida...</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007 Record • Past Five Years</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007: 9-4 (4-3 Big East/)
2003-07: 35-25 (20-17 C-USA/Big East)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2004-08: 43 • 50 • 59 • 58 • 54</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Returning Starters, Roughly</td> </tr> <tr> <td>16 (10 Offense, 6 Defense)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Best Player</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

George Selvie was not completely obscure before last year – he’d racked up 15 TFLs as a redshirt freshman, six of them sacks – but 13.5 sacks before Halloween does wonders for a reputation. He was double-teamed relentlessly after that (only one sack in the final month) but still finished the year second in NCAA in sacks and first in tackles for loss. He’s been Pat White’s contain-minded nemesis in both of the Bulls’ back-to-back upsets (16 tackles vs. WVU in two years, 6 for loss, none of it cheap for a defensive end). For an undersized guy –– he’s 6’4" but listed at a relatively slim 242 –– Selvie is the closest thing to ‘unblockable’ in the Big East since Dwight Freeney. </td> </tr> <tr> <td>Not to Rub It In or Anything</td> </tr> <tr> <td>There’s not much to like about Raymond James Stadium as a college venue: it’s well off-campus, part of Tampa’s famed "Stripper Row," built for the pros, looks like it’s built for the pros, luxury-boxed to the max, painted with an NFL team’s colors and logos and sponsored not by a moldering athletic director, but rather by a diversified financial services firm headquartered in St. Petersburg. It is redeemed, however, by the presence of a completely absurd, full-sized pirate ship, made of 5.5 tons of concrete, 14 tons of steel, a mile of rigging and 64,000 linear feet of wood trim. If Mike Leach ever coached here, it would be a perfect venue, actually.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>- - -
* According to Rivals.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Not that the new guys haven’t played: Jerome Murphy and Tyller Roberts both have three years in the program and played in every game last year, with Murphy making about as many tackles as the starters from the nickel role. But with Jenkins and Williams as starters, USF finished in the top 20 in pass efficiency D three years running; prior to that, in 2004, it finished 105th in that categeory. To expect gold again from another set of middling prospects seems farfetched.
What’s the Same. The offense improved dramatically, averaging 34 points last year against 23 in 2006, which had tied for its lowest scoring average since the program moved up to I-A. That’s a huge jump, even if you account for eight non-offensive touchdowns, and most of the residual enthusiasm over the Bulls this summer stems from the return of that unit en masse, intact save for a rather generic right tackle.
Bascially, though, the offense boils down to Matt Grothe. This was the case in 2006, when he was the leading rusher and accounted either running or passing for 68 percent of the team’s total yards as a redshirt freshman, and was again to about the same extent last year, when Grothe repeated as the leading rusher and was responsible for at least part of two-thirds of the total yards; his per-game average, 273 yards, was more than five times the average of the next most productive player, Mike Ford. Seven different receivers had more than 20 catches, but none had forty. So went Grothe, so went the Bulls, for better or worse:

Overall, this parallels the fate of the running game, which was also way, way down when the Bulls lost, generally, but the correlation was hardly one-to-one –– USF ran up 250 on the ground in the loss to UConn, one of its best running games of the season, on the same day Grothe delivered his least efficient passing effort of the season (two interceptions, no touchdowns), and one of the worst of his career. Auburn, on the other hand, held the Bulls to a meager 2.6 per carry, and Grothe pulled out one of his best passing games of the season in the upset. In all cases, most of those rushing yards are via the quarterback himself; while his passing was off, Grothe accounted for more than half of the big rushing total in the UConn loss, to little effect on the scoreboard.

Grothe: One valuable redneck.
- - -
As you can tell from its meh recruiting, this is not a particularly explosive offense without its ringleader, even after the addition of Ford, a highly-rated ex-Alabama recruit who tends at 225 pounds to be more of a grinder. Grothe has kept himself healthy so far, which might not last given his size and the frequent pounding he takes; if it does, USF could be the most productive offense in the conference. But a better contribution by Ford and Benjamin Williams would help, and the interceptions have to come down.
Home Sweet Home. Tyrone McKenzie is actually back for his second year here, news to anyone who followed the Florida native to Michigan State as a true freshman, then to Iowa State, where he finished second in the Big 12 in tackles in 2006 after sitting out a redshirt year, then back to the FLA, where he skirted the mandatory season on the bench for transfers and led USF in tackles en route to a second team all-Big East nod last year. He’s never actually been on the field at the same place two years in a row, but T-Mac did move from the outside to Moffitt’s spot in the middle in the spring, enough to sate his wanderlust, apparently.
Overly Optimistic Spring Chatter. Murphy and Roberts locked down the corner spots, as expected, but after new OLB Kion Wilson went down with an injury, the other new starters on defense came from the ever-churning mire of sweet, sweet opportunism:
SPRING MOVERS:

NT Sampson Genus — He started spring drills on the offensive line, but the sophomore moved over to the defensive line. By the time spring drills had ended, the 6-foot-1, 308-pounder had emerged as the starter at nose tackle. Genus' development was easily USF's biggest story of the spring.
LB Chris Robinson — Once a promising defensive end, Robinson saw minimal playing time last season because of an ankle injury. In the spring, though, Robinson took advantage of an injury to LB Kion Wilson and enters fall drills as the starter at strongside linebacker.
- - -
I don’t know if Genus’ development was the story: Big ‘n Rich were in town to pretend to honky tonk up the USF campus for next year’s embarrassing Gameday theme. The Leader encouraged the general public to show up, get rowdy, and, uh, try not to support the team:
"If I have 100 people wearing USF shirts, it’s not good," said Rick Paiva, vice president of creative services at ESPN. "We’ll have the [Rocky the] Bulls head out there, but this has to work for all games and all locations around the country."
- - -
Dude didn’t even know the name of the Bull. They’d never get away with that shit if they’d chosen Austin, much less the faux "country" schtick.
Also: new uniforms, pretty much the same as the old uniforms.
South Florida on You Tube. Departed nose tackle Richard Clebert, handling 225 pounds like it’s a broomstick:

<object height="284" width="355">
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/X-b0Xcy8GB8&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/X-b0Xcy8GB8&hl=en" height="284" width="355"></object> </p> That was 41 reps, if you were counting, and yes, you’re allowed to bounce it. Clebert’s official bio says he’s gotten up to 43, which puts him in Larry Allen territory, but he did "only" 38 reps at the combine and wasn’t drafted. Of course, Larry Allen doesn’t bounce.
See Also: A star is born at Rutgers. ... Matt Grothe on getting poked by UCF fans on Facebook before gaining 312 total yards and scoring four touchdowns in a 52-point win. ... And pretty much the only way to stop George Selvie.

Leavitt: Good coach, little teapot.
- - -
Best-Case: Grothe is a serious athlete and competitor, good enough with Selvie and McKenzie pacing the defense to keep USF in any game on this schedule. The game that stands out is the finale: at West Virginia, in December. USF wants to get there with the Big East title up for grabs, meaning it will have to finish 4-1 against the non-Syracuse portion of the slate –– Pittsburgh, at Louisville, at Cincinnati, Rutgers, UConn –– against which it was a disappointing 2-3 last year. I’m willing to concede the possibility of another perfect run through the non-conference, which is no short order with Kansas and a trip to NC State, but not through the Big East minefield. When it comes to West Virginia, though, where my instincts say no way USF takes three in a row over the conference belwether, my brain knows at the same time I said no way USF takes two in a row over the Mountaineers last year. This program has been one steady, virtually uninterrupted ascent for the last decade, and the Big East championship and accompanying BCS bid is the next logical step.
Worst-Case: The complete defensive collapse in the bowl game, to a Dixon-less Oregon team that had lost its last three in the regular season, was really troubling. The three-game losing streak in November could be written off as one bad stretch in an otherwise outstanding season, and every game was a to-the-wire finish. But the Ducks exposed USF completely, like just another team that had a few breaks go its way against Auburn and held on while West Virginia moved the ball between the 20s minus its best player. The overall talent level is still only about average by Big East standards, maybe a little below, according to the past few years’ recruiting rankings, and few middle class teams ever have to replace two all-conference, draft-worthy players at the same position at the same time. Kansas and NC State have both handled the Bulls in the last two years, in 2005 and 2006, respectively, and have a reasonable expectation of delivering two losses before the start of the conference schedule, where the 2-3 record against relative equals could be easily repeated. Two-year winning streak and coaching change notwithstanding, WVU is still a substantial favorite at home in the finale. A few bad bounces or an ill-timed injury, and USF could be back to basics at 6-6, re-embracing those magical Tampa Christmases of its youth.
Non-Binding Forecast: Above the Fray or Bust. The general consensus holds the Bulls as the second-best team in the Big East, and I very reluctantly agree, but I still believe there’s very, very little difference between USF and Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Rutgers –– and that difference is no greater than the relative advantages of Matt Grothe and George Selvie. This is a parity-driven league, and the losses come with it: in four toss-up games in-conference, the best bet is on the Bulls limping out with two losses, then picking up a third in Morgantown. Add to that a likely split with Kansas and N.C. State, and 8-4 seems right. I don’t know how that sounds to South Florida partisans, but if 8-4 and a trip to the Texas or Car Care Bowl actually sounds disappointing, just think how far you’ve come, baby.

RJ Esq · Jun 23, 2008

A Reasonably Anticipatory Assessment of: Army

by SMQ on Jun 23, 2008 7:13 PM EDT
A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason.
- - -
What’s Changed. Todd Berry’s four-year administration of Army from 2000-2003 was at least a comparable disaster to George W. Bush’s, in football terms, not least because Berry scrapped the classic wishbone and option that had defined the academy for decades in favor of some amorphous West Coast-y scheme that strived for balance and achieved rank mediocrity in all facets. Bob Sutton had stuck with the Bone in the late nineties, despite diminishing returns after the Cadets’ surprising run into the final polls in 1996, and in 1999 Army was still among a handful of option teams (along with the other academies and Nebraska, Rice and Ohio U. of Ohio) that always topped the national rushing charts because they ran about five or six times as often as they passed. Berry’s maneuverings merely made the bad results more bland, until the offense eventually bottomed out at less than 64 rushing yards per game on two pathetic yards per carry in 2003, both dead last nationally, and Berry was fired for posting the worst record in the history of the sport: 0-13.
As you’d expect from an NFL guy, Bobby Ross stuck with the goal of a balanced passing game, with modestly better results (because they couldn’t be any worse) but mostly the same high degree of suck, resulting in an offense that could barely eke out a living on the ground but that was also very inefficient in the passing game. Stan Brock is an ex-lineman and therefore inclined to favor anything suggesting a smashmouth or overtly physical approach, so when his first offense finished 111th in rushing offense and 115th in scoring last year, he didn’t even wait for the final gun to declare the hell with balance:
<table style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); float: right; font-size: 10px; height: 1px;" width="180" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td>

The least you should know about Army...</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007 Record • Past Five Years</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007: 3-9 • 2003-07: 12-47</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*-</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2004-08: 121 • 118 • 117 • 115 • 109</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Returning Starters, Roughly</td> </tr> <tr> <td> 9 (5 Offense, 4 Defense)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Best Player</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

Essentially by default, Frank Scappaticci fills this role, though I’d be surprised if a competent skill guy who didn’t exist last year fails to emerge from the new offense. Scappaticci’s main selling point is that he’s still around: he was third on the team in tackles last year, nothing special, but the rest of the leaders on defense left en masse. He’s active enough to move from outside to the middle, though this probably won’t help the perpetually porous defense at all.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>We Are Not Impressed</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

Army is sometimes mentioned as a one-time power –– ahem, Phil Steele –– though that power was concentrated almost exclusively in the years of and immediately following World War II, when a huge percentage of the college-age male population fit enough to be on a football field was either flocking to West Point or marching in Europe or some terrible jungle in the Pacific. Between 1943-1950, when a lot of schools didn’t field teams at all, the academy was 64-5-5, went undefeated four times, won three mythical championships, beat everyone by huge margins, had Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, etc., but the teams they played then were mostly depleted units from the clearly declining Ivy League and makeshift war-time teams like Sampson USN, Coast Guard Academy, Louisville AAF and Melville USN. It did regularly play and beat (or tie, frequently) two of the other most successful teams of the era, Michigan and Notre Dame, but its time as power ended as soon as the fighting men came home and metriculated back into the universities. Army was not bad at all prior to the war (two of its three undefeated season prior to WWII were during WWI, in 1914 and 1916), though it didn’t compete for championships; it’s never been relevant on a national scale since. </td> </tr> <tr> <td>- - -
* According to Rivals.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Army football alums and faithful have been calling for a return to the option offense, and now they may get their wish.

Coach Stan Brock confirmed yesterday he is considering installing more option plays into his offense next season.
Brock said he will meet with his coaching staff on a retreat after the season to discuss a detour from the pro-style offense.
"There's a lot of things with the option that we like," Brock said. "What we are trying to do is take the knowledge that we have here and go out and get some other knowledge. It will be a part (of the offense). But you have to recruit people to do it."
Army has 17 wins in 91 games since it strayed away from an option-based attack in 2000.
This season, Army's offense is ranked 117th out of 119 Division I teams. It has scored 14 offensive touchdowns in 10 games.
Army is still looking for its first 100-yard rusher in a game and has 45 three-and-out drives this season.

"If I'm the people at Army running the Academy, if Stan Brock doesn't say to me on Dec. 2 that we are going to start to install the option offense in the spring, I go get a coach who will," said John Feinstein, a best-selling author who chronicled Army's 1995 season in "A Civil War."
- - -
That was mid-November. In the meantime, I would have rethought the plan based on the Feinstein quote alone, because John Feinstein is constitutionally wrong about everything. But five months later, the same Times Herald-Record confirmed the switch from behind enemy lines in the spring, and said it’s not some wishy-washy package that may or may not see the light of day –– it’s a full-fledged, unabashed, raging Bone:
The Times Herald-Record has learned from several sources that the mystery formation Army has been installing behind the Foley Athletic Center's closed doors is the wishbone offense.
Army has practiced the wishbone since the first day of spring practice, although coach Stan Brock closed all practices to fans and media.
[...]
Brock wouldn't disclose the offense in an interview yesterday. When asked if the new offense would be the foundation for the 2008 season, Brock said, "Yes, that will be our offense."
- - -

Sources? Brock will catch the leakers at all costs! Get G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North on phone...the Red Phone.
- - -
For what it’s worth, the academy’s Scout site thinks the offense will be the spread option, which would fit with coordinator Tim Walsh’s experience in I-AA, but USA Today confirmed the wishbone angle, too, albeit in less BREAKING NEWZ! fashion than the Herald-Record; in May, Brock promised to unveil the new scheme before the opener against Temple. However it leaks, though, in whatever form it eventually appears, the return of the systemic option can only be positive –– if not for Army, specifically, then for the universe, generally, which benefits from any effort to re-establish to the fleeting state of perfect equilibrium it achieved in late 1993/early 1994. Success or failure is insignificant by comparison.
There is the not-so-insignificant matter of actually quarterbacking an option, since the presumptive starter remains Carson Williams, the obvious choice in the old system but not the kind of athlete you’d usually want trying to cut up the field for extra yards. To that end, Brock landed Paul McIntosh, allegedly a spread type QB who won Indiana’s "Mr. Football" award by running for 1,500 yards, passing for 2,500 and scoring five touchdowns in the state championship game, if that means anything. Again, though, the option is practically an academy tradition –- at this academy, and the ones relating to sea and air, respectively –– and plausibly mandated as such by the PATRIOT Act. That’s the kind of legislatively mandated deception I can get behind.
What’s the Same. This being a senior-dependent outfit, not much, except the subpar talent level –– in addition to the offensive overhaul, seven of the top ten tacklers are gone, including the entire secondary, two-thirds of the starting linebackers and the program’s only draft pick of the decade (Caleb Campbell). As usual, the secondary made most of the stops –– the top two and four of the top six tacklers were DBs –– despite opposing offenses’ running about two-thirds of the time, which was not out of the ordinary given the defense’s consistent struggles. That can probably be taken for granted.
If any component of the team counts as "experienced," it must be the offensive backfield: Williams returns along with last year’s four leading rushers. Obviously, that didn’t amount to much –– only one game (in the 41-6 loss to Rutgers) over four yards per carry, only six rushing touchdowns all season and an ineffectual committee whose three most prominent members, Tony Dace, Patrick Mealy and Wesley McMahand, fell short of 850 yards between them. All three were held under 3.5 per carry, a scandalously low number; McMahand, who had a solid sophomore season in ‘06, averaged a truly depressing 2.9. All of that needs to improve by about 60 percent if the wishbone –– or whatever –– is going to make a dent.
Mercy Rule. Usually I save any discussion of the schedule for the closing prognosis, but the major theme of Army’s season as I see it is the extreme reduction in degree of difficulty. Seven of the Knights’ nine losses last year were to teams that finished with eight wins or more, and one of the other two was at the more athletic hands of 7-6 Georgia Tech. For comparison, en route to their far superior records, Air Force faced five eight-game winners and went 2-3 against them; Navy faced four eight-game winners, and went 1-3, the only win coming over Air Force. To be clear, Army wasn’t all that competitive against either of its fightin’ service brethren –– 20-point loss to USAFA a year after shellacking the Falcons in ‘06, and a 35-point loss to Navy, the sixth Cadet loss in a row in that game –– but a large factor in the extremely divergent results on the season was that Boston College, Central Michigan and Tulsa, all Army losses, happened to have banner years relative to Duke, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame, all Navy wins. Based on the NCAA’s tally of opponents’ winning percentage, Navy’s schedule ranked 113th (.409), Air Force’s 76th (.477) and Army’s 43rd (.544), mainly on the random fluctuations of the teams listed above.

Williams: Used to running for his life, so why not save time and make it part of the system?
- - -
It must be with some optimism, then, that before the last two games against Rutgers and Navy, none of Army’s first ten opponents this year won more than seven games last year, and only one of them –– Texas A&M –– is from a BCS conference. Of that ten, only A&M and Air Force were in bowl games. This is by design: wisely recognizing that the best warriors avoid the losing battle, the program intentionally wriggled out of games with B.C., Georgia Tech and Tulsa. So on paper, at least, perennial doormats Temple, New Hampshire, Akron, Tulane, Eastern Michigan, Buffalo and Louisiana Tech are an opportunity to match or exceed last year’s spoils before November, without actually improving very much. And then there’s Rice...
Overly Optimistic Spring Chatter. Before McIntosh even arrives to compete and undergo his ritual hazing, quarterback was one crowded, crowded mess in the spring, during which the following names were all mentioned for the job:
• Carson Williams
• Chip Bowden
• Tony Moore
• Carlo Sandiego
• David Petraeus
The last one is a joke, though Gen. Dave, an ex-West Points star his own self, is scheduled to drop by to kick some ass into form after about the ninth game or so.
It was not an impressive display in the spring scrimmage: the defense, which intercepted all of four passes in the whole of 2006 and only seven last year, picked off their own quarterbacks three times in one afternoon. As far as I can tell, Bowden has no relation to the Bowdens, though their infiltration of the service academies is the next logical step in their slow, steady assault on America’s most beloved institutions; Chip scored on a scramble from ten yards out. Sandiego is a former running back, described as "diminutive," and hoping his speed wins the day in the new offense; Moore is another running back, though hardly diminutive: he comes in at 235 pounds. It seems most of what you need to know about this group is pretty obvious: they’re counting the days until the freshman gets there.
Army on You Tube. Go nuts for last year’s Army-Navy spirit video. Get it? Nuts? Just watch the video:

<object width="355" height="294">
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z-Wf9ce9eBc&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z-Wf9ce9eBc&hl=en" width="355" height="294"></object> </p> It’s always comforting to see that our best at brightest, at heart, are really just stupid college kids. Did I say ‘comforting’? I meant ‘terrifying.’ Those are our future officers in the Great China War of 2044. How are we going to kick a billion pairs of balls?
See Also: In the interest of equal time, one of the many Navy versions of the spirit video, predictably upping the ante on mascot violence. ... The only bagpipe-based entrance in college football. ... Two years before 9/11, al Qaeda gets to the railing in Veteran’s Stadium. ... And a little history lesson: the glory days classic against Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium in 1946. Kind of anticlimactic, that one.
Best-Case: Again, the team does not look much better, but the schedule does, in that fully eight games look winnable. The main goal is surely to gain some ground in the Commander-in-Chief standings, but the margins in last year’s games with the other academies suggest that’s a long way from realistic. If the Knights/Cadets can manage a winning record against the likes of Temple, New Hampshire, Akron, Tulane, Eastern Michigan, Buffalo, Louisiana Tech and Rice, though, five wins would be the most here since 1996.
Worst-Case: Army probably won’t lose to all of the above, but it’s still bad enough to go in as a probable underdog to Temple, Akron, Tulane, Buffalo, La Tech and Rice, which leaves it an upset by New Hampshire and/or Eastern Michigan from 1-11. The talent level is still low enough to resist a change in philosophy, since no scheme can instill actual speed.
Non-Binding Forecast: Beat the I-AA Team or Bust. The schedule suggests more wins, but it won’t be much more, even if five of six home games fall easily into the "optimistic" category. Realistically, they’d be doing well to split those six and steal one from Tulane or Buffalo on the road, and declare victory at 4-8. Unless Navy implodes completely minus Paul Johnson, the Midshipmen’s streak is in no danger whatsoever for the time being.

RJ Esq · Jun 23, 2008

Washington State's Troubled Program

If Paul Wulff was looking for a challenge, he found it at Washington State, which has had an astonishing 25 players arrested or charged with offenses in the past 18 months.

Among the incidents:

One player faced felony charges after hitting a man on the head with a frying pan.
Another tried to hurt a teammate by soaking his contact lenses in alcohol.
A player was accused of punching a student, knocking him unconscious and fracturing his cheekbone.

Wulff, who has been the coach for only six months, also lost eight scholarships because the Cougars failed to meet NCAA academic standards in 2006-07. Former coach Bill Doba kidded Wulff by saying, "Just blame it on me. I'm gone."

But recruiting the right players to isolated Pullman — population 27,030 — might be Wulff's biggest challenge.

Courtney Williams, a defensive back from Los Angeles who left because of academic problems, said: "WSU is a hard school to go to, man. You ain't got nothin' to do but get drunk and smoke weed, and not go to class because you're too tired from doing what you're doing."

RJ Esq · Jun 23, 2008

2-a-Days: Arkansas and Arkansas State

Arkansas Razorbacks

Arkansas is coming into this year making one of the biggest coaching splashes in the entire nation: The hiring of former Louisville offensive mastermind, Bobby Petrino. After a failed stint in the NFL, Petrino made up his mind about where his heart truly lies, taking all of the criticism it came with. Can he get Arkansas competing at a higher level than Houston Nutt did last year?

THE OFFENSE: The dust has settled over the Ryan Mallett ordeal. Mallett decided to redshirt because the NCAA waiver didn't clear, but by this time next year he'll be a redshirt sophomore and the absorption of Petrino's coaching should happen by then. Until that time comes, the offenses' triggerman will have to be the decidedly sub-par Casey Dick who has had his struggles ever since the 2005 season. The RB position is a tad depleted with Darren McFadden and Felix Jones gone, but junior Michael Smith will do an admirable job filling in. The WRs this year are pretty young, but look for this unit to have a breakout campaign. Whatever Petrino was doing with guys like Harry Douglass and Mario Urrutia was obviously working. Arkansas will work with three seniors and two sophomores on the starting line. Mitch Petrus anchors that productive squad. Arkansas was 5th in the nation in sacks allowed. Look for D.J. Williams to become the Gary Barnidge of the Arkansas offense; that is to say, look for him to produce in a big way and act basically as another solid receiving threat downfield.

THE DEFENSE: Darrell Glasper might wind up being the starter at CB. For a team that needs to replace most of the defensive backfield (losing Matt Hewitt could hurt), the defense needed someone to step up at CB and Glasper did just that this spring. But then again, Jamar Love and Isaac Madison aren't bad options. Elston Forte and Ernest Mitchell are two of the most noteworthy Razorback defenders (LB and DT respectively). Because the team only returns five players on this side of the ball, there are plenty of spots open for competition. I think this side of the ball is pretty interesting and it doesn't get enough attention because of what is perceived to be Petrino's strength (offense).

THE SCHEDULE:

Aug. 30 Western Illinois
Sept. 6 UL Monroe
Sept. 13 at Texas
Sept. 20 Alabama
Oct. 4 Florida
Oct. 11 at Auburn
Oct. 18 at Kentucky
Oct. 25 Mississippi
Nov. 1 Tulsa
Nov. 8 at South Carolina
Nov. 22 at Mississippi State
Nov. 28 LSU

Arkansas has one of the tougher schedules in the nation. There are only a handful of games that aren't hard. The Texas game probably highlights this schedule, but that four-game stretch is one of the more brutal ones in college football this year. Texas, Alabama, Florida, and Auburn!?!?! Holy cow. Then the date with Tulsa has a good storyline because of the whole Gus Malzahn thing and you know LSU is probably foaming at the mouth considering what happened during the last week of the season.

Don't Even Think About It:
Ehhhhh.....Maybe.....: @ Texas, Florida, @ Auburn, LSU
Good/Probable Shot At It: Western Illinois, UL Monroe, Alabama, @ Kentucky, Ole Miss, Tulsa, @ South Carolina, @ Mississippi State

THE OUTLOOK: Arkansas can win 8 games in 2008. In order to do so, Casey Dick needs to play like he has a clue of what's going on. Let's face it, the guy has stunk over the last three seasons. The Razorback passing game has been downright anemic under his leadership and that has to change. The defense has to be able to force turnovers like it did last year and they have to play like they aren't new starters. These two things can help Arkansas survive a tough schedule. I'd look for something closer to 7-5 and perhaps a Music City Bowl invitation.

BOWL GAME?: Music City Bowl.

Arkansas State Red Wolves

After competing with Texas in the 2007 opener, Arkansas State fans thought a repeat of the 2005 season was only a matter of time. Turns out, the Indians (actually the Red Wolves now) had a rather uneventful Sun Belt season. Does Doug Roberts have what it takes to take ASU to a bowl game, given that this is bound to be the best collection of Sun Belt teams in the conference's history?

THE OFFENSE: Arkansas State sports an underrated duo at QB and RB in the form of Corey Leonard and Reggie Arnold. ASU's offense ranked a somewhat paltry 70th in total offense and only 82nd in scoring offense. That certainly isn't what this group is capable of and first things first, the offensive line needs some repairing. Leonard was sacked almost 40 times over the course of last year and the line only returns Matt Mandich. That's it. Leonard was injured due to surgery and had to sit out during the spring, but he should be healthy by the season opener. The loss of Levi Dejohnette at WR is damaging to a group that shouldn't be ultra-productive.

THE DEFENSE: Probably the biggest thing you have to worry about here is the secondary. For a team that got no pass rush whatsoever, it's awfully impressive that Arkansas State finished 19th in pass defense. This year, that same secondary will lose Khayyam Burns and Tyrell Johnson at safety. Darren Toney was a rock at the CB position and he'll be gone as well. This area has to reload or else they won't keep up with the FAU, North Texas, UL Monroe, or Troy passing attacks (or any Sun Belt passing attack, for that matter). Senior Ben Owens is the best LB and you have to like the fact that the defensive front is a bit older. Look for them to get some more pressure, but that defensive backfield has me concerned.

THE SCHEDULE:

Aug. 30 at Texas A&M
Sept. 06 Texas Southern
Sept. 13 Southern Miss
Sept. 20 Middle Tennessee
Sept. 27 at Memphis
Oct. 11 Louisiana-Monroe
Oct. 18 at Louisiana-Lafayette
Nov. 01 at Alabama
Nov. 08 at Florida International
Nov. 22 Florida Atlantic
Nov. 29 at North Texas
Dec. 06 at Troy

If Arkansas State didn't have as many holes as they do, this would be any team's dream Sun Belt schedule. The only really challenging road conference game is against Troy while they get North Texas, FIU, and ULL on the road as well (three of the worst teams in the conference). FAU, UL Monroe, and Middle Tennessee all have to come to Jonesboro which is a definite bonus.

Don't Even Think About It: @ Texas A&M, @ Alabama
Ehhhhh......Maybe.....: Southern Miss, Middle Tennessee, @ Memphis, UL Monroe, Florida Atlantic, @ Troy
Good/Probable Shot At It: Texas Southern, @ UL Lafayette, @ FIU, @ North Texas

THE OUTLOOK: It's not good for Arkansas State. The combination of losing a ton of guys off a leaky line, spotty play from WRs, lack of penetration from the defensive lineman, and inexperience in the secondary doesn't make Arkansas State an attractive team to pick as a dark horse. The good news is that the schedule in-conference isn't terribly difficult and this is a team with enough talent to spring up and shock an FAU or a Memphis. Look for Arkansas State to win four games this season. I think 2009 might be the year this team competes for a conference crown. The "Red Wolves" should struggle mildly.

BOWL GAME?: Nope.

RJ Esq · Jun 23, 2008

If College Football Teams Were Comedians

Posted Jun 23rd 2008 10:40AM by Adam Jacobi
Filed under: Ohio State Football, Texas Football, Arkansas Football, Featured Stories
Intrepid writers have long earched for perfect comparisons for football teams. We've seen Simpsons characters, Arrested Development characters, cars, potato chips, and the granddaddy of them all, rappers. Here, we add another chapter to the canon of contextualization: standup comedians.

Frank Caliendo: UCLA

Your absolute, ultimate, professional pretender. Sure, they're popular, but that's because they're right there in Hollywood. Setting foot on national TV for the sole purpose of getting laughed right back off of it. An uncanny ability to make people sick of them before enjoying them.
Key comparison: HIS COACHNESS SIR RICK NEUHEISEL <3 and Caliendo's impression of John Madden. Lucky they're next to someone who knows what the hell he's talking about--"Thanks, John."

George Carlin: Penn State
Transcendent in the 80s, still outstanding in the 90s, but now the wheels are off the track, and the words most bandied about are "senile," "bitter," and "angry."
Key comparison: George Carlin's voice and Joe Paterno's voice. Somewhere between gravelly and demonic at this point.

[NOTE: Carlin passed away after this portion was written, but there's absolutely zero chance that he would want people dodging jokes about him in the wake of his death.]

Dane Cook: Texas
Undeniably popular, and probably earning it. Probably. Sure, there's an odor of douche to it all (Colt McCoy, get a real name, please), but that comes with popularity these days, right? Right? Whatever, you're just jealous.
Key comparison:Superfinger and Hook'Em salute. Put them together, and it's Wonder Twin Powers Activate!

Jeff Foxworthy: West Virginia
Give them 15 minutes, and they'll paint an even more horrifying picture of rednecks than usual. Bizarrely successful.
Key comparison: "If you celebrate a win by taking your living room outside and setting it on fire..."

Jim Gaffigan: BYU
Whiter than white. That goes for the fanbase, too. Still, lovably competent without any delusions of grandeur.
Key comparison: "He looks like a Mormon. What's wrong with looking like a Mormon??"

Mitch Hedberg: California
Look, when your school features hippies named "Dumpster Muffin" trying to save the trees and urinating on people, you automatically get the highest man that ever walked the earth. Aside from Snoop Dogg.
Key comparison: "When I was on acid, I would see things like beams of light. And I would hear things that sounded an awful lot like car horns" and Marshawn Lynch commandeering the injury cart.

Sam Kinison: Texas A&M
"Different" doesn't begin to describe the level of aberrant behavior on display on a routine basis. And what's with all the yelling? Must they seriously lead in the field of yelling? Oh, the answer is "yes"? Okay then.
Key comparison: That car crash and the Dennis Franchione Era. And that's being kind to Franchione.

Larry the Cable Guy: Arkansas
While they're playing off a reputation for being country as hell, they're actually running an incredibly profitable operation, and that's no accident, despite being only tangentially connected with the concept of quality.
Key comparison: "Soooooeeeeee!" and "Get 'er done." You're getting played, fans. Hard. Don't be giving them money just because they repeat some backward-ass, nonsensical phrase every five minutes.
BONUS! key comparison:Witless Protection and Houston Nutt.

Carlos Mencia: Ohio State
We don't care what their bank account says, anyone with half a brain cell knows they're fake as hell. Every second they spend in a state of popularity and success, another decent American stops believing in a just and loving God. A fan base with a uniformly room-temperature IQ. Someone please, please shut them up.
Key comparison: "Der Dee Der" and "O-H-I-O." I learned how to spell "Ohio" when I was three, and was no longer proud of knowing how when I was four. Just sayin'.

Eddie Murphy: Notre Dame
Despite what their name tells you, they're not exactly 100% Irish. Was on top of the world for an extended period of time, but what exactly have they accomplished in the last, oh, 15 years? They put all their eggs in the "insane obesity" basket, and uh, that may not have been the wisest long-term solution.
Key comparison: Charlie Weis and Nutty Professor/Norbit. Brilliant, guys, just brilliant.

Patton Oswalt: Northwestern
Brilliant? Totally. Ass-ugly? Equally so. Unqualified success and superstardom? Ehhh, not quite. If you're looking for discussion of Star Trek, Dungeons & Dragons, or Magic: The Gathering, this is your jam, man. Just don't expect to impress the ladies when you show up to a party in a t-shirt with their name on it.

Honestly, though, you can't really discuss them without their cohorts. Please, observe:

Brian Posehn: Vanderbilt
Same goes. And let's just go ahead and complete the "Comedians of College Football":

Zach Galifianakis: Stanford
I gave Stanford to Zach for the sweater. That's all.
Key comparison: Look at those guys. Like I'm comparing LSU to any of them. C'mon. Anyway, we have an alphabetical order* to uphold.

Michael Richards: Ole Miss
Look, we all know what that flag's all about, and it ain't tradition or states' rights.
Key comparison: Stanley Spadowski and Archie Manning. Transcendent talent on an otherwise laughable outfit.

Chris Rock: Miami
Unhinged enough to scare just about all the white fans. Not scare them away, mind you, but just keeping them abreast of the fact that there's a strange, scary world out there, and they're best admiring from a safe, large distance.
Key comparison: No Sex in the Champagne Room and The Seventh Floor Crew. Two vastly divergent, if equally candid, views on sexuality and the world as a whole.
BONUS! key comparison: Ray Lewis is totally the Tossed Salad Man.

Sinbad: Oregon
A federal sartorial disaster area. Yeah, keep telling us it's stylish for the era. That won't make you any less of a punchline once ten (err, five) years pass. Just stop embarrassing yourself.
Key comparison: White people run the spread option like this (Leaf, Brady), black people run it like this (Dixon, Dennis).

Carrot Top: Syracuse
Did you know that they were technically successful for a while? Now completely unwatchable. Orange in places where there ought not be orange (WARNING: SFW, BUT NOT ADVISABLE FOR WORK, LUNCH, SANITY). Would best serve humanity by being blasted into space.
Key comparison: Prop comedy and Greg Robinson's offense.

Judy Tenuta: Iowa State
Deriving any pleasure from what they do requires a heavy amount of at least one of the following: cynicism, schadenfreude, mental instability.
Key comparison:Let's just move on.

Ron White: Florida
More urbane than most of the rednecks with whom they're in league, which makes them more likable. Wearing a doo-doo-eatin' sneer awhile they rip off hit after hit. And of course, this is just for the long and beautiful history they've got with the mustache. Rock on. Oh, and for that matter...

Ron White: Illinois
Yessir.

Key comparisons: Shhh. Don't try to put words to it. Let the magic happen.

That's all we've got for right now, and if you've got some ideas, compliments, or complaints, the comment box is right down there. Just rest assured that I am always very right and if you disagree with anything in this article, you are very wrong. Oh, and Arkansas, you're totally getting ripped off, don't even bother voicing disagreement. Sorry.

RJ Esq · Jun 23, 2008

CLEMSON PLAYER: “HIGH AND AGGRAVATED” ASSAULT

Clemson: already flying high, so to speak.
High and aggravated best describes a hippo on PCP, the lead singer of Mastodon anytime after 6 p.m., or us any time between the dates of June 2, 1995 to January 13, 2000. It also, conveniently enough, describes a form of assault in the South Carolina criminal code. Perhaps you weren’t aware that South Carolina even had a criminal code, figuring they relied instead on a pastiche of Hammurabian code and a unique “color and cash test.” You’d be right, for the most part. (The “color test” is not unique–it’s widely used across the South! HA-ha. Racism.)
Bringing us to the case of Clemson defensive back Deandre McDaniel, arrested and charged with “assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature” for doing something high and aggravated on Saturday night in Central, South Carolina. It’s nice of them to specify exactly what kind of assault it is, meaning you, too, could rack up colorful charges like “tipsy and poorly committed assault,” or “fogged on ketamine and discombobulated” assault, or even the rare “quaalude-addled and giggly slapfighty battery.”
Clemson comes into this season as hyped as any Clemson team ever: Cullen Harper is on the Unitas Watch List, Spiller and Davis may be the most vaunted backfield combo since White/Bush (an inapt comparison, since Davis does not carry whole racks of ribs under his flak vest for in-game snacking,) and most everyone daring the absurd venture of a preseason top 25 has them in the top 25. (Us included, though we pull that lever with the robust confidence of a bomb squad cop clipping the blue wire instead of the red.)
By pattern, this means Clemson will botch the preseason ranking, lose three games they shouldn’t, and alternate 300 yard rushing games and crushing victories with baffling losses to the Georgia Techs of the world. If we had sense, we’d handle any Clemson hype with sterile tongs, and wouldn’t expect much variance in the existing pattern in the Tommy Bowden regime: nine wins has been the ceiling thus far, and in the ACC the week-to-week crab/bucket dynamic should continue.
We will, in retrospect, exert some degree of discretion OMG DAVIS SPILLER BOWERS JESUS BUDDHA ON A FLAMING MOPED!!!!!

<object width="425" height="344">
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WzWYGtlWYd0&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></object></p> Pardon that outburst. Back to reason, if only for a second. One nice thing, though, about Clemson’s upcoming campaign that might allay some of your nausea at taking the dive on expecting the great and not merely the good from them: Virginia Tech, a team that has broken out irons and torches on Clemson the past two years, is conveniently off the schedule, meaning the Curse of Jenkins is off the Tigers for the moment. Ten wins, here we come! (Not an insignificant total! Might still leave Clemson fans grumbling depending on the two losses!)
Oh, and three points to Clemson in the Fulmer Cup, updated later today.

RJ Esq · Jun 23, 2008

Mid-Major Monday Takes Bulls (and Owls) By the Horns

by SMQ on Jun 23, 2008 9:47 AM EDT
Two coaches who won't be around the MAC for much longer, if all goes according to plan: Turner Gill and Al Golden. Or so we're led to believe, after last year's rumor-fueled preview of this winter's carousel. Gill was at one point the apparent frontrunner to take over back at Nebraska, and Golden was one of the final three of four names on UCLA's before he scratched his own name off the list (publicly, anyway) to focus on "unfinished business" at Temple. It was a quasi-breakthrough season for both after abysmal, foundation-laying debuts in 2006; both have in the neighborhood of returning starters, including their quarterbacks and top playmaking skill guys, and expectations of another great leap forward in conjunction with the gains in experience –– almost every major player at Temple and Buffalo is entering his third year on the front line, like his coach, and no one seems shy about openly speculating over MAC championships.

Sure, they're focused on the present, but they can't help looking a little, huh?
- - -
This is, of course, several magnitudes or order more preferable than speculation voer whether either will manage to win a game, and a testament to the recent depths of these programs that 5-7 and 4-8 records made Gill and Golden two of the fastest risers ib the vague thermometer that registers the rekatuve heat if young prospects, and of the seats they're aiming to fill. They inherited such disasters that even a season in purgatory –– Gill's Bulls were 1-11 in 2006, their only win over Golden's flailing Owls, who also won once in the process of being regularly trounced with the youngest team in the country –– but the lunos were all a necessary part of the process. A cleansing, if you will: not only did both teams invest in youth at the expense of imediate returns, but the rock-bottom seasons made for a nice comparison. A losing record is all relative when no one associated with the program has ever been part of a winner there. Five wins, even four, looks teriffic when your predecessors took upward of three years to hit these numbers.
All the more reason for optimism: not only did all of Buffalo and Temple's wins come within the MAC, where both teams had non-losing records (5-3 for Buffalo, 4-4 for Temple) for the first time, but they came all at once –– the Bulls were 3-1 in October, and the Owls were 3-0. In the midst of epic, years-long losing streaks, all of a sudden they got streaky in the other direction.
The flipside of that, of course, is that they combined to go 3-14 the rest of the season, including Buffalo's shocking 42-7 wipeout over Temple in the second game, and neither carried the midseason momentum into November. Buffalo lost two straight to the top two teams in the division, the Ohio-based Miami and Bowling Green, and Temple flopped not only against Penn State, where it was predictably shut out, but also to Ohio U. of Ohio and Western Michigan, against which the Owls less excusably scored ten points altogether. If not for East division whipping boy Kent State, both teams would have finished with a familiar string of losses to end the year.
Instead, by the conference's odd division-only standings system, Buffalo actually tied for the division title with Miami and BG, and Temple finished a game out of the menagerie. Maybe because of the way the season ended, no one is actually biting on either to steal the division, although Athlon, at least, seems to have come very close to pulling the trigger on the Bulls, who it sees winning between four and nine games, with the upper half of the East listed as toss-ups. But neither Gill nor Golden has to win a championship to cement their up-and-coming bona fides. They may not even have to land of the MAC's three (maybe four, depending on what happens with the new Congressional Bowl) bowl bids, which Buffalo has never earned and Temple hasn't seen in almost thirty years. Here, barely removed from the worst situations imaginable, they only have to sustain the sense of a competitive edge that remains a degree or two above the all-too-familiar cellar. With the numbers coming back, they have no excuse not to match last year's totals, and most likely to add to them. Beyond that, there's nowhere to go but up –– that is, somewhere else, with twice the resources and expectations –– or down, as the inevitable cycle guts the lineups built with an eye toward an '08 breakthrough.

RJ Esq · Jun 24, 2008

The Games: Missouri vs. Illinois

by SMQ on Jun 24, 2008 3:28 PM EDT
The most interesting matchups of the season, chronologically.
- - -
The Stakes (We Think): Neither is a favorite to win its conference’s automatic bid, but Illinois was in the BCS last year and everyone seems to think Missouri should have been, so at-large positioning will be at a premium. No, winning here ultimately didn’t help the Tigers’ case last year, but the odds of the second-place team in the North running the table again outside of Mizzou (especially with the markedly increased difficulty of Kansas’ schedule) are somewhere between zero and none. The winner becomes an immediate favorite for one of the four open slots in January, and may generate some buzz for much greater goals.
Along the same lines, Missouri will open the season in the top ten and has a fairly clear path to 6-0 and probably some substantial mythical championship buzz, depending on the nature of the win; Illinois is likely in the top 20 to start, with an eye on the top ten after a mild upset and the confidence to go forward as a heavy hitter in the conference, with any lingering notions of one-hit wonderism thoroughly smashed. But because both teams are nouveau riche, those suspicions have a lot of relevancy for the loser –– this goes double for Illinois, still carrying the mark of its Rose Bowl beating, and of the Big Ten’s general image problem, and with longer odds than Mizzou to recover quickly with a long winning streak: the Illini only have two games between the Tigers and back-to-back games at Penn State and Michigan. They could disappear from the national discussion very quickly.

Eddie McGee's recurring nightmare.
- - -
Stars, Themes, Petty Grievances and Other Reasons to Watch. If only we’d known anything about these teams’ fates then, their game last September could have been a classic –– a H*i*m*n finalist; the Big Ten player of the year wild momentum swings via touchdowns on a blocked punt, a 100-yard fumble return and a punt return; over 70 points and almost 900 yards offense; and a near-comeback from 24 points down led by a backup quarterback that didn’t fall short until the dying seconds. All between teams that would still be playing into the New Year. This is a perfect interstate clash to open the season, anyway, shrewdly set in St. Louis, spanning both sides of the river, that can be worked into a fine little tradition along the lines of Oklahoma-Texas in the Cotton Bowl, the Cocktail Party in Jacksonville, etc. Throwdowns between programs that largely dominate big, adjacent states, at a convenient neutral site, have a lot of caché, all the moreso when the stakes are ostensibly higher and the level of firepower is what it is on these rosters.
Last year’s game belonged to the quarterbacks –– Chase Daniel threw for 359, three touchdowns and no picks; Eddie McGee and Juice Williams combined for 316 and one touchdown –– but Illinois suffered dramatically from losing Juice Williams in the second quarter. His first series, McGee’s fumble at the Tigers’ two yard-line (his second in four plays) led to a 13-point swing when Pig Brown took the loose ball the length of the field, and the comeback he largely facilitated was sunk when McGee threw interceptions on each of the Illini’s last two drives. A full-time, healthy and more well-rounded Juice offers a much better chance to keep up with Missouri’s fireworks instead of sprinting from behind with no margin for error.
The Early Edge. There’s a fair degree of disagreement about Illinois, which seems strong enough with Williams and Arrelious Benn in tow and a lot of up-and-coming talent from Zook’s strong recruiting classes, but which also lost its best players (Rashard Mendenhall, J Leman) on both sides. There are no such questions about Missouri’s lineup: with Daniel and Jeremy Maclin and the overwhelming majority of last year’s defense back, any regression to the mediocre Mizzou of the past decade would be a colossal disappointment. If these teams were virtually equal last year, the difference in August is that the Tigers have their engine (Daniel), and the Illini, minus Mendenhall, do not. As many points as Missouri can put up, and is fully expected to, this is no occasion to be working out kinks.

RJ Esq · Jun 24, 2008

2-a-Days: Cal and Fresno State

Cal Golden Bears

California was on the fast track to New Orleans since everybody else was falling out of the picture on a regular basis. Since that Kevin Riley screw-up against Oregon State, the Bears lost five of their last six games before the Armed Forces Bowl versus Air Force. Has Cal peaked or is it yet to reach its zenith?

THE OFFENSE: The headline right now with Cal is the QB battle. Tedford won't give away any secrets until the season rolls around, but Nathan Longshore and Kevin Riley both have decent shots at winning the job. Longshore obviously has the experience but Riley has more upside, especially for the future considering Nate won't be around next year. Whoever wins the position will have to improve upon the nation's 50th ranked offense both in total and scoring. That's not all that typical of a Cal team with a usually potent attack. The Golden Bears were 12th in the nation in 2006 so that's a 38-spot differential there--not good. At RB, Jahvid Best should be the one to replace Justin Forsett. Look for him to be the next-big-thing in the Pac-10, he's only a sophomore. The receivers have a new flavor to them as well without DeSean Jackson or Lavelle Hawkins. Jeremy Ross is primed for a huge season with all of the potential he's got stored in his 6'0 frame. TE Cameron Morrah will be a crucial part to Cal's offense considering the youth of Cal's other options. Alex Mack is the definite leader of the offensive line and senior OT Mike Tepper should have a good year.

THE DEFENSE: I was pretty sure Bob Gregory was going to get the job at Washington State, but it turns out Paul Wulff was handed that job. The defense last year was decent enough to get the job done, but again, Cal needed it to be only slightly better. That could have been the difference between the BCS and the Armed Forces Bowl. On a 5-star scale, Cal's LBs get a 5; the roster is chalked full of All-Pac 10 probables. Zach Follett is the star, Worrell Williams is not bad at all, and Anthony Felder completes the senior trio. These three guys are just about the best LB corps in the Pac-10 with the exception of USC. Cal will utilize more position packages to get the best out of their LBs so expect Mike Mohamed to get into the rotation and see some significant time. Derrick Hill should bust out of the woodwork this year and make some big-time noise at the DT position. The D-line is a little more than pedestrian, but they won't get shoved around due to their size. At corner, Syd’Quan Thompson is probably the best defender on the team, at least in my opinion. He has the skill set to really blow some people away.

THE SCHEDULE:

Aug. 30 Michigan State
Sept. 6 at Washington State
Sept. 13 at Maryland
Sept. 27 Colorado State
Oct. 4 Arizona State
Oct. 18 at Arizona
Oct. 25 UCLA
Nov. 1 Oregon
Nov. 8 at USC
Nov. 15 at Oregon State
Nov. 22 Stanford
Dec. 6 Washington

This is the toughest schedule that I have seen to date. When Colorado State is the easiest team you play all year, that means the schedule has to be pretty tough. After scanning it up and down, the toughest game is obviously at USC, but the Michigan State and Maryland games should be tricky ones to come out of unscathed. Also, this is a team that has to travel to Arizona and Oregon State.

Don't Even Think About It:
Ehhhhh.....Maybe.....: @ USC
Good/Probable Shot At It: Michigan State, @ Washington State, @ Maryland, Colorado State, Arizona State, @ Arizona, UCLA, Oregon, @ USC, @ Oregon State, Stanford, Washington

THE OUTLOOK: Don't get me wrong, even though Cal has a ton of winnable games on the slate, they have a ton of loseable ones as well. The entire year should be tough and there are plenty of games that Cal has just as good a chance of losing as they do winning. I hate to be Captain Obvious, but Cal could be anywhere between 5-7 to 10-2 depending on the kind of breaks they get. I'll give Cal 8 wins and a Holiday Bowl berth. My crystal ball says that Kevin Riley gets the job, takes Strawberry Canyon by storm, and leads Cal to a third place finish in the conference. That's no easy task considering this slate, either.

BOWL GAME?: Holiday Bowl.

Fresno State Bulldogs

Pat Hill is a good coach, Fresno State isn't afraid of anybody, they play aggressive football, this is the year, blah, blah, blah. Let's get to brass tacks; Will the team win the WAC, fiiiiiiinally?

THE OFFENSE: Tom Brandstater holds the fate of this offense underneath center. His fundamentals have been shaky throughout his reign as the starter, but he seemed to be coming along as the year progressed. Doug Nussmeier is taking over at offensive coordinator, so the shift may help accelerate his learning curve. Besides, he's a senior, so he should have learned the ropes of being a starter in college by now. If you didn't get a chance to really watch Fresno State, you missed out on one of the best-kept secrets in the nation: Freshman RB, Ryan Mathews. He was brilliant all year long sharing carries with Clifton Smith and Lonyae Miller. Now that Smith is gone, Look for Matthews to get the bulk of those carries, but Miller is not a bad option as a second running back. Marlon Moore should become the start at receiver, but watch out for Bear Pascoe at TE. Who wouldn't want a guy named Bear playing at TE? The guy is one of the best pass-catchers on the team. The line is filled with senior experience except at one spot with Andrew Jackson at G. Bobby Lepori is probably their best lineman.

THE DEFENSE: This is the one area of the team Fresno State might have an issue with. The previous year, Fresno State surrendered over 180 yards on the ground per game and that has to change with Wisconsin and Rutgers looming on the schedule. The pass defense was respectable, but you'd have to think it'll get even better if the Bulldog's D doesn't remain as soft against the run as they were. Tyler Clutts is gone, their main source of pressure. Ikenna Ike should be an okay fill-in, but he'll have to produce in a big way. Wilson Ramos will be an alright option, too. Perhaps even bigger than the loss of Tyler Clutts is LB Marcus Riley. Ben Jacobs returns inside, but there is still a lot of positioning going on at OLB. The secondary should be fine as a unit with three starters from last year returning. Sharrod Davis and Damion Owens should do decent enough at corner this year.

THE SCHEDULE:

Sept. 1 at Rutgers
Sept. 13 Wisconsin
Sept. 20 at Toledo
Sept. 27 at UCLA
Oct. 4 Hawaii
Oct. 11 Idaho
Oct. 25 at Utah State
Nov. 1 at Louisiana Tech
Nov. 7 Nevada
Nov. 15 New Mexico State
Nov. 21 at San Jose State
Nov. 28 at Boise State

You know, with all of the BCS talk this team is garnering, I wouldn't be surprised to see them get into the BCS if they finished 11-1. This schedule is actually pretty tough. The only break they really get is getting Hawaii at home so that pass-happy attack is neutralized somewhat. This team still has to go to Rutgers, Toledo, UCLA, and Boise State all the while playing Wisconsin at home.

Don't Even Think About It:
Ehhhhh.....Maybe.....: Wisconsin
Good/Probable Shot At It: @ Rutgers, @ Toledo, @ UCLA, Hawaii, Idaho, @ Utah State, @ Louisiana Tech, Nevada, New Mexico State, @ SJSU, @ Boise State

THE OUTLOOK: Just a forewarning to Rutgers, Wisconsin, and UCLA: Take Fresno State seriously! They have plenty of potential to spring up and beat you guys. Oh, yeah, the rest of the WAC as well. This is a team that has enough firepower on offense as long as Tom Brandstater is efficient (ooh, that's kind of important, isn't it?) and the defense can find some respectable pass rushing from Wilson Ramos and Ikenna Ike. With the offensive line coming back intact Brandstater shouldn't find standing upright in the pocket a problem, especially with the way the Bulldogs played last year. The schedule doesn't set up for a run to the BCS, but there should be a WAC title in the forseeable future with Hawaii and Boise State bound to be "down" (by their recent standards). The Bulldogs should get 9 or 10 victories.

BOWL GAME?: Liberty Bowl (kind of like what Boise State did in 2004)

RJ Esq · Jun 24, 2008

Jimmy Johns Delivers... Cocaine

Posted Jun 24th 2008 12:25PM by Brian Cook
Filed under: Alabama Football, NCAA FB Police Blotter, Breaking News, The Word

Anyone who's lived on a college campus in the past ten years knows that Jimmy Johns delivers. If we are talking about the delicious sandwich purveyor, the delivery is... well... delicious sandwiches. If we are talking about the Alabama running back/linebacker, however, the delivery is delicious narcotics:

Investigators with the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force picked up Johns Tuesday morning around 8 a.m. Sources tell FOX6 News Johns has been under investigation for a couple of weeks.

Tuscaloosa Police Chief Ken Swindle says Johns is charged with 5 counts of distribution of powder cocaine, and 1 count of possession.

And that's goodbye to one awesomely-named but unfortunately crappy and felonious (allegedly) football player. Alabama is now one scholarship closer to cramming its enormous 32-player recruiting class on campus. Just two more to go!

RJ Esq · Jun 24, 2008

WSU's Paul Wulff Responds to Seattle Times

Posted Jun 24th 2008 10:02AM by Sean Hawkins
Filed under: Washington State Football, Pac 10, Washington State

The Seattle Times put the Washington State University football program in the cross-hairs on Sunday, reporting on an array of mistakes by players over the last 18 months. 25 arrests in 18 months is a troubling sign, no matter the coach or the program.

Some of it was your run-of-the-mill incidents that occur at campuses across the country. You know, underage drinking, marijuana possession, assault. Not to excuse the behavior, but pretty standard stuff for 18-22 year-olds. But some of it was, well, a little odd. For example, standout defensive end/linebacker Andy Mattingly attacked a five-foot-ten soccer player. With a frying pan. And the soccer player? He had a butter knife to try and fend off the 6-4, 245-pounder who notched 91 tackles and eight sacks as a true sophomore last season. Predictably, the soccer player took the worst of it, suffering a two-inch gash and was "bleeding profusely" according to the police report. As the old saying goes, never bring a butter knife to a frying pan fight.

All that said, the vast majority of these assorted misdeeds happened under the previous coaching regime of Bill Doba. Doba was relieved of his duties in December after a modest 30-29 record. But the real issues surrounding Doba and his coaching staff appears to be what was, or wasn't, happening off the field.
WSU already suffered the worst APR penalty among all BCS teams, losing eight scholarships based on academic deficiencies and players bailing out of Pullman. Doba blamed a large part of the problems on the signing class of 2005, where six of the eight APR cases came to Pullman in that class. And Doba himself admitted in the story that he might have been a little easy on the players.

"I wasn't real proud of it, to be honest with you," Doba says. "They're kids ... I guess maybe I might have been too easy on them."

WSU turned to favorite son Paul Wulff, an excellent offensive lineman from the late-80's Cougar teams and a three-time Big Sky coach of the year prospect out of Eastern Washington. Wulff's reputation is strong on the field, but just as strong behind the scenes in terms of discipline and having the head coach mentality. In other words, this is his program and the buck stops at his desk.

In response to the Sunday story, Wulff hopped on the sports radio airwaves yesterday on KJR-AM in Seattle. You can give it a listen here. Most of all it was a chance for Wulff to respond in his own voice, beyond just a couple of lines in the story about what WSU is already doing to correct the problems of the past.

For example, since the APR debacle, academics have taken on a whole new level of importance. In Wulff's first semester in Pullman, the football team just turned in a 2.72 GPA for the spring, the highest in the last 30 years. The goal for this fall is to turn in the highest GPA in team history. And Wulff has already implemented a team "Unity Council", a 16-player group that will sit in judgment in dealing with players who stray off the beaten path. They will recommend punishment to the coaching staff, and the input will be part of the ultimate decision on each player.

The hope here is that it's another level of accountability for a program that needs organization and direction. Will it all work? Time will tell. It could be a few seasons before the bad apples are weeded out of the program. But despite the bad press, things are beginning to turn around under Wulff.

RJ Esq · Jun 25, 2008

A Reasonably Anticipatory Assessment of: Virginia Tech

by SMQ on Jun 25, 2008 6:59 PM EDT
A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason.
- - -
What’s Changed. The big, flashing, burning question is this: to what extent, exactly, is kicking ass a birthright for a Frank Beamer/Bud Foster defense? The track record is pretty good: Foster’s last four defenses, beginning with the Hokies’ first year in the ACC in 2004, all finished in the top five nationally in both scoring and total defense, an absurd run of anti-productivity; Tech led the nation in total defense in ‘05 and ‘06 and might have led last year if not for the 598-yard, 48-point evisceration at LSU in September, which has no comparison (even the blinged-out, championship-bound USC offense in 2004 only scored 24 on 373 yards in that season’s opener). By every measure, VT is the dominant defensive program in the country over the last four years.
The rub: four-year starter Vince Hall is gone. Three-year starter Chris Ellis is gone. Three-year starter Xavier Adibi is gone. Three-year starter Carlton Powell is gone. Two-year starter Brandon Flowers is gone, a year early. Two-year starter Barry Booker is gone. Two-year starter D.J. Parker is gone. That’s six of the starting front seven, seven of the top ten tacklers the last two years, almost 200 career starts, a dozen all-conference selections and a couple all-Americans leaving en masse. Four of those guys (Flowers, Adibi, Ellis and Powell) were drafted in the first five rounds in April; two of those who weren’t (Booker and Hall) were all-ACC, anyway. The core of the units that have been so strong is thoroughly depleted, and Foster’s touch was not exclusively golden before they arrived: in 2002 and 2003, the last years in the Big East, Tech was middle of the pack defensively, and really suffered in ‘03, when it allowed 30 points in four of the last five games (all losses).
<table style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); float: right; font-size: 10px; height: 1px;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="180"> <tbody> <tr> <td>

The least you should know about Virginia Tech...</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007 Record • Past Five Years</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007: 11-3 (8-1 ACC; 1st/Coastal)
2003-07: 50-16 (32-9 ACC/Big East)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*-</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2004-08: 41 • 14 • 32 • 29 • 18</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Returning Starters, Roughly</td> </tr> <tr> <td>10 (6 Offense, 4 Defense)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Best Player</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

Macho Harris was a top-rated gem out of high school and has lived up to every star: he’s consistently rated among the top cover guys in the country and has nine interceptions over the last two years, two of them returned for critical touchdowns in scares against Cincinnati and East Carolina. With Brandon Flowers bailing for the pros a year early with the rest of the defensive stars, Harris carries the "everybody’s All-American" torch by himself.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Plausibly-Rendered Origins</td> </tr> <tr> <td>You might think maroon and orange is a terrible color combination, if you’re like my mom, but it’s certainly an improvement on their 19th Century predecessors: black and gray (at least there’s no need to colorize old team photos). They chose "burnt orange and Chicago maroon" to go with a completely nonsensical nickname, born of a bizarre student cheer in 1896: Hoki, Hoki, Hoki, Hy.
Techs, Techs, V.P.I.
Sola-Rex, Sola-Rah.
Polytechs - Vir-gin-ia.
Rae, Ri, V.P.I.
- - -
Give them this: anyone who’d propose a cheer without a word of actual english must be one creative, open-minded individual.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>- - -
* According to Rivals.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Still, with the Lunchpail pedigree and Foster’s guidance, this is probably the best bet to emerge again as the stiffest defense in the conference. Run-oriented safety Kam Chancellor started every game, and Cam Martin played when Hall missed four games at midseason; Macho Harris has the reputation as the best returning corner anywhere, with the nickname, accolades and high draft projections to back it up. The youth on the line means the top five streak should definitely end, but they shouldn’t fall out of the top 20 overall, either.
What’s the Same. I dunno, maybe the best thing that ever happened to Sean Glennon was getting benched after starting 2 of 10 under insane pressure at LSU –– when he got back in the saddle a month later, he delivered a 10:1 TD:INT ratio over the last seven games of the regular season, six of them in-conference wins (the loss being the last-minute collapse against Boston College), and had probably the best two games of his career against Virginia and a week later in the ACC Championship, where he threw three touchdowns. Sean had apparently turned a corner, one that led him right into a vicious night in the Orange Bowl, where he completed less than half of his passes, was picked off twice and finished with an efficiency rating under 100 for the first time since LSU.

It’s Tyrod’s world, sooner or later.
- - -
Actually, Glennon did this in 2006, too, with a pair of fine games in late wins over Wake Forest and Virginia before laying a three-interception egg against Georgia in the Bowl Formerly Known as Peach. So it’s understandable that nobody’s getting too carried away about Glennon’s "ceiling," or counting on him to beat out Tyrod Taylor, a five-star OMG! recruit who kept drawing aesthetic comparisons to Marcus Vick (for, uh, good reasons, mostly) and might have never given Glennon another opening if he hadn’t gone down against Duke.
Coaches are not looking to cast Glennon aside, given his experience and winning record, and both shared reps with the first team in the spring. Fine. They can say what they want: everyone will be surprised if the rotation that evolved over the last month of the season doesn’t yield at some point before midseason to the full-on Tyrod Taylor Show. Neither guy is a proven passer over more than a couple games at a time, but Taylor hardly had a chance to throw as a freshman and would be a real disappointment if he didn’t achieve Glennon’s not-very-high level as a passer in Year Two. His future and athleticism add a different dimension to the offense and give him a chance to run away with this derby.
The Cheeseman Stands Alone, Breaks a Bone. The Hokies’ running back situation looks so bad coming out of the spring, it’s destined to be one of those elements that sneaks its way to respectability and then some kind of late breakout despite the odds. That’s how they do –– especially with four starting linemen back, one of them (Sergio Render) with as bright a future as any player on the team.
To be clear, there is no evidence for that prediction whatsoever. The running game generally was well below the Tech standard with Branden Ore carrying the load the last two years without the usual complement; there were a couple intriguing options after Ore was kicked off the team in the spring, until both of them –– Kenny Lewis and the deliciously-named Jahre Cheeseman –– were knocked out of practice with bad injuries (shoulder surgery for Lewis, a broken fibula for Cheeseman) that could linger well into the fall. That left Dustin Pickle, a melanin-challenged former walk-on and career special teamer, as the top tailback by the end of the spring. Incoming Ryan Williams was the No. 3 running back in the ‘08 class by Rivals, as well as the "best in space," and if he can’t beat out a couple gimpy career backups and a fifth-year senior just now earning a scholarship, "reversion to the mean" will not save them from a new low on the ground.
Overly Optimistic Post-Spring Chatter. Yet another completely depleted area that has to be filled immediately: wide receiver. Now sans longtime corps leaders Eddie Royal, Justin Harper, Josh "Hur Hur" Hyman and Josh Morgan, the returning receivers have three career receptions, all by ex-quarterback Ike Whitaker in garbage time last September. Like the running backs, they are chlorophyll green, so much so that Macho Harris spent the first six practices at flanker, just to see what might happen. Unlike the running backs, though, the receivers at least had a young ‘un emerge as a potential answer in April –– and not the guy anyone expected:
Give this guy a pen and tell him where to sign. Hand him a scholarship. Make it fast, too. Because Brandon Dillard is hard to catch.

Providing more evidence in his case of earning a scholarship for his final two college seasons, Dillard set up a touchdown with a 49-yard run on a reverse and caught a 25-yard TD pass to spark the White team to a 24-3 victory in Virginia Tech's Maroon-White spring football game at Lane Stadium.
If Dillard doesn't get his "free ride" soon, Macho Harris, the Hokies' star cornerback and unofficial team spokesman inferred he may be forced to intervene.

"I don't know," Harris said. "I believe after this, they're going to have to negotiate or something. They're going to have to work on something because Dillard is one of the impact players now."
- - -
Dillard allegedly ran a 4.28 in the forty this winter, whatever that’s worth (non-verifiable sub-4.4 times should always be met with suspicion, as if 40-times meant anything, anyway), and Harris not only admitted Dillard was the fastest player on the team, but guessed he was "hands down...the fastest guy in college football right now." That is hyperbole. But if Dillard starts the first game, as expected, yeah, he should probably get that money.
Viriginia Tech on You Tube. Michael Vick put Virginia Tech on the map, but the Hokies made national noise for the first time a few years earlier, specifically in the fourth quarter of the 1995 Sugar Bowl against Texas:

<object height="294" width="365">
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/q2mEFGPTJUI&hl=en" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/q2mEFGPTJUI&hl=en" height="294" width="365"></object> </p> Click on for the first, second and third quarters.
See Also: You are there for the complete Sean Glennon Experience. ... Whoever thought of Enter Sandman entrance is a kind of motivational genius, though you can always count on Chris Fowler to geek it up for the viewers at home. ... How do you get good at something? Practice practice practice. ... And maybe Brenden Hill is just, you know, a really big Neil Diamond fan.

You don’t get to say this much about the amateurs, but with Brandon Dillard, it’s time to get paid, son.
- - -
Best-Case: It helps dramatically that –– like some of the old Big East slates VT ran away from –– the schedule has only one team that finished anywhere near last year’s final polls, Boston College, and the Eagles will be without the league’s player of the year. The toughest dates will be against former powers fallen on hard times: Nebraska, Florida State, Miami, all on the road. Actually, up-and-coming East Carolina and North Carolina, based on strong efforts against the Hokies last year, might be about as dangerous. Tech may be a favorite in all of those games, but with no reliable skill players and a rebuilding front seven, there’s a loss in there somewhere. At best, this could be the most underwhelming 11-1 team you’ve ever seen; even optimistically, whatever the record is, whatever happens in the ACC Championship, the relatively cushy route should preclude any notions of a mythical championship run. Really: look hard at the schedule and remember I said that when you start to think, "Well, maybe..." in November.
Worst-Case: Expecting any team with as many holes as Tech brings into the season to go 5-1 against the toughest part of the schedule is over the top, even if it doesn’t look like a very daunting stretch on paper. East Carolina or North Carolina is an upset waiting to happen; Nebraska, Florida State and Miami can match up with the Hokies athletically and Boston College must be a toss-up after last year’s nip-and-tuck split. It’s not too hard to pick four losses out of that group, and maybe another one from the hard-to-peg trio of Georgia Tech (the Hokies will have little time to scout the Jackets’ slippery new offense before the third game), Maryland and/or Virginia. A 7-5 finish would be Tech’s worst in a decade, but looking at the gaping question marks, that’s not too far out of line.
Non-Binding Forecast: Poorly Attended, Pirate-Themed Weekend in Tampa or Bust. Almost unbelievably, as harshly as I want to react to the major personnel losses, the layout lends itself to success. For all the attrition, Tech is still the preseason favorite in the Atlantic and a strong contender to repeat as conference champion, if only by default. The new look ACC was designed to feature the high-flying Florida schools, Miami and Florida State, hook the Sunshine rivals up in Jacksonville every year for a blockbuster championship and throw itself in with the other elite football conferences. Turns out it was really built for Beamer Ball. The Canes and Noles have foundered, the league champion is 0-4 in BCS games and the rest have followed Virginia Tech’s stodgy lead: the ACC passed less, gained less and scored less, by wide margins, than any other major conference in 2007. That profile couldn’t fit a team more snugly than it does the Hokies, and as long as they can drag games into the mud, the consistent inability (or unwillingness) to fly high offensively is a manageable burden, and the conference championship is a very attainable goal. I can’t credibly predict more than two losses from a slate of games that, aside from maybe resurgent Nebraska in Lincoln, Tech should definitely be favored to win. Don’t get carried away, but the Hokies should be right there in the BCS mix in early December, as usual.

RJ Esq · Jun 25, 2008

A Reasonably Anticipatory Assessment of: Texas Tech

by SMQ on Jun 25, 2008 10:40 AM EDT
A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason.
- - -
What’s Changed. Expectations on defense. Mike Leach let defensive coordinator Lyle Setencich go after the Raiders allowed 610 yards and seven touchdowns to Oklahoma State in their Big 12 opener, and to read the offseason press, longtime assistant Ruffin McNeil was the tough-loving molder of responsible, aggressive, sure-tackling defensive men Tech has been waiting for. There’s this statistic floating around, per Tech’s Scout site back in January:
Over the course of the final eight games of the regular season, Texas Tech's defense ranked first in the Big 12 Conference in total defense and improved in every defensive category. Additionally, the Red Raider pass defense led the conference and was among the top units in the country.
...and then Mark Schlabach in May:
But what is expected to make the 2008 Texas Tech team different from others in the past is its defense. Eight starters are expected to return to a unit that led the Big 12 in defense over the final eight games of the 2007 season.
...and in the print edition of Athlon:
Under McNeill, Tech led the Big 12 in defense over the final eight games of the year.
I’m not sure how this was calculated, exactly, but part of Tech’s last eight games included easy routs over Northwestern State, Iowa State and Baylor, so it could be true. Level out the schedules, though, and not quite:

Boxes indicate conference leaders per category; numbers courtesy the great CFB Stats.
- - -
Even by the very, very generous standards of the most offensively-oriented conference in the country, that’s a middle-of-the-pack effort. Tech did lead in pass defense, and did well in the more important measure of pass efficiency D, but who needed to throw? Even after the evisceration by Oklahoma State and the subsequent coaching change, Tech allowed 233 yards rushing to Texas A&M, 212 to Missouri, 219 to Colorado, 308 to Texas and 249 to Virginia; it allowed 41 points to Missouri, 59 to Texas, and was the only Big 12 team besides Baylor and Nebraska –– the worst defenses in the conference –– to allow Colorado to score more than thirty. Outside of holding to Texas A&M to seven points, the positives are limited to games against non-BCS scrubs, Iowa State and Baylor and a first half against Oklahoma minus the Sooners’ starting quarterback.
And it did even better relative to the rest of the Big 12 than it did in comparison to past Tech defenses:

Boxes this time indicate the worst season per category.
- - -
<table style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); float: right; font-size: 10px; height: 1px;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="180"> <tbody> <tr> <td>

The least you should know about Texas Tech...</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007 Record • Past Five Years</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007: 9-4 (4-4 Big 12, T-3rd)
2003-07: 42-21 (23-17 Big 12)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2004-08: 33 • 37 • 25 • 52 • 45</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Returning Starters, Roughly</td> </tr> <tr> <td>14 (8 Offense, 6 Defense)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Best Player</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

Obviously, to say Michael Crabtree took the Big 12 by storm or something would be an understatement. He set freshman records for everything, came pretty close to setting national records for everything, regardless of class, and won the Biletnikoff Award. Better defenses caught on later in the year and held him somewhat in check –– 17 touchdowns in the first six games declined to five TDs in the last seven –– and there was the flatly dropped touchdown on fourth down that would have beaten Oklahoma State, after he’d caught three scores earlier in the game. But Crabtree still had 64 catches in those last seven, dominated Texas and Oklahoma (21 for 349 and 3 TDs in back-to-back games) and is a good bet to go toward the top of next year’s draft, if he wants. All things considered, the best receiver in the country.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Reach Out and Buy Season Tickets</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

Tech gets a lot of credit for unabashedly clinging to the politcally incorrect "Guns Up" signal as its mandatory contribution to the sprawling genre of Texas football hand signs, but nevertheless contributes to the creeping corporate footprint on the sport by way of Jones AT&T Stadium. The edifice pays homage to the people who built it: humble Texas couple Clifford B. and Audrey Jones, who donated much of the original $400,000 construction cost in the mid-forties, and faceless corporate giant SBC (since bought out by your all-encompassing telecommunications master), which donated, uh, considerably more to the ongoing, $52 million expansion begun in 2000. Pieces of the old AstroTurf from Jones/AT&T went for $200-$500 in 2006. Hey, whatever it takes.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>- - -
* According to Rivals.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> This is piling on a bit, since I think improvement is very likely with eight returning starters, but the D had eight returning starters in 2005 and nine in 2004, so I’m not sure where there’s any evidence this bunch will throw off the long-abiding reigns and assume the pedestal as Leach’s best defense. It will be more experienced, but not more talented –– of the returnees, only cornerback Jamar Wall and maybe safety Darcel McBath project as all-conference types, and none of the starters was rated above three stars out of high school (recruiting skeptics see here, here and here). In games that matter, improvement is just getting back to "average"; since almost everyone’s defensive numbers were awful last year and are bound to improve, it will take more than just a nudge in the right direction to make a difference in the record.
What’s the Same. Graham Harrell was the most highly-recruited of any of Leach’s prolific quarterbacks (four stars back in 2004) and had the best season of anyone in that group in terms of efficiency: in Big 12 games, he had a higher completion percentage for more yards per attempt, a lower interception percentage and a higher passer rating than any of his predecessors in the Air Raid, which is saying quite a lot next to Kingsbury, Symons, Cumbie and Hodges.

I think we should throw. What do you think?
- - -
But where they all worked with rather generic athletes who succeeded as part of the system, Harrell’s biggest advantage will continue to be that he has the special, dominant athlete Tech’s other slingers never did in Michael Crabtree, the most impressive of last year’s true breakout stars. You’ve also got all five offensive linemen back and five other guys who had at least 20 catches, but again –– per Michael Lewis’ prediction –– any sense that this might be Tech’s year to challenge the division overlords is an outgrowth of the maturity of Oklahoma/Texas level talent within Leach’s unique approach to offense. That is, however absurd it seems that they might somehow exceed last year’s production, Harrell and Crabtree’s consistency is a minimum requirement for moving forward.
Possession is Half the Battle. I usually don’t give much credence to time of possession, because the margins are typically so small, and in Tech’s case, it’s generally succeeded despite finishing routinely near the bottom in terms of ball control. The NCAA’s only kept the statistic officially since 2005, during which time the Raiders have finished tenth, eleventh and eleventh in the Big 12, and among the bottom 15 teams in the country in possession the last two years.
Maybe this matters and maybe it doesn’t: in three of its four losses last year, Tech was at a disadvantage of almost eight minutes against Oklahoma State, more than eight minutes at Colorado and a whopping ten-and-a-half minutes against Texas, while holding onto the ball about six-and-a-half minutes longer than Oklahoma in the turning point of the season. But it was at similar disadvantages in easy wins over Iowa State, Texas A&M and Baylor, and a slight advantage in possession in the lopsided loss to Missouri. The correlation is certainly not one-to-one, but the defense did face nine plays more on average in losses than in wins –– about a full drive per game, which makes a big difference for a mediocre defense occasionally hanging on for its life.
One way to improve that number and keep the defense off the field is to improve on third downs, especially third-and-short (1-3 yards to go). Tech’s overall third down percentage looks good, but, like a lot of its numbers, are more sobering when you separate Big 12 games from the non-conference fluff: in-conference, the success rate declined to 41 percent, and was less than 50 percent on short-yardage situations, where the Raiders (of course) tended to throw, without a lot of success –- they were actually more successful passing on 3rd-and-7 or longer (45.3 percent in all games) than on 3rd-and-6 or less (39.3 percent), which is definitely not normal and speaks to the need of a more reliable running game to pull the latter number up.
Overly Optimistic Post-Spring Chatter. For obvious reasons, the focus was supposed to be on getting the defense up to par, and it would seem it delivered on that goal:
Red Raider fans got a glimpse of Texas Tech's newly fortified defensive line during the annual Red-Black Game on Saturday as the unit recorded nine sacks and pressured the squad's quarterbacks throughout the workout. The defense edged out a 29-23 win over the offense.
[...]
Defensive tackle Richard Jones led the unit with three sacks, while ends Daniel Howard and [McKinner] Dixon recorded two each. Despite playing against a thinned-out offensive line, the defensive front rotation showed its athleticism and spent much of the day in the backfield, accounting for 84 lost yards on tackles behind the line of scrimmage.
- - -
A satisfying defensive improvement? Nay –– Leach was so dismayed by what he saw in the Saturday game he made the whole team strap ‘em on again on Sunday, for a "much more violent and active" (and closed to the public, so possibly Medieval) scrimmage that apparently was closer to his expectations. Though the defense still won.
Texas Tech on You Tube. Keep a close eye on the ball in Grant Walker’s hands, and on the official standing about six feet from Oklahoma’s demonstrative assistant:

<object height="304" width="365">
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qJpeKRFV67c&hl=en" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qJpeKRFV67c&hl=en" height="304" width="365"></object> </p> That’s the ref’s hand coming into the picture at about 0:27 to catch the ball. Flag? Uh, no. The scurvy dog dares not flag a brazen buccaneer on his own turf, even surrounded by the other team’s scalawags. Ye be pleasing the funny bone on the slow-mo, matey.
See Also: A wealth of entertaining Tech stuff out there, even beyond Mike Leach, like... ... Alabama didn’t win the Cotton Bowl? ... Tech gets introduced by the Donald. ... And it looks like a ton of fun to be a Raider, crawling into cabinets, jousting in the dorms, parodying generic, self-righteous university ads, testing debris impact, branding yourself with the Double T, tailgating to excess, being taken to the ground and arrested as you storm the field, taking shots to the face...just don’t pass out at the parties, man. (And just for the hell of it, the Lubbock Babes).
Best-Case: Raider partisans will no doubt be disappointed with anything less than a 6-0 start, against the usual non-conference cakewalk in September (Eastern Washington, Nevada, SMU, UMass) and North also-rans K-State and Nebraska to open the Big 12 season. The next two, at Texas A&M and Kansas, are winnable, which opens the door to 8-0 when Texas comes to Lubbock the first Saturday in November for one of the biggest games in Tech history, if it gets to that point. I have to think there’s a loss among Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma –– taking two of three would mean winning at least one on the road, and the Raiders have been much better under Leach at home, and taking three out of four from Oklahoma, in particular, seems like a stretch -– but a defense as improved as everyone seems to think it should be makes Tech an immediate contender for the division title. I can envision a Kansas-like run to 11-1 and an at-large BCS bid, but even optimistically, Oklahoma has a vice-grip on the South.
Worst-Case: The Raiders have been maddeningly inconsistent for a team with very high expectations, including some really baffling and disappointing losses: Oklahoma State in 2005, Colorado in 2006, Colorado and Oklahoma State last year. They haven’t been competitive in two straight losses to Missouri, have dropped five straight to Texas and haven’t come close to winning at Oklahoma since Bob Stoops was hired there. A 4-0 start seems inevitable, but historically, there’s a loss in one of the two road games against Kansas State or Texas A&M, and another between Kansas (again, Tech has struggled on the road, and KU has been suprisingly good under Mangino in Lawrence) and Oklahoma State, in addition to the annual beating by UT and OU. That’s just another 4-4 conference record and middling bowl game, and the first obvious setback in eight years of mostly steady optimism and progress.
Non-Binding Forecast: January or Bust. Last year’s upset notwithstanding, no credible forecast will move very loaded Oklahoma from the top of the division. Tech is realistically shooting for second place in the South and a Cotton Bowl bid at worst, which means a) Substantially improved defense; b) Better consistency on both sides of the ball –– the numberes will look sensational again, but gaudy blowouts of SMU don’t mean much when the offense stalls against a Colorado or Missouri (or, with this year’s schedule, say, Nebraska and Kansas), and the defense falls apart against Oklahoma State; and c) A win over Texas in Lubbock. All of those elements seem more likely now than they ever have in the past. I’m still inclined to take Texas’ overall talent advantage and guess there’s the usual letdown somewhere in tough games with A&M, Kansas and Oklahoma State, but the Raiders shouldn’t be satisfied with any more than three losses, or any less than the Holiday Bowl. This looks like a sure top 25 team, but until it demonstrates the leap on defense, not top fifteen.

RJ Esq · Jun 26, 2008

[FONT=arial, helvetica][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]UC hopes ex-Gopher joins fold[/FONT] [FONT=Times New Roman, Serif]Need Zimpher's OK after LB's legal woe
[/FONT] [FONT=Times New Roman, serif]
By Bill Koch
bkoch@enquirer.com [/FONT] [/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]University of Cincinnati head coach Brian Kelly is waiting for clearance from school president Nancy Zimpher that would allow former Minnesota player Alex Daniels to become a member of the Bearcats' football team.[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]Daniels, a linebacker from Columbus Brookhaven High School, was one of four players dismissed from the Minnesota team in July 2007 after they allegedly were involved in an incident with an 18-year-old woman on campus.[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]Daniels, 21, was arrested but never was charged with a crime, according to Kelly. He transferred to UC last year, paying his own way, first at Raymond Walters College, a UC branch campus, and then in the College of Arts and Sciences on the main campus.[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]"He needs to meet some criteria that we set relative to academics and his situation and relative to his court case," Kelly said Tuesday. "We had to get all the proper documentation and run it by the president."[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]According to a July 18, 2007, Associated Press story, Dominic Jones, a junior and one of the best defensive players on the Minnesota team, was accused of having sex with an 18-year-old woman who was "physically helpless" after a night of binge drinking at a campus apartment in early April of that year.[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]Investigators said Daniels used his cell phone to film Jones having sex with the woman. Hennepin County (Minn.) attorney Mike Freeman said Daniels and Minnesota players E.J. Jones and Keith Massey also had sex with the woman earlier that night.[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]"I don't know what facts the prosecution had that they had to charge one and not the others," Kelly said. "All I know is in our conversations with our lawyer, (Daniels) was not charged and will never be charged. The case has been closed."[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]When asked if he were concerned about public relations fallout if Daniels joins the UC team, Kelly said: "If he was charged with a crime, I would be concerned, but he was never charged with a crime. What we're dealing with here is bad judgment ...[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]"The bottom line was that he needed to come to school and work on his degree. He got into school on his own. I feel comfortable if the president signs off on it."[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]If Daniels gets the OK from Zimpher, he will be eligible to play this fall and will have two years of eligibility remaining.[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]Kelly said he would decide this fall whether to award Daniels a scholarship if he is cleared to play.[/FONT]
[FONT=arial, helvetica]At 6 feet 3 and 255 pounds, Daniels can play defensive end, linebacker and running back. He was ranked the 11th-best athlete in the nation by Rivals.com after he led Brookhaven to a state title in 2004.[/FONT]

RJ Esq · Jun 26, 2008

OU lineman Loadholt arrested

By Scott Wright
Staff Writer
NORMAN — Oklahoma senior starting left tackle Phil Loadholt was arrested Saturday along Interstate 35 on suspicion of driving under the influence and for allegedly transporting an open container, criminal misdemeanor charges, according to Oklahoma Highway Patrol documents.

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Kenny Mossman, OU senior associate athletics director in charge of communications, said he did not expect coach Bob Stoops to comment on the arrest.
The situation likely will be handled internally, and it is not expected that Loadholt, 22, will be dismissed from the team.
This is Loadholt's second arrest in two years, but first since coming to OU in January 2007.
In September 2006, during his sophomore year at Garden City (Kan.) Community College, Loadholt was arrested on allegations of disorderly conduct in Manhattan, Kan.

RJ Esq · Jun 26, 2008

Mandate For Change: Georgia Tech

by SMQ on Jun 26, 2008 6:12 PM EDT
The Catalyst: Imagine being a Georgia Tech fan is like being on amusement park ride. From the time Bobby Ross was hired to take over for Bill Curry in 1987, this is your track:

After alternating stretches of exhilirating highs and terror-stricken troughs, you might think a bit of, shall we say, regularity would be exactly what a jittery Wreck wanted. Maybe it was, when Gailey was hired. Turns out no one has much fun on the flat stretch as the car slows to a stop, especially when it keeps losing to Georgia.
You have to say this for Gailey: he held the line. George O’Leary –– who debuted with the 1-10 plunge in 1994, by the way –– averaged about 8.5 wins over his last five years, higher than any other five-year stretch here since the mid-fifties; at the end of Gailey’s six-year run, he’d averaged about 7.5 wins, which was the highest number (other than O’Leary’s) since another run of seven-win seasons in the early sixties.
It’s not that good, either. Not only did Gailey Equilibrium instictively seek seven wins at all costs, like turtles returning to the beaches of their birth to lay eggs; the Jackets finished right at 4-4 in ACC games four years out of six, going as far as losing to Duke by four touchdowns (2003) to get there. Gailey’s recruiting classes were consistently among the worst in the ACC, surpassed in unremarkability only by Duke and Wake Forest. He landed Calvin Johnson but couldn’t get him anyone who could supplant Reggie Ball. It didn’t help that Jim Grobe’s broken through with his collection of mediocre talent two years in a row.
The question –– and this is a very valid question, given the school’s historical norm over the past half-century, which is very Chan-esque –– is whether any other available coaches could have done appreciably better. The only guy with a better record over a comparable period of time is O’Leary. If the ongoing Gailey regime didn’t bode well for the future, precedent doesn’t, either.
The New Guy: Technically, Paul Johnson is a mystery because of the skepticism following his flexbone system, although it’s clear from Tech’s position breakdowns in the spring –– complete with slotbacks and "B-Backs" (fullbacks, with an emphasis on running rather than blocking) –– that the Jackets will be committed to running the triple option from the start.
This is completely out of step with anything anyone outside of the physically overmatched service academies are doing, but Johnson’s track record speaks for itself: he won the Southern Conference championship every year at Georgia Southern, coached in three straight I-AA champonship games and won the last two, then took bottomed-out Navy to five straight bowl games. In eleven years, he only has one losing record (Navy was 2-10 in 2002, his first year); even at the academy, after the rocky start, he won at least eight games every season.

Dywer: won’t be getting outside much.
- - -
There’s nothing wrong with skepticism about the offense’s efficacy against better defenses, though, since Johnson’s Navy teams rarely had much success against teams on a higher level than, say, the Mountain West Conference. Number of Midshipmen victories since 2002 over teams that finished with a winning record: five, against Air Force (2003, 2007), New Mexico (2004), East Carolina (2006) and Colorado State (2005), if you’re willing count the 6-6 Rams. In six years under Johnson, the Middies’ best performance was probably against Boston College in the ‘06 Car Care Bowl, which they lost only because a late pitch in the rain squirted free and set up the winning field goal for BC. None of Navy’s actual BCS conference victims came anywhere near a winning record.
Immediate Impact or Slow Burn?: The preseason consensus has not been kind to the Jackets, which probably has at least as much to do with the reticence of the prognostoscenti to buy into Johnson’s funky scheme as it does the very green set of players preparing to run it –– on both sides, the Jackets lose almost twice as many starters (14) as they return (8), and about 75 percent of last year’s meager total offense.
In terms of the type of player he inherits, there are none of the square pegs Rich Rodriguez has to endure at Michigan: cement-shoed Taylor Bennett transferred after a dreadfully disappointing season as the top quarterback, leaving much more option-friendly Josh Nesbitt as the point man (he, Auburn transfer Calvin Booker or one of a couple of true freshmen expected to be in the mix in the fall are likely to handle most of the carries, if the distribution at Navy is any indication) and Jonathan Dwyer as the between-the-tackles pacemaker at fullback –– he didn’t start a game last year, but nobody who watched Dwyer back up Tashard Choice as a true freshman has any question about his full-time bona fides. Given that Nesbitt and Booker are actual quarterbacks, Johnson may let them throw more often than he did the rag-armed vagabonds who required extreme surprise and wide open targets to complete passes at Navy. Tech has the athletes to run the option and expand the playbook right now.
But Navy’s example is not a good one: it took the Midshipmen a year in the desert to pick up the intricacies that carried them along the next five years. It still seems unlikely that an athletic, disciplined defense like Virginia Tech’s will have much greater trouble with the flexbone than it will with any other –– the Jackets still have to block and tackle, after all, and that kind of leap is only going to come with improved recruiting. After the last six years, this may not be what Wreck partisans want to hear, but Gailey’s Johnson's first priority has to be just holding the line.

RJ Esq · Jun 26, 2008

Jones pleads guilty

By Alan Trubow | Thursday, June 26, 2008, 04:42 PM
Former Texas football player Andre Jones pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and was taken into custody at the Travis County Justice Complex on Thursday.
Jones, a defensive tackle, will serve 30 days in jail and will be on probation for 10 years. Only 12 of Jones’ days in jail will go on his record, according to his lawyer Ariel Payan.
Jones’ guilty plea stems from an East Austin robbery last summer that also included former Texas players Robert Joseph and James Henry.
Judge Brenda Kennedy ordered Jones to complete 340 hours of community service and submit to regular drug testing.
“I think he was happy with the deal, but I think he wished he had the money to take it to a jury,” Payan said of Jones. “It would have been risky to go to trial, but he might have done it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an option because he was out of money.”
Payan added that Jones wanted to get his jail time finished before the start of the school year because he still hopes to come back to Texas.
Jones has been on scholarship for the past year despite the off-field altercation, but he has not been part of the team or been able to participate in any team functions.
Jones’ scholarship will be revoked because he plead guilty to a felony, a source close to the football team said.

RJ Esq · Jun 26, 2008

2-a-Days: Stanford and UCLA

Stanford Cardinal

Stanford's lone highlight was probably the biggest upset in college football history. After the win against USC, this team didn't have an impressive stretch but the year did end with a win over the reeling Cal Golden Bears. Now that Harbaugh has established Stanford somewhat as a threat, is it possible for them to build upon last year?

THE OFFENSE: Stanford was at least competitive on this side of the ball, but the running game was anemic. Jeremy Stewart led the team last year with about 30 yards a game. That's not going to cut it if Stanford can keep going in the direction Harbaugh is taking them. Anthony Kimble was supposed to be the starter before he went down with an injury and he should remain healthy this year. The QB position is interesting with Jason Forcier primed to take over the offense after transferring from Michigan. Forcier is a special talent with a solid skill set. Tavita Pritchard led the Stanford offense to victory against the Trojans in October of 2007, but he's a shaky QB who doesn't always make the smartest decisions. Look for Forcier to become the starter eventually if not the opening game guy under center. Even so, Harbaugh landed a fantastic recruit in Andrew Luck who will start at his position a few years down the road. The receivers are a shallow spot on the depth chart, but Richard Sherman should have a huge year, as long as that line protects Forcier/Prtichard. And that's the key to this offense. As long as the pass protection improves, moving the ball will become that much easier. Stanford gave up four sacks per game and that's a major drive killer. Stanford's offensive line situation is a bit odd. First, Chris Marinelli did a really good job. Alex Fletcher is one of the best centers in the nation. And, Andrew Phillips should begin to shine. The other two spots are major weaknesses and this unit just doesn't act like they're on the same page. Things need to get better in a hurry.

THE DEFENSE: Stanford bent a lot last year, but for the most part they didn't break too badly. They only gave up about four touchdowns a game (28 points) so they can deal with that. There's one thing you have to tip your hat to them for and that was their aggressive style of play. They were fantastic at making sacks and getting to people behind the line of scrimmage, so that deserves some commendation. Ekom Udofia and Pannel Egboh should be a tough duo to stop on the defensive line. Clinton Snyder is one of the best linebackers in the entire Pac-10 and look for him to make some serious waves. The Cardinal secondary will probably miss Nick Sanchez, but Kris Evans should have a nice season. Bo McNally and Austin Yancy do a good job as well at safety.

THE SCHEDULE:

Aug. 28 Oregon State
Sept. 6 at Arizona State
Sept. 13 at TCU
Sept. 20 San Jose State
Sept. 27 at Washington
Oct. 4 at Notre Dame
Oct. 11 Arizona
Oct. 18 at UCLA
Nov. 1 Washington State
Nov. 8 at Oregon
Nov. 15 USC
Nov. 22 at California

It's tough. The only game that's even close to being a given is San Jose State, a game which an improved Stanford team should win at home. Beyond that, it's going to be really tough to come out of this slate with six wins. Road trips to Tempe, Fort Worth, and South Bend by early October means this team's confidence could be shattered by the time the Pac-10 schedule really kicks in. To make matters worse, what should be the Pac-10's "Big 3" all face Stanford to end the year. That could be a major momentum killer heading into 2009.

Don't Even Think About It: @ Oregon, USC, @ Cal
Ehhhhh.....Maybe....: Oregon State, @ Arizona State, @ TCU, @ Notre Dame, Arizona, @ UCLA
Good/Probable Shot At It: San Jose State, @ Washington, Washington State

THE OUTLOOK: Stanford won't be very good. They just don't have the talent up and down the roster to be continually competitive as the season wears on. Jim Harbaugh is in the process of really building something at Stanford, but the schedule is unforgiving to a team that can't run, can't block, and struggles against the pass. Stanford might spring up and pull off an upset or two, but that would most likely equate to four wins. I just can't see Stanford competing this year against Oregon, USC, or Cal and two of their four wins from last year came against the Trojans and the Golden Bears.

BOWL GAME?: Nope.

UCLA Bruins

Karl Dorrell was the constant underachiever, at least that's what he's perceived to be around Los Angeles. Now, there's a new sheriff in town and he's brought along with him a mad scientist, otherwise known as Norm Chow. When exactly will this sleeping giant wake up?

THE OFFENSE: Things might not go as smoothly as people hoped for this re-emerging program. Patrick Cowan is out with an ACL tear leaving the job solely for Ben Olson. Or is it? Word is Kevin Craft (who transferred from the JUCO ranks and played for his dad at San Diego State) is sparkling in practices. There's an outside chance at this happening, but if the offense starts sputtering midway through the year, expect Craft to be the new guy in charge. Kahlil Bell has spent the last few years as a change-of-pace kind of guy, but with Chris Markey out of the picture, expect him to step up and really shine as the starting tailback. Aundre Dean could breakout sort of in a LeSean McCoy-esque fashion. The definite plus to this offense is at receiver. There are a lot of guys on the roster who should come through in a big way. First is Marcus Everett who figures to be the top target on this new offense. Dominique Johnson is ready to breakthrough as the number two receiver and Logan Paulsen could emerge as a legit threat at the TE position. Micah Kia is planning on having a solid year at the LT position and should be a role model for a line that is reconstructing somewhat.

THE DEFENSE: UCLA's offense was really bad at different times throughout 2007, but the defense was strong consistently. 29th in total and scoring defense, the unit that was supposed to come through did so and should at least make for a bowl-bound security blanket if the offense tanks again like it has the last two years. Brigham Harwell is one of the best players on the team and a force up the middle. Tom Blake has to step up with the absence of Bruce Smith guaranteed to slow down the pass rush a little bit. Reggie Carter should be in for a gigantic year at LB. This guy is one of the best in the country and a joy to watch when he's flying around the field. The secondary unit is older, but they don't have a ton of experience. Alterraun Verner is the star of the backfield but expect the safety spot to be sort of a weakpoint. I don't have overflowing confidence in Bret Lockett or Aaron Ware to have the kind of field vision and knowledge it takes to star at safety, especially with the potent passing games in the Pac-10.

THE SCHEDULE:

Sept. 1 Tennessee
Sept. 13 at BYU
Sept. 20 Arizona
Sept. 27 Fresno State
Oct. 4 Washington State
Oct. 11 at Oregon
Oct. 18 Stanford
Oct. 25 at California
Nov. 8 Oregon State
Nov. 15 at Washington
Nov. 28 at Arizona State
Dec. 6 USC

Again, another really tough schedule. UCLA is the lucky BCS-conference team to face the two teams that most consider to have the best shot at going to the BCS from the non-BCS ranks, BYU and Fresno State. Add onto that a Labor Day showdown against Tennessee and a Pac-10 schedule which is really hard, and UCLA could have one of the hardest schedules in the nation.

Don't Even Think About It:
Ehhhhh.....Maybe....: Tennessee, @ Oregon, @ Cal, USC
Good/Probable Shot At It: @ BYU, Arizona, Fresno State, Washington State, Stanford, Oregon State, @ Washington, @ Arizona State

THE OUTLOOK: Things won't start off with a bang in the Neuheisel era, but it will be good enough to go bowling in a Pac-10 conference that could be the second best in the country. The schedule is really hard, but this team will win seven games including, that's right, a defeat of the USC Trojans at the Rose Bowl. I think we're seeing the beginning of the tide turning, or at the very least the fact that UCLA will become a legitimate challenger of USC for the Pac-10 throne. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'm buying the hype. For the future, that is, let me be clear. This year, UCLA will go to the.....

BOWL GAME?: Emerald Bowl.

RJ Esq · Jun 26, 2008

2-a-Days: SDSU and SJSU

San Diego State Aztecs

It's been two seasons now and Chuck Long has yet to get the ball rolling in San Diego. The Aztecs have been pretty irrelevant on the national scale during Long's reign and, despite graduation and an awful run defense, San Diego State might have some hope in 2008.

THE OFFENSE: Ryan Lindley took the job at QB and while he didn't excel, he was decent enough to get some separation from JUCO transfer Drew Westling. Lindley is a redshirt freshman so game-time experience could be a looming issue. Atiyyah Henderson is the best RB on the team with his dual-threat nature (speed and receiving). He has had an injury-laden past though. Brandon Sullivan is a sophomore and for a team that appears to be building for the 2009 season, he should see a good amount of carries. Of course we haven't mentioned what the Aztecs plan on doing to replace QB Kevin O'Connell who was the leading rusher last season. Henderson and Sullivan both will try to pitch in because Lindley isn't the fleetest of foot. Darren Mougey is the kind of all-purpose threat that this offense needs to have a big year. He came to SDSU as a QB but switched over to WR and is seeing some time at TE. Mekell Wesley wasn't effective at WR last year, but I see him picking up the pace and having a good season as the team's number two receiver behind Vincent Brown. This is a bit alarming, but Chuck Long is throwing in three redshirt freshman offensive lineman into the mix which could be dangerous considering how bad the veteran line of last year played.

THE DEFENSE: Oooooohhhh.....Ouch....Yikes.....Any other interjection which could be taken with a negative connotation regarding San Diego State's run defense. It was THE worst in the country (with the exception of UAB) and that has to change with a younger, inexperienced offensive team. Siaosi Fifita is the best lineman on the team and in order to even consider playing for a bowl spot, the Aztecs need for him to produce big this year as he shifts to a full-time DT. The rest of the line is pretty young meaning there might be a prayer of a semblance of run-stopping in 2009, especially with Ernie Lawson on in the inside. Pass rushing was another glaring weakness that just debilitated this team to no end. SDSU's defense ranked 107th in sacks and 116th in TFL. Russell Allen is the top playmaker at LB and he led the team with about 10 tackles a game. That guy is a gamer. As you might expect, the lack of a pass rush and the ease of running the football against the small and soft defensive front didn't result in a productive secondary. Vonnie Holmes, a senior cornerback, could be considered the leader but junior Aaron Moore probably has the most talent at that position. The pass defense needs to get better if they want to compete against teams like Utah and BYU in their conference.

THE SCHEDULE:

Aug. 30 Cal Poly
Sept. 6 at Notre Dame
Sept. 13 at San Jose State
Sept. 27 Idaho
Oct. 4 at TCU
Oct. 11 Air Force
Oct. 18 at New Mexico
Oct. 25 Colorado State
Nov. 1 at Wyoming
Nov. 8 at BYU
Nov. 15 Utah
Nov. 22 UNLV

Man. For a non-BCS school, San Diego State shouldn't complain. The three toughest games on that schedule are BYU, Utah, and Notre Dame in that order, so that's not a problem. They open up against FCS opponent Cal Poly (who is a good team). San Jose State is a challenge but they can win that game and Idaho should be a victory. This team could open up with a 3-1 record only needing three more conference wins to qualify for the Poinsettia Bowl.

Don't Even Think About It: @ Notre Dame, @ BYU, Utah, @ TCU
Ehhhhh......Maybe.....: @ New Mexico, @ Wyoming (in Laramie, probably won't happen)
Good/Probable Shot At It: Cal Poly, @ SJSU, Idaho, Air Force, Colorado State, UNLV

THE OUTLOOK: With a bit of luck, this team could be bowling. But, there are too many tossups for me to really be comfortable with that prediction. SDSU will have minor issues on offense, but I still look for some strides to be made on that side of the football. Defense is obviously where the biggest issue is. The 118th best run defense in the country last year won't get too much better, if at all. The schedule sets up for a 6-6 record, but this isn't the year for San Diego State. Look for the team to go 4-8/5-7 and try for a bowl next year.

BOWL GAME?: Nope.

San Jose State Spartans

Was Dick Tomey's 2006 turnaround an absolute fluke or the real San Jose State? Last year's team was pretty much a colossal failure, at least compared to the expectations many out there tacked onto them. Is a bowl game in the foreseeable future?

THE OFFENSE: To start with, there's a QB issue in San Jose. Adam Tafralis is gone after four seasons and now Tomey has to start from scratch. Kyle Reed is the kind of big-armed guy they need to carry this offense, but don't expect Myles Eden to give the job up. Reed had a foot injury which left the job open to Eden and Jordan LaSecla, but expect Reed to probably get the starting spot. Rushing was an issue with a ranking of 112 and an YPC of about 2.5. San Jose State is extremely thin at RB and an ongoing issue is whether or not Yonus Davis' waiver to the NCAA will clear. He's trying to get a sixth year of eligibility and if he does get that wish granted, it could be the difference between a bowl paycheck and staying home for the postseason. If worst comes to worst, James Callier will have to pick it up. At WR, Kevin Jurovich is one of the more underrated guys in the country with a lot of skill. David Richmond is a good number two guy as well. Also, personally, I like Jalal Beauchman as an athlete and think he'll have a good year coming through as the number three target. San Jose State has a pretty solid trio of wideouts which should only help them as the season progresses. The line was okay last year and it lacks senior experience, but that will pay dividends down the road.

THE DEFENSE: The defense wasn't as tenacious and formidable as some had hoped last year. With six guys coming back, it'll be tough to get appreciably better. Jeff Schweiger is going to have an absolutely huge season terrorizing WAC fans. He's a USC transfer and was putting on a clinic in the spring. He's a big dude, almost as big as a tackle, with enough athleticism to become a star at defensive end. Jarron Gilbert at DT will be a nice compliment for Schweiger. The linebackers are a solid group of guys with Travis Jones and Justin Cole leading the way trying to fill in for Matt Castelo. Coye Francies is another Pac-10 transfer coming from Oregon State to play CB. He and Christopher Owen should combine for one of the best CB tandems in the conference.

THE SCHEDULE:

Aug. 30 UC Davis
Sept. 6 at Nebraska
Sept. 13 San Diego State
Sept. 20 at Stanford
Sept. 28 at Hawaii
Oct. 11 Utah State
Oct. 18 at New Mexico State
Oct. 24 Boise State
Nov. 1 at Idaho
Nov. 8 Louisiana Tech
Nov. 15 at Nevada
Nov. 21 Fresno State

San Jose State has a shot to get eligible with this. I see their two games against San Diego State and Nevada as make-or-break deals as it applies to bowling. The Spartans are the kind of team that will be walking the line and flirting with eligibility, but a win against Nevada would be huge because the Wolf Pack should be competing for the same spot. New Mexico State is exponentially easier to beat on the road, as is Hawaii and Nevada. So they miss some breaks there, but they have a good shot at Boise State (remember the last two times the Broncos went to San Jose?).

Don't Even Think About It: @ Nebraska
Ehhhhh.....Maybe.....: @ Stanford, @ Hawaii, Boise State, @ Nevada, Fresno State
Good/Probable Shot At It: UC Davis, SDSU, Utah State, @ New Mexico State, @ Idaho, Louisiana Tech

THE OUTLOOK: Don't look for the Spartans to make it. They might qualify, but the WAC would probably need five bids for SJSU to squeak in there. The problem is they're just a step or two behind the top four in the conference; those being Nevada, Hawaii, Boise State, and Fresno State. San Jose State still has some unanswered questions offensively and I think the true team showed up last year, not in 2006. Defensively, the team is average and they'll need to have a big improvement from last year if they want to shoot for seven wins. San Jose State will be 5-7 or something in that range for the 2008 season.

BOWL GAME?: Nope.

RetroVK · Jun 27, 2008

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Prized Minnesota football recruit Sam Maresh underwent open heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic on Thursday.

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</TD><TD width=10 rowSpan=3> </TD></TR><TR><TD align=middle width=300 height=250><SCRIPT type=text/javascript></SCRIPT><SCRIPT src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/cbssports/collegefootball/media/stories;arena=collegefootball;site=media;feat=stories;type=psa;user=Anonymous;seg=nonaol;ctype=lan;lang=en-us;lang=en-us;adv=a;cust=no;u=SFwvtwq0G84AADz0pTw;sz=300x250;tile=15;ord=7765651941174674?"></SCRIPT><SCRIPT src="http://m1.2mdn.net/879366/flashwrite_1_2.js"></SCRIPT><OBJECT id=DCF203756472 height=250 width=300 classid=clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000>

<embed src="http://m1.2mdn.net/1843223/f14v3_LV1newsV2_tt_fs_tf_2a_wt_im_f9_55_300x250.swf" flashvars="clickTag=http%3A//ad.doubleclick.net/click%253Bh%3Dv8/36ed/3/0/%252a/x%253B203756472%253B0-0%253B0%253B27307572%253B4307-300/250%253B27025632/27043489/1%253Bu%253DSFwvtwq0G84AADz0pTw%253B%257Eaopt%253D0/ff/ff/ff%253B%257Efdr%253D203797594%253B0-0%253B0%253B24346207%253B4307-300/250%253B26812755/26830612/1%253Bu%253DSFwvtwq0G84AADz0pTw%253B%257Eaopt%253D2/0/ff/0%253B%257Esscs%253D%253fhttp%3A//www.healthyenergy.com/%3Fpage%3D27307572%3B%7Cad%3D203756472%3B&clickTAG=http%3A//ad.doubleclick.net/click%253Bh%3Dv8/36ed/3/0/%252a/x%253B203756472%253B0-0%253B0%253B27307572%253B4307-300/250%253B27025632/27043489/1%253Bu%253DSFwvtwq0G84AADz0pTw%253B%257Eaopt%253D0/ff/ff/ff%253B%257Efdr%253D203797594%253B0-0%253B0%253B24346207%253B4307-300/250%253B26812755/26830612/1%253Bu%253DSFwvtwq0G84AADz0pTw%253B%257Eaopt%253D2/0/ff/0%253B%257Esscs%253D%253fhttp%3A//www.healthyenergy.com/%3Fpage%3D27307572%3B%7Cad%3D203756472%3B&clicktag=http%3A//ad.doubleclick.net/click%253Bh%3Dv8/36ed/3/0/%252a/x%253B203756472%253B0-0%253B0%253B27307572%253B4307-300/250%253B27025632/27043489/1%253Bu%253DSFwvtwq0G84AADz0pTw%253B%257Eaopt%253D0/ff/ff/ff%253B%257Efdr%253D203797594%253B0-0%253B0%253B24346207%253B4307-300/250%253B26812755/26830612/1%253Bu%253DSFwvtwq0G84AADz0pTw%253B%257Eaopt%253D2/0/ff/0%253B%257Esscs%253D%253fhttp%3A//www.healthyenergy.com/%3Fpage%3D27307572%3B%7Cad%3D203756472%3B" width="300" height="250" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" quality="high" swliveconnect="true" wmode="opaque" name="DCF203756472" base="http://m1.2mdn.net/1843223" AllowScriptAccess="never"></embed></OBJECT><NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT><NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT></TD></TR><TR><TD colSpan=3 height=10><SPACER type="block" height="10" width="1"></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></P>Doctors deemed the procedure, which replaced a valve in Maresh's heart, a success. The procedure was performed by Dr. Hartzell Schaff, the same physician who operated on former Timberwolves guard Fred Hoiberg three years ago.
"We want to thank all of the wonderful people who have expressed their best wishes to our family," Bill Maresh, Sam's father, said in a statement issued by the university. "Our close family has grown even closer during the difficult time. In fact, because of the tremendous outpouring of support, it feels that our family has not only grown closer, but it has grown in number."
Maresh was born with an abnormal aortic valve, which prevents his heart from pumping blood efficiently. The standout middle linebacker from Champlin Park High School in suburban Minneapolis didn't discover the condition until taking a routine physical that Minnesota requires of all incoming athletes.
Maresh is part of a highly touted 2008 recruiting class by coach Tim Brewster. Hoiberg never played basketball again after needing a pacemaker installed following a complication from the procedure.
It is unknown whether Maresh will be able to play football again, but that's not a priority at this point, Brewster said.
"I've said from the beginning that it was a tremendous blessing for Sam and his family that this problem was found when it was," Brewster said in a statement. "Today, to have the problem corrected in a very successful manner is an even greater blessing for them. I'm sure this has been an amazing day for the Maresh family."

RJ Esq · Jun 28, 2008

A Reasonably Anticipatory Assessment of: Arizona

by SMQ on Jun 27, 2008 8:21 PM EDT
A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason.
- - -
What’s Changed. Defense is Mike Stoops’ forté –– he was the coordinator for dominant defenses at Kansas State and Oklahoma –– and the Wildcats had the ingredients last year for an old-school, Desert Swarm revival: they put three players on the all-conference team, not including an honorable mention nod, and four in the draft. So it must have been disappointed that the D was just average, overhwelmingly average, in every way it could be: the ‘Cats were sixth in the Pac Ten against the run, fifth in pass efficiency D, fifth in yards allowed, seventh in points allowed, seventh in sacks and tackles for loss. A pack of returning starters barely inched forward from its ‘06 yields.
<table style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); float: right; font-size: 10px; height: 1px;" width="189" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td>

The least you should know about Arizona...</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007 Record • Past Five Years</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007: 5-7 (4-5 Pac Ten, 6th)
2003-07: 19-39 (13-29 Pac Ten)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*-</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2004-08: 44 • 21 • 18 • 44 • 39</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Returning Starters, Roughly</td> </tr> <tr> <td>13 (10 Offense, 3 Defense)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Best Player</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

You probably haven’t heard of Mike Thomas, but the one-time DB recruit caught more passes for more touchdowns than anyone in the Pac Ten last year; he’s second to Rice’s Jarrett Dillard among active players in career receptions. Buzz is Thomas might move to punt returns in addition to kick returns, although he’s still focused on the latter: Arizona hasn’t brought a kick back for touchdown in ten years.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>College Football’s Greatest Quasi-Tradition</td> </tr> <tr> <td>

Improbably, Arizona and Arizona State claim the oldest trophy in collegiate sports: the Territorial Cup, first awarded on Thanksgiving, 1899, for an 11-2 victory by Arizona Territorial Normal School in front of 300 fans –– a big holiday crowd for the then-territory of the old West. I’d say Little Brown Jug aficionados still have a point, though: the original cup was forgotten for more than a century, even after it was rediscovered in the early 1970s and put in ASU archives until 1992, when it was lost again until it showed up in a church a few years later. The teams didn’t start playing for possession of the Territorial Cup again until 2001 –– after a 102-year break, during which time it had been replaced by something called the "Ben Goo Trophy" from 1979-1998, and then the short-lived "Saguaro Trophy," neither of which you should have heard of unless you are from Arizona. You can’t compete with a prize from pre-statehood, man. </td> </tr> <tr> <td>- - -
* According to Rivals.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> More disappointing: things may get worse before they get better, because almost all that experience is gone. The draft took Antoine Cason and Wilrey Fontenot, corners who’d started every game the last four years, picked off 20 passes and knocked down another 47 between them; Spencer Larsen, who made every play from strongside linebacker (Larsen had 23 percent more tackles than runner-up Ronnie Palmer in 2006, and 37 percent more than Palmer last-year, when he led the conference in stops); and Lionel Dotson, who was all-Pac Ten by the coaches and had 6.5 sacks from defensive tackle. Graduation took three more starters from the front seven, and two-year starter Johnathan Turner was indicted and suspended in May, leaving only Palmer at the Mike and a couple ordinary safeties left over.

Tuitama: For best results, keep upright.
Overall, opponents’ yards per carry has declined to respectable levels the last two years as sacks and plays in the backfield have increased, but it’s hard to see that trend continuing when the guys making those plays –– along with the corners making quarterbacks think twice –– are all gone. Though Arizona’s recruiting has certainly improved, unless one of the cousins Tuihalamaka makes it off the bench (Apaiata and Vuna are both listed as backups), none of the new starters is branded with particularly high expectations. It would be a hell of a coaching job to maintain middle-of-the-pack status with so many new faces in the middle of the line.
What’s the Same. The Wildcats ran a on a little more than half their offensive snaps through Stoops’ first four years, to terrible effect: UA never cracked four yards per carry, the absolute minimum for a respectable running game, and was held to a truly dismal 2.7 per carry in 2006, easily one of the worst numbers in the country –– they actually lost ground trying to run in three different games that year. Disgusted, Stoops hired Sonny Dykes from Mike Leach’s aerial circus at Texas Tech, took a hands-off approach to the offense last spring and vowed to throw 50 passes a game.
They actually hit that mark four times and finished the year at a little over 44 passes to 27 runs on average, a massive swing in favor of throwin’ that improved production by about 130 yards and 11.5 points per game. Its three-game winning streak in late October/November –– very much like the three-game winning streak the previous November –– was a direct result of Willie Tuitama’s sudden efficiency: other than his big night against Northern Arizona early in the year, Tuitama’s final TD:INT ratio of 28:12 benefits mostly from his 10:2 ratio in those three games, which included a 510-yard, 48-point carpet-bombing of Washington and 341-yard, three-touchdown barrage of UCLA. This was a major improvement from midseason, when he’d surrounded another huge game against Washington State with lousy efforts against Cal, Oregon State, USC and Stanford –– though Tuitama completed a substantial majority of his passes for a lot of yards in those games, they didn’t amount to much. He barely cracked five yards per attempt in all four losses, and his TD:INT was 2:6.
The late run would be reason for optimism if not for the reversion against Arizona State, where Tuitama was picked twice and had his lowest-rated game since he threw three picks at Oregon State. It was a tale of two seasons with this guy, and it mostly broke down according to location, location, location:

Some of that amounts to the luck (or bad luck) of the draw –– USC, Oregon State and Arizona State were probably bad games for Arizona’s offense no matter where they were played, and Tuitama did light up Washington in Seattle; although he also struggled in a one-point loss to Stanford at home. If there’s anything to the home field advantage, it could be a wild ride, since USC, Cal, Oregon State and ASU are all in Tucson this year. Given that the temporary surge wasn’t altogether new, it seems more likely the up-and-down routine is Tuitama’s signature.
Overly Optimistic Post-Spring Chatter. The coaches came out of the spring looking for good things to say about what they their own selves called a "no-name" defense –– "Not having a star player can work to our advantage, as long as they play hard," etc. –– and even the school’s PR department recognizes the defense has a long way to go. But the offense is only really replacing a left tackle, and in that case, if you can’t stop ‘em, throw the bomb on those bastards:
Arizona's chances of breaking a 10-year bowl drought could depend on the deep ball.

The Wildcats, coming off a 5-7 season, are clearly looking to spread the field with more deep throws than ever.
In the team's second year in the spread offense, Arizona quarterback Willie Tuitama is out to bring the deep threat more into the equation.
That was obvious as the Wildcats' four- and five-receiver sets went down the sidelines with regularity and with effectiveness this spring.

"That's my game," Tuitama says when ever asked about the prospects of utilizing his strong arm more.
- - -
This is in contrast to the dink ‘n dunk routine that was so ineffective for most of last year, with the exception of tight end Rob Gronkowski, a true freshman who averaged almost 19 per catch and scored six touchdowns. But Gronkowski is 6’6", 250 and has a name ending in "kowski," so he presumably isn’t the guy going long down the sideline. That’s going to fall to Mike Thomas, who’s way too short (5’9" at best) to be an NFL-style, over-the-top leaper, but even if more than half his Pac Ten-best 82 receptions last year didn’t result in a first down, Thomas did have ten over 25 yards and eleven touchdowns and has apparently been clocked at sub-4.4. One of his three catches in the spring game was a 29-yard touchdown, though again, that’s just as much a knock against the new corners as an endorsement to put it up more often.
For his part, Tuitama is a succinct quote. I also happened to like this quote from the athletic department following the spring game:
When asked how much he felt he has improved since last year Tuitama said, "eight times."
- - -
If his precision on the deep curl hasn’t improved, at least his precision on hyperbolic self-assessment has.
Arizona on You Tube. Things get a little rough at the end of last year’s Zona-Oregon game:

<object width="365" height="294">
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dfNJ87mq1LI&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" mce_src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dfNJ87mq1LI&hl=en" width="365" height="294"></object> </p> Even at 1/15th the real speed, that was infinitely more entertaining than the actual game once Dennis Dixon went down.
See Also: A pretty amazing run by the virtual Tuitama. ... The Wildcats get Medieval on Miami in the ‘94 Fiesta Bowl .. And picture montages are usually lame, but when you add the right music, I dunno, I’m torn.
Best-Case: Arizona’s made a habit of winning games here and there it’s not supposed to win –– UCLA in ‘05, Cal and Oregon in ‘06, UCLA and Oregon last year –– and if it can actually win all the games is supposed to win, as opposing to losing to Washington (‘05 and ‘06) and/or Stanford (‘07), this could be the quasi-breakthrough season Wildcat partisans have been expecting since Stoops was hired. The non-conference schedule is more manageable without BYU, and with Washington and Stanford among the first three Pac Ten games, the Wildcats could be sitting at 5-1 when Cal comes in on Oct. 18. It gets tougher down the stretch, but a very plausible start along those lines will put UA in a position to beat Washington State at home, as expected, and upset either Cal or Oregon State in Tucson to climb to 7-5, a ticket to its first bowl game in a decade.

Stoops: Might have been fired already, but sort of gives off that ‘disgruntled’ vibe.
- - -
Worst-Case: Tuitama was healthy last year but was knocked out of the Arizona State game as a freshman and missed at least part of six other games in 2006. There is no experience behind him, and seemingly no talent unless incoming four-star/Chris Leak doppelganger Matt Scott is a revelation, and anther injury to Tuitama could be immediate disaster –– there’s no running game and potentially no defense. Outside of injury, things could get off on the wrong foot at New Mexico (UA lost to the Lobos last year in Tucson) and at UCLA in back-to-back weeks. With a backloaded schedule, if the Cats don’t handle Washington at home after that, it could really ugly –– Cal, USC, Oregon State, Oregon and Arizona State are five of the last six, so if there are fewer than three wins at the start of that stretch, there’s very little chance of making it past four. Or of Mike Stoops keeping his job past Pearl Harbor Day.
Non-Binding Forecast: Mendoza Line or Bust. It seems the offense will be a little better off with a veteran like Tuitama and the defense worse, to a greater degree, and the net result is about what you’ve come to expect from ‘Zona over the last three years. To get beyond 6-6, they need to get to mid-October at 5-1, which most likely means beating New Mexico, Washington and Stanford. Doable, certainly, but UA was 1-2 against those teams last year, and Washington and Stanford have the same aspirations as the Wildcats; a loss to one of that trio seems likely. Even at 4-2 at the midway point, the stretch run doesn’t give much hope for better than .500. The question at that point is whether 6-6 is good enough to get Stoops another year.

RJ Esq · Jun 28, 2008

The Games: Tennessee at UCLA

by SMQ on Jun 27, 2008 12:51 PM EDT
The most interesting matchups of the season, chronologically.
- - -
The Stakes (We Think): I like these early games that seem destined to define the course of the season, even of they rarely do in practice. Like Tennessee’s games with Cal the last two years, which seemed to show such great promise for the Vols in ‘06 and the Bears last year, and such doom for the losers: the momentum and optimism that comes with charging out of the gate at full speed over a worthy victim that had hoped to do the same had faded by midseason, and the loser in the opener finished much closer to its goals in both cases. This time of year, we tend to look at the season as a whole, and over three months, the starting point becomes more and more irrelevant.
For both of these teams, though, neither of which is expected to make any serious noies in their respective conferences but both of which hold out some hope that they can if things "gel," a little affirmation at the start of an uncertain voyage seems essential. For LA, unveiling the Neuheisel administration with a top 20 win vaults the Bruins from a slowly-building, middle-of-the-pack nonfactor in the Pac Ten to a serious contender, a threat to everyone on the schedule short of USC, with no small measure of the "Oh shit" factor going forward: Slick Rick’s oiled the craps of the sputtering Dorrell jalopy into a functioning machine.
Tennessee has the opposite concern: the Vols have to expect to win in the Rose Bowl, over an apparently less-talented team with holes on both lines and no identity except inconsistency. If they can’t, their hopes of defending the East title against loaded Florida a few weeks on, or at Georgia in October, dwindle even further. UCLA can instantly give its season a higher purpose. Tennessee can ensure its season still has one.

First Berkeley, now L.A. ... we’re gettin’ to be quite the jet set, ma!
- - -
Stars, Themes, Petty Grievances and Other Reasons to Watch. Speaking of purposes and identities, I’m not certain Tennessee necessarily has either on offense –– as I’ve written before, the Vols evolved the last three years into a pass-oriented team, the result of having an NFL-bound quarterback and an offensive coordinator who’s thrived on molding big, pocket-bound slingers for more than a decade. Erik Ainge and David Cutcliffe are gone, gone with the wind and the sweet aroma of temporarily-guaranteed cash wafting with it, and the returning personnel –– five veteran offensive linemen, including three all-SEC possibilities, and 1,000-yard mudder Arian Foster –– favors a return to the hard-thumping physicality of Phil Fulmer’s best teams in the late nineties. There’s not much indication in these spread-happy times that new OC Dave Clawson shares the same vision of restoring the Volunteer legacy. This is the first chance to see exactly how UT lans to define itself offensively. No doubt the larger goal is ‘balance,’ but that means a sizeable contribution from Jonathan Crompton, whose appearances from the bench were rare underwhelming.
For what it’s worth, DeWayne Walker’s defenses have been more successful the last two years against more conventional offenses, like Oregon State, Notre Dame, Arizona State and USC –– that is, the kind Tennessee has tended to favor. The Bruins have manned up pretty well against teams that want to run right at them. The much bigger question for LA is that its offense is the walking wounded. The top two quarterbacks, top two running backs and top receiver all missed at least a third of last year’s games for mostly major injuries, and their blocking this time around is inexperienced, to say the least.
The Early Edge. The SEC has generally struggled on the West Coast this decade; I think this means nothing. UCLA has been a much better team when actually healthy –– 8-4 over the first half in ‘06-’07, 5-9 in the second half. That’s significant, especially if there’s some rejuvenative fire for the new staff. I look at this as a toss-up, one Tennessee should win on athletes, experience and continuity, but a dangerous assumption because LA is a blank slate that could go either way. Given a healthy Ben Olson vs. Crompton, I’ll take Olson; many a young quarterback has met his demise on an early road trip. The head says Tennessee in a cloud of dust; the gut says fine –– but they don’t cover.

RJ Esq · Jun 29, 2008

Not Much Left in Cardinals' Nest

If Louisville fans didn't have enough to scream about, last week's report that 20 scholarship underclassmen have left Steve Kragthorpe's team since the end of spring practice in 2007 certainly put them over the top.

Reasons for the departures vary. Some players were kicked off for behavior problems, some transferred to other teams and others simply quit. Although Kragthorpe says he will have 85 scholarship players this fall, he has lost what amounts to a full recruiting class.

Given the turnover, more turbulence is ahead for the Cardinals, who were No. 10 in the Associated Press preseason poll in 2007 before stumbling to a 6-6 season.

In fairness to Kragthorpe, the coach says he had to clean up a lot of "off-the-field issues" when he came to Louisville from Tulsa.

"When you go into a program that has been losing and there's attrition, people say, 'That's just a new coach who's changing the way they do things.' In my situation, I came into a program that had been winning, so people aren't as apt to see it that way."

RJ Esq · Jun 29, 2008

Huskies cut ties with Hasty and Murchison

By Bob Condotta
Seattle Times staff reporter

J.R. Hasty never made as much noise on the football field at the University of Washington as was expected after a standout career at Bellevue High.
So fittingly, his Huskies career ended on Saturday with nary a whimper.
The school made no official announcement that Hasty, a junior running back, had finally been cut loose for good, simply releasing an updated roster on its Web site that didn't include his name. The name of senior cornerback Jordan Murchison, who battled legal trouble last season and played sparingly, was also absent from the roster. A school spokesman later confirmed that neither will play for the Huskies again. Both were recently told by UW coach Tyrone Willingham that they were not having their scholarships renewed for the 2008 season.
Hasty, who scored a state-record 50 touchdowns as a senior at Bellevue in 2004, said he was told by Willingham that "he kind of just didn't really trust me, I guess."
His career ends with just 18 yards on six carries, all last season.
Hasty had been unofficially suspended since midway through spring football for undisclosed disciplinary reasons. He was suspended for the beginning of spring practice for what he said was missing some offseason conditioning drills. He returned for a couple of practices before again being suspended.
Hasty said Willingham told him then that the coach wanted more time to think about whether he should be allowed back on the team. Hasty said he wanted to return but got the final word a few weeks ago.
"It's pretty frustrating coming in thinking you are the top guy and they take it from you," he said. "That hurts real bad. And from my own state [school], that kills me."
Hasty was considered the plum of Willingham's first recruiting class at UW in 2005. He impressed coaches with his play early on as a true freshman and he made trips to away games at UCLA and Oregon as Willingham debated whether to play him before it was decided he would redshirt.
But the following year he struggled during spring practice after adding weight in an attempt to get stronger. He then was declared academically ineligible that summer and missed the 2006 season.
Hasty said he thinks that's when UW coaches may have started to lose faith in him.
"It kind of seemed like that a little bit," he said. "It just didn't work out for whatever reason."
Hasty struggled with an ankle injury during fall camp in 2007 and didn't make a run at the starting running-back job. After not playing against Oregon Oct. 20, he briefly quit the team, saying he didn't feel like he was getting a fair shot, but decided to return after talks with Willingham and his parents — his father is James Hasty, a former WSU safety and longtime NFL player.
A school spokesman said Hasty and Murchison were academically eligible. Hasty said he would like to continue playing and may pursue a lower-division school, where he would be immediately eligible and would have two years left.
Murchison, a transfer from City College of San Francisco, was slated to contend for a starting cornerback job heading into last season before it was learned he was wanted on assault charges. It was also discovered he had been arrested for domestic violence. He was suspended for five games before he was reinstated when his legal issues were resolved.
A school spokesman said Willingham would have no comment on the departures.

RJ Esq · Jun 29, 2008

2-a-Days: Air Force and Colorado

Air Force Falcons

In an overrated fashion, everybody started panicking when it came to the Air Force Falcons of 2007. How could you possibly scrap the option? You need that at a service academy! It turns out, Air Force was better for the minor changes on offense and the option remained a staple of the playcalling. But this year, the personnel should change on offense. Can Air Force return to the postseason or, better yet, compete with Utah, BYU, and TCU as one of the better teams in the Mountain West?

THE OFFENSE: Eric Herbort figures to be one of the top options in this summer's QB battle. Herbort is an athletic guy with a good amount of speed, but he will have to stave off Shea Smith who has more experience. Smith is a pretty quick dude as well, but Herbort has the advantage in the passing game. Whichever QB Troy Calhoun picks, he'll have to create a number of home run plays if Air Force wants to score points in bunches. Ty Paffett and Savier Stephens should combine to make for a solid duo at the RB positions. Kyle Halderman will also see a lot of time as a changeup player for Paffett. Todd Newell will see plenty of touches at FB, a spot that Air Forces uses to mix things up in the option game. The WRs aren't utilized as much as other teams do, but Travis Dekker is a big guy and probably the team's top weapon at TE. Blaine Guenther is gone and that's a pretty big missing chunk on the line. Keith Williams is the most consistent player on the offensive line, one that needs to do some rebuilding.

THE DEFENSE: Probably the most impressive thing the new coaching staff managed to accomplish was to make Air Force's defense a solid improvement over the 2006 defensive unit. The pass efficiency defense spiked upwards about 60 spots, a pretty decent increase. Ben Garland is a large run-stuffer at NG and a force up the middle. He's probably the best Falcon defender. The experience up front will be a positive as the season wears on. Hunter Altman is the only starter coming back in the LB corps which could be an issue. Look for Ken Lamendola to have a big year as he tries to fill in for Drew Fowler. Chris Thomas is the leading returning tackler at the safety position and Reggie Rembert should have a big year at CB. He hasn't maxed out on his potential yet.

THE SCHEDULE:

Aug. 30 Southern Utah
Sept. 6 at Wyoming
Sept. 13 at Houston
Sept. 20 Utah
Oct. 4 Navy
Oct. 11 at San Diego State
Oct. 18 at UNLV
Oct. 23 New Mexico
Nov. 1 at Army
Nov. 8 Colorado State
Nov. 15 BYU
Nov. 22 at TCU

The year opens up with a cakewalk against Southern Utah and the MWC season kicks off right away with a road game against the Cowboys of Wyoming. If Air Force isn't careful, their season could begin 1-4 in a huge hole. San Diego State and UNLV are winnable road games, but Air Force has struggled with those teams in the past. The year closes out with a TCU team looking for retribution after the loss in Colorado Springs in 2007.

Don't Even Think About It:
Ehhhhh.....Maybe....: @ Houston, Utah, BYU, @ TCU
Good/Probable Shot At It: Southern Utah, @ Wyoming, Navy, @ San Diego State, @ UNLV, New Mexico, @ Army, Colorado State

THE OUTLOOK: The schedule, even if it doesn't have any BCS schools (because Troy Calhoun wanted to go to another bowl game), is not easy. The Mountain West is decidedly the best non-BCS conference and it has a few teams capable of competing in BCS conferences (Utah, BYU, TCU, New Mexico). With new faces all over the board on offense and a defense that has to do some filling in on the depth chart, this team could win six games, but I don't think a bowl game is in their sight. It's always hard with the recruiting situation at service academies to have a consistent program. I think it depends on whether or not BYU or Utah get into the BCS because all San Diego State has to do is go 6-6 and they're in (Poinsettia Bowl), all New Mexico has to do is go 6-6 and they're in (New Mexico Bowl), and basically TCU just has to go 6-6 and they're in (Fort Worth Bowl). There won't be enough spots.

BOWL GAME?: Nope.

Colorado Buffaloes

It's a start. Dan Hawkins is trying to rebuild the Colorado football program ever since that late collapse from the 2005 season, but he's inching closer and closer to doing it. The Buffaloes are thought to be duking it out with Kansas State as the fourth best team in the Big 12 North, but does this team have more to shoot for than that?

THE OFFENSE: The Buffs have a shaky offense. Some of that can be pinned on freshmanitis for incumbent QB and coach's son, Cody Hawkins. Now that he's probably got that first season under his belt, I think he should be ready to play much better week-in and week-out. Demetrius Sumler could be the starter, but it all depends on how Darrell Scott, Hawkins' biggest recruit by far, performs and adjusts to the college level. He should see some considerable time down the stretch, but personally, whenever I saw Sumler, I was impressed. He has some untapped skill waiting to blossom. But besides that, Scott McKnight is the leader of the WRs, even though he's only a smallish sophomore. Josh Smith came along late last year and will be competing with Patrick Williams for the two slot. Patrick Devenny is a converted QB and he's done okay transitioning to WR. I like Colorado's offensive line, too. The unit finished 17th in sacks allowed and won't really have a problem filling in for Tyler Polumbus due to the fact that 6'8 280 pounder Nate Solder played like a star in the spring. Don't forget about Daniel Sanders at C and Ryan Miller at T, too, these guys can play.

THE DEFENSE: The defense returns eight players, led by DT George Hypolite. Hypolite led a defense that did.......average. Like the offense, the defense was shabby at times (especially in the Kansas State game). This unit didn't play aggressive enough and it showed in the sacks and TFL column. The run defense was solid and that's where Hypolite's performance came in. Maurice Lucas is also a key player on the D-line. Jeff Smart did a good job last year, but he'll have to be even better in order to fill in the shoes of Jordan Dizon who was drafted by the Detroit Lions. Gardner McKay is a good athlete, but Hawkins did spend much of this spring searching for somebody to be a viable replacement for Terrance Wheatley who led the team last season with five pickoffs.

THE SCHEDULE:

Aug. 30 Colorado State
Sept. 6 Eastern Washington
Sept. 18 West Virginia
Sept. 27 at Florida State
Oct. 4 Texas
Oct. 11 at Kansas
Oct. 18 Kansas State
Oct. 25 at Missouri
Nov. 1 at Texas A&M
Nov. 8 Iowa State
Nov. 15 Oklahoma State
Nov. 28 at Nebraska

Colorado could start the year 3-0. Wait.....huh? A home game with West Virginia? It's a game that Colorado can win if you take into account the altitude factor. I don't think the Mountaineers are used to that and it'll be an interesting game to keep an eye on. This schedule is really hard if you look at the draw from the South. No Baylor this year, but Colorado gets Texas, Oklahoma State, and a trip to Kyle Field. No picnic.

Don't Even Think About It:
Ehhhhh.....Maybe....: West Virginia, @ Florida State, Texas, @ Kansas, @ Missouri, @ Nebraska
Good/Probable Shot At It: Colorado State, Eastern Washington, Kansas State, @ Texas A&M, Iowa State, Oklahoma State

THE OUTLOOK: Even though this is a team that can make it to the postseason, I'm not sure whether or not they will. They're definitely a borderline kind of team, especially when you consider the schedule they're up against. The Big 12 is going to be a lion's den this year and qualifying for a bowl game will be worthy of some admiration. Colorado was just so flaky and I was stunned they made it. Nebraska's defense won't be pathetic, there's no Baylor on the schedule, and I'm not sure of their chances at upsetting Texas, Missouri, or Kansas. They'll go 5-7.

BOWL GAME?: Nope.

RJ Esq · Jun 30, 2008

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td class="col0">Arkansas linebacker Burton arrested for drunken-driving

</td><td class="col1"> Story Highlights

Burton was arrested Sunday after an officer saw his car cross the center line
He took a breathalyzer test and had a blood-alcohol level of 0.13
Burton had 23 tackles and played well on special teams last season

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</td></tr></tbody></table> FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) -- Arkansas backup linebacker Freddy Burton faces a drunken-driving charge after an early morning arrest by university police.
A police spokesman says Burton, 19, of Morrilton was arrested Sunday after an officer saw his car cross the center line. The spokesman says Burton took a breathalyzer test and had a blood-alcohol level of 0.13. Arkansas' legal limit is 0.08.
Burton was later released from the Washington County jail after posting an $880 bond. He is scheduled for a July 28 hearing in Fayetteville District Court. He also faces a careless driving charge.
Burton had 23 tackles and played well on special teams last season under coach Houston Nutt. The sophomore was named to Southeastern Conference's All-Freshman team last year.

It's a Long F*ckin' Offseason: News Articles and Notes

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