ABOVE: The average college football fan's perception of Ohio State's reputation after last Saturday's USC game.
College football needs better villains.
In the wake of Ohio State's soul-shredding loss to Southern Cal last Saturday, the Grave Dancers' Union has been establishing new locals in 49 of the 50 states. It was a terrible performance by a team that was supposed to be better than they've looked so far, but why all the glee? Because the Buckeyes got humbled? I'd say the last two title games were humbling enough. Because the Big Ten got drug down? Here's a message for you, SEC Fan: We get it. We got it two years ago.
Right now hating on the Buckeyes is as useless and wasteful as hating the Buffalo Bills for losing four straight Super Bowls. It might ultimately prove as pointless as hating the New York Yankees has been for the past few seasons. The Yankees really aren't good enough to hate any more, and the Buckeyes might not be the best team in the Big Ten.
So there's no reason to act like Clubber Lang just got knocked out by Rocky Balboa. If OSU was your idea of a college football villain, what are you going to do when a real villain (think Erickson's Hurricanes, Spurrier's Gators, Switzer's Sooners) shows up?
They got their bachelor's degree from Florida and their master's from LSU, but Saturday night Southern California handed Ohio State a brand-new degree: the Doctor of Failosophy. Yeesh. What a curbstomping. If you really need me to tell you what to do with the Buckeyes now, I'll be happy to do so, as long as you tell me something first: Who turned the computer on for you?
Don't just sell, pards; eject. There are at least two teams in the Big Ten playing better football than the Buckeyes right now.
I saw a distant early warning last Saturday, and it's wasn't the Ohio-OSU game. It was the fact that South Dakota State beat Youngstown State almost as badly as the Buckeyes did. Sure, Jim Tressel rested his starters when the game was in hand and probably didn't want to show up his former employer too badly. Even if Tressel had rested his starters for the whole game, they ought to be able to out-perform a squad that was playing Division II ball four years ago. You've got problems on offense, Coach, and they're not all in Beanie Wells's shoes.
So where does the savvy investor in the non-existent football futures market go now?
I cringe to say it's a Southern truth because really, this may just apply to the vast majority of college football fans. But Southern zeal for the game is rarely matched as evidenced by this story.
There's a short video below (2:13 in length) about the lengths two friends went to catch the entirety of an Alabama football game, thereby delaying by an hour their arrival at one of their weddings. Predictable fallout: relatives who won't speak to them, a divorce years later. Less predictable fallout: "I'd do it again".
Honestly, this video is instructive. Chances are you won't agree with what the two men did, but the lesson is not to schedule fall weddings. Ever.
Sometimes it pays to have an otherwise successful peer do something really stupid. Such is the case for Florida football coach Urban Meyer. It was announced last week that the Gators' football coach, leather jacket warrior and national champion will be paid $3.25 million annually as part of a six-year contract extension.
This wouldn't have been as likely even a few weeks ago, but then Billy Donovan almost left, stayed, left, and then returned. His bouncing ball act may have forced Florida to commit extra case to ensure some permanence with its pair of championship coaches.
It's not Meyer's fault, but the NCAA skeptics will be certain to mention this pay raise (and Nick Saban's salary!) to Congress. It's also certain to raise the salaries of several coaches including Bob Stoops and Pete Carroll. Stoops is alleged to have a clause in his contract allowing for near or matching salary to other highly paid coaches. Carroll will just flirt with the NFL again next offseason and quietly sign another fat extension.
TSD: I see most schools across college football selling out in order to win: taking kids that wouldn't get into that school if they didn't run a 4.4, funneling them through easy courses, looking the other way when they get into trouble. You mentioned Michigan, but a lot of Stanford fans would say that's the route Cal used to turn its program around. What do you think? Do Stanford and Cal differ in terms of how they prioritize academics and football?
JH: I don't think there's any doubt about it. It's a pretty wide gap. Right now, Stanford is No. 1 in the country at 92 percent graduation, and Cal's at 44 percent. So, I'd say they're cutting some corners.
He can check Cal off the list now. Only seven other Pac-10 schools and 108 other D-IA schools to go before he's insulted everyone in college football. Somehow I don't think that's a good thing. Is this campaign his version of a more caustic "Straight Talk Express" a la John McCain? What program is his next target? People want to know.
"If he's going to make statements like that, he ought to get his information right," Carroll said. "And if he has any questions about it he should call me."
The schedule includes seven homes games, including two against Division I-AA opponents. Because of an exemption, the Warriors are allowed to play 13 regular-season games.
"After a long and exhaustive process that included discussions with several schools, no team we targeted for a 13th game would agree to play at UH in 2007," Hawaii athletics director Herman Frazier said.
I have a feeling we may need to reference this in December when Hawaii is undefeated or something darn near it and people start grousing about their weak out-of-conference slate. We warned you, it's coming!
I realize travel's expensive lately, but certainly someone in D-I should have been willing to make the finest road trip in all of college football. Or maybe Hawaii was unwilling to play that special someone? Who knows.
At least four college football players competed at this weekend's NCAA outdoor track championships. This is a high honor for those players as they are true two-sport stars which is rare nowadays. I wrote earlier about LSU's Trindon Holliday being college football's fastest man. Well, he and his second-place 10.06 times in the 100 meters happen to share some fast company.
Florida State cornerback Michael Ray Garvin placed sixth in the 100 meter finals, completing the race in 10.30 seconds.
The other event to feature a quartet of football players was the final of the 4x100 meter relay. Michael Ray garvin ran the #3 leg for Florida State. He and his teammates won the event in 38.60 seconds. Holliday ran the anchor leg for second-place LSU as they came in at 38.85 seconds.
Clemson tailback C.J. Spiller ran the anchor leg for his Tigers who clocked in at 40.07 seconds to finish seventh in the event. Finally there was Arizona cornerback Antoine Cason who ran the third leg for his eigth-place Wildcats who finished the race in 40.13 seconds.
There are many more college football players who compete in track during the spring, but few reach the NCAA Championships. Congratulations to Holliday, Garvin, Spiller and Cason for representing their programs well in Sacramento.
(Photo Credits L-R: Streeter Lecka, Grant Halverson and Harry How, Getty Images)
ESPN crack investigative reporter Mike Fish (along with George J. Tanber) have revealed new details into the Toledo gambling probe. The big news is that that an NCAA representative sent an email to the athletic director in November telling him that the NCAA was done investigating the situation.
The e-mail from [the NCAA's gambling pointwoman, Rachel] Newman-Baker was sent to [Toledo Athletic Director Mike] O'Brien in response to an e-mail sent by O'Brien earlier that day in which O'Brien asked Newman-Baker what the result was of the NCAA probe into the UT-Kent game.
The university tried to retrieve the e-mail from O'Brien's hard drive without success. O'Brien later found a hard copy of the e-mail in a file, according to UT spokesman Tobin Klinger.
In his e-mail, O'Brien wrote: "At the conclusion of the [Oct. 11] meeting, I asked what the next step would be and you indicated you would respond. With the meeting occurring almost a month ago, I thought I should contact you. I would assume that nothing has come of this and that you had nothing to share."
In her response to O'Brien, the first contact she had with him since Oct. 11, Newman-Baker said "no additional investigation was warranted at this time."
Additionally, the man fingered for involvement in the scandal is claiming that investigators and the government have no evidence to prosecute him.
"They got nothing," Ghazi "Gary" Manni said in an interview with USA TODAY. Manni, a Detroit-area resident who describes himself as a gambler, was alleged to have conspired with Toledo football and basketball players to fix games, according to court documents.
But Manni said his contacts with Toledo athletes, including running back Harvey "Scooter" McDougle Jr., was about friendship and had nothing to do with fixing games.
In the meantime, McDougle's father is hoping his son can return to the field and be cleared of the situation.
What's puzzling about all of this is that Vegas is not a place to make mistakes about something like this. They were the first to raise a red flag about some irregularities involving a Toledo football game and as we reported here earlier, there's a 99% chance something unusual or illegal happened in the way of betting for that game.
Need further confirmation of the story the FanHouse broke all this week? We got it. Check out this message board posting at the Bucknuts website, formerly Scout's Ohio State affiliate:
The Scout Oklahoma website, OUInsider, considered at one time to be the 'flagship' of the Scout fleet has pulled up anchor and set sail. . . .As part of the dissolution, the site has given back to Scout management of the once popular Sooners Illustrated magazine.
We called the newly independent Oklahoma website for their comments this morning.
"We felt like our customers we're not getting their monies worth with Scout," publisher Brian Bishop said. "This on-going message board debacle was the last straw, and I doubt that Scout can survive it. We had no choice but to let the sucker sink and try to load as many customers as possible into the lifeboats before next weeks' announcement from Scout that they will become MySpace Sports."
Bishop went on to opine, "Imagine that -- you'll now be crossing paths with your fourth grader as you visit you favorite team site. That's not exactly the affiliation we wanted when we signed on the Scout."
Heh. Just in case you still can't believe what's happening, we have more proof: Scout's website is already posting job listings for the new MySpace/Scout merger. Check out the logo (below):
Will this new venture plug the leaks or are more publishers bound to jump ship at the sight of the reworked Scout.com platform? Stay tuned ...
Symbolic of Arizona State's decline the last three years, former Arizona State star tailback Loren Wade was found guilty of second-degree murder Thursday. Wade shot and killed teammate Brandon Falkner in March of 2005, apparently in a fit of jealousy.
Prosecutors claimed Falkner was shot because Wade saw him talking to his girlfriend. Falkner was 25.
Wade faces a maximum of 22 years in prison when he's sentenced.
There's a cost to killing a man in cold blood, and Wade's going to pay it here.
At one point he was a promising sometimes-starter as a freshman before a benefits issue and the murder charge derailed his career. In his absence the Sun Devils struggled to run the ball on offense until they finally found a reliable tailback last year. Falkner's murder, Wade's benefits scandal and murder arrest and the Keller/Carpenter quarterback situation all contributed to the termination of former coach Dirk Koetter.
Strangely, the ASU Athletic Department decided to play with fire again in hiring the controversial Dennis Erickson to be their new football coach. Wherever he's gone, suspicious program behavior has followed. Somehow we don't think Arizona State is out of the woods, yet.
They got their bachelor's degree from Florida and their master's from LSU, but Saturday night Southern California handed Ohio State a brand-new degree: the Doctor of Failosophy. Yeesh. What a curbstomping. If you really need me to tell you what to do with the Buckeyes now, I'll be happy to do so, as long as you tell me something first: Who turned the computer on for you? 
Sometimes it pays to have an otherwise successful peer do something really stupid. Such is the case for Florida football coach Urban Meyer. It was announced last week that the Gators' football coach, leather jacket warrior and national champion 
Stanford's new football coach 
Or is it Hula partner? Or 
Symbolic of Arizona State's decline the last three years, former Arizona State star tailback 
