Archive for the ‘College Football’ Category

Is this a joke, Bobby?

On Friday, February 8, Florida State released its 2008 football schedule. The mighty Noles will be opening their season with back-to-back home games versus–drum roll, please–Western Carolina and Tennessee-Chattanooga.

Both I-AA teams, the WCU Catamounts are 3-19 in the last two seasons while the UT-Chattanooga Moccasins have torn through the I-AA ranks with a two-year mark of 5-17.

Reeling from multiple suspensions related to academic fraud (now there’s a shocker) that will leave FSU without several starters for the first three games of 2008, FSU Coach Bobby Bowden shamelessly acknowledged:

“There’s no way we would be ready to play a ranked team at that time…the first three ballgames we’re going to have around, what, 12 scholarship guys out?”

For those not paying attention at home, Bowden just said, “Yep, I’m a pussy.” Even worse, he was almost glib about failing to keep his kids in good academic standing. Seeing as Bobby’s integrity is already a non-starter, I guess he might as well piss on basic accountability while he’s at it.

Thank God this scheduling isn’t endemic to the rest of Division I-A. At least we can count on, say, the defending national champion LSU Tigers to schedule aggressively. Les Miles is a man among boys! He’ll take on anyone…anytime…anywhere! Can I get an Amen from SEC country? I mean, it’s not like LSU’s 2008 schedule has eight home games, including a four-game non-conference gauntlet of Appalachian State, Troy, North Texas and Tulane.

Oh please, spare me the lame-ass one-liners about Notre Dame scheduling the Coast Guard and Merchant Marines. I’m not a big fan of scheduling the service academies, if only because it gives all the intellectually lazy ND haters of the world an excuse to spin total bullshit as fact. The real facts are these: the Naval Academy has one of the top Div I-A winning percentages since 2003, while the Air Force Academy has been been a legitimate mid-major bowl team for a quarter century. If you think scheduling the likes of Navy or Air Force is the same as scheduling not one, but two Div I-AA opponents in the same season, you’re incapable of having an honest discussion–about anything–so shut the hell up.

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 [Note: only days after this article was written, Florida State put all of its athletic programs on two-year probation. According to an AP report issued on February 14, 2008, 60 student-athletes spread out across all FSU sports programs have lost or will lose some eligibility. Bottom line: any parent who willingly watches his or her child sign a Letter of Intent for Florida State should be charged with negligence. That "school" is a joke. And beyond that scoreboard they don't care what happens to your kids. ]

Former Notre Dame head coach Bob Davie might be leaving the television booth and returning to the sidelines as the defensive coordinator for Texas A&M according to multiple sources Monday night.

From Rivals.com

ESPN analyst Bob Davie on Monday declined to comment on whether he was interested in Texas A&M’s vacant defensive coordinator position, but acknowledged he still had thoughts of returning to coaching.

“You never lose that (love for coaching),” Davie said via phone from his home in Scottsdale, Ariz. “I don’t think you ever lose that. But life is pretty good here.”

Davie wouldn’t comment about rumors that he might be reunited with A&M coach Mike Sherman in College Station. “I don’t think I can comment on that at all,” he said. “Mike and I are good friends. Any comments should come from Mike.”

Efforts to reach Sherman were unsuccessful.

And from the Austin American Statesman

Texas A&M appears to be leaning toward hiring a former defensive coordinator, Bob Davie, to return to that role under new head coach Mike Sherman, one source close to the athletic department says.

Davie, 53, served as R.C. Slocum’s defensive coordinator between 1989 and 1993 before leaving for the same position at Notre Dame and eventually becoming the head coach of the Irish. He was the head coach there for five years before a 35-25 record and the second of two losing seasons brought him a pink slip there.

“It’s about 75 percent done,” the source said. If the two sides come to an agreement, Davie would replace Reggie Herring, who stayed less than a month before taking an assistant’s job with the Dallas Cowboys.

As an x’s and o’s coach, Davie is actually pretty decent.  His defenses at A&M were pretty good and his defenses while at ND as both the DC and head coach were always sound. Put him in charge of a game and he falls apart, but as the DC he won’t have to do that.  This is actually a pretty good hire for the Aggies in that Davie’s TV career could help him on the recruiting front.

I’m kind of surprised it took this long for Davie to get another coaching gig, but this seems like a pretty good fit for him.  Although, as the saying goes, you can never go home again.

So I woke up yesterday morning expecting to thoroughly enjoy National Signing Day. Most recruiting analysts projected Notre Dame as having one of the top classes in the country, its best in well over a decade, with an outside shot at ending the day with the #1 ranked class.

For the most part, that’s what happened. The ND faithful were a little disappointed when Milton Knox deferred to Hometown U and picked UCLA, but other than that it was a great day. A surprise commit from Kapron Lewis-Moore briefly vaulted ND to #1 in several recruiting rankings, but the Irish eventually got in line behind Alabama to be ranked a near-consensus #2 by the likes of Rivals.com, Scout.com, and Tom Lemming.

Note that I said near-consensus.

I had some time to spare, so I made the mistake of watching some of ESPNU’s coverage of National Signing Day.  I didn’t expect a whole lot from this crew. While the other aforementioned recruiting analysts use fairly complex methodology in ranking teams, ESPN pretty much collectively pulls info out of its ass. Their defining criteria in ranking recruits boils down to 1) Did you play in the Under Armour High School All-Star game that we televised? 2) Do you live in the state of Florida?

Knowing this, I was still shocked at ESPN’s final rankings. Alabama and Notre Dame, the near-consensus 1-2 recruiting classes in the country? Try #3 and #9. Even better, at the beginning of the day ESPN had Notre Dame ranked #7 and Alabama #9. How does Bama go from #9 to #3 in the span of about 12 hours while ND gains an elite player and drops two spots? I won’t speculate on ESPN’s venomous hatred of all things Notre Dame, but I will speculate on Alabama. I figure an industrious ESPN intern was surfing the other recruiting websites and said to himself, “Wow, we are staggeringly stupid.”

Tom Luginbill is the National Recruiting Director for ESPN’s Scouts Inc. (not to be confused with Scout.com, the older and more credible recruiting service). It is reasonable to say no one does less homework on the recruiting trail than Luginbill and his lackeys. They indiscriminately start, flame and retract unsubstantiated rumors. They sport wood for any kid in the Sunshine State who runs a 4.4. And they are unabashed Urban Meyer jock sniffers.

Case in point, ESPN singularly projected the Florida Gators as having the #1 recruiting class for 2008 heading into National Signing Day. And by “singularly” I mean every other recruiting service looked at them and said, “Pass me what you’re smoking.” Looking at UF’s depth chart, any armchair recruitnik could identify a stud running back and some elite offensive lineman as absolute musts, plus maybe a few receivers coupled with a Tebow understudy. And yet, when the dust had settled on NSD, Florida had suffered two elite Signing Day decommits, they whiffed on quarterback, they whiffed on running back, other than one touted juco they whiffed on wide receiver, they didn’t get a tight end, and they managed only one good and one mediocre offensive lineman.

What did this unbalanced class yield Florida? As the ESPNU NSD coverage wrapped up Wednesday evening, the Gators were still at #1. To their credit, by Thursday morning morning ESPN had dropped Florida all the way down to #4, sighting the said decommits of elite linebacker and o-line prospects Ramon Buchanan and Ricky Barnum. Curiously however, the ESPNU talking heads neglected to mention these defections during their Wednesday broadcast, even going so far to interview Urban Meyer a full three hours after the decommits were public knowledge and have a circle jerk about his “#1 class” and how it “met all their needs.” (Speaking of the Florida head coach, did he even wait until the ink dried on Omar Hunter’s LOI before reneging on his promise that defensive coordinator Greg Mattison wasn’t going to the NFL? There’s slimey, and then there’s Urban.)

Meanwhile, Notre Dame fans watched as for most of the day ESPN had Kapron Lewis-Moore—a Texas A&M decommit for the better part of a week who faxed his Letter of Intent to Charlie Weis around 9:30 AM EST—as an Aggie commit. And then, to add insult to injury, ESPN dropped Notre Dame from #7 to #9, apparently because they failed to land Milton Knox, who was already committed to UCLA anyway. It wasn’t quite the snub ND and other schools endured a couple months ago when ESPN blatantly downgraded any players who opted for Tom Lemming’s Army All-Star Game over their Under Armour game, but a snub nonetheless.

Look, I realize oftentimes these recruiting rankings are a crapshoot. But when the “leader in sports entertainment” gets into the business of high-stakes college football recruiting, I would expect at least a modicum of intelligence and professionalism. ESPN’s research is shoddy. Their recruiting analysts wear their agendas on their sleeves. They’ve turned their recruiting coverage into a shameless vehicle for the Under Armour All-Star Game. All in all, their product is a steaming pile of tabloid-quality wildebeest dung. Luginbill & Co. have the biggest microphone and the biggest stage, and they are little more than PR guys for high school football south of the Mason-Dixon Line. ESPN’s viewers deserve better. College football coaches, players, and fans deserve better.

Came across this little bit on former Notre Dame running back Justin Hoskins on USAToday.com tonight…

“TB Justin Hoskins — The transfer from Notre Dame made an impact this spring, showing he’ll challenge Ontario Sneed for the starting job in the fall.” 

Hoskins, you may remember, came in the same class as Darius Walker and many felt he would be the better back when all was said and done.  It’s a shame he never materialized at Notre Dame because he is one heck of an athlete - as he showed when he hurdled a defender on a kickoff as a freshman at Notre Dame.

Hopefully Hoskins can make some noise at CMU and get a crack at the NFL down the road.

While doing unrelated research today, I came across this stat regarding NFL MVPs. It’s a stat I have never heard mentioned on any ND message board, any ND publication or broadcast. Since the Associated Press started to announce the NFL’s most valuable players back in 1957, one school has stood atop the NCAA as having delivered the most number of players to be selected as the NFL’s MVP. You guessed it, Notre Dame.

The Irish have sent four players on to become NFL MVPs (Paul Hournung, Alan Page, Joe Theismann, Joe Montana). LSU and Alabama come in second with three, though it has been reported that Alabama claims seven.

This at the very least adds to a little of the intrigue to the Brady Quinn vs. Jamarcus Russell NFL career battle. Charlie Weis has said that in three years, Quinn will be one of the top three QBs in the league, while pundits like Todd McShay seemingly salivate daily over Russell, who rose as the media favorite after his most impressive day as a collegiate quarterback came against a lowly Notre Dame defense.

Quinn may have lost out on the Heisman this weekend, but he was named a finalist for the Cingular Player of the Year Award which is vote on by fans. Colt Brennan, Ray Rice, and Troy Smith are the three other finalists so this figures to come down to Smith and Quinn like a lot of other awards have this year.

Here’s the details on how to vote according to the Yahoo! article…

Fans can determine the winner by text messaging “VOTE” to “87654″ on their wireless phone and casting their votes for the nominees. Fans who participated in the Player of the Week voting during the season will automatically receive a text message with the four candidates. This year’s winner will join former Texas quarterback Vince Young (2005) and former Texas running back Cedric Benson (2004) on the list of Cingular All-America Player of the Year award recipients.

Voting for the Cingular All-America Player of the Year is open until January 5 at 11:59 p.m. (EST). The selection process will culminate during the BCS National Championship game on FOX on January 8 when the Cingular All- America Player of the Year will be announced. (LINK)

Vote early and vote often. I certainly know I would enjoy seeing Quinn named the player of the year during the BCS Title game – especially if Florida happens to be winning the game at the time as I’m sure that would make the collective blood pressure of Columbus skyrocket.

According to the Mississippi Sun Herald, Reggie Bush did not have Brady Quinn on his ballot, but did vote Troy Smith #1 and Darren McFadden #2.  His reasoning for not voting for Quinn?

When asked about Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn calling him after Saturday’s ceremony to complain, Bush responded by saying, “You have to have the big numbers and lead your team to wins in big games or a chance at the national championship.”

Maybe what Bush meant to say was, “you need to push your team to big wins in big games.”

Of coourse, Bush also could be upset that Brady might get drafted #1 overall, and not #2 behind some defensive end from North Carolina State…

And for the Ohio State fans out there who we know are reading Bush also offered this up in the same report.

“There was nobody who really had that standout season”

Did Bush watch any football this year?  Smith, Quinn, and McFadden all had huge years.  Not to mention some damn fine players who won’t be in New York Saturday like Steve Slaton and Ray Rice.  Last I checked, all five of these players had their teams in the top 5 at some point in the season, but I guess that doesn’t qualify as giving their teams a chance at the national championship.

And just for fun… according to ESPN’s profile of Steve Slaton, the sophomore running back is projected to run for 1,877 yards and 19 (17 rushing, 2 receiving) toucchdowns - both of which top Bush’s 1,740 yards and 18 (16 rushing, 2 receiving) toucchdowns from a year ago.

I know, I know, Bush had more receiving yards and the returns and all that, but the fact that you can find a running back who wasn’t even invited to New York as a finalist with more touchdowns and yards than last year’s winner makes a statement like “nobody who really had that standout season” seem just a bit assine.

After looking at the CBS Heisman rankings referenced in my previous post, reading the following article from the NY Sun was refreshing.  Allen Barra has an outstanding article up comparing Brady Quinn and Troy Smith and their respective Heisman resumes.  The article is a must read for Notre Dame fans.  Here are some of the highlight…

Until about 21 years ago, it was understood by seasoned observers that the quarterback for the no. 1 team in the country was seldom a legitimate contender for the best player in the nation, if only because if a team was good enough to be ranked no. 1, it was difficult to accurately assess the quarterback’s contribution. Before Florida State’s Charlie Ward in 1993, Notre Dame’s Angelo Bertelli in 1943 and Johnny Lujack in 1947 were the only quarterbacks for no. 1 teams to win the Heisman.

This is an interesting point that not too many pundits have brought up this year or even in recent years.  The last few seasons, its generally been a given that the best player on the best team is automatically at least a finalist for the Heisman.

Barra goes on to mention some quarterbacks who won the award without being on a #1 team.

Virtually all the other Heisman winners at quarterback, notably Navy’s Roger Staubach (1963), Florida’s Steve Spurrier (1966), and Stanford’s Jim Plunkett (1970), won their Heisman because of, not in spite of, playing on teams that weren’t national championship contenders. Their statistics were thought to be accurate reflections of their own abilities rather than their teammates’.

Mt favorite line of the article however has to be…

Thirty-five or 40 years ago, Brady Quinn of Notre Dame (no. 11) would be a clear favorite for the Heisman Trophy. Instead, no. 1 Ohio State’s Troy Smith, a fine player but perhaps no better than a dozen others at his position, will probably win it in a landslide.

Allen concludes his article with the following…

A careful look at the record convinces me that Troy Smith is destined to join their number. But whatever happens to Smith in the NFL, Brady Quinn put up numbers this year that were at least the equal of Troy Smith’s, and he did it against tougher opposition and with far less help from his teammates. By any objective yardstick, he deserves the nod over Troy Smith as the outstanding college football player of the 2006 season.

Now, while I can’t argue much with Smith winning as I think he performed at a high level all year and with his performances against Texas and Michigan, he clearly was at his best against the best.

With some people in the media, such as our boy Dennis Dodd, not even placing Quinn in his top 7 for the Heisman, its nice to see someone stand up for Quinn and state some obvious facts that some people fail to recognize.

Now, before we get a bunch of Ohio State fans over here commenting on how much more deserving Smith is than Quinn, I already acknowledged that I can’t argue much with Smith winning this year.  My point with this post, however, is to show that those who think Quinn doesn’t even deserve to be in New York with Smith are out of their mind.

The experts over at CBS, including Notre Dame fan favorite Dennis Dodd has a list of their Heisman rankings available online.  Seems the geniuses over at the Columbia Broadcasting System think Brady Quinn is not even worthy of being in the top 7 candidates.

My personal favorite is Dodd’s listing of Jamarcus Russell as his runner up.  Dodd doesn’t list Quinn in his top 7 but does list Colt Brennan third.  Dodd further shows his insightful analysis by ranking Mike Hart ahead of Darren McFadden.  Hart is a fine back, but please, McFadden has been down right dominant and without McFadden, Arkansas’s offense simply does not tick.

The best part of CBS’s rankings are their top three – Troy Smith, Colt Brennan, and Ian Johnson.  When the Heisman finalists were announced earlier today, only Smith was on the actual list of invitees to the Downtown Athletic Club.

Their writeup on Quinn is another gem…

Brady Quinn had a very good season and is one of the best quarterbacks in the nation, but failed to lead his team to victories against Michigan and USC. With Troy Smith being the top QB and Colt Brennan getting a late push, Quinn will probably finished third among QBs.

From the looks of things, Quinn will finish no worse than third overall.  What’s even more amusing about this list is that a few weeks back, there was quite a bit of chatter on the boards about CBS doing more to promote Quinn for the Heisman during the Navy game than NBC did all season.  I wonder if those sentiments still ring true throughout the Notre Dame faithful?

A few weeks back Mandel responded to emails that he hated Notre Dame saying he indeed had no ill feelings for the Irish.  His reasoning then was…

“If I really hated Notre Dame, why would have I voted them No. 2 in my preseason AP ballot? (Oops.) Why would I have devoted an entire column in August explaining why, amidst a sea of skepticism, the Irish truly were a legitimate national-title contender. (I guess those weren’t myths after all.) And why would I have voluntarily spent a highly enjoyable Saturday night watching football with members of the Notre Dame band?” (LINK)

And you know what, you almost have to believe Mandel, especially after his little write up on the Sugar Bowl…

4) Sugar (Jan. 3): LSU (10-2) vs. Notre Dame (10-2). The game should be a boon to New Orleans’ ravaged economy. Not only will Irish fans descend on the city, but there’s also a decent chance they’ll be hitting the Bourbon Street bars by halftime. (LINK)

Mandel thinks so much of the Notre Dame team, he thinks Notre Dame will be winning by so much at halftime that they will be celebrating in the streets of New Orleans during the second half.  You see, Mandel really does love the Irish.

Thanks for the show of faith in the Irish Stewart.

Wait, you didn’t mean LSU would be winning by that much at halftime that it would be over, did you???