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Another wide receiver. Did Miami make a mistake by not taking one with the 25th pick?
ESPN writes- Britt has a nice blend of size, hands and better-than-expected top-end speed. Although he’s a bit raw in his route-running Britt has the potential to develop into the big-play wideout the Titans desperately need.
No I’m not talking about some middle aged man propelling a ball at some objects at the end of a lane, but the games that climax every college football season. Bowl season officially starts this Saturday, here are the matchups for all the college football fanatics out there.
Dec 20
Eaglebank Bowl- Wake Forest vs Navy
New Mexico Bowl- Colorado State vs Fresno St
MAGICJACK ST. PETERSBURG BOWL- Memphis vs. South Florida
PIONEER LAS VEGAS BOWL- Brigham Young vs Arizona
Dec 21
R+L CARRIERS NEW ORLEANS BOWL- Southern Miss vs. Troy
Dec 23
SAN DIEGO COUNTY CREDIT UNION POINSETTIA BOWL- Boise St vs TCU
Dec 24
SHERATON HAWAII BOWL- Hawaii vs Notre Dame
Dec 26
MOTOR CITY BOWL- Florida Atlantic vs. Central Michigan
Saturday, December 27
MEINEKE CAR CARE BOWL- West Virginia vs. North Carolina
Champs Sports Bowl- Wisconsin vs. Florida State
Emerald Bowl- Miami (FL) vs. California
December 28
Independence Bowl- Northern Illinois vs. Louisiana Tech
PAPAJOHNS.COM BOWL- North Carolina State vs. Rutgers
Valero Alamo Bowl- Missouri vs. No. 23 Northwestern
Tuesday, December 30
ROADY’S HUMANITARIAN BOWL- Maryland vs. Nevada
PACIFIC LIFE HOLIDAY BOWL- Oklahoma State vs. No. 17 Oregon
Texas Bowl- Western Michigan vs. Rice
Wednesday, December 31
BELL HELICOPTER ARMED FORCES BOWL- Houston vs. Air Force
Sun Bowl- Oregon State vs. Pittsburgh
GAYLORD HOTELS MUSIC CITY BOWL- Boston College vs. Vanderbilt
Insight Bowl- Kansas vs. Minnesota
CHICK-FIL-A BOWL- LSU vs. Georgia Tech
Thursday, January 1
OUTBACK BOWL- South Carolina vs. Iowa
CAPITAL ONE BOWL- Georgia vs. Michigan State
Gator Bowl- Nebraska vs. Clemson
Rose Bowl- Penn State vs. USC
Fedex Orange Bowl- Cincinnati vs. Virginia Tech
Friday, January 2
Cotton Bowl- Mississippi vs. Texas Tech
AUTOZONE LIBERTY BOWL- Kentucky vs. East Carolina
ALLSTATE SUGAR BOWL- Utah vs. Alabama
January 3
INTERNATIONAL BOWL- Buffalo vs. Connecticut
January 5
TOSTITOS FIESTA BOWL- Ohio State vs. Texas
January 6
GMAC Bowl- Ball State vs. Tulsa*
January 8
FEDEX BCS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME- Florida vs. Oklahoma
That’s 34 games, 68 schools spread over a period of 20 days for those of you keeping score at home. An ample supply of college football for any fanatics out there.
A few notes
*- There are a few bowl games remaining without corporate names in their title. Gator, Sun, Texas, Independence. Were these games unable to find sponsors?
*- Will Oklahoma St. and Oregon combine for 70 pts or more in the Holiday Bowl? This annually has been of the most high scoring affairs.
*- Oh how has the Orange Bowl dropped. A game that featured early triumphs of Joe Paterno led Penn State, Nebraska and Oklahoma in their glory days, the first major bowl appearance of Florida State, and the all time classic 84 battle between Nebraska and Miami, has Cincinnati and Virginia Tech playing this year. I’m sure they are talented football teams, but how many people are drooling to see them play in a prime-time network slot?
*- Arizona and BYU meet in a bowl 30 years after the former left the WAC conference for the higher profile Pac Eight(Now Ten, Arizona State joined also)
*- Vanderbilt makes a rare bowl appearance. Congratulations to Commodore fans, but this is a sign of how bowls are grown way out of proportion. 6-6 college teams get bids. When I was growing up I could remember Florida State going without a bowl in 1978 even though they finished the season 8-3.
It is my humble opinion that bowl season has gotten out of hand. Someone may say what’s the big deal? If someone wants to start a bowl game and there are two schools willing to play in it, does their records matter. A good football isn’t only a contest between stars at big name schools.
All true, but how much public money is spent on these affairs? Many of the teams are state universities who get funded by taxpayers. Then there is the game itself where police have to be taken from other tasks to work the day or night of the game or paid over-time.
With the economic downturn right now, you have to wonder if there will be less bowls in the near future. That would depend on how long a deal a corporate sponsor signed on for. I wonder how many fans of some schools plan to make a bowl trip. Are there 1,000 or more FAU Owls willing to journey from Florida to Michigan in December to watch the team play? Even if I were a Owl fan and had money, I’d stay home.
Enjoy the games.
It was a bizarre weekend in college football, with eight ranked teams losing to teams ranked below them — seven to teams not ranked at all.
#3 Oklahoma lost to unranked Colorado, 24-27.
#4 Florida lost to unranked Auburn, 17-20.
#5 West Virginia lost to #18 South Florida, 13-21 (Thursday night).
#7 Texas lost to unranked Kansas State, 21-41
#10 Rutgers lost to unranked Maryland, 24-34
#13 Clemson lost to unranked Georgia Tech, 3-13
#21 Penn State lost to unranked Illinois, 20-27
#22 Alabama lost to unranked Florida State, 14- 21
This was on top of several other close finishes.
ESPN’s Pat Forde dubs it “Insanity Saturday” and observes that this throws the whole season out of whack.
Just that fast, the college football landscape shifted seismically beneath our feet.
Just that fast, the Red River Shootout game Saturday between Oklahoma and Texas was dropped to undercard status. For the first time in years, it’s not the marquee game in the Big 12. And for the first time in years, the league’s maligned North looks more compelling than the South. If you can believe it, the biggest game in that league next week might be unbeaten Kansas at 3-1 Kansas State — either that or 4-1 Nebraska at unbeaten Missouri.
Just that fast, the upcoming LSU-Florida showdown Saturday in Baton Rouge lost half its helium when the Gators were shocked in The Swamp by an Auburn team that had lost at home to South Florida and Mississippi State on consecutive weekends.
Just that fast, the three Big East teams that began the season in the Top 25 all have at least one loss. Louisville went down first, then West Virginia, now Rutgers. Suddenly South Florida, Connecticut and Cincinnati are the unbeaten teams in the Big East. Honk if you foresaw that in August.
Just that fast, Illinois is 4-1 and tied for first in the Big Ten at 2-0. That’s the same Illinois that went 2-10 last year, with only one victory over I-A competition.
Just that fast, we have an ACC plot twist that leaves Virginia and Boston College well out in front in their respective divisions at 3-0 in league play. Virginia was left for dead after a Week 1 blowout loss to Wyoming. Boston College was picked last in its division by at least one preseason magazine.
And just that fast, USC and LSU put that much more distance between themselves and what’s left of the pack.
The object lesson here is that no favorite is safe. Not at home, not on the road, not in league play, not out of league play. If those lessons hadn’t already been learned by Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32, and Syracuse 38, Louisville 35, they were reinforced on Insanity Saturday.
And no lead is safe. You’d think the Sooners getting up 24-7 would be enough to make Colorado quit. You’d be wrong. The Buffaloes scored the final 20 points, winning on the last play of the game — a 45-yard field goal by Kevin Eberhart.
[...]
Underdogs aren’t scared right now, by much of anyone. Players and coaches are shrugging off past history, blowing off bad losses, not worrying about falling behind and regrouping to pull upsets nobody saw coming. Nobody’s rolling over.
I’ve seen this sort of thing in college basketball before but never to this extent in football. The bottom line, though, is that Notre Dame and Alabama and Michigan no longer have an automatic recruiting advantage over South Florida and West Virginia and Georgia Tech. There’s a wealth of talent out there and plenty of television exposure to be had in the realigned conference structure. Players would rather go to a program with less prestige and start than sit on the bench and one of the Big Boys.
According to CBS, Don Imus has been fired from his radio show today after being fired from his MSNBC simulcast earlier this week.
(CBS) NEW YORK CBS 2 has learned that CBS-owned radio station WFAN has fired Don Imus. The news comes a day after MSNBC discontinued their relationship his radio show.
CBS Chairman and CEO Les Moonves met with Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson on Thursday morning to discuss Imus’ future with the company. The shock jock has been in hot water since calling members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.”
In the past week or so, two men commenting on sporting events got themselves into hot water. Their divergent fates says something about their releative sins as well as about how they’ve handled them. In the more celebrated case (enough to knock the paternity of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby down a few notches) Don Imus referred to Rutgers women’s basketball team in a derogatory fashion. No one defends Imus, though there doesn’t seem to be a concensus what a fitting punishment would be. Baseball Crank though criticizes Rutgers for making the championship team into a bunch of wimps.
Somebody gave these young women the message – or at least failed to disabuse them of the notion – that they should take Imus’ words seriously, take them to heart. This press conference was a show of the coach and the players wallowing in Imus’ words, embracing them, and thus elevating them as if any serious person would think less of them – rather than of Imus – for what Imus said. This story should never have been about the players, because Imus’ words were generic (indeed, that’s precisely why they were offensive). It’s the Culture of Victimology at its most destructive, teaching these young women that they should consider themselves to have been genuinely maligned by an aging boor and to seek out the status and posture of one to whom a deep wrong has been done and who is owed.
To have had the team come out and say, “Nothing a declining two bit hack says can take away our triumph” would have put Imus in his place quite nicely.
On the other hand Billy Packer stood his ground, SarcastiPundit agues, as he should have.
“I said he fagged out on me and it had nothing to do with sexual connotation,” Packer told the Philadelphia Inquirer. I got to know Charlie a number of years ago and have great admiration for his program and intellect. He is a big Dukie, and he has been talking a number of years about coming to the Final Four to be a runner.” Packer explained that he was using the word in the wholly legitimate form of an adjective meaning to exhaust or tire out. I’m certainly no fan of Packer; he’s (for lack of a better term) a college basketball supremacist and generally a blowhard. But I have to give him props here for refusing to be bullied in a situation where he has done nothing wrong. Anybody so ignorant as to be offended by such a thing should spend more time educating himself or herself and less time trying to impose speech codes on others.
And SarcastiPundit remembers a time when an inoffensive word led to a resignation due to mass ignorance.
Crossposted on SoccerDad.
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It is sad when the biggest news story that came out of the Tennessee-Rutgers National Championship Game is another bonehead comment by Don Imus.
Imus started out talking about the Rutgers team as, “some rough girls from Rutgers. They got tattoos,” and then went on to call them “some nappy-headed hos.”
He compared them to the Tennessee team, saying “The girls from Tennessee — they all looked cute.”
The conversation then went on to compare the game to “the jigaboos versus the wannabes.”
So, the new NFL Network granted reprieve to the faithful following of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, and will televise the game free to all those New Jersey folks pining to see their team take the field in the first-ever Texas Bowl on December 28th against Kansas State. For a while, it was nip-and-tuck, and no one was quite sure if they were going to have to find the local sports bar or locate someone who may be lucky enough to have this rare commodity.
Did anyone try to watch the game on Thanskgiving night? It was supposed to be broadcast to everyone, but when the game started, the NFL Network switched over to a documentary and all those turkey-eating football fanatics were left in the dark. The NFL Network, for all it’s hype, is only showing eight games this season, as well as a smattering of college bowl games. Did anyone tell the powers that be that there may be real football fans out there wanting to watch some of these late season battles?
Someone has got to be watching the store for the almighty league where they play for pay. At any rate, all you scarlet-wearing fans can breathe a sigh of relief and enjoy the festivities as New Jersey will be proudly represented during Holiday bowl week in the state where everything is big.
From AP-
PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Rutgers coach Greg Schiano will stay with the school he led to national prominence this season, rather than return to take over the troubled Miami program.
“This is where I want to be. This is the job I want to have,” Schiano said Monday.
Schiano, who was Miami’s defensive coordinator in 1999 and 2000, said he spoke with the Hurricanes’ athletic director Sunday night.
“We’re just scratching the surface here at Rutgers,” Schiano said. “The sky’s the limit. We’re going to do great things here. We haven’t done it yet.”
Schiano has orchestrated No. 16 Rutgers’ rise from one of the nation’s lowliest programs in the past six seasons.
If I were the U of M, I’d hire defensive coordinator Randy Shannon. Something tells me an outside coach will be hired. Much like when Tom Olivadotti was passed over for then obscure Jimmy Johnson in 1984.
Your guess is as good as mine at present.
UPDATE: AP has a few more details.
Schiano has orchestrated No. 16 Rutgers’ rise from one of the nation’s lowliest programs in the past six seasons. At 10-2 (5-2 Big East), the Scarlet Knights are heading to a Texas Bowl matchup against Kansas State. Rutgers narrowly missed the Bowl Championship Series by losing Saturday night in triple overtime at West Virginia. “We’re just scratching the surface here at Rutgers,” Schiano said. “The sky’s the limit. We’re going to do great things here. We haven’t done it yet.”
Last year, Schiano led Rutgers to its first winning season (7-5) since 1992, and its first bowl berth since 1978.
Schiano did not discuss his current contract and declined to say whether he was signing a new one. He made $191,000 last year before athletic director Robert Mulcahy gave him a seven-year extension that will max out at $350,000 — but only if he stays until 2012. The extension raised Schiano’s annual income from private sources from $325,000 to $625,000.
That’s a terrific income by any standards, although a tiny fraction of what he could get at Miami (or Alabama). From a purely professional standpoint, this is an inexplicable move: Coaches are supposed to climb the ladder, always taking an obviously more prominent gig. There’s simply no doubt that Miami–arguably the dominant program of the last generation–is light years ahead of Rutgers, a team that has spent many a year in the I-A cellar.
Still, Miami is a no-win situation while he’s already a minor legend at Rutgers. He could stay at Rutgers for years going 6-6; that’s a firing offense at Miami.
Where the heck did these two teams come from again? Rutgers has always been a bad program. After winning the first college football game ever 6-4 over Princeton, (November 6, 1869, actually, meaning that the anniversary was this past week), they seemingly lost every game since until a couple of years ago.
Now, they are national title contenders.
I love teams like Rutgers. They show the BCS to be the farce that it is. They are at a huge disadvantage in the polls, because voters are less likely to promote them. They came into this week ranked behind the one less West Virginia, which had just lost to Louisville.
It is going to be interesting to see where the BCS puts them.
Louisville is a great story in its own right. A second tier football program until the past few years, Louisville itself would have shaken up the BCS. Louisville doesn’t have the tradition that the other top programs have, and the fact that they were number 3 this late says a lot.
Rutgers has yet to play West Virginia, which could be a tough game. If they run the table, it will make for a VERY INTERESTING decision process for the BCS title game.
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