—Washington QB Jake Locker might switch positions while his thumb heals (6-8 weeks). I don’t like that idea. I know he wants to help the team, but he’s just too valuable to the Huskies to put him at risk of further injury.

—What is the deal with refs refusing to call safeties? First, there was the horrible non-call in the Cal-Maryland game a couple weeks ago and then another one in the Michigan State-Indiana game last Saturday. In each case, the defense clearly stopped the ball carrier before the nose of the ball hit the goal line.

It’s almost as if refs measure the gravitational pull around the football and determine that as long as its magnetic boundary extends to the goal line, then the ball has safely crossed the plain. Or maybe they measure the ball’s aura. I don’t know.

Why are refs so gun shy? What is the danger of a safety? Is it because safeties are potentially such huge momentum changers? I agree, but to NOT call a safety when it definitely happened can change momentum as well.

We need more safeties for other reasons, too, as it gives the SEC a chance to have those baseball-type shootouts that we all love to fall asleep to.

—Bad Tedford! Why would you even think of replacing Riley with Longshore? Bad! Bad!

—Austin Murphy elegantly reveals why we shouldn’t be surprised by Oregon State’s win over USC. I can’t believe I only picked the Beavers with the points. Especially after thinking that Oregon State would beat Penn State earlier in the season. Why don’t I just stick with my gut? I knew OSU had something…

—I just love every-week-in-the-regular-season-is-a-playoff-in-college-football polemics and Tony Barnhart does it as good as anyone.

—Just a thought: I think we were able to find a way to adequately measure two coaches against one another recently. In this case, I’m talking how Jim Tressel is much smarter than Mack Brown.

Main piece of evidence: The use of Vince Young vs. the use of Terrell Pyor.

Under Brown, Young was forced to redshirt and then sit most of the next season due to slowness in picking up the offense. One of the guys playing in place of Young was the great Chance Mock. By his third season at Texas, Brown realized that he’d better shape the offense to Young’s talents (not vice versa) or he might be out of a job, or at least permanently confined to the 10-2 gulag he had created for himself. The result of that decision? Uh, transformational player, 11-1 and 13-0, with a national title. But what if he had been given a shot earlier? How much better would he have been by year three with starter’s minutes under his belt? Does Texas win that 2004 title?

Meanwhile, Tressel has not made the same mistake and is already starting the guy who is, to me, as close to Vince Young as you can get. Pryor has already showed rapid improvement and I’m sure by the end of the season he’ll be pretty dang good. By the time Pryor takes his first snap against USC in 2009, he might be the best player in college football. Ohio State is not going to win the national title this year, so take your lumps now and then go terrorize everyone for the next two or three years. Sounds like a plan!

So, established: Tressel is smarter than Brown. Hope you all can breathe easier knowing that.

—HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!! Help me…can’t. stop. laughing.

As crazy and amazing as today’s Raiders press conference was, I find it even more crazy and amazing that there are athletic directors around the country (scroll down in the link–BF, I guarantee you the Vols couldn’t do much worse!) who would even entertain the thought of hiring now-former Oakland head coach Lane Kiffin to run their program.

Continue Reading →

And why not?  As Chris Dufresne of the LA Times notes:

The conference has the nation’s top-ranked team, Oklahoma, four schools ranked in the top seven, six teams ranked in the top 25, and nine quarterbacks ranked in the top 20 of this week’s NCAA pass efficiency statistics.

I would add to that list:  The nation’s top three Heisman candidates.

Now, I remember last week everyone making a HUGE deal over how the SEC had five teams ranked in the top 10.  Surely, what the Big 12 has done so far is equally as impressive.

But for the most part:  Crickets.

Now this is more like it.

A Heisman campaign should be fun and creative and that’s exactly what Texas Tech is doing with Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree at passorcatch2008.com.

The site portrays the two players as political candidates.

Harrell on the issues:  “Footballs don’t magically fly through the air.”

Crabtree on the issues:  “Footballs don’t catch themselves.  Nobody wants the ball to touch the ground.”

Mike Leach is the ‘Commander in Chief’, the Tech offensive line is the Secret Service and the defensive coordinator is the head of the Defense Department, naturally.

Election years always bring out such possibilities.  When I was at USC, I made up this little bit for Reggie Bush.

This is fun stuff–and isn’t college football supposed to be fun?  This puts these guys out there in a creative way.  Who knows?  Maybe it will help to further identify these players as Heisman candidates for some of the voters out there.

It certainly won’t hurt.

Michigan State is running a non-campaign campaign, which seems to be in vogue among the Sports Information chattering classes these days.

“I’m more old school with these things,” (Michigan State SID John) Lewandowski said. “We live in an era where gimmicks are not going to win awards. It’s more important to make sure he’s accessible, manage the media opportunities and be mindful of what else he has going on. But the bottom line is the team has to be successful.”

I wish people understood that when you put out a marketing gimmick, the goal is not to win the award, but to increase name recognition for your candidate, who then can win the award with his play on the field.   The worst scenario you can have is a player dominating on the field and no one knowing about it.

Those Geico cave man commercials don’t make anyone buy Geico, but they make you remember the name Geico when it is time to buy insurance.  We live in an era when gimmicks most certainly help with publicity.  Paris Hilton is very adept at such gimmicks and I’m sure most of you hadn’t heard of her until you viewed that ‘gimmick’ she put out.

The No. 1 reason Javon Ringer is not a serious threat for the Heisman right now is that he isn’t very well known to Heisman voters.  Sure, the working media portion of the voters know who he is and they are rewarding him by putting him on Heisman lists, but the rank and file voters–I’m talking the ones who work construction or sell Amway until they cast their votes in early December (and I’m being facetious here)–have no clue who he is.

No harm could be done if Michigan State put Ringer’s name out there.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of SIDs who like to sit on the media capital they’ve accumulated over the years and not spend it.  They worry about their credibility being damaged if the player screws up and the campaign implodes (in reality, no one cares if a PR campaign doesn’t work–they are quickly forgotten).  They don’t want to be seen as ‘crying wolf’ for a player who ends up being a bust.  It’s a ‘safe’ mentality that can end up negating a lot of opportunities for so many hard-working players who are busting their butts for their schools.

Javon Ringer carried the ball 44 times last week.  Give the man a bobble head, for crying out loud.

What is it?

Well, it’s a scenario in which all the candidates from all the teams hit a road bump and the race is ‘reset’ to a new state.

Right now, Chase Daniel is your Heisman leader.  He plays for an undefeated team ranked in the top 5.  What if Missouri loses?  Is Daniel automatically eliminated from Heisman contention?

Not necessarily.  As long as all the other candidates–Sam Bradford, Javon Ringer, Max Hall, etc.–hit roadblocks as well, he could crawl his way back.

This scenario occurred several times last season.  Teams just kept losing, players just kept having disastrous outings, and in the end, a true sophomore on a team with 3 losses (at the time of the vote) was able to win.  Mind you, last year was a year where the national champ had 2 losses, so having a Heisman winner on a 3-loss team wasn’t as drastic by comparison.

So, if Texas beats Missouri, but Oklahoma beats Texas and the Sooners lost to Texas Tech, then Daniel, Colt McCoy and Bradford would all be in the same boat.  If a team that has just lost–like Florida or USC–bounces back to make a run at the national title, then their candidates would be resurgent as well.

It’s pretty rare when this scenario occurs.  More often than not, the Heisman winner has control of the race for most of the season and experiences few bumps along the way.  But it could happen.  So far, this year’s front runner, last year’s winner, this year’s dark horse and a few other noteworthy candidates have taken major hits to their candidacies.

If chaos happens again, as it did last year, we could have another re-set.