SEC tops itself

The SEC can always be counted on to top itself, that is to say, when you think that you have seen just how slimy it get can get, the SEC is happy to demonstrate it can go lower still. So in off-season where March saw four Auburn football players charged with first degree robbery, in an incident where students in an off-campus house were robbed at gunpoint, the University of Georgia is angling to beat that standard.

The Auburn robbers included the leading tackler on the national title team. UGA can trump that however, because this week they demonstrated that they like players who are criminals while they are still star high school recruits. Over at Auburn and Alabama, you have to wait until you get into school to become a felon, not at Georgia.

Seven Georgia players were the victims of locker-room thefts of iPods, iPhones and other small electronic devices. Whodunnit? Allegedly, three top Georgia football recruits who stole the items during an open house event at the Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall. Because the value of the property stolen did not exceed $1,500 the recruits in question were only charged with misdemeanor theft, clearly, leaving Alabama and Auburn free to argue that they recruit guys that are harder than that...

As ESPN SEC blogger Chris Low notes, this likely will hardlly even slow the recruiting of these kids in the scum filled pond that is SEC football, "Talent usually wins out, even when a kid has a troubled past." So that even after word of this incident broke, two of the three recruits involved were invited by Nick Saban and Alabama to attend their Spring football game.

Auburn back in the news

The ink was hardly dry on the Clarion Content's last critical post about Auburn football, four of their players were charged with armed robbery and kicked off the team, before HBO was airing a scandalous documentary about the university.

HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" aired an episode that included four former Auburn football players saying they were paid during their time at the school. Does this shock anyone? Is their any meaning left in the phrase institutional control when it comes to the state of Alabama, home of the last two college football national champions?

At Auburn, no way?

Very legitimate...

Well, well, well we can hardly believe what we are reading on ESPN.com this morning. Four players from Auburn's football team were arrested for five counts of first-degree robbery, one count of first-degree burglary -- both of which are felonies -- and one count of third-degree theft. Reportedly, three men entered a house off-campus, displayed a gun and robbed the residents.

Their vehicle was stopped by police, a pistol and stolen property were recovered, and the four players were taken into custody. They are being held on $511,000 bail. Three of them were part of Auburn's 2010 recruiting class. The fourth was their leading tackler in the national championship game last year. All four have been kicked off the team.

Read more here.

Making bank

We ran across an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that cited a wonderful little piece of investigative journalism by The Sports Business Journal. Did you know, dear readers, that twenty-three of the college bowls are ostensibly non-profit foundations? Nonprofit organizations like those that operate the bowls are not allowed under the federal tax code to give excessive salaries or perks could be seen as using charitable funds to enrich private individuals.

Yet The Sports Business Journal found that:

the Outback Bowl paid Jim McVay $808,032
the Sugar Bowl paid Paul Hoolahan $645,386
the Sugar Bowl also paid Jeff Hundley $398,023
the Chick-fil-A Bowl paid Gary Stokan $504,444
the Chick-fil-A Bowl also paid David Epps $210,013
the Cotton Bowl paid Rick Baker $419,873
the Alamo Bowl paid Derrick Fox $419,045
the Fiesta Bowl paid John Junker $415,118
the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl paid Gary Cavalli $377,475
the Orange Bowl paid Eric Poms $357,722

These bowls are all ostensibly non-profit organizations!

And the Obama administration just agreed to extend all these guys tax breaks.

The societal train has jumped the tracks.

ACC expansion, fantastic?

The Clarion Content has long been a vocal opponent of ACC expansion. We do not believe in diluting one's core brand, in this case outstanding basketball, for the vain hope of improvement in something that has never been a core competency, football. The ACC has been a classic case for our point of view. The new schools (Va Tech excepted) have not made the ACC any better at football. In fact, the ACC has dragged Florida State and Miami, once perennial college football powers, down to its level of mediocrity.

Now the second stage is kicking in, loss of focus has gradually damaged ACC basketball. The last two years of ACC basketball, save at the very top of the conference, have been some of the weakest ACC basketball in its history. More than once, a .500 record in league play has not been good enough to qualify an ACC team for the Big Dance. In the league's heyday, as the nation's premier basketball conference, that never would have happened. This year, the ACC is even worse.

For the first time since the poll's inception, the ESPN/USA Today Coaches' Poll this week has not only just one ranked ACC team, #1 Duke, but beyond that, not a single other ACC team so much as received votes. None. That had never happened before; Duke stands alone. How the mighty have fallen!

What's Oregon about?

Curious what Oregon football is about? They will be playing in the National Championship game versus the cheaters from Auburn. Michael Sokolove wrote a fascinating profile in the New York Times Magazine last month.

Oregon's Coach Chip Kelly told Sokolove, "If someone says to me, 'What do you stand for? I should be able to invite them to practice and in five minutes, they’d say: 'I see it. I get it.' They stand for playing hard and playing fast."

Sokolove notes John Wooden, the legendary U.C.L.A. basketball coach, was known for fast-paced practices that reduced the need for aerobic training. Kelly has taken a page from Wooden's playbook. Oregon may ride that vision all the national championship.

Read the whole article here.

Watch out for that brick wall!

Mama said knock you out! Oops upside the head, said oops upside the head.

Why are these are things that the announcers at the Illinois-Northwestern college football game might say this weekend? To lighten the mood?

Illinois and Northwestern are playing at Wrigley Field.



The famous baseball diamond with its ivy covered brick walls. Said brick walls are, approximately, twelve inches behind the back of the end zone at some points under the rightfield grandstand.

The other end zone along the third base dugout is no peach either. They cribbed the let's host a college football game idea from Yankee Stadium, but Wrigley looks great.

They have added extra padding to the brick outfield walls. With all the concussion discussion that has been in the air in recent months, we here at the Clarion Content, hope they carefully weighed the players well-being and safety against the value of the all-mighty dollar.

Playing at Wrigley Field will most definitely sell some ducats.

Stevie Johnson got it going on

Stevie Johnson is the Buffalo Bills rookie sensation at wide receiver. He has had a monster start to his career, with six TDs and nearly 600 yards on a struggling team, in just the first ten weeks. It turns out, however, Mr. Johnson, aka Steve Styles, is multi-talented.

We heard our man free-styling on Jim Rome today and had to dig a little deeper. Check him out. He has got some skills.

The ACC blows, again

Early leader for ACC player of the year? Duke's Sean Renfree

Once again the ACC football programs started the season highly regarded, five teams ranked in the top 25. There is exactly one left, Miami at #17. The Clarion Content has beat this drum for ages, but expansion not only hurt the existing ACC football programs, it dragged perennial national football powerhouses Florida State and Miami down to the ACC's level: craptastic.

This week saw a plethora of losses for the ACC. Miami, formerly known as the "U", lost on the road to #2, Ohio State. Back in the day, this would have been a speed match-up, and Miami would have blown by Ohio State. Recruiting in Miami is not the same since they joined the ACC.

Florida State got spanked at #10 Oklahoma. We guess classlessly running Bobby Bowden out of town did not do them any good.

Georgia Tech helped Kansas break an eight game losing streak. The week previous Kansas and Clarion Content fave, Turner Gill, could not beat North Dakota State, managing only three points. Georgia Tech was the cure they needed.

Virginia Tech coming off a thrilling game, but last minute loss, to BCS pretender Boise State, got beat by Division I-AA James Madison. AT HOME!

League doormat Virginia actually had a good showing, losing a close game to a down USC program. North Carolina State won at Central Florida.

Not very impressive as a league. Why do people keep buying into ACC Football? It is far and away the worst BCS conference.

Oregon State player tasered; naked

These beavers may not be as innocent as they appear...

That's right sports fans, Oregon State Beaver alumni could not be prouder today. They are trying to move their football team to the same level as the Oregon Ducks, a program that has recently burst on the national scene, both for their on-field ability and for the off-field likelihood of their athletes ending up in the slammer.

The incident: A drunk, naked Oregon State offensive lineman, Tyler Patrick Thomas, broke into the home of a thirty-two year-old woman in Corvallis, Oregon. Illegal and unimpressive, however what happened next is about the wackiest college football arrest since Lawrence Phillips of Nebraska fame broke into his ex-girlfriend's house and "made a tail."

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the nineteen year-old Thomas, who hails from Kalispell, Montana was ordered by the police to get down on the floor. The bare ass Thomas assumed a three-point football stance and charged in his birthday suit at the cops. They tasered him into submission and took him into custody. He was charged with first-degree criminal trespass, second-degree criminal mischief and resisting arrest, as well as possession of alcohol by a minor.

Ooops.

He has been kicked off of the Oregon State football team.

Incidentally, Lawrence Phillips, who played parts of two seasons with the Rams and was the reason why the team gave away future Hall of Famer, Jerome, "The Bus" Bettis to the Steelers, is now serving thirty-one years in California State Prison for various violent crimes.

Ahhhh, college football season.

College Football Consolidation

The BCS was always BS...

Talk of the consolidation of college football's major conferences has been all the rage this week. Today it looks as if it is becoming official, with University of Colorado's announcement that it is joining the PAC-10 and the University of Nebraska announcement that it is bolting the Big 12 for the Big 10. This will very quickly make the Big 12 no mas, as most of the remaining teams will seize the opportunity to make the PAC-10 a sixteen team league.

As wily observers know this is all about the haves and have-nots amongst the college football power players. The expansion of PAC-10 to a sixteen team league will be followed in short order by the Big-10 and SEC expanding to sixteen team leagues. The ACC will also be reluctantly forced to do so to ally with the college football superpowers. This will allow these four conferences to sideline the NCAA, as well as the BCS and have their own college football playoff. It is all about the dead presidents and there is no reason for the college football programs with the juice to split the Division I-A college football revenue pie one-hundred and eleven ways when they can reduce that split to sixty-four.

There is an interesting analysis about how this came about by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports here. However that is looking backward, the Clarion Content is more fascinated by how things will turn out going forward. Our prediction is it will not be long before the Big East is a basketball only league again. Villanova, St. John's and Georgetown will not mind. The question is what happens to the storied and not so storied programs from the current BCS conferences that end up on the outside looking in at the money. Our speculation on the schools that might end up on that list would include Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State and UConn. These schools along with the already jilted: Utah, Utah State, Boise State and Fresno States of the world may be made enough to actually get congressional action this time.

Have the college football commissioners warned the university presidents that their radical schemes for the future might bring about anti-trust lawsuits and Department of Justice maneuvering. President Obama signaled way back in the election campaign that he was pro-college football playoff, but by any means necessary?

The Clarion Content is pro-college football playoff too, but it is easy to feel genuine concern that money has distorted the system so badly that these schools are losing track of their education mission to their student bodies and their duty to the college athlete. And maybe this was already so under the corrupt and co-opted NCAA, but will this consolidation make it any better? Quien sabe?

Lane Kiffin skewered

One of our loyal Ohio readers forwarded along this video clip which roasts former Tennessee Volunteers coach Lane Kiffin to the tune of Runaway Train by Soul Asylum.

BCS to be reviewed

The best team in the country was???

The Clarion Content was just excoriating the Obama administration last week on our politics page for its failure to object to the merger between two existing harmful monopolies, Ticketmaster and Live Nation. There is better news out of Washington, D.C. today. While the President was courtside watching the Duke game yesterday afternoon, with Veep Joe Biden who looked like he couldn't tell the teams apart without a program, the Justice Department was indicating its preliminary willingness to look into a harmful sports monopoly, the college football Bowl Championship Series (BCS).

The BCS is, of course, prima facie an anti-competitive system. It is deliberately designed to exclude and minimize opportunities for schools not in the six "power" conferences. The BCS worked just as its designers intended this year when it denied undefeated Boise State and Texas Christian a chance to compete for the national title. In fact, it not only excluded these schools from a national title game or any opportunity to play in one, but in a fit of extreme protectionism, it refused to allow them to play any team from the so-called power conferences in a BCS sanctioned bowl.

This behavior is monopolistic and highly objectionable. It would be bad enough if it were perpetrated by a private entity, but coming from an organization that includes many public universities, it is genuinely perverse. We agree, of course, that there are far bigger problems facing the country. However, we are glad to see the Obama administration is at least on the right side of this anti-trust issue. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote in a letter to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, a leading rabblerouser on the topic, that, "This seemingly discriminatory action with regard to revenues and access have raised questions regarding whether the BCS potentially runs afoul of the nation's antitrust laws...The administration shares your belief that the current lack of a college football national championship playoff with respect to the highest division of college football ... raises important questions affecting millions of fans, colleges and universities, players and other interested parties."

Is it going anywhere? Probably not, much more likely it is strictly for public consumption, and the Obama folks showed their true colors in raising nary an objection of significance to the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation which will raise the already ridiculous prices for concert tickets even higher. The BCS signaled its inclination to continue to ignore any and all objections in a statement released by its chairman, "This letter is nothing new and if the Justice Department thought there was a case to be made, they likely would have made it already."

Lane Kiffin to USC

Who's ready to take on the Trojans?

We could not have said it better than ESPN columnist Pat Forde did, "Paris Hilton has paid more dues than Lane Kiffin."

We are predicting that Lane Kiffin does about as well with USC football as Tim Floyd did with USC basketball. USC Athletic Director, Mike Garrett, can take credit for both hires. For those of you who do not recall, Floyd's Trojans looked good for a minute, making it all the way to the Sweet Sixteen (once). Unfortunately, four years after his arrival Floyd resigned as the head coach, USC vacated its 21 wins from the 2007-08 season, and ordered self-imposed sanctions which included withdrawing from postseason consideration (including the Pac-10 tournament) for the 2009-10 season.

Kiffin leaves Tennessee fourteen months into a five year contract, one game over .500, with a string of "minor" NCAA violations in his wake.

Smooth move, Ex-Lax, errrr, AD Garrett.

The Good and the Bad of college football

This weekend is a perfect exemplar of the good and the bad of college football. In Durham, North Carolina, the staff of the Clarion Content is hanging on breathlessly hoping that somehow, some way the Duke Blue Devils can pull out a road upset against the all-world athletes of Miami of Florida. Were Duke able to pull off the win, they would remain bowl eligible going into their final game of the season against Wake Forest.

This is the good. The argument is that every game matters. Michigan versus Ohio State today, records aside, the game still has serious bragging rights at stake. Just because coach Rich Rodriguez is a trainwreck at Michigan does not make the game less valuable to the Big Blue alumni. You think Ohio State's fans want to win any less just because Michigan is terrible? The fact that Michigan is about to complete it's first back to back sub .500 seasons in more than 40 years would just make it all the more frustrating for Buckeye backers were their team to lose.

Despite our interest here in Duke, and the great rivalry game the midwest, or even other matches of consequence like North Carolina vying for bowl seedings versus Boston College in Chestnut Hill, or Arizona and Oregon meeting in a PAC-10 match-up, there is a problem. It does not infect the great PA battle between Lafayette and Leigh, which has the Lafayette Leopards hoping for a big win to secure an at-large bid into the Division I-AA, playoffs. And there it is! The geniuses that run the BCS refuse to allow any semblance of on the field battle for the national championship of Division I.

This beauty contest/gymnastics/figure skating method of voting for the best team rather than deciding it on the field incentivizes awfulness. This weak, whoops, week, #1 Florida is playing Florida International of the Sun Belt Conference. #2 Alamaba is playing Chattanooga of the Southern Conference. As of this moment they lead by a combined 80 to 3. Cupcakes for all! Even Texas with a potentially more legitimate opponent from the Big 12, has lucked into, the 1 up and 5 down in conference, Kansas Jayhawks. There is but a single match-up of top 25 teams, the Stanford-Cal game. This is the bad of college football. And its pretty putrid, because...

The faux national championship is securely in the hands of the judges. Boise State and TCU may be preemptively ruled out. Sorry. The winner of SEC conference title game is guaranteed a spot, allegedly. Cincinnati is be punished for being from the least favored of eligible conferences. Who is the best team? How would anyone know?

The Clarion Content would love to watch the coaching savvy of Georgia Tech's Paul Johnson in an eight team playoff. Too bad.

Michigan, not much to like

The Clarion Content found one more reason to dislike the University of Michigan athletic department yesterday. Two different students reported incidents with retiring Athletic Director, Bill Martin. The school's department of public safety reported a brusque Martin shoved past one and in an another case grabbed a student's windbreaker.

The Associated Press report says,

Michigan student Jackie Turner says she told Martin he needed a pass to enter the regents guest area of the press box Sept. 12 during a game against Notre Dame. She said he pushed her shoulder and walked past her.

"Honey, I am the athletic director," Turner quoted him as saying, according to a university report on the incident.

On Oct. 17, Eastern Michigan student Arif Khan said he told Martin and a female companion they needed passes to enter the area after a game against Delaware State. Khan said Martin grabbed his jacket.

"I am the athletic director, I can go in," Khan quoted Martin as telling him.

Sounds like a nice guy. This is the jerk who brought in the slimeball football coach, Rich Rodriguez. Well, it is not like one might expect anything low out of the Michigan athletic department.

Ole Miss tries to ban chant

The University of Mississippi long considered a bastion of the old South is trying to change a tradition. Ole Miss was the site of a bloody standoff, less than fifty years ago, when in 1962 it admitted its first black student, James Meredith. The university still has to address its reputation and legacy. Six years ago the university got rid of its on-field mascot, Colonel Rebel, a white-haired old man who carried a cane and resembled a plantation owner. Now the school is trying to mover further out of the shadow of its old image.

The school is trying to ban the chanting of the phrase, 'The South Will Rise Again,' at the end of the marching band's medley 'From Dixie With Love.' The school's chancellor has suggested replacing the traditional chant, with 'To hell with LSU.' No luck yet. Some students are willing to go along with change, others are resisting. The medley played by the school band is based on the Confederate Army's fight song, "Dixie," blended with the Union Army's "Battle Hymn of the Republic." The song itself may have to be banned to end the chant.

Read the whole story here.

One more reason to root

Need one more reason to root for Duke football? As a team the football squad has maintained a collective 3.0+ Grade Point Average in each of the last three semesters consecutively. This is not an Auburn situation where the kids are getting inflated grades from classes they don't attend. There are no fluff Parks and Recreation Management majors offered at Duke, unlike some large state institutions.

Count the Clarion Content in as a supporter.

Duke Football

Duke football went on the road yesterday to North Carolina State's Carter-Finely Stadium. The boys in blue out executed the Wolfpack in all phases of the game. The result was a 49-28 Duke victory. Duke was led by senior quarterback Thad Lewis who was a remarkable 40 of 50 for 459 yards and 5 touchdown passes. He even added one more TD on foot.

Duke Coach David Cutcliffe said it was the best performance he had ever seen by one of his quarterbacks. As the Greensboro News-Record noted, that is quite a list, "Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Erik Ainge, Heath Shuler and Colorado Rockies first baseman Todd Helton." Duke shut its offense down in the fourth quarter, going conservative or Lewis might have thrown for 600 yards! Following a close game at home versus national powerhouse and championship contender Virginia Tech, Duke said all week there were no moral victories. They wanted this one.

And they got it. They snapped all sorts of streaks in the process including; 8 straight ACC losses, 16 years since they had beat NC State, their first ACC road win in 6 years and their first win at NC State since 1984! QB Thad Lewis is now the all-time touchdown pass leader in Blue Devil history and is tied for 6th all-time in ACC history. The Sporting News led its coverage of the best in college football this week with the Duke quarterback. Wow!

Let's go Duke!

Nice work Arkansas

The smiling face of Arkansas Football

The Arkansas football program has to just feel right proud of itself about now. They have truly done some fascinating work in the last couple of years. Sure was a good call driving Houston Nutt out of town so you could bring in the classy Bobby Petrino, Razorbacks. Hope you enjoyed going 2 up and 6 down in the SEC last year. It probably wasn't too hard to swallow the irony of Coach Nutt going 9 and 4 and winning the Cotton Bowl with perennial SEC doormat, Ole Miss. Now this year, Coach Nutt has the Ole Miss Rebels ranked in the top ten in the preseason polls.

What? Arkansas expectations aren't quite that high? You don't say.

Well, at least you can say that all this running off Coach Nutt happened over what was a good cause. The ever-whining Mitch Mustain has done an admirable job holding down the third string quarterback job at USC. He holds a clipboard real well.

Nice work, Razorback-nation. Reap what you sow.