Category: College Football (Page 37 of 296)

      Boise State holds back three players for Georgia game

      September 2, 2011 /
      Boise State Broncos defensive tackle Chase Baker (97) sacks Louisiana Tech Bulldogs quarterback Ross Jenkins (11) on fourth down during the first half at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho, October 26, 2010. REUTERS/ Brian Losness (UNITED STATES)

      Everyone seems to be hyper-cautious these days, so Boise State is holding back three players from tomorrow night’s showdown with Georgia at the Georgia Dome.

      The Broncos announced in a brief statement Friday that senior safety Cedric Febis, sophomore defensive tackle Ricky Tjong-a-Tjoe and sophomore wide receiver Geraldo Boldewijn had not accompanied the team to Atlanta.

      “The three are being held out of the game due to a review of their NCAA eligibility,” the statement read. “The review is not academic or violation of team rules.”

      The three players all have a few noteworthy things in common. The first is that all three are originally from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where they each played for local football club teams before coming to the U.S. All three played for prep high schools in Boise before joining the Broncos.

      The second is that all three are expected to be major contributors for the Broncos this season. A fifth-year senior, Febis was in line to earn a starting safety position following the graduation of Jeron Johnson. He is likely to be replaced by redshirt freshman Jeremy Ioane.

      The spread has moved from Boise State by 3.5 to Boise by 3.

      ESPN Insider also has a great article about how Aaron Murray is as good as Kellen Moore. One thing to keep in mind is that Murray will be behind a veteran offensive line and Moore will be playing behind three new starters. I remember Mel Kiper making the point that the experience of the offensive line was one of the best predictors of success for a college football team. This should be a great game but I think Georgia might pull this one out.

      College Football, External Sports

      College football gets started tonight

      September 1, 2011 /
      REFILE – CORRECTING ID Wisconsin Badgers head coach Paul Chryst coaches against the TCU Horned Frogs during the third quarter of the 97th Rose Bowl game in Pasadena, California, January 1, 2011. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL)

      After a brutal off-season, college football gets back to business tonight with a bunch of games. Looking at the college football lines, however, we won’t get many great games tonight.

      Wisconsin is known for its cupcake schedule in non-conference games, and they get started tonight against UNLV as a 35.5 point favorite. To their credit, they’ve added Oregon State as their second game.

      Tomorrow night we have a decent game with TCU as a 4-point road favorite against Baylor.

      Then on Saturday we have a ton of games, with Oregon as a 4-point favorite against LSU at Cowboys Stadium and Boise State as a 3.5-point favorite against Georgia in the Georgia Dome as the featured battles.

      College Football, External Sports

      Explosive allegations rock Miami Hurricanes

      August 17, 2011 /

      The drumbeat of college football scandals just got louder with some serious allegations being leveled against the Miami Hurricanes football program. Yahoo! Sports broke the story and followed up with more analysis, and this thing could be pretty big.

      In one sense, none of this is surprising. As we’ve said many times, college football players are squeezed by the current system and there are too many temptations for them to cash in on benefits when they don’t have their own spending money. We’ve seen it in the tattoo scandal at Ohio Sate and the potential suit scandal at Alabama. The NCAA needs to reform the rules.

      This crap happens everywhere. The deciding factor is simply proof available to the NCAA. With Ohio State, they had an FBI sting that produced the memorabilia that was central to the scandal. So far in Alabama there are tons of photos produced by sites like SPORTSbyBROOKS. We’ll see where that goes.

      Here in Miami things might be even worse, as a rogue booster named Nevin Shapiro is in prison. He’s pissed off and he seems determined to take down the Miami football program. Thus the problem – if he can provide proof, Miami is in huge trouble. Some of the allegations are pretty tough as he’s saying he also provided prostitutes to the players.

      The NCAA needs to be careful here. If they go off on these programs with massive sanctions, you might end up with a revolt as other schools will realize that this is happening everywhere on some level. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Meanwhile, the officials in Miami need to get on top of this asap.

      College Football, External Sports

      Michigan’s Denard Robinson dilemma

      August 7, 2011 /
      Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson (16) runs the ball by Ohio State defender Johnathan Hankins (52) during the second quarter of their NCAA college football game in Columbus, Ohio, November 27, 2010. REUTERS/Jeff Haynes (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL)

      Michigan’s new head coach, Brady Hoke, is facing a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, he needs to bring Michigan back to playing Michigan football after the disastrous RichRod experiment. That means moving back to a pro style offense and moving from the absurd 3-3-5 defense that stopped nobody in the Big Ten back to a traditional 4-3. Michigan needs to get bigger, and Hoke has started that process with his 2011 recruiting class.

      Yet with respect to the offense, Hoke also has Denard Robinson, one of the most explosive college football players we’ve seen in years. He was perfect for RichRod’s offense, even though that offense and Robinson sputtered against better defenses. It was an all-or-nothing proposition, and naturally Hoke is anxious to move on.

      So how does he use Denard Robinson going forward? Hoke says “We’re smart enough to have elements he does well from what he did in the past in our offense.” But he plans on using Robinson as the quarterback in his pro style offense, which will have Robinson taking snaps under center instead of the shotgun and relying on play action.

      I’m skeptical this can work. Sure, he’ll still unleash Robinson at times, and I suspect they might use the option play, but Robinson’s effectiveness will likely suffer dramatically under this system.

      Robinson made big plays in the passing game last year, but that was because he found wide-open receivers when defenses tried in vain to slow down his running game. This year he won’t have that luxury. I don’t see Robinson consistently making the tough throws demanded in a pro style offense. He’s also very short and that will limit him as well.

      We’ll see how this experiment plays out, but I suspect that Hoke will regret taking Robinson out of his element.

      A better option might be to have a traditional quarterback run Hoke’s new offense, and keep a version of RichRod’s system around for Robinson to run as a Wildcat formation. He could also use Robinson as a Slash-type weapon in the traditional offense.

      Right now their odds of winning the Big Ten are set at 15/1, so few are expecting a breakout year.

      With this transition and the drama surrounding the Big Ten this year with the addition of Nebraska and the troubles at Ohio State, Michigan should be one of the more intriguing stories of 2011.

      College Football, External Sports

      More absurdity from the NCAA

      July 26, 2011 /

      The biggest problem facing the NCAA is the myth of amateurism in college sports. With the Internet, 24-hour cable channels, and now social media, the activities of “student athletes” is now much more open to scrutiny.

      In their losing battle to monitor and control these college kids, the NCAA is chasing down some ridiculous “problems.” Check out their recent allegations against North Carolina:

      Last week the NCAA found that from February through June 2010, the university “did not adequately and consistently monitor social networking activity that visibly illustrated potential amateurism violations within the football program, which delayed the institution’s discovery and compounded the provision of impermissible benefits.”

      The statement included an NCCA request for “copies of materials posted on Twitter by football student-athletes. … Furthermore, the NCAA is requesting information regarding the institution’s efforts to monitor the social networking activity of football student-athletes.”

      So the NCAA is now seeking to become a social networking assassin of its own. Or should I say it is just playing another variation of its familiar role of assassin, as the NCAA is often in the business of search and destroy, usually of its own making.

      Following the Ohio State tattoo fiasco and the emerging story of Alabama players potentially getting suits, the NCAA is setting itself up for repeated failure by expecting their athletes to avoid all temptation. They need to loosen the rules, and they need to consider letting athletes earn money on outside activities.

      College Football, External Sports

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