Category: College Football (Page 55 of 296)

      SEC losses another star, as Georgia’s Houston opts for NFL draft

      January 17, 2011 /

      Chris Low of ESPN.com reports that Georgia All-SEC outside linebacker Justin Houston has decided to declare early for the NFL draft. Houston finished second in the SEC this season with 10 sacks, which gave him 17.5 sacks over the past two seasons.

      Houston is the latest SEC underclassmen to turn pro over the past month. Teammate A.J. Green announced last week that he was skipping his senior season to enter the NFL draft, which means the Bulldogs will lose four linebackers and their star receiver this offseason. (Darryl Gamble and Akeem Dent were seniors, while Marcus Dowtin is transferring to another school.)

      Late last week, quarterback Cam Newton and defensive tackle Nick Fairley of Auburn decided to forego their senior seasons and enter the draft. Kentucky will also be without Randall Cobb next season, while Alabama will lose running back Mark Ingram, receiver Julio Jones and defensive end Marcell Dareus to the NFL.

      Fairley could have company in the top 5 if scouts view fellow SEC player Ryan Mallett (Arkansas) as a top selection. At 6-6 and 238 pounds, Mallett certainly has the size and arm strength to develop into a starting quarterback at the next level, but some have questioned his inability to close out big games and lead his team in crunch time.

      LSU’s Patrick Peterson and Stevan Ridley are two more names that the SEC will lose this offseason, but the conference is always producing new talent. It will repopulate.

      College Football, External Sports, NFL

      Newton to enter NFL draft – is he a first rounder?

      January 14, 2011 /
      Auburn Tigers quarterback Cam Newton enjoys his teams 22-19 victory over the Oregon Ducks in the NCAA BCS National Championship college football game in Glendale, Arizona, January 10, 2011. REUTERS/Mike Blake (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL)

      Let the months of speculation begin.

      Auburn quarterback Cam Newton has announced that he will forego his senior season and enter the 2011 NFL Draft. The Heisman Trophy winner finished his junior season with 2,854 passing yards, a 66.1 percent completion rate and 30 passing touchdowns to go with 1,473 rushing yards and 20 rushing touchdowns.

      Oh, and he also led the Tigers to a national championship victory over Oregon.

      Now comes the fun and nauseating part: Where will he fall in the draft? Is he a clear-cut first round pick? Is he a top 10 pick? Is he even projected to be a quarterback at the next level?

      Most people would undoubtedly answer “yes” to that last question, although some pundits believe Newton will have to make the transition to tight end in the NFL. He certainly has the arm strength and size to be a great quarterback, but can he succeed in a pro-style offense? Can he be a leader? Can he read a defense? Does he have the accuracy to make all of the throws in a NFL offense? How is his football IQ?

      It only took one man to believe that Tim Tebow was capable of developing into a starting quarterback for a team to select him in the first round. Granted, that man (Josh McDaniels) is now searching for work, but that’s more because he managed to trade away his two best offensive players (Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall) in two years and gave away Peyton Hillis for a third-string quarterback in Brady Quinn. Only some people criticize him for trading away draft picks in order to select Tebow…

      Getting back to Newton, he’s going to wow scouts with his athleticism in pre-draft workouts but he’ll have to convince a team that he has the intelligence and work ethic needed to become a quarterback in the NFL. Because if he can’t, then he’s going to fall in the draft and he may be forced to switch positions in order to make it at the next level.

      In other Auburn-related news, defensive tackle Nick Fairley is expected to announce Friday that he too is foregoing his senior year and entering the draft. If that’s the case, there’s no question that he’s a top 5 pick.

      College Football, External Sports, NFL, NFL Draft

      Les Miles receives seven-year contract extension from LSU

      January 12, 2011 /

      ESPN.com is reporting that LSU and head coach Les Miles have agreed in principle to a new contract that will run through the 2017 season.

      LSU athletic director Joe Alleva says Miles’ annual pay of a little more than $3.75 million will remain the same.

      Miles has won 62 games and five bowls, including a 2007 national title in his first six years with the Tigers. Alleva says the university wants to maintain stability at the top of a winning program.

      Miles, who met with Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon Monday about the coaching vacancy the Wolverines had at the time, says Baton Rouge is home to his family now and that staying at LSU is “the right thing to do.”

      I think it says something that Miles (presumably) had two opportunities over the past four years to leave Baton Rouge and coach at his alma mater and he chose to stay. He has shown loyalty to the LSU program and in turn, the Tigers have given it right back.

      I still think the guy is bat sh*t crazy though. He obviously knows how to win but I wonder if he goes home sometimes and thinks to himself, “How the hell did I pull that one out of my ass?”

      Only Miles could get called for a delay of game penalty on fourth-and-nine and then call a timeout. And only he could then get bailed out when his opponent (Tennessee) had 12 men on the field during the final play and therefore found a way to pull victory out of the jaws of defeat.

      Oh, Les Miles.

      College Football, External Sports

      Miles stays at LSU, Michigan hires Hoke

      January 11, 2011 /

      Les Miles isn’t headed to Ann Arbor, which means Brady Hoke is.

      The Los Angeles Times is reporting that after meeting with Michigan officials about the Wolverines’ football vacancy on Monday, Miles will stay at LSU. The former UM graduate is 62-17 with the Tigers, which includes five bowl victories and one national title in his previous six seasons. Following Miles’ decision, Michigan moved quickly to hire Hoke.

      When Rich Rodriguez was fired last week, two names emerged as leading candidates to replace him: Stanford’s Jim Harbaugh and San Diego State’s Hoke. And once Harbaugh agreed to terms with the 49ers, Hoke become the clear favorite to land in Ann Arbor.

      It would have taken a truckload of money to get Miles to come to Michigan and in the end, it would have been a riskier move than what AD David Brandon wanted to make following the Rich-Rod debacle. Hoke is the safer choice and he may be the better long-term fit for the program, too. He has ties to the team, he’s an up-and-comer and he’s cheap. It just makes sense following what happened with Rodriguez.

      Is Hoke the right fit? We’ll see. He certainly isn’t a big name but the Wolverines got a big name in Rodriguez and look how that turned out. I know some UM fans would have rather seen Rodriguez retained for another year than hire Hoke. But at least he’ll put the emphasis back on defense after Rich-Rod completely ignored that side of the ball for three years. (Maybe Hoke will actually recruit a kicker that knows that the ball is supposed to go between the uprights and not to either side of them, too.)

      Hoke may be a ho-hum hire in some people’s minds, but maybe that’s exactly what UM needs right now.

      College Football, External Sports

      How was this bowl season better than a playoff?

      January 11, 2011 /
      Auburn Tigers quarterback Cam Newton (R) is tackled by Oregon Ducks Spencer Paysinger during the second quarter in the NCAA BCS National Championship college football game in Glendale, Arizona, January 10, 2011. REUTERS/Mike Blake (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL IMAGES OF THE DAY)

      Bill Hancock seems like a nice enough guy but he’s delusional if he thinks that this past bowl season was a rousing success and that it proved that there’s no need for a playoff.

      First and foremost, that title game was terrible. It may have had an exciting finish but a great game it was not.

      Two of the most explosive offenses in the nation were on display Monday night and yet, you couldn’t have asked for worse field conditions. This should have been the most entertaining game of the season but from the opening kickoff, players resembled hockey players sliding on a sheet of ice. Neither team could catch their footing, which is probably why the combined score totaled only 41 points (or 31 fewer points than what Vegas installed for the over/under). How does this happen in an indoor stadium when the grass can easily be maintained?

      Granted, it’s not the BCS’ fault that the game was rather lousy on a whole. Even if there were a playoff, there would be no guarantee that all the games would be exciting. But at the very least, the teams would be playing for something every week.

      The matchup between Auburn and Oregon was dead on, but the BCS largely struck out with its other games. They made Stanford fly cross-country just to crush an overmatched Virginia Tech team and there’s no reason to relive the Oklahoma-UConn debacle.

      The Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl were both highly entertaining – I’ll give the BCS that. But why must there be a long delay between the BCS bowl games and the championship? And for the love of college football, why were the Go Daddy.com Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the BBVA Compass Bowl and the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl shown as a lead up to the national title game? I felt bad for the kids who played in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl because nobody cared by that point. They made those poor kids play on Sunday night following four NFL playoff games – only action junkies tuned into that one.

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      College Football, External Sports

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