Could Kyle Brotzman’s notorious miss against Nevada in 2010 be a boon for Boise State? (Peter Read Miller/SI)

Stanford’s offensive coordinator position was recently endowed by an anonymous donor to honor Andrew Luck (gross autoplay video alert at that link). The donation got friend of the program The Gurgling Cod thinking about how to turn this into a rivalry game:

UGA FAN PROTIP — make anon gift to GT, name OC position after Reggie Ball. #trollanthropy espn.go.com/college-footba…

— The Gurgling Cod (@TheGurglingCod) May 23, 2012

Monied fans, you have your marching orders. Our previous bloggy home has just wrapped up an annual charity drive in which donations are given to match rivalry scores (say, $70.33 for enthusiastic fans of January’s Orange Bowl outcome), but an endowment? Oh, that’s a gift that lasts and lasts. We have 10 modest suggestions for our readers overburdened with spite and disposable income:

Read More…

Unlike baseball, college football is actually supposed to have an opening weekend. (REUTERS)

All this chirping about based ball’s Opening “Day” just makes us pine for five months from now, when college football will accomplish in five days what baseball crams into nine or so. Is it too early to start making out our Week 1 mayhem wish list? Probably!

Thursday, August 30

• South Carolina @ Vanderbilt. James Franklin taunts Jadeveon Clowney after the Commodores pull off a late go-ahead touchdown, and the ensuing fracas manages to convince SEC officials to suspend the South Carolina stalwart. Seeking revenge, Steve Spurrier departs Nashville with five or six of Franklin’s scholarship quarterbacks, to feather his depth-chart-fiddlin’ nest back in Columbia. No one is truly satisfied, but no lessons are learned.

• Minnesota @ UNLV. TCF Bank revokes Golden Gophers’ stadium sponsorship after team refuses to pay $5,000 in ATM fees following return from Vegas.

• UCF @ Akron. Zips win, and Terry Bowden gets free jousting privileges at all Medieval Times locations for life.

• UMass @ UConn. In their FBS debut, the Minutemen rout the Huskies, relegating Connecticut to the MAC by a previously unnoticed realignment provision. All involved parties agree this is probably in everyone’s best interest.

Read More…

Temple mascot Hooter and the Fighting Hedwigs are in talks to join the Big East in all sports. (Main image: US PRESSWIRE; inset: Warner Bros.)

Temple’s return to the Big East, if it goes through, will elevate an owl mascot to the AQ level for the first time since the school’s 2004 ejection from the conference. It’s a natural fit for the league of Squibs, but as the move is rather last-minute from a conditioning standpoint, you may find yourselves falling behind, winded in an effort to make Harry Potter jokes during league play in 2012. Below, a few basic maneuvers you might find useful, during an imaginary conference schedule that assumes the Fighting Hedwigs join up with the Ever-Increasingly Accurately Named Big East by fall:

October 6, 2012. Temple @ UConn. “Accio passing game, you guys! Amirite??”

October 13, 2012. Syracuse @ Temple. “Addazio’s offense without Bernard Pierce is deader than Dumbledore.”

October 20, 2012. Temple @ Pitt. “I tell you what, this Owls front seven has put Tino Sunseri in Azkaban.”

October 27, 2012. Rutgers @ Temple. “And what a coming-out party for Matt Brown! He blasted through the Scarlet Knights’ line like a Dementor! A Dementor on a Firebolt!”

Read More…

See. No lie. That's really the slogan.

The 2012 BBVA Bowl is just a day away. We’re sure you have so many questions. We’re here to help. (For an Xs and Os breakdown, check out Ben Glicksman’s game preview.)

• What’s all this, then? We return once more to the scene of the late, lamented PapaJohns.com Bowl, still the only college football game to ever be named for a pizza chain’s website.

• Where will this game be played? Birmingham, Alabama’s Legion Field.

• Should I feel unsafe even setting foot in the stadium? Nonsense. I myself spent an entire football game there this season, and not a single piece of   concrete fell on my head.

• But didn’t you find a loose bolt just inexplicably sitting in your seat when you got there? I did, yes.

• When is it on television? Kickoff is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Saturday, January 7. The game will be televised on ESPN.

• Whom does it feature? Typically, Big East versus SEC, with the MAC and C-USA as alternates.

• What about this year? It’s 6-6 Pitt versus 7-5 SMU! Have you chills, gentle readers? Are they multiplying?

• How excited is Pitt to be back in the BBVA Compass Bowl for a second consecutive postseason, with a second interim head coach? We’re not sure numbers this minute can be measured by current blogging technologies.

Read More…

Where Bowdens coach, hilarity is sure to follow. (AP)

Just a quick flurry of news reading before I board yet another plane:

• Fresh coaches, bought  and sold! Of ALL THE DAYS to be traveling during business hours! To miss this Terry-Bowden-to-Akron bombshell! That brimstoney scent on the wind is the aroma of a thousand blog sniping engines spinning up to life, for where there is a Bowden in a head-coaching gig, administrative mayhem and general hilarity are sure to eventually follow. Bowden leaves behind an island of misfit toys in Florence, Ala., only to join up with an abominable snowman: His new AD, you’ll recall, fired previous coach Rob Ianello over the phone while Ianello was driving to his mother’s funeral. Elsewhere on the carousel: Wisconsin’s Paul Chryst to Pitt, and Houston’s Tony Levine to Houston! Huzzah!

• Keep your thoughts with College Station: The worst sort of news out of Texas A&M: Senior offensive lineman Joseph Villavisencio died in a car crash Thursday, on his way home for winter break. He was 22 years old. Our sincere best wishes and condolences to his family and the A&M football community.

• Roster blotter: Matt Barkley, noted Christmas tree impersonator and fine football player, will give it one more round with the Trojans. Just remember where you heard Matt Leinart’s opinion first. Charlie Weis re-ups on quarterbacks. Four Bruins are out for the bowl game, as is FSU’s Jermaine Thomas. And Virginia Tech kicker Cody Journell is in a world of trouble, arrested for felony breaking and entering.

Read More…

After one season as Pitt head coach, Todd Graham left the Panthers to take the Arizona State job. (Getty)

You’ll see a lot of editorializing on the subject of Todd Graham over the next few days in the wake of his abrupt exit from Pitt after less than a calendar year as head coach to take the same job at Arizona State. If that coverage is negative and accuses Graham of pretty much anything short of sorcery, it’s probably in the ballpark. The facts of the past couple days are damning without embellishment: Todd Graham is pretty gross, y’all.

The process: I first saw the news Wednesday afternoon on The Fan’s Chris Gates’ Twitter feed. The story that emerged had taken shape in a startlingly short frame of time. According to the Post-Gazette, Graham sought permission to speak with the Sun Devils on Tuesday, and was denied by Pitt AD Steve Pederson. And by this account, that was the entire exit process:

Mr. Pederson said that was the last he had heard from Mr. Graham, despite repeated attempts to reach both him and Arizona State athletic director Lisa Love to discuss the situation further. A Pitt athletic department administrator then went to Mr. Graham’s house Tuesday night to try to find out what his intentions were. Mr. Graham answered the door but declined to speak to the administrator. Wednesday morning, Mr. Graham sent his resignation to Mr. Pederson — without speaking with him — and he and his family hopped on an airplane bound for Arizona.

The reaction: Untethered by upheaval, Pitt players took to various social media outlets to vent their emotions — all entirely justified, since they were informed of Graham’s departure via text message from a third party. Notable among these respondents were Brandon Lindsey, who waxed bitterly philosophical (“At least we got to run at 630 this morning”) and Devin Street, who called his now-former coach a “damn diva” and informed the Internet Graham cuts his own hair.

Read More…

The cruel bowl system will keep Mr. and Mrs. Kellen Moore from a BCS destination.

• Bowltyme! Travesties upon travesties abound! (And that’s just the Belk Bowl lineup!) Your full 2011-2012 college football bowl schedule is available for perusal, and there’s just so much to unpack. The Coaches’ and Harris Poll ballots are out and open to dissection, and if you’d like somebody to do your dissecting for you, Andy Staples has you covered.  Stewart Mandel: “Oh, Sugar Bowl. There you go again.”  Matt Hinton: “Seriously: Voting on the better football team? Are we still doing this? We’re really going to do it again? Deferring to polls and algorithms in a competition that keeps score?” Boise State: Shut out of the BCS despite a top 10 finish for the fourth time. The Urbz Bowl: A real thing now.

• Fresh coaches, bought and sold! A reminder: Our Canned Coaches Cubby post will tally each fired coach this offseason. Latest additions: Steve Fairchild and Pat Hill. (Hill’s mustache declined comment.) Now, to the hires (deeeep breath): Hugh Freeze to Ole Miss, Carl Pelini to FAU, Garrick McGee to UAB and Curtis Johnson to Tulane. In non-firing news: Mike Price to remain at UTEP for the moment, Mack Brown hanging on at Texas and Houston would very much like to keep Kevin Sumlin with the Cougars. Good luck with that. In possible departures: Three Auburn assistants have been out on the interviewing trail, though two of them have already lost out (and that’s frankly lucky for all involved parties). And three Pittsburgh assistants are leaving the Panthers for points west.

• A coaching post of a more serious nature: Condolences to the family of former Ohio State assistant Joe Daniels, who passed away over the weekend. Our very best wishes to the OSU football community.

Read More…

Justin Blackmon and Oklahoma State will likely move to No. 2 in the BCS standings after improving to 9-0. (AP)

Snap judgments from the Week 10 late shift. For swing shift Snaps, click here. For early shift Snaps, click here. For a review of the Top 25 action, click here. For game highlights from SI.com, click here.

• No. 3 Oklahoma State 52, No. 17 Kansas State 45: It’s a low-hanging fruit of a plotline to grab at, but it’s too perfect to ignore in good conscience: In Week 10, for those who stayed up late enough, college football peddled wares for every taste. While the top two teams in the country traded body blows in four quarters and an extra frame of siege warfare, the No. 3 squad weathered a shootout to remain undefeated and in the thick of the national title hunt. Even the gods of sport got in on this one, causing what might have been the biggest earthquake recorded in state history just after the game wrapped. (Kirk Herbstreit, by the way? Not amused. They’re calling this a 5.6, and I’ve only ever been in a 5.5, and let me tell you, I can’t blame him for going Madame Alexander for a minute there.)

Brandon Weeden having a personal-best day is a real treat, if you’re into scads of points, and a sparklier sight than most other quarterbacks’ successful outings; his 502 yards were not only a career high, but set a Cowboys program record. His biggest beneficiary was, of course, Justin Blackmon, who caught 205 yards’ worth of advancement and two of Weeden’s four scoring passes. The other two landed in the arms of Tracy Moore and Joseph Randle, who tacked on two rushing touchdowns at crucial moments, including the game-winner.

We can’t let the night pass without a nod to Collin Klein, who bested his personal passing and rushing highs for the season with 377 all-purpose yards and four touchdowns. K-State’s passing game broke down completely in the game’s final minute, however, just past midfield. A 22-yard connection put the Cats at OSU’s five-yard line with 25 seconds remaining, but Klein’s last three heaves of the game were for naught. Kansas State might fall out of the Top 25 for this one, and right now, that feels monstrously unfair. [RECAP | BOX]

Read More…

Ray Graham, who has been sensational for the Panthers this season, injured his knee in the first quarter of Pitt's win over UConn. (AP)

• Pitt 35, UConn 20: The principal storylines from Wednesday night’s Big East contest were the body blow dealt to Pitt’s running game and an explosion of Panther aerial antics. Crucial offensive cog Ray Graham injured his right knee while being tackled on a run early in the first quarter. He looked to be in serious pain while being helped off the field, but was in better spirits acknowledging the crowd as he was carted to the locker room. Pitt quarterback Tino Sunseri took it from there, winging it all night for 419 yards and three all-purpose touchdowns (two passing, one rushing). Now, UConn had a bad pass defense heading in, ranking sixth in the Big East in yards allowed, but not this bad. And Pitt was averaging less than 200 passing yards per game after eight weeks, thanks to some early season quarterback shuffling and the presence of Graham. Sunseri distributed his balls widely, with seven receivers recording at least 35 yards’ worth of catches. [RECAP | BOX]

• Cleanse your palate with some actual excellent news: Eric LeGrand will lead the Scarlet Knights out of the tunnel for Rutgers’ game against West Virginia. Welcome back, big guy.

• “I don’t care about trinkets, I don’t care about Ohio State, I don’t care about the players:” Edward Rife is off to prison, and the sentencing judge wants to make it very clear that football didn’t influence his decision.

• Quote of the day: “West Virginia and Louisville can’t get along. PERFECT fits for the Big 12!” — Travis Haney

• Giveth, taketh: Cincinnati has lost starting cornerback Dominic Battle for the season with a torn ACL, and Georgia freshman phenom Malcolm Mitchell is ailing.

Read More…

Ray Graham rushed for 226 yards and two TDs in Pitt's 44-17 rout of USF. (US PRESSWIRE)

• Pittsburgh 44, South Florida 17: Where last night’s prognostications were correct: The Pitt-USF game was indeed not a close one! Where last night’s prognostications were wholly inaccurate: The Bulls did not, in fact, win! Here, yesterday: “The only pairing that comes close to an interesting on-field matchup, on paper, is the guy in the No. 1 Panthers jersey, Ray Graham, against USF’s 15th-ranked rushing defense. ” Graham, last night: 226 yards and two rushing touchdowns. (RECAP | BOX)

• Houston 49, UTEP 42: I’m not bragging. I’m evangelizing: Tune into UTEP games when I tell you to, all right? You’ll see magic happen. It’s simple math to determine whether a given Miners game is worthy of your time: If their opponent is very good, or very bad, you’ll want to watch. Anything in between, skip. But this team plays up to good competition and down to bad like nobody else. Oh, and Houston had 710 yards of offense. Y’know. Just Houston, doing that Houston thing. No big deal. (RECAP | BOX)

• Jackson State 58, Texas Southern 13: Casey Therriault got his justified game back after last year’s five-sack outing against those other Tigers with a 300-yard, four-touchdown performance for JSU.

• Driven to drink, but best not to drive: Oklahoma freshman linebacker Londell Taylor was arrested on misdemeanor DUI charges Saturday night following the OU-Mizzou game.

Read More…