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…

Legendary coach Barry Switzer is the patron saint of Campus Union’s college football awards; Dana Holgorsen is one of our distinguished spring 2012 imaginary award recipients. (US PRESSWIRE)

[Previously: 2011 midseason Switzies | 2011 year-end Switzies]

Preseason football is meaningless football, but that won’t stop us from handing out imaginary trophies to the luminaries of spring. Be sure to also check out Andy Staples’ post-spring Top 25 and Stewart Mandel’s 10 spring lessons.

• The Paul Erdős Plaque for Most Relentlessly Complex Spring Game Scoring System: Auburn, which awarded players extra points for “explosive plays”  and consecutive first downs, confounding all onlookers.

• The Mark Mangino Medal of Mean Expectation Lowering: Quoth Dana Holgorsen, tempering fan panic as he tinkers with his offense: ”The guys in there? If we’re playing with them in the fall, we’re not going to win.”

• Most Likely To Announce His Own Retirement At Halftime Of The First Game Due To Incurable Sadness: We had Frank Spaziani slotted in here until about three minutes before hitting the “publish” button, when we realized we’re not sure if he’s capable of processing human sadness. Would Kirk Ferentz make an able runner-up candidate? He keeps right on losing running backs, had to replace two coordinators and has a Week 1 date with Northern Illinois. The Huskies are themselves replacing Chandler Harnish, but if Jordan Lynch can even prove a halfway passable facsimile … oh, man.

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…

Danny O'Brien is trading in his Maryland flag-themed apparel for Wisconsin's ever-so-slightly more traditional look. (US PRESSWIRE)

We’re hitting the road for our first swing through spring camps, so you’re getting your roundup reading today. Normal posting will resume Monday. 

• Wisconsin wins Whimsy Wednesday! Wowsers! Bret Bielema (the alliteration hits just keep on coming) has landed high-profile transfer fish and Maryland refugee Danny O’Brien, and will attempt to stage an encore presentation of 2011′s smash hit, “Anything Your ACC Quarterback Can Do, He Can Do Better Here,” starring Russell Wilson. (It’s a working title.) Our sincere best wishes to O’Brien, whom we hope informed Randy Edsall of his decision by leaving a terse answering machine message explaining that Wisconsin is his “dream school.”

• This blurb also not sponsored by Allstate. No Allstate Police Blotter Item of the Week this week thanks to a strange lull in college football-adjacent crime, but we can’t let the week pass without recognizing the efforts of Boston College defensive lineman Jaryd Rudolph, who got himself busted making a sex tape of a teammate and a female BC student. It was an audio-only sex tape, making it the “losing to one-win Maryland” of erotica. (Sorry, Terps. Not your day. Here, have a metaphor.)

• Hail to the Sun Belt, sure is a fun belt, Ra! Ra! Ra! Georgia State to the Sun Belt one scant season after joining the CAA? Sure, why not? This is the age of San Diego State to the Big East, and nothing is sacred or sensical.

Read More…

Assorted bits of light reading to speed you through your Friday.

• Fear the Fruit. Delta State’s “Fear the Okra” campaign continues to delight and horrify in equal measure.

• Welcome to the College Football Hall of Fame Tent, sponsored by Coca-Cola. We prefer to think this is just a power play enacted as sort of a protest movement against those who would block the enshrinement of Stephen Garcia’s hair.

• What, no Sam Bradford? Starting Monday, you can vote for RGIII’s EA Sports sidekick.

• All in the graven idol game. Auburn’s Heis-men statues will be unveiled at the Tigers’ spring game. We’re holding out for a statue of Pat Dye.

Read More…

We feel like this didn’t get enough play last week, probably because it was posted at quittin’ time on a Friday, but hide your parents’ sisters, doting nephews of Westwood!

UCLA’s offensive coordinator and currently Tim Tebow’s QB coach, Noel Mazzone, stood my auntie up for her prom in 1974. #notsofunfact

— Arian Foster (@ArianFoster) February 17, 2012

Illinois players, coaches and staff helped prepare and distribute meals for the needy Friday in San Francisco. (AP)

The 2011 Kraft Fight Hunger 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 Stewart Mandel’s game preview.)

• What’s all this, then? Welcome, one and all, to the 10th annual Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl!

• Can they even say that when the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl is exactly one year old? They can, apparently. The former Emerald Bowl turned over title sponsorship in 2010.

• Any particular reason I should feel bad for making fun of this bowl’s clunky name? There is, actually!

Once again, Kraft Foods is working with Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief organization, to fight hunger but the 2011 goal is to help donate 25 million meals. Ultimately, this donation will help the more than 50 million Americans who live in food insecure households.

• Totally fine to be petrified of its mascots, though, right? Absolutely. Don’t stand with your back to any ballroom during bowl week activities, lest the Kool-Aid man and a bipedal Oreo creep up on you.

• Where will this game be played? San Francisco’s AT&T Park, permanent home of the baseball Giants and temporary home of Cal football during stadium renovations.

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…

LaMichael James and Oregon beat UCLA 60-13 when the teams met last season. (Peter Read Miller/SI)

• Pac-12 Championship Game: UCLA @ No. 8 Oregon, 8:00 p.m. ET, FOX: If this weren’t the inaugural Pac-12 title game, it wouldn’t even be worth mentioning. The Bruins are the technical South champions, but the honor of the best record belongs to the postseason-banned Trojans. Everything about this game is ridiculous: The conference’s first title match is destined to be remembered as a joke; Rick Neuheisel wraps his coaching tenure at his alma mater playing primetime cannon fodder; and for comparison’s sake, there’s a MAC championship starting an hour earlier that looks like the hot television ticket of the evening. It’s nobody’s fault, but the Bruins simply shouldn’t be here.

Read More…

This long-burning question finally has an answer: Washington State. (Icon SMI)

• We have our heading: CBS’ Bruce Feldman had it first, and had it correct: The Dread Cap’n has docked in Pullman and intends to stay a spell. And we owe a debt of gratitude to Larry Scott, whose blockbuster Pac-12 media rights deal facilitated the triumphant return of Mike Leach to the ranks of active college football coaches. Triumphant? At Washington State? You bet your barnacles. Stewart Mandel has a much longer column up on this topic, but let me just add to the chorus: Leach is inheriting a talented passing offense from Paul Wulff. He’ll have the money to hire some talented assistants. He’s well-known enough to garner media attention for his team even if ESPN decides in a fit of entirely plausible petulance to plunge the program into a total Worldwide Leader media blackout. (What will become of the GameDay flag?)

Apart from all that, it’s just a win for fans of the game. College football is more interesting with Mike Leach in it than without, and since it’s just Washington State and it can’t possibly threaten your team’s livelihood for months at least, those of you without active rooting interests in the Cougars have plenty of shady cover beneath which to become ravenous sidewalk alumni.

• Rest in peace, Tiger: Chester McGlockton, former star Clemson defensive tackle and current Stanford assistant coach, died Wednesday of what’s being reported as a heart attack. McGlockton, 42, was finishing up his second season on the Cardinal staff. Our sincere condolences and best wishes to his family and the Clemson and Stanford football communities.

Read More…