Since I'm on the Vols the
WWL ran a segment on
Outside the Lines last Sunday about Tennessee’s Lane
Kiffin that focused on his recent transgressions to include a handful of secondary recruiting violations. My takeaway from the interviews is that
Kiffin is going with the "any publicity is good publicity" philosophy. Interestingly enough
the OTL piece itself is potentially now a violation as it showed
Kiffin meeting with recruits.
The Wiz of Odds has an interesting post up this week
on the prices of new premium seats at Cal. So much for the cheap seats. For a cool $225,000 you can get prime season tickets at California Memorial Stadium. With six home games in 2009 that's $37,500 per seat for each game. For that kind of cash I better get to suit up and play a couple of snaps. The crazier part is that some fans are shelling it out. All of this to raise money to save the crumbling old stadium. I wonder if the tree people will come back when they start working on it? I obviously went somewhere horribly wrong in life. I need to get to the point where 225k for season tickets sounds like a good idea.
The end result of the NCAA investigation into the Alabama textbook scandal is that Bama will vacate 21 wins that fell between 2005-2007, and serve three years of probation. They will also have to pay a $43,900 fine. Can they just buy a single ticket to a Cal game and call it good? This whole affair is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and Bama has a good chance of getting those wins back through the appeals process. After all Oklahoma got theirs back through the appeals process after the Big Red Motor Sports scandal that ousted QB Rhett Bomar. Meanwhile the LA Times blasted USC leadership for their lack of action during their ongoing NCAA investigation.
Dr. Saturday gave Notre Dame Head Coach Charlie Weis a little critiquing on his usage of Twitter to this point and suggests he should start a blog instead. I would read it. Hell I'd pay for a subscription. I'd love to know more about what he's thinking.
Notre Dame is
working through Pep Rally options due to the fact that the Joyce Center, where they are typically held, will be undergoing renovations this fall. They could really do something cool with this and have them at a different place of significance on campus each week. Just set up a stage for the team and let whoever wants to walk up and get fired up. It will never happen but it sounds fun.
In recruiting news
Notre Dame received a commitment from Wide Receiver Bennett Jackson this week.
The great Subway Domer has a solid write up and some video on the future slot receiver. I’m always happy to see good kids committing to ND but I’ll get excited when this class picks up a herd of offensive and defensive linemen. To state the obvious it all hinges on performance on the field this fall. Meanwhile
We Is Notre Dame has an
equally great write up on the choice of young Nick Montana to commit to Washington. I completely agree with their perspective and could not have said it better myself. Nice work all around gents.
The World Wide Leader jumped on the Irish bandwagon this week and
predicted a great season for Notre Dame in 2009. Interesting twist as they were all over how terrible they were in 2007 and 2008. Good, bad or middle of the road the Irish remain relevant. You have to have an "Insider" account to r
ead the whole article but the very short version is that they compared
Clausen’s numbers to Matthew Stafford's after his Sophomore year at Georgia and the 2008
Notre Dame team to the 2007 Alabama team noting many similarities on both counts. I wonder if Mark May approved this article?
Texags.com has taken a page out of former "Wrecking Crew" DC Bob Davie’s playbook and has taken to using academics as the reason they can’t recruit top line players to field a competitive team. Strange how this excuse only rears its ugly head when teams are losing. The R.C. Slocum quote about "Choking Chickens" did make me laugh though.