I need to go to realignment talk rehab. It has been a great discussion but I am ready to move on to something else. At least until the next interesting 10 degrees of "some guy at the bar told me..." message board post hits and ignites the next round of discussion.
Here are a few other pseudo interesting tidbits from around the college football landscape this week.
Lane Kiffin is getting paid a cool $4 million per year at USC. As much as I hated watching ND lose to USC with Carroll on the sidelines Kiffin kicks the whole thing up another several notches. You couldn't dream up a more perfect antagonist. Here is to hoping Brian Kelly owns him.
The powers that be at Texas Tech are still trying to rid themselves of Mike Leach. With no other treasure to plunder for the year I expect Leach will continue to entertain himself by torturing the Raiders until he finds something better to do with his time. I still expect he will catch on at some Sun Belt type school at the conclusion of the 2010 season. Gerald Myers is praying for someone to hire Leach ASAP.
The ACC is the latest BCS conference to broker a gigantor TV deal. The Pac Ten and Big 12 need to iron out the details on their combined TV deal ricky tick to help keep this realignment monster in check.
BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock responded to U.S. Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) with a five page letter outlining all the reasons that the two Senators should stop spending the taxpayers money to shake the BCS down. The letter is outlined in five key points with a primary focus on revenue distribution. In short the BCS is saying that the little guys are doing quite well for themselves. Another interesting observation is that the Official BCS Website is now being run by ESPN. They damn near own all of college football at this point.
University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, AZ is now a potential venue for non-conference games between the Pac 10 and Big 12. Cool.
Minnesota has self reported violations related to the recruitment of all world offensive tackle Seantreal Henderson. Too bad it didn't work. Henderson jumped on the Kiffin train and headed to USC. Ther is no denying the Orgeron. Dr. Saturday has an entertaining piece on the situation.
On May 24th Michigan will announce self imposed sanctions related to exceeding practice time and having too many coaches involved in off season activities. It is but a small price to pay for having the unbeatable genius Rich Rodriguez on the sidelines.
Wolverines coach Rich Rodriguez said he's also preparing a response that will be released at the same time "if the attorneys can get all the communication done."
"A lot of the things that I would probably want to say will be in the response," Rodriguez said. "But I don't know if everything that I'd like to say will be in the response."
That should be entertaining.
Speaking of Michigan the extension of the series between the Wolverines and Notre Dame through 2031 was apparently never solidified with a signed contract. Needless to say that with all the other uncertainty currently in the air some Irish faithful are not real excited to hear this. I won't rehash all of the reasons why I think it is important that the Wolverines remain on the schedule.
I have read an obscene amount material on realignment in the last couple of weeks. Much to my surprise I actually quite enjoyed this piece from Pat Forde. In short he is not in favor of a major shakeup and does a fine job of reminding us all just how powerful the Big Ten has been for the last decade. Food for thought.
Enjoy the weekend.