Welcome to another edition of the week in news. These are the college football stories that I found the most interesting this week.
ESPN will expand College Football Game Day to three hours this fall and add Erin Andrews to the supporting cast. That extra hour will be captivating I'm sure. That EA she can crank out the human interest pieces and injury reports like no other.
Vanderbilt Head Coach Bobby Johnson resigned unexpectedly this week. Uhhhh okay.
Sneaky Pete Carroll "feels responsible" for the current state of affairs at USC. Seriously follow this link and listen to Pete ramble, it is a comedy show. Of note said comments came about during an interview he was out doing while promoting his new book "Win Forever." I wonder if there is a chapter in there about securing unfair and totally shady advantages? Who the hell is going to buy his book?
In related news Carroll's under handed hiring of a special teams "consultant" in 2008 could be the thing that torpedoes the Trojan appeal of their NCAA sanctions.
The decision, as The Times reported last July, was to hire Pete Rodriguez, a former NFL special teams guru, in violation of the association's cap on coaches. It gave USC "more than a limited competitive advantage" over other schools, the NCAA found. Carroll did not list Rodriguez on the coaches roster while he served as a "consultant" for the Trojan kicking squads during the entire 2008 regular season.
In a related total coincidence USC Football players are suddenly scrambling to move back into the dorms. I wonder why? HLS has the details.
Pat Forde wrote a piece this week lambasting Nebraska for launching the Red Out Around The World website that we talked about last week. Short version he basically says one of the classiest programs around is now a bunch of chooches. Whatever. The more the hype builds around the Nebraska vs. Texas showdown the more I think I need to be in Lincoln on October 16th. Whatever happens I think I want to witness it first hand.
T. Boone Pickens might be running out of patience with Mike Gundy. I find this amusing on several levels. Does Boone really think he is going to get a better coach at Okie State? Granted it would be awesome if he, I mean the school, brought in Mike Leach for multiple reasons. That said I expect that I will see the Kraken emerge from the sea in person before Okie Light wins the Big 12-2 no matter who is on the sidelines. Billionaires...
Scipio Tex over at Barking Carnival wrote a very interesting piece about a new recruiting network that could emerge and crush the current big players in the recruitnik game. I'm all about it.
Speaking of recruiting Jamie Newberg wrote an article on Brian Kelly's recruiting strategy this week. I'm not sure I completely agree with the assessment on the previous regime. It wasn't perfect but Weis definitely made positive strides on the recruiting front. That said the insight into what Kelly is up to is interesting.
Former Irish great Tim Brown will be enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame this weekend. The honor is well deserved as Brown was simply electric at Notre Dame. As a side note I am also glad that I got to visit the HOF while it was still in South Bend.
Add Terry Bradshaw to the list of people that hate Jimmy Clausen. How novel.
We Are Notre Dame offered some great perspective on the availability of tickets to Notre Dame Football games this fall. They make some great points that are well worth the read.
HLS led a Twitter lynch mob on Thursday that called out College Football News about 10 different ways for running a ND preview that outlined all the reasons that freshman Offensive Tackle Matt James would be a difference maker in 2010. As you know James tragically lost his life this past spring. Nice work.
Over at NBCsports.com Notre Dame blogger Keith Arnold enlisted a handful of our favorite peers in the Notre Dame blogosphere to break down what they feel are the Top 25 players on the ND roster heading into 2010. Thus far numbers 25-11 have been revealed. The perspectives are a great read for any Notre Dame fan. The links are below.
Have a great weekend!