Welcome to another edition of TWIN wherein I discuss the college football stories that I found to be the most interesting that week. The season is upon us and there will be real college football games on tonight! So let’s jump right in and take a look. Starting elsewhere and ending in South Bend….
After a few weeks of yes, no and maybe so BYU has officially decided to leave the Mountain West Conference next summer and become a football Independent. The other Cougar sports will play in something called the West Coast Conference. On the heels of the announcement BYU cut a deal with ESPN to broadcast their games and inked a 6 year deal to play Notre Dame. DeLoss Dodds is now on the clock. This superconference vs. independent scenario could get very interesting.
The Big Ten + 2 came up with a couple of convoluted divisions and a championship game. After the schedule that they got dealt Nebraska fans are starting to ask what they got themselves into.
The North Carolina soap opera continues. All world Defensive Tackle Marvin Austin has been suspended indefinitely.
The guys over at Spence Park Soap Box want to fire TAMU AD Bill Byrne. He came out this week and basically said that the Ags couldn’t compete in the SEC. Doh!
Virginia Tech vs. America’s favorite little guy Boise State is the game that everyone, especially the WWL, is talking about this week. Over at Barking Carnival Scipio Tex has a great take on the matchup. After reading this I now want to see a "False Kingmaker" trophy awarded to the winner.
It would appear that there is a split vote amongst the prognosticators as to whether or not Texas or Oklahoma will win the Big 12-2 South, defeat Nebraska in the Big 12-2 title game and possibly play in the BCS Championship. If you have ever wondered about the degree to which these two rivals think about one another you can find the answer in this great back and forth between Barking Carnival and Boomer and Sooner. You have to appreciate the fact that they are so focused on one another before the season even kicks off.
Nike has rolled out the latest iterations of their "Pro Combat" uniforms. Kudos to all of the programs that wear Nike uniforms and don’t participate in this ridiculous ad campaign. Any and all comparisons of athletics and athletic apparel to war, combat, battle, service members etc. should probably be avoided by corporate America. As we prepare to enter year 10 of OEF Nike continues to fail in the situational awareness department. In addition the uniforms themselves are simply ridiculous. Apologies for the mini rant. It is a pet peeve of mine.
Back on the Notre Dame front the Irish Blogger Gathering is in full tilt for week one. To check out all of the Notre Dame Blog contributions see the host post at UHND. Links to all of the responses from around the Notre Dame Blogosphere are at the bottom.
Speaking of other Notre Dame Blogs the wise one OC Domer has his Season Preview up and I was pleased to see that he is thinking much like I am about the 2010 season. As they say great minds think alike. For added greatness OC even included some high level math in his version. I need to drive up to Orange County and have a beer with him soon.
Sophomore Notre Dame Wide Receiver Shaq Evans asked for a transfer this week and Brian Kelly gave it to him. As per usual this one is a depth chart issue. It would appear that Shaq is headed home to play for Slick Rick at UCLA. Best of luck to him.
The Notre Dame opening week depth chart hit the streets this week bearing a couple of surprises. Coach Kelly shed some more light on those for us shortly thereafter. Bottom line this team has quality depth. Dig it.
Have a great weekend watching college football! We will continue our never ending conversation about Notre Dame and the greater college football landscape here at OFD throughout the weekend. So stop by, leave a comment or jump into our Forum to start a thread. You can also follow One Foot Down on Twitter. I will be commenting on all of the opening week action in bursts of 140 characters or less. Go Irish!