Welcome to TWIN. Starting elsewhere and ending in South Bend.
PAC-12 Commissioner Larry Scott gave an interview to the New York Times last weekend in which he discussed the future of the college football postseason. It would appear that Scott is in favor of a four-team playoff and reducing the total number of bowl games. He specifically addressed the fact that 6-6 teams should not be eligible for the postseason and that the bowl season should not drag as far as it has been into the month of January. I remain skeptical about going down the playoff road but I am all about shrinking the postseason a bit and wrapping it up closer to New Year's Day.
President Obama weighed in on the playoff and several other sports-related topics in an interview with Bill Simmons. It would appear that the President is also in favor of a college football playoff. He likes the eight team variety.
Tejas Tech front man Tommy Tuberville is the defendant in a fraud lawsuit. Tubs and his former business partner are accused of defrauding investors of a mere 1.7 million. Those are not exactly Madoff numbers but I doubt the good ole' boys that run Tejas Tech are digging this negative press too much. This will be interesting to keep an eye on.
Samantha Ketcham's bid to become Texas A&M's first female yell leader has come up short. The milkmen will continue to lead the cheers in Aggieland. For now....
More after the jump.
Straight cash homey. That's what Texas A&M and Missouri are shelling out to free themselves from the clutches of the Big 12 forever. For a cool $12.41 million each, they will officially depart the conference on July 1, 2012. I hope it turns out to be worth it.
Former Texas Offensive Coordinator Greg Davis got run out of Austin after the 2010 season and most Longhorn fans seemed to feel that his departure was long overdue. This week Davis resurfaced as the new OC for Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeyes. This is most likely a good fit for Davis. Ferentz has gone 96-66 in his 13 seasons at Iowa with four 10+ win seasons and two conference titles. That would have gotten him run out of Austin a long time ago.
Remember USC Running Back Dillon Baxter? He transferred to San Diego State and took all of six weeks to get dismissed from the Aztec squad. So much for that.
SBN has added a YouTube channel that is worth checking out. It would appear that Spencer Hall and Jason Kirk share our affinity for the beloved Fullback.
The mothership has yet to offer us big money for our pitched show wherein MotS dusts off his Bengal Bouts skills at the expense of some of the more unruly members of our commentariat. We plan to broadcast these dustups live from Murtaugh's garage with Miesle commentating and Burger breaking down lethal combos on a SMART board between rounds. It is only a matter of time until they pick it up.
On that note the Bengal Bout finals will be streamed live on UND.com tonight at 7pm EST. The website says Friday March 4th but I'm fairly certain that they mean tonight. Details. Anyway, who doesn't want to watch that?
Eric Hansen's Notre Dame football notebook was chock full of discussion points on Monday. For starters recent Notre Dame commit Davonte Neal got some attention earlier this week when he transferred to another high school. There was a mild explosion across the web on the Neal transfer but Hansen put us all at ease a bit with the below quote from Brian Kelly.
"He's going to have his academics taken care of, and that's really the most important thing for us"
Strangely I have convinced myself to feel better now.
Hansen went on to discuss fifth-year candidates. I mentioned this in the comments under this post on Monday but if you missed it the players below have submitted their applications to the Faculty Board on Athletics and are pending final approval.
Kapron Lewis-Moore
Jamoris Slaughter
Braxton Cave
John Goodman
Mike Golic Jr.
Dan McCarthy
Chris Salvi is the 7th but he does not have to go through the approval process as he will still be taking undergraduate classes in the fall. Salvi transferred to Notre Dame from Butler and is on track to graduate next December.
The only "new" name that surfaced here is Dan McCarthy. KLM, Slaughter and Cave have been foregone conclusions all along and Goodman & Golic leaked their news via Twitter a few weeks ago.
Hansen closed by addressing the rumored December 1st game at Hawaii'. It would appear that the proposed Manti Te'o sendoff game is officially dead in the water. That's too bad, I would have been all about sending Te'o and Toma off with a win in their backyard.
In other Notre Dame Football news you can buy up to 10 tickets for the Navy game in Dublin right now. The Naval Academy isn't wasting any time getting these on the market.
Speaking of football tickets have you purchased your tickets for the Blue-Gold Spring Football Game yet? I am pleased to announce that I bought a handful of tickets to said contest for the OFD Staff. We will be there in force. Details to follow but we hope to get a chance to visit with all of you while we are there.
The Comment of the week is brought to you by OFD regular commenter Shinons*. He took it to another level under Murtaugh's post on Troy Niklas moving to Tight End.
2 way player, FTW!
That'll satisfy the harumphers - especially if he sees time at fullback! Nostalgiagasm!
Really, I do think it would be pretty neat
The invention and use of the terms harumphers and Nostalgiagasm in a single comment is all varsity. I suspect that both of those will get regular usage from the commentariat going forward. If they don't we have all failed.
What did I miss?