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You know how this works.
Starting elsewhere and ending in South Bend.
Charlie Strong took Louisville to the BCS and put the smack down on Florida. Now Charlie Strong is going to get paid. Louisville went big on this contract to make sure that Strong doesn't bolt for greener pastures in the near future. I suppose they got tired of Papa John's Stadium being used as a stepping stone. The deal makes Strong the 7th highest paid coach in college football.
Speaking of coaching salaries the mother ship put together a pretty interesting collection of 2012's most costly winners. Who sits at the top of the list? None other than Chuck Weis. Yeah, that guy. Isn't he still getting checks from Notre Dame too? Chuck knows how to get paid. Other notable names on the list include Kirk Ferentz, Mike Leach and Mack Brown. Good company.
The NCAA botched their investigation of Miami and are now investigating themselves. I believe that they are actually calling it an "external review" for those that are interested. This post from an "actual lawyer" explains this a little bit. If any of our resident lawyers want to clarify anything please feel free to do so in the comments.
Speaking of investigations Addicted to Quack has a great post up where they interviewed John Infante of the Bylaw Blog, about the NCAA investigation of Oregon and their relationship with Willie Lyles. The excerpt below is interesting.
In response to what was going on in men's basketball, the NCAA raised those requirements, and tried to distinguish between a recruiting service that was made in order to be an actual recruiting and scouting service versus one that was being used to funnel money, because what was happening in men's basketball was you would pay $5,000 to someone and you would get back xeroxed copies of something printed off Rivals.com, or you would get back the someone's height, weight, and then their evaluation would be 'high major,' 'mid major,' etc.So what the NCAA did was they put all these additional requirements like if you're going to subscribe to this, it has to be the same price, it has to be more information than just demographics, it has to be sent out at least four times a year, so very technical requirements. Basically, what's come out is it appears that a lot of the service that Oregon bought from Willie Lyles did not appear to meet those requirements. So the question now is what did that mean, and how is the NCAA going to treat that violation?
Look you guys, the Mountain West has divisions and a championship game now. These are the things that happen when the WAC no longer plays football. This is all very sad for New Mexico State though. Not only did the WAC not want them but Head Coach DeWayne Walker also fled Las Cruces to be the secondary coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Last week we talked a little bit about how conferences would be jockeying for position in the next iteration of the bowl games. This week the Big 12 announced that it is discussing partnerships with the ACC And two other unnamed leagues. Could such alliances be the thing that finally stops all of the crazy conference expansion? Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby seems to think so.
"We've had conversations with three other leagues," Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told the American-Statesman on Friday afternoon. "The ACC is one of them. It's a process of discovery that would provide some of the benefits of larger membership without actually adding members."
Pat Haden is standing by his guy Lane Kiffin. Now let's just hope he continues to stand by him for a long, long time.
You can't go more than a few weeks without the Dread Pirate Mike Leach stirring up a headline somewhere. This week he got some people riled up when he allegedly pulled an offer from a long time commit from DeSoto, Texas. You can add DeSoto High School to the long list of places that Leach has been banned from. Texas forever y'all.
On that Texas note did you all see this crazy video of Johnny Manziel and the Dude Perfect trick shot guys? If this is real, it is pretty incredible.
Have you all seen this De'Anthony Thomas Twitter piece from the mothership? This reminded me of how funny Big Louis Nix III's Twitter account is. Speaking of Irish Chocolate....
Big Louis Nix III has switched his jersey number to #1 for the 2013 season. Big Irish Chocolate even changed his Twitter handle to @ChocolateN1X to capture the essence of the swap. The Nix/ Toma #9 didn't stay available for long. The number will be passed on and once again it will be worn by two different players. Inbound freshmen Jaylon Smith and Mike Heuerman will both be rocking #9 next fall. Make Nix and Toma proud youz two.
What else? Oh yeah the Fighting Irish are hosting some big time visitors this weekend. Stay tuned for updates!
With all of the Te'o talk this week I tried to focus TWIN to topics other than the Te'o hoax again. But when it came to choosing the comment of the week OFD regular frank_grimes left me no choice but to post this one. Nicely done frank, nicely done.
Have a great weekend!
Here's what I think we, as ND fans, need to understand
There are some people out there who just don’t like ND football, period. And those people are going to believe the worst, no matter what. My suggestion to all of you is, don’t worry about perception. When this story first broke, I saw a lot of comments from people worried about public perception. Why worry about it? People are going to believe what they want to believe (case in point: Manti Te’o). Fair people will give this saga a fair hearing, but those who hate ND will believe the worst no matter what. So don’t worry about it.
And I wish people would stop trying to make sense of everything Te’o did IN HINDSIGHT. “Well here, here and here there should have been red flags.” Well yes, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight we can all look back and say he should have done things differently. We can also look back on the Titanic and determine things should have been handled differently there, but at the time it looked like a hell of a ship.
I’m not Manti Te’o, I can’t speak for his thoughts and feelings, and neither can you, so it’s ridiculous to project your thoughts, feelings and experiences onto him. “I would have done this, this and this.” Good for you. You also spend time commenting on a message board, while he’s built himself up as an all-american football player. So I’m thinking he would have handled your life differently as well.
As far as I can tell, the worst thing he did was lie about a few things. Well stop the freaking presses. All that means is he’s qualified to be president. I personally feel like these people who think he was in on the hoax should be applauding him, not criticizing him. Sheesh, if I thought someone was clever enough and clairvoyant enough to develop a story that allegedly propelled him to be a Heisman Trophy finalist (his play on the field had nothing to do with that?), I’d be rather impressed. What media savvy! Give me a break. At the very least, if he was looking to propel his Heisman campaign forward he would have waited until after the first showcase game against Oklahoma. “We just beat Purdue by 3 points, time to pull out the big guns!” And did I see someone mention money, or “sponsorships?” If all he wanted was to get paid, he wouldn’t have been on the freaking team last year, he would have already turned pro.
This saga, honestly, tells me more about the society we live in than it does about Te’o. He’s not perfect; I never suspected he was, and to be honest I didn’t care at all about this “inspirational” story. But the fact that so many people want to believe the worst in people, and that so many people never let facts get in the way of a good story, really disappoints me. It’s not surprising, this is the case with every soap opera-ish story that comes out. But man, the bloodthirsty mob mentality is quite startling, especially when you consider nothing was done here to gain a competitive advantage. Even if you believe the absolute worst about this story, it’s merely a media manipulation saga, not an effort to pay players under the table or forge academic records. It goes back to my original point, people just want to hate on ND, and you just can’t worry about that.
by frank_grimes on Jan 20, 2013 10:54 PM PST reply
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