Nearly seven months after it occurred, USC’s loss to Stanford got even more amazing on Saturday.
A new addition to the legendary tale about the 41-point underdog Cardinal, playing without their starting quarterback and ending the Trojans’ 35-game home winning streak at the Coliseum, is that there were four NFL first-rounders on the field for USC that night.
Stanford, trying to merely find its way under new head coach Jim Harbaugh, had none. That, of course, shouldn’t be a surprise. “The Farm” has produced only five first-round picks since 1983, when John Elway was the first overall selection, and only one since 1993 (tackle Kwame Harris in 2003).
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A year after advancing to the Sweet 16 and despite the presence of O.J. Mayo, the USC men’s basketball team wasn’t able to even get out of the first round of the NCAA Tournament. The sting is still in the air, but Tim Floyd doesn’t have to worry. It won’t last long.
Spring practice is just about here.
Football -- even if just the spring version -- supersedes everything at USC.
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Less than 24 hours after Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton shared the spotlight, lashing out at each other in their latest Democratic debate, Will Muschamp and Major Applewhite took over the spotlight, and there was nothing but love as Austin turned its attention back to Longhorn football.
Yep, college football is back already. On Friday afternoon, a day after giving Obama a tour of his Texas-sized football facilities, Mack Brown was the first coach in the nation to get started with his allotment of 15 spring practice sessions.
That’s when Brown and junior quarterback Colt McCoy, the usual focal points, took a backseat to Muschamp and Applewhite, who are the rock stars of the spring.
Muschamp, the Longhorns’ new defensive coordinator, is already getting rave reviews after working with the Texas players for the first time.
That’s when Brown and junior quarterback Colt McCoy, the usual focal points, took a backseat to Muschamp and Applewhite, who are the rock stars of the spring.
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After meeting for three days this week, the NCAA “Football Rules Committee” emerged with several proposed changes for the upcoming 2008 season. One can assume that there were plenty of NFL rulebooks tucked into briefcases in that room.
Unlike last year, when the primary goal of the committee was to fix the timing errors they made in 2006, the committee’s focus was to “enhance the safety of our student-athletes.” The NFL-esque results included: stricter guidelines and penalties for dangerous helmet-related contact, a simplified interpretation of chop blocks and prohibiting the “horse-collar” tackle. We’re not sure why those rules weren’t in place to begin with, but it’s good to have them now in the hands of the “Playing Rules Oversight Panel” (we aren’t making that up).
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Tommy Bowden set himself up. For what exactly remains to be seen. But he’s set up now.
Recruiting classes that deserve a standing ovation, like the one he wrapped up on Wednesday, have a way of doing that to you. It all has to do with the level of expectations.
And at Clemson, you also have to factor in “the wait.”
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A couple decades ago, longtime college basketball coach and voracious reader George Raveling said: “After reviewing more than 60 sports sections from across the nation, I have yet to find one college football coach who didn’t have a great recruiting year. Where did all the average players go?”
While the jab may have been fueled by the playful rivalry between college football and basketball coaches, it was indeed true. Back then, before the Internet gave birth to a multitude of recruiting pontificators and prognosticators, a coach’s class sometimes could be as good as he wanted it to be … until the players actually started playing, of course.
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Panther Field, where Ohio Dominican University plays its football games, is less than eight miles away from the Horseshoe, but they might as well be light-years apart. That’s the relative distance between the Panthers and the Ohio State Buckeyes.
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When Pete Carroll was hired at USC in December of 2000, DeWayne Walker and Norm Chow were the first “recruits” he went after.
Walker was still the New England Patriots’ secondary coach, having stayed on as a member of Bill Belichick’s staff after Carroll was fired following the 1999 season.
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Due to the way the most recent season ended, talk of establishing a playoff has shifted into high gear.
An eight-team playoff bracket like the one proposed by University of Georgia president Michael Adams is too much of a leap and too harmful to the significance of the bowl system. But it’s not out of the question down the road. It’s more likely that a “plus one” scenario will serve as an intermediate step, following the 2010 regular season.
With that in mind, it makes sense to look at how such a scenario would have applied itself to the recently completed season. Would it have helped to clean things up? Judge for yourself and let me know.
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I grew up on University of Hawaii football. Names such as Falaniko Noga, Gary Allen, David Toloumu, Nuu Faaola, Raphel Cherry and Walter Murray are completely foreign to most, but they mean a lot to me. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve watching them play on Saturday night at Aloha Stadium.
In 1981, when Hawaii went 9-2, I got hooked on college football. Coach Dick Tomey had established a solid program that consistently flirted with the idea of making it big someday. There was no harming in dreaming.
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