You know it's bad in Iowa City when...

...even the Cedar Rapids Gazette (the Iowa Hawkeye "homer" paper) is getting in on the act. The "act", if you aren't already aware, is the now-regular reporting of the mounting criminal activities by (cough)student(cough)-athletes at the University of Iowa (nearly all of which have been football players).

Cedar Rapids Gazette - Leaders, not bystanders

The "Ghost Room"?! Good Lord.

Now, an intelligent person might ask, "If all of these quotes are from investigations you did in November of last year, why are you just now (six months later) reporting it?"

The answer, my friends, lies in the first sentence of this post.

It appears the floodgates are now wide open. Not even the Hawkeye Gazette can pretend it isn't happening anymore.

Oh, well... better late than never... I guess. Don't get cocky, though. You didn't earn any respect with this.

SIDE NOTE: I really don't like spending this much time/energy on the Hawks, but it's coming in waves right now. Really. There is nothing I can do. My hands are tied. Not in a "my hands are tied while Cedric Everson sexually assaults me" kind of way, but you smell what I'm cookin'.

SEC AD's give thumbs-down to early signing day

...but not because they didn't like it necessarily, but because they had some unanswered questions.

ESPN - SEC athletic directors turn down proposed early signing day

It's win for the have-nots, and all non-SEC schools, in my opinion.

Again... I see the good and the bad around this (see previous post), but if I had to vote, I would say No.

We'll see if this comes up again next year...

A cool "polling system" by another blogger

The guy over on Three Yards and a Cloud of Rubber posted this:

Predict the Final Big 10 Standings

Damn... I use Google Docs, but I can't figure out how he does that. If I can, I will figure it out and post one for the Big XII fans out there.

Another bit on recruiting

My last post sparked my memory about another article I had read that discusses "A new NCAA rule approved in January forbids college football head coaches from visiting high schools during the spring evaluation period that stretches from April 15 through May 31."

ESPN - Big 12 roundup: Recruiting, Reesing, Red Raiders and more

I point this out because it's an example of what I was talking about in my last post. Coaches like Mack Brown love this rule because it prevents other coaches from invading his talent pool for 6 weeks. Les Miles (LSU) and Dan Hawkins (Colorado) basically call bullshit, but what can they do?

As a grad from a Big XII North school, I'm accustomed to getting the short end of the stick against Texas in College Football politics.

Early signing period for SEC?

The SEC coaches voted 9-3 in favor of a 24-hour "Early Signing" window in late-November on the Monday before the contact period begins.

ESPN - SEC coaches hoping for early signing day in late November

A major benefit of this would be that if a kid is ready to commit (with a written Letter of Intent - the only "real" commitment) to a school at that time, they can. This would prevent schools from having to spend time and resources recruiting these kids until the first week of February - National Signing Day (NSD).

It wouldn't be such a big deal, except that there has been an ugly trend developing recently where situations like this arise:

* Kid verbally commits to School A in, say, October.
* School A says "thanks", and turns it's attention to it's 24 other scholarships it is trying to fill
* Around January, Kid starts to feel ignored by School A
* School B checks Rivals.com, sees Kid has committed to School A, and thinks "Huh... we never noticed him. Let's go get him!"
* School B swoops in, weeks before NSD, with a shower of recruiting attention on Kid
* Kid feels loved again, and signs his LOI with School B on NSD
* School A complains that School B "stole" their recruit

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It definitely favors the Texas's, Florida's and USC's of the world, who have a huge pool of great local athletes beating down their door to play for them.

For the have-not schools, or schools in less-populated areas, that recruiting time in December in January is critical. How are coaches in the Midwest supposed to recruit in Texas and Florida during the season? They can't.

I admire Urban Meyer for opposing this. He has every reason to want to lock his local recruits up early, before the northern schools start booking their recruiting trips to the Sunshine State.

In the end, I don't like it. Maybe it's because my team is a have-not, and I'm used to rooting for the underdog, but I'm not in favor of any new rules that help the rich get richer in College Football.

By the way, if you want a better understanding of how the recruiting process works in College Football, pick up this book. It's a quick read, and your wife will be impressed that you actually read a book.

Trouble at Wazzu

Look at this guy go...

ESPN - QB Schmidtke to be released from football agreement

11 citations in 18 months? Duuuude, you might want to lay low for a while.

Rivals - 2008 Head Coach Power Rankings

I just ran across this over on Cyclone Fanatic:

Rivals - 2008 Head Coach Power Rankings

Interestingly enough, I don't see Kirk Ferentz on that list...

Hawkeye Trainwreck

I hate to post about the Hawks so early in the blog, but the College Football Guy like to be timely with his news.

The Hawks are paying Kirk Ferentz nearly $3 million/year to go 19-18 over the last 3 years, have a 3-6 career record against in-state rival Iowa State, and lose their last game of the season last year, at home, on Senior day, with a bowl bid on the line, to Western Michigan.

I don't know where it stands now, but when USA Today wrote this report in November 2006, Ferentz was the 2nd-highest paid coach in the country.

Million-dollar coaches move into mainstream

Also under his watch, Kinnick Stadium is being re-named Kinnick Prison. Seriously, look at this list:

List of recent Hawkeye legal troubles

Here's the latest news...

DMR - Warrants charge ex-Hawkeyes with sex abuse

ESPN - Arrest warrants issued in sexual assault case

This is on the heels of Pierre Pierce, the basketball player and two-time sex offender. Did I mention the possible/probable cover-up by the university, not reporting the incident to the police? It stinks in Iowa City right now, bad. My man Keeler at the Des Moines Rag summed it up pretty good the other day...

Night descends on Iowa football

Even the most hard-core Hawkeye fans and Ferentz supporters are starting to waiver, and for good reason. I pray that it never gets this bad in Ames.

In Kirk We Trust? Really? See you in September.

NCAA '09 Release Date : 7/15/08

I'm not a big "gamer", but I like to grab the new version of these games every 3 years or so. I typically play the shit out of them for a while, then let them collect dust until some night rolls around where my wife is out of town and I can't find anyone to grab a beer with.

The only games that I have really played since the turn of the century have been Tiger Woods 04, Madden 05 and NCAA Football 06.

I think this is the year I re-up on NCAA Football. This Online Dynasty thing looks like a perfect way to waste time with my buddies back in the Midwest. Of course, this means I will need to upgrade to a PS3, which won't be cheap, but it is a Blu-Ray player, which is nice.

Here are some links I found:

EA Sports - NCAA 09
GameRosters.com - A service provided by a fellow ISU Alum
PSX Sports - Same type of service
Operation Sports - Screen-shots - All of the teams are shown in order towards the end of the slides

I was able to pre-order the new 80GB PS3 at Circuit City, which allows you to play your old PS2 games on it:

Circuit City - New 80GB PS3

It looks like you might not be able to pre-order any more, but you get the idea. I think it's supposed to come out in early/mid-June.

Opening Kickoff

Cheers, all. I'm the self-proclaimed College Football Guy. Pretty original, I know. I thought of it when I decided to start a blog. I thought about going with College Football Genius, or Guru, or some other word that starts with G, but only a douche bag would proclaim himself a Genius or a Guru. So I'll go with Guy.

I assume you like college football, too, or you wouldn't be here. Good for you. It's great isn't it? Until a team like Georgia starts complaining that they should be in the BCS Championship game, even though they didn't even win their division in their conference. Then it's not sweet. Then you want to tell them to travel more than an hour to play a game every once in a while (I know, they go to Tempe this year). But mostly it's sweet.

Just so you know where I'm coming from, here's a little history...

I grew up in West Des Moines, IA rooting for the Iowa Hawkeyes.

...

Sorry, I just threw up a little in my mouth. Back to the story...

These were the Hayden Fry years, and the Hawks were semi-frequent visitors to the Rose Bowl, though they were never actually able to win one (1982 - Washington, 1986 - UCLA, 1991 - Washington).

I played football (not very well), but baseball was what I excelled at growing up. So when my dream of a baseball scholarship to Stanford didn't pan out, I had to look for other college options. When it came time to pick a college, my budget pretty much limited me to in-state tuition. That left Iowa or Iowa State. I don't count UNI - it's basically a JuCo for teachers-to-be that happens to have a decent D1 basketball program and a great D1-AA football program.

Anyway... I was pretty set on Engineering, so Iowa State was clearly the better choice. The doctors, lawyers and hot chicks went to Iowa. The engineers, scientists and farmers daughters went to ISU. At Iowa, they had (age) 19 bars, guys and gals drank shots of Jaeger, and tried their hardest to look as cool or hot as they could doing it. At Iowa State we drank beer. Like, a shit-load of beer. The Beast was a favorite. Or Natty Ice if you wanted a quicker buzz, coupled with the worst headache of your life. Iowa talked a lot about partying, and they did. We just did it, and shut the fuck up about it.

This pretty much helps explain it:

Girls of the Big XII - Iowa State

No. 1 Pastime: "Drinking. If you don't like alcohol, go to another school."

Atta girl. Way to represent.

Shortly after starting at ISU, my high school football coach got hired on as an assistant there, and he helped me get a job as the assistant to the Video Director for the football team. I filmed every practice and game, traveled with the team, cut tapes for coaches, etc. Pretty sweet, except that I was working my ass off, and had very little time for "the college experience", if you know what I mean.

I worked that for a couple years, then left and lived off of some less time-consuming jobs, then I graduated and moved to Orange County, CA (possibly the only County in the country that you can refer to like a city, and everyone gets it - except maybe Humbolt County, but that's a whole other deal...)

Because my allegiance is to a team that has only once even smelled the national limelight in College Football (2002 - when Seneca Wallace lead the #9 Cyclones into Norman to play the #2 Sooners and were absolutely crushed, 49-3), and I now live in the heart of USC/UCLA territory, and I travel quite a bit for work (I could see the blue turf from my hotel room in Boise once), I feel like I have a pretty fair view of the college football landscape.

Did I mention I have a fridge in my garage that's dedicated to booze. Pretty sweet, huh.

OK, my hands are cramping. I think I just gave myself carpel-tunnel. I'm out.