Bevo's Daily Round Up 1.21.09

Dr. Saturday looks at all the preseason Top 25 college football polls. Most believe Texas and Florida will meet.

Baseball America has the Horns at No. 4 in their preseason rankings. In case you were wondering... Texas A&M is No. 1.

Basketball

Arkansas loves Rick Barnes. Barnes spoke to the Downtown Tip-Off Club in Fayetteville, Arkansas on Monday.

Barnes had several other stories, including how his career started, but with time winding down, the man who was booed in Alltel Arena last spring and in Bud Walton on Jan. 6 stared into the crowd and said, "I've always wanted to hear that woo pig thing."

Within seconds, everyone was on their feet giving Rick Barnes a woo pig sooie send-off.

University of Texas guard Ashleigh Fontenette is the Big 12 Freshman Player of the Week.

Football

Sam Bradford was never close to leaving Oklahoma.

Father and son had lunch together just before the end of the regular season to discuss options, and that’s when Sam said he would go through the NFL evaluation process, but "felt he still had plenty of room to improve his game and get bigger and stronger before he made the jump," Kent Bradford said.

So, what happened to Mike Sherman's preseason idea of building the Aggie offense around Mike Goodson?

At his season-ending press conference, Aggies coach Mike Sherman hardly wanted to discuss why Goodson wouldn't be back, and why a year ago Sherman had said he wanted to build the offense around Goodson.

"We wanted to, but we didn't," said Sherman, whose first team finished 4-8. "We tried to, but it just didn't happen."

Missouri coach Gary Pinkel is a father-figure to his players.

Being a father is a tedious responsibility. Caring, nurturing and being a quality role model isn't always an easy task.

For Missouri's veteran head football coach Gary Pinkel, it appears it has become second nature judging by the way he treats his current players, his future players and his coaching staff.

 

Chase Daniel has a PR machine. Thursday is Chase Daniel day at ESPN. He starts on the Mike & Mike show at 8:25 a.m. and finishes at 2:40 p.m. on the Hotlist.

Nebraska's Marlon Lucky had an interesting observation about Chase Daniel at the East-West Shrine Game last week.

"He's not used to being under center, I can tell you that," Lucky said. "He was struggling under center with the handoffs and all that stuff. But when he got into the shotgun, he ran everything well."

Former Fresno State defensive line coach Kerry Locklin has been hired for the same position at Kansas.

ESPN's Tim Griffin looks at the recruiting needs of several Big 12 Programs: Texas Tech, Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.

Basketball

Oops. Kansas coach Bill Self spoke to a recruit during the evaluation period.

"It’s accurate," Self said after KU’s 73-53 victory over Texas A&M on Monday night. "After the game was over, like I always do, like every coach always does, I had to catch a plane, I had to go back and tell the coaches, you know, ‘Congratulations, good win.’ As I was approached, I shook a hand and said, ‘I can’t talk to you, but you played really well.’

"If that exchange, which is all it was, is a problem, then our administration will deal with it. I certainly by no means am going to deny that that happened, but the reason I was back in the back was to go say hi to the coaches after a game."

Texas Tech coach Pat Knight wants more leadership and accountability from his players.

Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Texas, is bringing back football. The school cut the program back in 1940, due to the fact a lot of male students were fighting in World War II.

ESPN has their college football prestige rankings for No. 16- No. 20. The Aggies come in at No. 20.

Recruits must wait until the National Signing Day to sign their letter of intent, but many made their decision months before. Some college coaches don't care for the waiting period and want an early signing period.

"All we're doing is chasing these guys who've already said they want to play for us," Minnesota coach Tim Brewster said. "We're just babysitting."

Brewster and some of his peers have pulled for an early signing period, which would allow committed players to formalize their intentions as soon as mid-December. Proponents say such a period would end stress for players and coaches and help schools save money by giving January recruiting a tighter focus. Opponents say the change would pressure players to sign early, and thus lose a two-month window for official visits. Schools would also be prevented from evaluating first-semester, senior-year grades.

Who are the top recruiting programs in the country? Texas is in the Top 10.

Everyone knows the No. 1 - No. 4 in the 2009 preseason college football rankings. The only question now is who will be No. 5.

Several football fans in Austin used the BCS formula to grade teams and Utah came up as the national champion.

"With the release of the six computer polls used in determining the ranking of teams in college football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS), it has been determined that the University of Utah has placed first in the final rankings of the 2008 season," said a news release last week.

Too bad nobody notified the BCS, which, as far as anyone knows, still hasn't changed its mind.

They also used the formula to determine the winner of World War II. The results were sent out in an email.

"Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands," it said. "Their only losses came against the U.S. and Russia; however, considering their entire body of work —including an incredibly tough strength of schedule — our computers deemed them worthy of the No. 1 ranking."