Bevo's Daily Round Up 2.04.09

The quest for talented 17 and 18 year-old-kids. Nebraska State Paper looks at the frenzy surrounding signing day.

Change the rules! Cynics proclaim. Create an early signing period! They shudder. Things have ch-ch-changed! They bluster.

Ain’t a thing changed in the game. Here’s what has: Now you know how mind-numbingly elaborate and seamy this whole courtship is.

What cynics really loathe are the competition of recruiting services - like Rivals and Scout – that revel in the drama, chasing around high school kids via phone calls, email and text messages, all of which are essentially asking him to dip his finger in whatever sugary soda he likes to drink and hold it to the breeze. The cynics loathe realizing that their readers have forsaken the morning coffee and paper to squint at computer screens and type "WOOYAH! WOWEE!" when some kid they’ve never met says they’re 80 percent sure they’ll attend School X.

There is a new SB Nation blog just for Big 12 baseball.

Basketball

Tonight's game can either be good for Missouri or very, very bad.

"They'll be looking for blood," senior Matt Lawrence said. "We'll have to stomach that. I know after we lose, we're always ready to get to the next game and get that bitter taste out of our mouth."

Rick Barnes may not make any changes to the line up for the Missouri game.

"It's really easy right now to say, 'We're going to sit Connor Atchley down,' " Barnes said. "You look at his numbers. You also know he's made big plays in the past. The coach's job is to get him back there. The easiest thing to do is take out your frustrations."

Damion James had an MRI on his knee Monday.

Barnes responds to questions about Texas Tech coach Pat Knight's ejection.

"And you talk about bad games, it can be a bad game both ways, where they disrupt flow for everybody, where they take players out of a game," Barnes said. "There does come a point where you get frustrated and you want to lash out and say [or] do whatever, because at times coaches feel there really is no accountability. ..."

Baseball

FSN has announced its baseball telecast line up for the 2009 season. Texas A&M at Texas on Saturday May 9 is one of the televised games.

Football

BurntOrangeBeat talks to NFL scout Chris Stueber about Colt McCoy, Jordan Shipley, Adam Ulatoski and Sergio Kindle.

FoxSports Pete Schrager has a mock draft and Brian Orakpo comes in at No. 3.

A nice post from a USC blogger about the Horns win over Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl.

The Dallas Morning News looks back at the 2004 recruiting class from Texas.

Husker Locker Blog looks at why it is good to mess with Texas, at least in recruiting.

Mack Brown and Bob Stoops want an early signing period.

Texas coach Mack Brown believes it would take pressure off recruits because they wouldn't have to deal with the visits, calls and letters from schools throughout late December and January if they've already signed.

Brown, who often signs players who graduate high school and enroll in college a semester early, believes such a change would be beneficial for those students.

"I think it would be great ... especially for the ones that are coming in January because they could have a special day instead of missing their signing day because they're already enrolled in school," he said.

Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops is a major proponent of an early signing period and thinks it will be good for everyone involved.

"It would benefit those students (and) I think it would allow more coaches to be back from the road and be with the current players that are on your team in the early weeks of January working with them," he said. "I think there would be a lot of financial savings for universities as well."

T. Boone Pickens has more than the nation's energy problems on his mind.

T. Boone Pickens has been busy spreading the message about his energy policy. But when he has some downtime, you’re likely to find the Texas billionaire at Oklahoma State football games or helping its athletic department. Pickens, who earned a degree in geology from Oklahoma State in 1951 and made his fortune in oil and gas investments, donated $165 million to his school in 2006, the nation’s largest single gift to an athletic program.

Christine Michael may have an immediate impact at Texas A&M.

What about that SEC speed? Three Big 12 track teams beat three SEC teams.

Gary Patterson has  quite a recruiting tool at TCU. The girls outnumber the guys 4 to 1.

Sometimes the best recruits are overlooked by scouting services.

Rashad Johnson is the no-star All-American, the player overlooked by every scouting service in America, and most college coaches, too.

Johnson walked on at Alabama in 2004. Now after 30 starts and 11 career interceptions, the safety is likely bound for the NFL. He wouldn't trade his path for all the attention lavished on blue-chip recruits.

The economy is a factor in some recruits college decisions.

"Parents I have talked to have been concerned about the expenses involved with traveling," said Tom Lemming, recruiting analyst for CBS College Sports. "They would prefer their kid staying within a 300-mile radius.

The internet is also a factor in recruiting.

How did college football recruiting get to be bigger than, say, the Stanley Cup Finals?

Part of it is simple and obvious: Football is more popular than ever before. But there is more to it than that. The recruiting fervor has outpaced the growth of the sport. And that is largely because of how the world has changed in the last 10 years, especially the media world.

Ten years ago, most sports news came from newspapers (the actual, good old-fashioned print editions) or ESPN. Each was dealing with a finite amount of space or airtime and had to make editorial decisions based on what the masses seemed to want. Both could exercise restraint when it came to recruiting.

These days you can read any newspaper in the country and hundreds of other news and commentary sites, as long as you have an Internet connection. Pleasing the masses doesn't work so well anymore. The key to success is finding a niche, owning it and expanding it.

During the dead period right before signing day, recruits make calls to other recruits to get their peers to commit.

Midseason firings of basketball coaches is not a good trend. SI's Seth Davis wants ADs to take a pledge.

I hereby pledge never to fire a coach or ask for a coach's resignation before his or her season has concluded, except under extraordinary circumstances. I understand "extraordinary circumstances" to include egregious personal behavior, the commission of a major NCAA violation or some other circumstance which is not related to the athletic performance of a coach's team.

ESPN's Pat Forde looks at boorish behavior in college basketball. A Big 12 coach makes the list.