These are supposed to be 2010 season highlights, but since we really didn't have any, the author just threw in some old clips. It definitely works for me.
Whatever you do, just don't end up like Texas.
The glow of Auburn's second national championship won’t come off for awhile, but next season will come sooner than expected. What will that season look like? If we follow the template of Texas from this past season, it’s not a pretty picture.
ESPN blogger David Ubben talks to himself about Texas.
Reason in Ubben's head asked: Texas is Texas. There is no way that they can do bad and not win. They are Texas after all. Nevermind that they have no character, they are soft and are replacing their OC and DC and are losing their only running threat (Newton) and best Defender in Williams. But... they're Texas
DU: You're crazy if you think Newton is their best runner. He wasn't any more consistent than Fozzy Whittaker or Cody Johnson, and like Marcus Lattimore and Michael Dyer showed us this year, freshman running backs can have a huge impact on teams. That's a big reason for the excitement surrounding Malcolm Brown. As for no character and being soft, none of that seemed to hurt them over the past decade. How quickly people forget the Longhorns' sustained success under Mack Brown with one awful season. Replacing a guy like Colt McCoy isn't easy, especially when you build your entire offense around him. They're not replacing anyone as indispensable as him this year. Also, Sam Acho was unquestionably their best defender this year, not Aaron Williams. Both are gone, yes, but Texas has a ton of talent behind them with a lot to prove in 2011.
What a great way to start Big 12-2 conference play.
Hamilton, given space to shoot against Oklahoma's zone defense, matched a career best with five three-point baskets as the 12th-ranked Longhorns defeated the Sooners 66-46 Saturday in front of 13,196 fans at the Erwin Center.
"I thought it was Christmas out there," Hamilton said.
Merry Christmas, Jordan.
Meet one of UT's biggest donors, Red McCombs.
Basketball
The Big 12-2 is a basketball conference.
Barking Carnival has a Big 12-2 season preview.
Kansas' forward Marcus Morris gets high praise.
Shortly after his team’s 84-79 victory at Iowa State on Wednesday, Bill Self emerged from the Kansas locker room and paid forward Marcus Morris the ultimate compliment.
"He’s the best all-around player we’ve had here," Self said. "He does more things well than anybody we’ve ever coached."
The Aggie Tough Love program has paid off for coach Mark Turgeon.
Two seasons into guard Naji Hibbert's career, the men surrounding him daily under Reed Arena's roof agree on at least one thing concerning the sophomore's steady growth.
Coach Mark Turgeon is hard on Hibbert.
Turgeon points to Hibbert's "potential" as reason to stay on his case. Senior teammate B.J. Holmes sees a mirror image of his own development as an underclassman - thanks in part to Turgeon's tough-love treatment of both.
Kansas State beat up Texas Tech.
No. 21 Kansas State did just that Saturday, hammering Texas Tech 94-60 behind Jamar Samuels' 22 points and Jacob Pullen's 21. Rodney McGruder added 16 points and 15 rebounds for the Wildcats (13-5, 1-2 Big 12), and Curtis Kelly had 12.
John Roberson scored 19 for Texas Tech (8-10, 0-3) and Brad Reese added 11. The Red Raiders have lost their three Big 12 games by a combined 77 points, with two of those losses coming at home.
Nebraska almost beat Kansas. Yes, you read that correctly.
The Aggies beat Missouri in OT.
Can a player come off the bench to shot a technical free throw?
Question:
In the Kansas State at Oklahoma State game on January 8, Jamar Samuels of KSU was assessed a technical foul after arguing a call. The Cowboys' Keiton Page was on the bench when the foul was called. Page entered the game and shot the technical free throws for OSU. Is this allowed?
Submitted by Jason, Oklahoma City, Okla.
Answer:
Good question, Jason. This is a permissible way for a team to shoot free throws. In the NCAA Rules Book, Rule 8, Section 2, Article 4 states that "free throws awarded because of any technical foul will be attempted by a player on the offended team, including an eligible substitute, who shall be designated by the head coach or captain of the offended team. The same player must shoot both free throws."
This rule allowed Keiton Page to enter the game as an eligible substitute and attempt the free throws.
There is quite a drama brewing in Manhattan. The Wildcat's season has been a disappointment so far.
The most disappointing college basketball team in the country now faces a five-game stretch that will decide its season. The consequences extend much deeper.
So much is wrong with Kansas State. The Wildcats lack leadership, even with a three-year captain and preseason All-American. They lack togetherness, even with a well-respected coach who just last year was recognized nationally. They lack post presence, even with four bigs who average 6 feet 10 and 253 pounds.
Most of all, Kansas State lacks any apparent toughness, even with a reputation as one of the hardest teams in the country. Last year, the Wildcats called themselves Dobermans. This year, they’re far more domesticated.
For the rest of this weekend's conference games, visit Big 12 Hoops.
Football
It is always good to get a boost from the Land Thieves.
Weeden and Blackmon, the Oklahoma State duo, spent the season making Jones and Broyles the nation's second-best quarterback-receiver combo.
Weeden bested Jones for the Big 12's first-team quarterback nod. Blackmon beat out fellow finalist Broyles for the Biletnikoff Award.
All four will be coming back to their respective campuses. So, too, will Sooners linebacker Travis Lewis.
Do you really care? Here are the Big 12-2 television bowl ratings.
Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma versus Connecticut. The game drew a 6.15 rating, down 25 percent from the 2010 Fiesta Bowl between TCU and Boise State. It was the lowest of the five BCS games, which shouldn't come as a surprise. The Outback Bowl between Florida and Penn State also outdrew the Fiesta Bowl. The 17-point line between the teams wasn't very attractive, and the game wasn't in much doubt in the second half.
Great. There is some news on running backs coming out of Norman and it isn't good.
Oklahoma already has a handful of backs jockeying for carries in 2011. Sophomore-to-be Roy Finch, who averaged just under five yards a carry as a freshman in 2010, headlines this group.
The Sooners added another on Thursday, when former Iowa running back Brandon Wegher announced he would transfer to Oklahoma.
Wegher sat out the 2010 season after leaving the Hawkeyes in August, but ran for 641 yards and eight touchdowns as a freshman in 2009. It wasn't immediately clear if sitting out the 2010 season would satisfy the one-year requirement that comes with transferring to another FBS school, but Wegher plans to walk on to the Sooners. An OU spokesman told the Tulsa World that Wegher would need to be granted a waiver by the NCAA to play in 2011.
Oklahoma’s Bruce Kittle, last season's on-campus recruiting coordinator, has been promoted to tight ends and tackles coach.
When Robert Griffin got to town, everything changed for the Bears.
"Robert Griffin has had a huge effect on some of the players that they've been able to bring in the last couple of years," said Todd Wills of SicEmSports.com. "He has a personality that you just don't get from a college athlete. He just has a personality that draws people to him. He's a class kid and a great student. He's the kind of guy, as a coach, that you want out there trying to get guys to come to Baylor."
A&M defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter will stay in College Station and receiver Jeff Fuller is coming back for his senior year.
Sad news, if true...Are the Sooners facing scholarship limits?
Success has its problems.
Former offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen and former running backs coach Robert Gillespie have left OSU for West Virginia. As of Wednesday, Holgorsen and Gillespie are the lone staff departures.
Some man love in Stillwater.
Bowl ratings dropped this year.
University of Houston QB Case Keenum has won his appeal and can play in 2011.
ESPN may televise UTSA's first football game.
Just say NO, San Antonio. I love orange as much as anyone, but I have to say no to this. (Thanks to RQ for this article.)
Texas State thinks they have won the lottery with their latest coaching hire.
As UTSA's big-name hire hit the ground running, and the school lined up one big-name opponent after another, Texas State appeared to lag behind its Interstate 35 rival in the race for relevance.
Never mind that the Roadrunners have yet to play, let alone win, a single game. They haven't lost any, either, a reality the Bobcats simply couldn't compete with this fall as they bumbled through their 14th losing season in 18 years.
Enter Dennis Franchione.
Morbid curiosity. Rich Rodriguez got rid of that Michigan stuff quickly.
When Rich Rodriguez donated a dozen bags of Michigan apparel to the Salvation Army, Wolverines fan Darren Schumacher became curious.
So he showed up Saturday at a cold parking lot about halfway between Ann Arbor and Detroit, where the former coach’s belongings were being auctioned off in a small tent.
"I’m shocked at how many people are here and, to be honest, what things are going for," the 43-year-old Schumacher said. "It was kind of an unfortunate era for Michigan football, and people are buying it like it was Bo Schembechler."
The Big Ten is sticking with those stupid division names.
Legends and Leaders, the names for the Big Ten’s two new divisions, are sticking around. At least through next football season.
With the addition of Nebraska as its 12th team, the Big Ten announced in December it would field two six-team divisions in football with the winners meeting in a league title game.
The names sparked an uproar from critics, who questioned the suitability and asked the league to reconsider.
How can they possibly ever thank Nebraska for saving the conference? Thanks to the Cornhuskers the Big Ten is relevant again.
The NCAA posted the college football attendance numbers.
Rough seasons didn’t hurt crowds: The Texas Longhorns had their first losing year in 13 seasons, but that didn’t stop fans from coming to the game. The Longhorns averaged a sellout of 100,657 fans per game, good for fifth in the country. Georgia, which also finished up the season with a losing record, averaged a sellout as well, averaging 92,746 fans per game. Florida, in Urban Meyer’s last season, finished the season 8-5 and unranked but sold out and averaged 90,511 fans per game.
This would have been really, really fun.
Former University of Miami player Randal Hill is now a federal agent.
Ivan Maisel looks back at the important lessons we learn from the bowl season.
If nothing else, the bowls reminded us of the outsized importance of motivation in college football's postseason. Outsized, because let's face it, at the end of a long, grueling season, the specter of as many as five more weeks of practice and video study demands that a team want to tackle it.
Boone Pickens was elected to the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.
Some sports articles are worth reading just for the prose.
The Bears abandoned the passing game in 1969 by drafting Bobby Douglass, an Age of Aquarius proto-Tebow with matinee-idol looks, a fullback’s physique, a powerful arm and the accuracy of a Farmers’ Almanac. A typical Douglass passing season: 5 touchdowns, 15 interceptions, 30 sacks and a 40.4 percent completion rate. Coach Jim Dooley moved in with Douglass to teach him the finer points (or even the coarser points) of quarterbacking. Douglass, in turn, married a Playboy Playmate. Though not while Dooley bunked with him. That would have been awkward.
Useless Garnishment...Because the girls need a little help understanding sports.
Having chicks in your workplace is just a pain.
Having chicks in the workplace is a hassle. They need separate bathrooms, they won't make your coffee anymore, they get all cranky when the office holiday party is held at the Playboy Club. Maybe that's why so many sports departments just aren't hiring them as much.
To be fair, a lot of newspapers aren't hiring much of anybody these days. But Dave Morgan built the Yahoo! sports department from scratch and was asked by Karen Crouse at a 2008 Association for Women in Sports Media convention how many women he'd hired to write for the site. His answer: zero.
Sound like an anomaly? Check the lists of columnists and bloggers at any number of major, corporate-run websites.
The Super Bowl commercials are all about the girls.
While Super Bowl players fight it out on the field, a high-powered pack of celebrity gals — including Kim Kardashian— will duke it out during the Big Game's commercials.
Also, Monday, Teleflora will announce that country music icon Faith Hill will star in its Super Bowl spot — a far cry from last year's Don Rickles voice-over.
Sex sells, especially sex and the Super Bowl.
Kenetria Harris, wife of Chicago Bears safety Chris Harris, is the perfect player's wife.
I always question him about busted coverage or missed tackles, saying "What happened there?" or "What were you guys doing?" I try to be sensitive, especially after a loss, so sometimes I'll let him bring up a missed play before I discuss what I saw from the stands. Sometimes it's not the players' fault, but the coach's play calling. But from the stands all we see is that a player didn't make a certain play.
Judith Light talks about her role as Marie Lombardi in the the Broadway hit "Lombardi."
This should make almost all of you very, very happy.
Following the gravy train of college sports and the BCS...money.
Bill Hancock just keeps pumping the sunshine.
In his remarks to the Football Writers Association of America, Hancock praised the virtues of the bowl system because it allowed a team like Tulsa to travel to Hawaii, and a team like Kansas State to travel to New York City. He also said the system worked because it allowed TCU to play in the Rose Bowl, something that would have never happened under the old system.
When it comes to bowls, the rich get richer.
How has the past decade been for you? For executives of bowl games, it has been good — very good.
The three men pictured at the top of this post — Jim McVay, left, Paul Hoolahan and Gary Stokan — have seen their salaries rise a combined $1,265,241 since 2001. That's an average of $421,747 per man.
Everybody makes money in Auburn, AL.
For the fifth time in as many years an SEC team won the BCS national championship last night. What does that mean? It means that Auburn, based in the most fan rabid conference in the country, can expect to see a huge increase in licensing royalties. While schools have typically seen at least a 25 percent royalty bump after winning the national championship, I'm guessing Auburn's take is going rise by more than 50 percent.
Here is one more useless advertising gimmick of corporate sponsors on ESPN.
And finally...
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. - Martin Luther King Jr.
Buffalo Bills running back Carlton Chester "Cookie" Gilchrist spoke up.
Gilchrist, the 1962 American Football League MVP, died the day before a remarkable anniversary not exactly celebrated by the world of professional football. On January 11, 1965, Gilchrist led an African-American boycott of the AFL All Star game, which was to be played in New Orleans. In 1965, an informal Jim Crow system ruled the Crescent city, and African-American players talked among themselves about their inability to get cabs, be served in restaurants or stay at certain hotels. Gilchrist organized all twenty-two African-American All-Pros to approach AFL commissioner Joe Foss and make clear that unless the game was moved, they wouldn't be playing. White players also announced that they would stand in support of their black teammates. Foss had no choice but to accede to their demands, and moved the game to Houston's Jeppesen Stadium.
Take some time today to remember and to do something for others.