what makes a violation?

since i am a die hard husky fan and have been hearing about the mess-ups of the new sarkisian regime nonstop on local sportstalk radio, i will use examples of recruiting violations that have been brought against the university of washington of late. though my husky-centric observations are just that, i think that they hold mult-conference implications.

with the disclaimer appropriately outlined, the uw has been slapped with two recruiting violations since sark took over. the first was that they set off a fog machine and put a recruit's name on the scoreboard of husky stadium while he was on his visit while sounding the trademark husky end-zone celebration siren. the ncaa brought a minor violation against the dawgs for "simulating a game environment." well, ncaa, that is awful silly. the main reason that is silly is that the huskies don't set off a fog machine during games for any reason under any circumstance. i have many friends that play for the dawgs and they are all getting quite a laugh out of this.

the second violation, which obviously is much more serious and legitimate is the fact that sark and nick holt brought a reporter to a kid's house in los angeles while they were visiting him. they also had a high school junior prospect pop in for a visit during all of this which is not kosher. the fact that the reporter came along isn't cool and a cut and dry violation, but the fact that another underclassman showed up is textbook recruiting. i know from my d-1 recruiting visits that coaches from all levels did that sort of thing, why just meet one kid when his friend who is a year younger can coincendentally pop in for a visit while bigtime college coaches are there? i know i did it and so did my friends, some of whom played and now play at schools such as uw and usc.

the ncaa has to keep a very close eye on these sorts of things for obvious reasons, but the uw coaches weren't giving anyone cars or houses (usc - r. bush) or locking kids in a hotel room forcing him to sign a letter of intent (oregon - jj arrington - it should be noted that the person who uncovered that oregon deal was jeff tedford. weird isn't it?).

anyway, the huskies got both of the kids with whom they were called for violations, so all i have to say about that is go dawgs.

gotta love the sark

orrin hatch, go be a senator

aren't there more pressing issues facing our country right now than arguing about how the validity of the bcs system? utah republican senator orrin hatch certainly doesn't think so, which is really unfortunate and moreover indicative of the country in which we presently live. the fact that a united states senator is spending time questioning the legality of the bcs on "fairness" issues is completely outrageous.

after utah dismantled alabama there were talks about antitrust violations on the part of the bcs, which are completely ridiculous - how do you hold a computer legally accountable for violations of fundamentally moral law? the answer is that you cannot and furthermore, elected officials of some of the highest positions in our country should not be sitting around bringing up such issues in high courts or in front of state legislatures. sure, barack might have brought some of this on by voicing his thoughts in favor of a playoff, but that does not give us senators clearance to state that a COMPUTER is violating laws.

wether they claim that the ncaa or the bcs is some sort of governing body responsible for ensuring the fairness of a system that will inevitably leave AT LEAST one team out of the national championship picture is not the point - these people are the voices of the republic of the united states of america and they should start acting like it. college football is a way of life for some. personally, i bleed purple and gold and hope that the huskies turn it around, but i am not asking patty murray to go to olympia to demand that the pac 10 renegotiate television deals so that one of the west coast teams gets better east coast media exposure.

sports are sports. they are fantastic, we all love them, but don't for a second waste the time of the united states government or any federal government whining about the fairness of the 'decision' of a computer. it is almost as productive as trying to settle on a price for a senatorial seat in illinois - sure, someone will listen, but it won't end very well.

you left early? seriously?

as the '09 draft class has fully taken shape, some of the players who are leaving early really are head scratchers. the majority of the decisions that are especially confusing come from the big 10, which isn't really very surprising. after having lived in buckeye country, the midwest really isn't very glamorous - but you didn't need me to tell you that. my choices for the biggest surprise early entrants are as follows:

aaron maybin of penn state
seriously? were you just so embarrassed by the rose bowl that you had to get out of happy valley? i guess i can't really blame the guy for wanting to move on when his head coach doesn't come to the locker room at halftime of the granddaddy of them all to coach his team. still though, aaron maybin may be a fantastic player one day but he is a sophomore. he can't even buy himself a beer. maybe the jonathan stewart argument will hold up, but that is highly unlikely in the case of a defensive end.

brian hartline of ohio state
dude, you aren't anthony gonzalez. did you think that it would be a good idea to go into a draft class that includes michael crabtree, hakeem nicks, percy harvin and jeremy maclin? have fun being a 4th round pick and playing for the browns.

chris wells of ohio state, pj hill of wisconsin, shonn greene of iowa
did all of you guys pinky swear that you would flood the '09 draft with 2nd round running back picks from the big 10? must have. also need to question glenn coffee and lesean mccoy's choice to leave early with all of those guys in the mix as well as knowshon moreno. too many great college running backs who won't do well in the league. pj hill and shonn greene certainly have the size, but we shall see.

nate davis of ball state
you gotta be kidding me, nate. take off the receiver gloves and grip the ball by the laces for christ sake. your pieces of flair don't make up for the fact that you won't play in the nfl, ever. i would probably want to get out of muncie, indiana as well though... the ridiculous thing is that nate davis is the 3rd best qb in the draft behind mark sanchez and matt stafford. with that in mind, sanchez certainly made a smart choice by declaring this year as he is my pick for the best qb in the draft and that probably wouldn't be the case next year. pete carroll didn't need to act like a baby about it.

eat your heart out mel kiper!

hook 'em horns!

texas beats ohio state miraculously in the fiesta bowl...how great for all of those guys and for everyone wearing burnt orange. this was a fun game to watch and showed that colt mccoy is a great college football player who will join the likes of eric crouch, kliff kingsbury and more recently chris leek as awesome college players who never made it on sundays. i think that tim tebow will also join this list unless someone does something with him like the 49'ers did with former penn state qb michael robinson (he is now a very useful fullback).

it also let us know yet again that nothing could happen without colt's lord and savior. i wonder if his is different than mine and all the rest of ours or something - it seems that he is thanking his quite frequently, maybe i didn't read the instruction manual for my lord and savior with quite enough scrutiny. also colt needs to watch a little more of his colleagues playing the game. he claimed that no one could beat them. well, colt, you should have watched the rose bowl.

i don't have a whole lot to say about this game because it was fun to watch and was a quality bowl game. the only thing about it that is really getting at me is the idea that there should be a joint national championship if oklahoma beats florida between ou and texas. if anything, there should be a joint national championship with usc involved, those guys would have demolished texas and oklahoma. florida v. usc sure would have been fun to watch, but oh well!

bcs implications of the sugar bowl result

so all of the espn.com types are calling for utah to be considered as one of the best teams in the country and for recognition of the non-bcs schools when it comes to post-season competition. utah played extremely well in the sugar bowl and produced what will probably be the most impressive victory of this bowl season. their performance trumps usc's rose bowl win just because they were so heavily favored to lose. they certainly proved that they are the one of the best teams in the country, but i don't think this means that the bcs system needs to be changed to allow for the inclusion of more small conference teams and by small i mean not good.

case in point - the orange bowl. did anyone watch that game? it was really quite terrible to be honest. if the bcs can't even produce good, competitive and entertaining games with the conferences it is currently using, then why in bear bryant's name should they include more of these marginal conferences? utah deserves all of the credit that is coming to them - those guys wanted it more than alabama and kyle whittingham and his staff outcoached the coach of the year. maybe those guys do deserve a shot at the national title, but people have to recognize that oklahoma, for example, played NINE teams that went on to bowl games and only lost to texas. utah played four teams and call me crazy, but demolishing texas tech is a little different than beating oregon state by a field goal.


utah was impressive, boise state v. tcu was a good bowl game, the big east just doesn't deserve a spot in the bcs. instead of letting a big east team into a bcs game, there should be two at large bids, but these teams just don't play tough enough schedules to put them into national championship consideration. if they want to be considered, they either have to play ridiculous non-conference schedules, or change conferences. even bigtime schools are playing more difficult non-conference schedules that the teams demanding consideration. usc played and drubbed ohio state this season and even boise state played a tough oregon team.

congrats to utah, they deserve it, but they certainly don't deserve to be considered the best team in the country this season.

mike leach on 60 minutes? c'mon man!

i hate to use a chris berman/nfl primetime catch phrase but it really seems to fit in this case. the 60 minutes people must be really scraping for content if they are making trips to lubbock to interview one of the most enigmatic people in bigtime college football - in this case, enigmatic isn't meant to be some sort of loving complement.

the thing that really stuck out for me in the segment that aired earlier tonight were the thoughts of michael lewis, the author of moneyball, during his interview about leach. his opinion of leach was one of giddy sycophantism that lewis probably should have toned down just a bit, but his idea that the only thing holding back the texas tech program from being on the florida/oklahoma/usc level was that the tech recruits were those the rejects from those programs per se. he went on to say that once leach has a few high caliber recruits, then the rest of the country had better watch out for the red raiders.

first, doesn't being a top ten team for the majority of the season make you a top program? second, if graham harrell and michael crabtree aren't high caliber players, then what exactly is a high caliber player? taking michael lewis' comments to the next level, texas tech will never get the highest caliber recruits for one reason - mike leach. after personally going through the d1 football recruiting process and having coaches come to my house to meet my family, if some guy strolls in wearing an under armour tee, looking like a doofus and wanting to do card tricks for me, i am moving on to the bob stoops and pete carrolls of the world.

if you haven't seen these videos, do yourself a favor and just take a quick look -

mike leach's dating advice
mike leach's meteorological prowess

if the recruits that leach is trying to attract are smart assed, sarcastic sports talk radio personalities, then he will be the owner of an embarassment of riches. if the recruits that he wants are top 100 high school seniors, then being a generally weird guy probably isn't the way to go.

tommy trojan proves his (and the pac 10's) worth!

yesterday's rose bowl and the '09 bowl season in general have proven one thing to college football fans and the national media in general - the pac 10 is if not the best, the second best college football conference in the game today. the sec and the pac 10 and far and away the best and most competitive conferences in the country and they have been for some years.

the ohio state, texas and oklahoma teams that have shown themselves to be relevant in the 00's were flashes in the national pan that only were successful based on superstar players. vince young's rose bowl victory over usc will go down as one of the most dominant individual performances in recent memory and perhaps ever, but without him, usc would have won four consecutive rose bowls and texas probably would not have been in that game in the first place. without ted ginn and troy smith, ohio state would have become just as irrelevant. oklahoma had some great qb's but never have played well in huge games, until this year and even this year they couldn't win the red river shootout. this argument obviously goes both ways but the level of continued athleticism and raw talent on display for the better part of a decade at the l.a. coliseum is indisputably unmatched anywhere else in the country over the same stretch.

how about this for a question - why wasn't mark sanchez up for the heisman? after the game yesterday, his attitude and diction suggest he will be back next year to most definitely win the award, but watching him yesterday and throughout the year, he is absolutely a better quarterback than tim tebow or colt mccoy. those guys are great leaders and tough players, but not better quarterbacks than sanchez. i guess sam bradford deserved the heisman this year, he was for sure the best qb in the nation, but there were better players out there - brian orakpo of texas and rey maualuga of usc could have easily been considered as the best players in the country as well.

usc easily handled penn state yesterday, as was predicted and as they should have. oregon handled oklahoma state. arizona handled byu. cal handled miami and oregon state beat pitt in an absolutely awful game that should have had its highlights shown in black and white. the pac 10 became the only conference to go undefeated and beat some very good teams with national recognition handily. the big 12 and big 10 haven't had the same performances and therefore have shown themselves to be a step below the pac 10 and sec.

lee corso saying that the pac 10 needs to get a tv deal so east coast pollsters can see them play is nonsense. for someone who works as a college football analyst, the old guy just doesn't really know what he is talking about! usc played in plenty of nationally televised games this year - they smoked ohio state in one of them, lost to oregon state in another and dominated penn state in a third, not to mention stomping notre dame and ucla on nationally televised games. east coast ap voters and writers need to just stop watching lsu v. mississippi state and check out cal v. arizona instead to realize that the pac 10 is just as good, if not better, than the sec.

looking forward, the pac 10 is only going to get better with steve sarkisian moving to washington. there could be six pac 10 teams in bowl games next year depending on how sarkisian's recruiting goes and how well he can groom jake locker to run a pro offense, make reads and not break his thumb trying to block people. jim harbaugh's stanford team isn't very far away from success either, there are some very good players on that team who no one knows about and those guys could spoil someone's season next year - they almost beat usc this year and that would have really made a mess of things. arizona will have to reload at qb, asu will have another losing record - two words, dennis erickson - washington state is hopeless and neuhisel will surely do something to ruin ucla. other than that, the pac 10 is looking pretty serious.

as pete carroll said after the rose bowl, no one could beat that team this year. bring on the plus one!