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Urban Meyer leaving Florida according to ESPN

Coach Brad Franchione has been named the 2009 American Community College Football Coaches Association Coach of the Year. The award will be presented to Franchione at the American Football Coaches Association Coach of the Year Dinner on Jan. 12 at the AFCA Convention in Orlando.

We have now reached college football's very own exhibition post season known as the bowl season. Already, I can hear some grumblings from a few of you about why I should watch the St. Petersburg Bowl or the Papajohns.com Bowl when there's plenty of Christmas parties to attend and plenty of women to underwhelm. Well, can't argue with that, see you guys next year! (Just kidding). Okay, so as is custom with the bowl games thread, each day a bowl game is being played, I will ping the list and do my usual mildly sarcastic preview of each bowl game....

I didn't see a thread posted already. Heisman Trophy announcement coming within the hour. Your predictions/reactions?

Kelly's character is a LOSER and a SELLOUT! At the very least he should have been man enough to stand by his team and see them through the bowl game. He should have told Notre Dame that he would be the coach and that they would simply have to wait until the bowl game was finished. NO INTEGRITY!

Just thought with the game tomorrow and the Cadets/Midshipmen making their way to Phili today I'd create a thread for old grads from each side to root for their team.

University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow didn't take home an award from the The Home Depot ESPNU College Football Awards Thursday night, but he made national news from the red carpet with his date, the young woman he brought on his arm.She was Kelly Faughnan, 20, whom he met the day before. Faughnan had been diagnosed with a brain tumor just before Thanksgiving last year. Before surgery last year, her wish was to go to Disney World during the awards show to get a glimpse of Tebow. Faughnan is from Clifton, Va., according to several news reports.Fox News reported that...

Notre Dame has settled on Brian Kelly as the man who can restore its faded glory, just as he turned Cincinnati into a national title contender. Just 10 days after Charlie Weis was fired, it's up to Kelly to revive the fortunes of a team that just completed the worst decade of football in the history of the storied program with a 70-52 record and three losing seasons. ESPN's Chris Mortensen first reported Kelly would take over in South Bend.

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There's certainly an argument to be made that college football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS) isn't an ideal system, but just to what degree should the federal government come in an regulate this multi-billion dollar industry? According to Andy Staples, a writer for Sports Illustrated's Web site, SI.com who appeared on the Fox News Channel's Dec. 9 "Studio B," the industry should revamped from a regulatory aspect because of issue of "fairness." He was asked by host Shepard Smith why it is appropriate for Congress to be meddling in the college football. "It is funny because everybody says, ‘Why is Congress...

I was checking the latest BCS poll and I noticed all the matchups involve top 10 teams. I wonder if this is the first time this has happned. Usually a "less deserving" team gets in because of the automatic conference entry, a la ACC or Big East, or Notre Dame or a bowl game will pick a team with a bigger draw. Rose: THE Ohio State University vs. Oregon: 8 vs. 7Sugar: Florida vs. Cincinnati: 5 vs. 3Fiesta: BSU vs. TCU: 4 vs 6Orange: Iowa vs GT: 10 vs 9

This should feel like a just reward for an offseason where the non-automatic qualifiers extolled their virtues in front of Congress, then reached unprecedented heights in the BCS era on the field. It can't be understated that for the first time, two teams from outside of the major conferences have been granted access behind the BCS' velvet rope as No. 3 TCU and No. 6 Boise State will meet in the Fiesta Bowl. "I think the Fiesta Bowl, to their credit, is putting two very, very deserving teams on the field against each other," WAC commissioner Karl Benson said. It's...

2009-10 Bowl Schedule

Florida Quarterback Tim Tebow is without a doubt one of the best quarterbacks in college football in the 21st Century. Before the SEC Championship pitting undefeated and number one-ranked Florida against undefeated and number two-ranked Alabama, Tebow was a virtual lock for the Heisman Trophy. But I don't think that's going to happen because Florida lost 32 to 13 and Tebow cried. That's right, he cried.

Breathe easy, Boise State fans. Texas hit a do-or-die field goal on the final play of the game Saturday night to beat Nebraska in the Big 12 championship game. The kick likely put Texas in the national championship game and Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl. If Nebraska had won, the Broncos might have gotten snubbed by the Bowl Championship Series.

Go Bama!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alabama is headed for the BCS championship game, thanks to a stunning -- and near-perfect -- victory over No. 1 Florida. The Crimson Tide, ranked No. 2, broke open a tight SEC title game in Atlanta with a solid second half, defeating the Gators 32-13 on Saturday. The Crimson Tide punched their ticket to the national title game with a magnificent performance against Florida, the defending national champion. They pounded out just shy of 500 yards of offense and forced Gators QB Tim Tebow into uncharacteristic mistakes.

Sportswriters Show They Are Not Bright Lights College football is a game -- a very profitable game -- played by unpaid college kids. The kids play for pride and a chance to go onto the pros. The universities, the television networks like ESPN, the bowl organizations and others reap the profits by exploiting them. So lets stop the annual whining about ...

We have officially reached a milestone in the season. The first of which is that I now don't need any clever or anecdotal introductory paragraph to get your neurons firing in anticipation of the upcoming week. The second is that we now have a pretty clear indication of who will be playing where and a very highly touted, yet scaled down, slate of games. Before we begin, let's honor the conference champions thus far in 2009. So if you're an Ohio State Buckeye, TCU Horned Frog, Troy Trojan, or Boise State Bronco, break out the sparkling grape juice and overturn...

Bobby Bowden will end his 44-year coaching career after Florida State plays in a bowl game. Bowden will retire as the second winningest coach in major-college football behind Penn State's Joe Paterno. The 80-year-old Bowden has won 388 games at Samford, West Virginia and Florida State, where he spent the last 34 seasons.

Cheeseburger Charlie out at Notre Dame....

Charlie Weis is out as Notre Dame head football coach, a source close to the program told the Daily News. AD Jack Swarbrick has decided to make a change after Weis finished the season with a 6-6 record and four straight losses to Navy, Pitt, Connecticut and Stanford. Weis coached Notre Dame for five years and leaves with a 35-27 record. He has told friends in South Bend he has at least six offers from NFL teams to become their offensive coordinator. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/college/2009/11/30/2009-11-30_source_notre_dame_fires_head_coach_charlie_weis_.html#ixzz0YN6yjvNp

The bowl picture looks nice and neat if No. 2 Texas beats Nebraska in the Big 12 title game. It gets really messy if the Cornhuskers pull a huge – but not unprecedented – upset over the Longhorns. Remember Texas did the same to Nebraska in 1996. In 2003, K-State rolled top-ranked Oklahoma, five years after Texas A&M ended the No. 2 Wildcats’ title hopes in double overtime. Should the Cornhuskers beat Texas, Nebraska will head to the Fiesta Bowl. Texas won’t head to the BCS title game and instead appears set for the Orange Bowl. So what does that...

This Saturday morning in Arizona while I was waiting for the annual Arizona- Arizona State football game to kick off at 1:30 PM local time, I thought I would catch a little of the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game. There is nothing in football as fun or as entertaining as instate and conference college football rivalries. But isn't it too bad that somebody always has to take the fun out of our lives. Usually these party poopers are just an ex-spouse, the local police or the IRS. But sadly, in what seems far too many cases these days, it appears that these...

For the first time in his 34 seasons at Florida State as coach, Bobby Bowden seemed unsure if he wanted to continue his remarkable coaching career any longer. Only minutes after the Seminoles were demolished by No. 1 Florida for the second straight season, losing 37-10 in Bowden's final trip to the Swamp, Bowden didn't sound like he'd be coaching at FSU again in 2010. "I want to coach next year, but let me say I need to go home and do some soul searching," Bowden said. Over the last four seasons, as criticism surrounding Bowden mounted as his teams...

Ten Rivalries to Witness College football passion covers the width and breadth of the many social, economic, racial, regional and religious subcultures in America. From Boston Brahmins (Harvard) to Hollywood fashion (USC), from Southern tradition (Alabama) to California progressives (Stanford), from Catholics (Notre Dame) to Mormons (BYU) to hippies (Cal), everyone has a team to cheer for. Below are 10 games that highlight that spectrum of passion, pageantry and pride (listed in approximate order of occurance during the season): Texas vs Oklahoma: The Longhorns, the Sooners and the Texas State Fair recall how so much of our culture is derived...

Hopefully you'll forgive me for being candid, but this week may not be my most well written thread of the season. Family is coming into town, I actually have to work on Thanksgiving, and I actually have an excuse to watch one of the Thanksgiving NFL games. But aside from that, it's that week of the season that encapsulates the spirit and tradition of college football. Of course, that means one thing here on the FR College Football Ping List: it's rivalry week! Often our rivals perform the menial tasks associated with life: cleaning toilets, digging ditches, waiting our table...

ATHENS -- To the Bulldog Nation, the Uga mascot is royalty, the lineage anointed to represent the University of Georgia. But to the Seiler family, the English bulldogs are family pets. That is sadly evident at times such as these. In only his second season as Georgia's mascot, Uga VII has passed away. Uga VII passed away suddenly Thursday morning at his home in Savannah. At 4 years old, he was practically a pup and had served as Georgia's mascot for not even two full football seasons when he unexpectedly succumbed to heart problems.

This month is the centennial of what has all but been forgotten — a moment that could have ended football in America but instead forced the sport down a different, better path. Football was so gruesome at the turn of the century that in 1905, no less than President Roosevelt himself demanded that the sport clean itself up, and the notorious flying wedge was banned. However, by ought-nine, as they said back then, it was still a brutal battle royal. In the season's championship match — what may be called the first "game of the century" — The New York...

When you get right down to it, who doesn't love a good trophy? A trophy may end up becoming a thing of the past in most facets of human civilization, but there will always be a home for the physical manifestation of the internet meme "Pwn3d" in the great game of college football. In the professional game, there is really truly only one trophy that people really want and that has Vince Lombardi's name etched on it. But in the college game, there are trophies for nearly every type of game you can think of. Some contests have a bronze...

They're not a member of any conference and you’ll never be able to follow their standout players to the NFL. Nothing about the Navy football team screams “pay attention to me.”

Nile Kinnick may not have reached the average American life expectancy even when he was alive. But one could argue that the life he did live was extraordinary anyway. A very talented athlete as well as a gifted student, Kinnick enrolled at the University of Iowa and would eventually play football. By the time Kinnick was a sophomore, most folks that were associated with Hawkeye football knew they were witnessing a once in a generation kind of student-athlete. (And don't underestimate how good of a student Kinnick was. It's extremely rare to see that sort of thing anymore out of...

JACKSON, Miss. — The University of Mississippi's first-year chancellor followed through on a promise Tuesday and asked the band to stop playing a pep song because some fans are chanting "the South will rise again" at the end of the medley. "Here at the University of Mississippi, there must be no doubt that this is a warm and welcoming place for all," Dan Jones wrote Tuesday in a letter to the university community. "We cannot even appear to support those outside our community who advocate a revival of racial segregation. We cannot fail to respond." Dan Jones said last week...

No Recession for Tedford Bethany Stotts, November 10, 2009 California students and furloughed faculty will be feeling the pinch this academic year. Not so for University of California head coach, Jeff Tedford. He’s going to get $2.8 million for the upcoming football season. Yes, the University of California system, despite its budget crises, will give Jeff Tedford $2.8 million this year. The California Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley also has a planned $430 million makeover. How high has Tedford’s salary climbed as of late? A 2004 press release from UC Berkeley regarding his 5-year contract states that “Coach Jeff Tedford,...

BOWL (MATCHUP) Mark Schlabach Bruce Feldman Citi BCS National Championship Game (BCS No. 1 vs. BCS No. 2) Alabama vs. Texas Florida vs. Texas Tostitos Fiesta (BCS vs. BCS) Iowa vs. TCU USC vs. Boise State Allstate Sugar (BCS vs. BCS) Florida vs. Boise State Alabama vs. Cincinnati FedEx Orange (BCS vs. BCS) Georgia Tech vs. Cincinnati Georgia Tech vs. TCU Rose Bowl presented by Citi (BCS vs. BCS) Oregon vs. Ohio State Oregon vs. Ohio State

Top 10: 1: Florida 2: 'Bama 3: Texas 4: TCU 5: Cincinnati 6: Boise State 7: Gerogia Tech 8: LSU 9: USC 10: Iowa Computer put 'Bama back up over Texas. TCU leaped over Cincinnati to take the top spot for highest ranked non-BCS team. Despite losing LSU gained a spot. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/ncaa/polls/bcs/

It was an eerily warm November morning when I arrived in South Bend yesterday with my son, Gary, to attend the Notre Dame-Navy battle. "What a beautiful day for a game!" I exclaimed to my son as we listened unsuspectingly to the band's pre-game rendition of the Notre Dame Victory March. Little did we know that we were not about to witness a football game, but a funeral. For not only did the Naval Academy's efficient yet stunning 23-21 victory, their second in three years against the Irish after Notre Dame had defeated them 43 years in a row,...

Longhorn fans may be jumping the gun, but with players like Colt McCoy who’s a Heisman contender, Jordan Shipley a semifinalist for the Biletnikoff Award, and Earl Thomas a semifinalist for the Jim Thorpe Award, fans anticipate the best. Not to mention Texas has one of the leading defensive lines in the conference. So how does Coach Mack Brown feel about his key players? "I do feel like, the way Colt has been playing the last two weeks, that he's right back in the middle of the Heisman race," said Coach Brown. What about the Texas defense? "It's unusual to...

A major heart thumper, GT now 9-1 (6-1 in ACC) Looks to win ACC, major bowl bid Unashamed Georgia Tech Vanity

With November now upon us, I have a few disjointed things lying around on my desktop that have been there for several weeks, and since they're all not compelling enough by themselves to introduce a thread, I'll go ahead and get them out of the way now and regroup with some much better philosophy for the next few weeks or so. --Here is a neat quiz that might give some of you grief. Name the 26 teams with the most all-time wins in the Division Formerly Known as I-A in 7 minutes or less and you get to brag about...

NEW YORK — Maryland and South Carolina will wear uniforms with camouflage designs during their games Nov. 14 to honor military veterans and promote the Wounded Warrior Project. The black with tan camouflage uniforms, designed by Under Armour, will have a Wounded Warrior logo on them. Instead of players' names, the backs of the jerseys will have words such as courage, loyalty, integrity and service. "Ooooh," South Carolina defensive tackle Ladi Ajiboye said Tuesday after seeing the camouflage cleats the Gamecocks will wear. "I could wear these the whole season." The Wounded Warrior Project acts as an advocate for injured...

STORRS, Conn. (AP) -- A University of Connecticut student committed an act terrorism by posting Internet messages telling people to "stop the snitching" after the stabbing death of football player Jasper Howard, university police said Thursday.

My high school English teacher, Mr. Wood, used to do something to essays that I'd write to attempt to pass his class. Anytime I would use a cliche or something that he thought was trite, he'd deduct a certain percentage from my final grade on that particular paper. If it was doing an assignment on an author that I didn't care too much for, like that uncle fornicating commie George Bernard Shaw, I was particularly obnoxious in my rhetoric and that would just enrage him even further. Looking back on it, Mr. Wood always seemed like he was either the...

An attorney for a Bloomfield man said Tuesday that his client has been charged with murder in connection with the death of UConn football player Jasper Howard. Attorney Deron Freeman said his client, John William Lomax, was charged Tuesday morning with murder in connection with Howard's death. Freeman maintained his client's innocence in Howard's death.

Last play of the game, 4th down!!! Hawks win!!! 8-0 BAYBEE!!!!

So now the geniuses who run the BCS have decided that the answer to their problems is better spinning. A story in yesterday's Sports Business Journal reports that the BCS is considering hiring someone whose job would be to defend the BCS against people like me--and many, many others--who think it is a complete and utter shame. In fact, John Marinatto, the new commissioner of The Big East, who as of now would be in charge of the BCS next year--the ACC's John Swofford is doing it right now--is quoted as saying that the BCS commissioners believe they have not...

'Southern Methodist University freshman Ryan Rosenbaum still has a lot of collegiate soccer ahead of him, but he'll be hard pressed to ever score as memorable a goal as he did Wednesday night. Up 2-1 against No. 16 Tulsa, SMU was on its heels trying to keep the Hurricanes from setting up the equalizer in the 63rd minute of their Conference USA game. Tulsa controlled possession, but an errant pass found the freshman Rosenbaum, who attempted to clear the ball downfield. Things ended up working out slightly better than expected'

This most recent Sunday afternoon is when we approached the second half of the season and with that came the first BCS rankings. That dreaded three letter acronym we love so much does give rise to several talking points, chief among them are which teams deserve to be where they are. And let's face it, when it comes down to brass tacks with the BCS standings, most only look at the top 5, and maybe the top 10 in the very least. Take Boise State for example at #4. After two very underwhelming games in the past few weeks against...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The Southeastern Conference has suspended officials from last weekend's Arkansas-Florida game after the crew was involved in its second controversial call of the year. Referee Marc Curles' crew called a personal foul on Arkansas defensive lineman Malcolm Sheppard in the fourth quarter as the Gators were rallying for a 23-20 victory. The league said there was no video evidence to support the call.The same group of officials called the LSU-Georgia game earlier this month, which included a late unsportsmanlike conduct penalty the league said shouldn't have been called. "A series of calls that have occurred during the...