We are close enough to college football season to smell it, so it is high time I got around to offering a few preseason predictions. I will begin by forecasting this year’s conference champions, but be forewarned; I did a lousy job of this last season, so there is little reason for you to believe I will be any better at it this autumn. That said, here are my league title prognostications:

Sun Belt Conference: I know they’re not expected to make much noise this season, but I’m not about to pick against the Florida Atlantic Owls in Howard Schnellenberger’s final fall on the sidelines. I freely admit this is an emotional pick, but I’m going with FAU to send Coach Schnellenberger out a winner.

Mid-American Conference: I swear, I’m not trying to get an owl theme going here, even though I do love a good "Twin Peaks" reference, but I’m taking the Temple Owls to win the MAC this season. After going 4-42 from 2003 to 2006, Bill Cosby’s alma mater has gone 17-8 over the last two seasons, including a 12-4 mark in conference play and a 10-2 ledger at home. After missing out on a bowl game last year, Temple is ready to capture the MAC crown this fall.

Conference USA: As much as I’d like to pick Rice and perpetuate the trend of picking Owls wherever possible, I believe the odds favor a different Southwest Conference refugee instead, as the Houston Cougars are the best bet to capture the league title with Case Keenum returning for his sixth (and most oversexed) season.

Western Athletic Conference: I’m going with the Nevada Wolf Pack, because (a) they beat Boise State last year, (b) they get Fresno State, Hawaii, and Louisiana Tech in Reno, and (c) they’re basically the only team that’s left.

Mountain West Conference: The league schedule-makers took what would have been a tough call and made it easy. Because the TCU Horned Frogs have to play on the blue turf one week after facing Wyoming more than 7,000 feet above sea level in Laramie, the Boise St. Broncos are the obvious choice here.

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(Author’s Note: I’m not going to lie to you; jet lag and an atypical midday nap on Monday have conspired to throw off my sleep schedule, as a consequence of which I am out of sorts, and it shows. Fortunately, lots of other folks have more than taken up the slack, for which I am most obliged. Since the Miami allegations, especially as they relate to Orson Charles, have been covered comprehensively, here as well as elsewhere, I have opted to take the story in a different direction, which may or may not work, but, frankly, once I am done with it, I can set it to be published in the morning, then I can go to bed, get a good night’s sleep, and, with any luck, awake refreshed shortly before you read this in the morning.)

Orson Swindle was a humorist out of Gainesville, and, because I had a real close relationship with SB Nation, Doug Gillett came to my house and he was with Orson Swindle. I showed [Swindle] my closet. The reason why I show all the kids my closet is because that’s where I had like 50 to 70 UM game-worn jerseys of all the best players in the last however long. That was our first visit.

Nevin Shapiro (except, no, not really)

[Exterior mansion, day; dissolve to interior, master bedroom, with sounds of ocean waves and "Miami Vice" theme audible in background. Nevin Shapiro enters, clad in white leather shoes without socks, white slacks, a pink T-shirt, and a Miami Hurricanes baseball jersey unbuttoned over it. He is followed by Orson Swindle and Doug Gillett, who are dressed like Orson Swindle and Doug Gillett, respectively.]

Shapiro: . . . And that’s how Michael Irvin introduced me to powerballing! You know that’s what killed John Belushi, right? Say, Charles, . . .

Swindle: Swindle. Or Spencer. Either one works, really.

Shapiro: You’re not the tight end out of Plant?

Swindle: Nope.

Shapiro: Ah, well, what the hell; you’re here, anyway. I’ll pay you 20 bucks if you go back in the closet!

[Swindle and Gillett look at one another.]

Gillett: Uh, listen, I don’t know where you got that idea . . .

Swindle: Um, yeah, Doug’s into a completely different EDSBS contributor . . .

Gillett and Swindle: Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Shapiro: What? No, I mean literally! Come inside my closet!

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A few thoughts on the day when Yahoo! dropped a bomb on the Hurricanes:

Is it possible to run a clean athletic program in Miami? DavetheDawg would know better than me, but my impression is that the symbiosis between the Hurricane athletic program and the famed Miami nightlife is so strong that it would be difficult to excise the one from the other. As officials at Southern Cal learned, some environments are just not conducive to good compliance practices. Perhaps we should be glad that Athens is a sleepy hamlet where the most glitzy thing going is likely to be The Darkness Cover Band playing on Tuesday night at the Georgia Theater*.

If you didn't get a chance this afternoon to listen to Luther "Uncle Luke" Campbell on Jack Arute and Mike Leach's satellite radio college football show you really missed out. Among other revelations: a) Campbell only met Shapiro twice, but was immediately suspicious of a 5'5 white guy dating a 6'2 black woman, b) Shapiro chapped Uncle Luke a little when he referred to himself as "Little Luke", though at first Campbell just assumed it was a nickname growing from Shapiro's diminuitive stature, and c) Luther Campbell probably knows more about this story than he is willing to tell the national media.

Boy howdy it's going to be fun times at the schools that hired the refugee coaches from Miami implicated in Yahoo!'s reporting. Auburn fans will tell you that Nick Saban's cheating regimen was substandard, and that he addressed this by hiring some real pros. I would say that any assistant football coach stupid enough to get photographed in a nightclub partying with one of his players and a big money booster is stupid enough to be fired, illicit benefits or no. In today's NCAA environment, that kind of thing is right up there with a personalized Chip Kelly thank you note in the pantheon of smart people doing dumb thngs. It's just bound to come back and bite you in the ass.

In case you missed it, much of Shapiro's vaguely pathetic pandering to a group of teenage manchildren occurred while Miami's athletic director was a gentleman named Paul Dee. Paul Dee wasalso the head of the NCAA's infractions committee at the time. There would be a joke in here about glass houses and specks in eyes and such, were it not for the fact that Dee presided over a period in which the infractions committee rarely if ever went after anyone. Instead, it now appears that having Paul Dee as infractions czar was on par with the U.N. naming a representative from Iran to the nuclear policy committee and reps from China and North Korea to the human rights panel. Both of which the U.N. actually did.

Yahoo!'s Charles Robinson joins Jim Cantore on the list of very nice gentlemen who you should be freaked the hell out to see standing on your front lawn. 'Cause either way there's a storm brewing.

You know who I really feel sorry for? Al Golden. Seriously, I cannot imagine that he took the Miami job after being told the extent of these shenanigans. It's simply not plausible to me. Were I the former Temple coach, I would have begun my day by storming into Donna Shalala's office and breaking things. Because really, how much less trust could you have in an employment situation?

Shapiro was arrested in April of 2010, so you'd think that someone from Tha U would have noticed that the guy they named the Athletic Lounge for was on trial in federal court, and said to the compliance folks "Hey, why don't you send Junior the new guy down there to keep an eye on things, see if anything we need to know about comes up." I don't know which is worse, the notion that Miami didn't know about these allegations, or the notion that they knew about them and might not have told Golden about them during the hiring process. Either way, were the world a just place (which it's not, as A.J. Green, Albert Hollis and a lot of other Bulldogs will tell you) Al Golden would be given the option of walking away from Miami's smoldering pit of destruction at the end of the year with his buyout torn up and his future before him. 

Speaking of smoldering pits of destruction, shockingly, Miami's may not be as deep as some think. Based solely upon Yahoo!'s reporting I don't think the death penalty is on the table here. Remember, SMU only got the ultimate sanction after getting caught paying players from an institutional slush fund, telling the NCAA they would stop, and then making surreptitious payments to players all the same. That's a double-barrelled FU to the NCAA. Miami may have been lax, but there's no evidence that anyone within the university structure beyond the coaching level was involved. Basketball coach Frank Haith was implicated as having some knowledge, but he's already gone to Missouri and seems to be cooperating with the boys in Indy.

All of which is to say that based solely on what has been reported up to now, I don't think Miami's getting the death penalty because theirs is a "rogue booster" case, not a "rogue administrator" case. While the NCAA rulebook largely makes the two synonymous for purposes of determining whether a violation has been committed (using the torturous term "representative of a school's athletic interest"), I think it's a distinction with real implications for the punishment stage of the game.

 I do, however, believe that there is more to come on this story in the days ahead. And while I don't know that the Canes are in line for SMU level smiting, I think they are in line for the type of post-Albert Means level Alabama sanctions that set the Tide back years. The difference is that Miami's alleged booster-run-amok was working on a scale that Logan Young never dreamed of. Which means that while there may be no difference in quality of infraction, the sheer quantity of violations alleged in the Shapiro case may make this a whole different animal.

Another consideration is the fact that Shapiro was a partner in the ironically named Improper Axcess Sports, a sports agency that actually signed up Miami football players to representation agreements. That does look pretty bad for Miami compliance, as having one of the principals of a sports agent hanging around players seems like one of those situations just bound to go wrong eventually. Charles Robinson also said this afternoon during a radio interview that at one point during Virginia's 48-0, November 2007 blowout of Miami in the Orange Bowl, Shapiro actually had a press box confrontation with the director of the Hurricane compliance staff, and that the information he had was that Miami compliance was trying to limit Shapiro's direct involvement with players. To use a journalistic cliche, I think that means that we have to ask what the Miami compliance staff knew, when did they know it, and what was their response? Those will be key questions going forward as the NCAA considers the dreaded "lack of institutional control" tag. There are a variety of ways to get that label, and the early word on Shapiro's intricate involvement in Miami athletics make its application to this case seem not only plausible, but likely

This one's gonna get interesting and stay interesting, gang. [birdwithoperaglassesandpopcorn.jpeg goes here].

*Please for the love of all things holy tell me that there's no such thing as a band of The Darkness impersonators. Please, oh please.

According to a University press release North Carolina football coach Butch Davis was fired this afternoon following a closed door meeting of the University's Board of Trustees. Citing a need to "restore confidence in the University of North Carolina and our football program", UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp also indicated that the decision was the result not of any developments in the ongoing investigation into the school's football program, but of accumulated issues.

One has to wonder what exactly accumulated in the past few days that had not accumulated in the preceding months. It's hard to imagine a worse time to jettison your college football coach, what with fall practice a week away. Really, it's hard to justify the decision unless the UNC board discovered something new and troubling, or had to line up the financing to make a move now. Either way, I imagine UNC fans will view this as the school writing off an entire season. At least that's how I would see it if the same sort of lightning bolt struck out of a clear blue sky in Athens.

Davis leaves behind an investigation which deprived his program of many of the stud blue chip prospects he brought in through masterful recruiting. It's in the area of recruiting where Davis's departure could affect Georgia. Specifically, North Carolina has been seen by many as Georgia's primary competition for the services of top-ranked running back Keith Marshall of Raleigh, who's already been discussed at length on this site.

Another thing to bear in mind is that if North Carolina goes the interim route for 2011 they could join the list of major programs coach hunting for 2012, a list which hopefully will not include your Georgia Bulldogs. I don't think a North Carolina program staring down probation is more appealing than Mark Richt's current digs if, Heaven help, change becomes necessary. But the more buyers in the market the more pressure on market participants to make offers and close deals in a hurry. Just something to consider. Until later . . .

Go 'Dawgs!!!

So here's an idea. Let's kick off the hioliday weekend with a huge flaming brown paper bag of awful on Oregon coach Chip Kelly's doorstep. Wouldn't that be fun?

By now you already know about the slowly building firestorm surrounding Oregon's payments to Texas recruiting guru Will Lyles. Oregon has said that Lyles provided them with valuable information in exchange for $25,000. Lyles has now done an hours long,on the record interview with Yahoo! Sports, and says . . .{drumroll please}

"I look back at it now and they paid for what they saw as my access and influence with recruits,"

Well that's quite forthright and plainspoken, isn't it? Lyles also told Yahoo! that the reason that footage released recently and alleged to be his contribution to the Ducks' recruiting effort looked like it was thrown together at the last minute was because, eh, it was thrown together at the last minute. After an urgent request from Kelly for Lyles to get something together to show for that $25,000.

I said as recently as last week that this thing would likely die quietly unless somebody opened his mouth about it. Mouth. Opened. What Lyles is describing is a) himself as a representative of Oregon's athletic interest (a "booster" in common parlance) steering recruits to the University of Oregon after receiving tens of thousands of dollars for a steaming pile of grainy, outdated digital crap. Also, color the Oregon athletic department stupid for paying with a school check for . . .nothing they could legitimately pay for. Certain members of the SEC and Big XII frown disapprovingly in your direction Oregon. You're doing it wrong.

This also raises the question of what Mark Emmert and the crack investigation team in Indianapolis will do with this. While they're used to dealing with incomplete information, innuendo, rumor and grudge-fueled allegations, what will they do when a guy comes out and says "I was paid cash money by Oregon to influence recruits and, what do you know, they ended up going to Oregon!" Oregon can certainly characterize the transaction differently than Mr. Lyles does. That's their right, and we should definitely give equal consideration to the possibility that Lyles may have an ax to grind or an agenda to serve. But this is about as close to a smoking gun as Emmert and crew are ever gonna get. It will be interesting to see how they handle it.

Kudos to Lyles however for reading the writing on the wall. Oregon already brought in a guy known for sealing the leaks around foundering athletic ships. They were going to roll over on Lyles, it was just a matter of when they would start blaming him and what exactly they would blame him for. He may have beaten the Ducks to the punch, and we'll all have a more interesting weekend for it. God Bless you, Will Lyles. Sorry Duck (and Cover) Nation.

As you know, MaconDawg was at yesterday’s Peach State Pigskin Preview, where Mark Richt endorsed the idea of eliminating kickoffs in college football, though Coach Richt’s proposal differed somewhat from the suggestion offered by Greg Schiano, who favored giving the scoring team a fourth and 15 at its own 30 yard line after the Rutgers Scarlet Knights’ Eric LeGrand was paralyzed while making a tackle on a kickoff return. Coach Richt, by contrast, preferred to give the receiving team possession somewhere in the vicinity of its own 23 yard line.

Any civilized person is sympathetic to LeGrand’s situation. It is regrettable that injuries take place in sport, and all reasonable efforts should be made to ensure player safety. Reasonableness, however, is to be judged not just according to the severity of risks, but also by the probability of their occurrence. What happened to Johnathan Taylor is terrible, but it was a freak accident, and proposing an "outfield fly rule" to eliminate the possibility of player collisions such as that one would be an overreaction akin to the effort to outlaw football in Georgia following Von Gammon’s death in 1897.

P.J. O’Rourke once noted that, if one were to redesign a horse with complete safety in mind, the result would be a cow, which is a very dull animal to see racing in the Kentucky Derby. George Will likewise pointed out that not all traffic regulations are reasonable merely because they would have salutary effects; reducing the speed limit to 35 miles per hour on the highway and outlawing left turns undeniably would reduce the number and severity of automobile collisions, but such extreme measures would be overkill.

Football is a violent game; as Vince Lombardi famously noted, dancing is a contact sport, but football is a collision sport. Serious injuries are a risk, even on routine plays. Changes to the rules of the game are warranted to address unduly high levels of risk; the legalization of the forward pass represented a fundamental alteration of the game, but it ameliorated an unacceptably elevated level of danger to players. College football’s elimination of the wedge block represents a less sweeping change designed to confront Coach Schiano’s valid concerns.

I am opposed to Coach Schiano’s proposal, because it dramatically alters the nature of the game by creating a "make it, take it" situation for the scoring team, thereby devaluing defense as a part of the game. Giving possession to the team that has just scored, rather than to the team that has just been scored upon, represents a sweeping shift in the sport without analogue in the last century.

While I have less of a problem with Coach Richt’s recommendation, I agree with Christian Robinson that eliminating special teams plays would affect adversely athletes’ ability to earn playing time through their performance on coverage and return teams. A few devastating injuries might be avoided, but many more opportunities for players like Chad Gloer to improve their status from walk-ons to scholarship athletes certainly would be lost.

As Coach Schiano notes, the problem is one of physics: players today are much larger and faster than they were when the kickoff was invented, so their collisions are more risky than they were initially. Obviously, players are not going to get smaller or slower, so the only variable it is within the NCAA’s power to control is distance. If a larger, faster player must propel himself downfield at maximum velocity, reduce the length of the straight line he must travel, and you will reduce the force with which he arrives at his destination. Don’t give him the room within which to build up an unacceptably dangerous head of steam.

When college football moved kickoffs from the 35 yard line to the 30 in 2007, former Georgia coach Jim Donnan said: "This is a massive change in college football. It's going to be very difficult to kick the ball out of the end zone from the 30-yard line unless you have a heavy wind." It was this change that exacerbated unreasonably the risk Coach Richt and Coach Schiano wish to see addressed.

The solution, therefore, is to move the line back. How doable is that? The NFL just did it. Restoring the status quo ante 2007 would produce more touchbacks and fewer injuries without dramatically changing---or, really, changing at all---the nature of the game. We could even move kickoffs to the 40 yard line, where the restraining line is located in high school, and make the game safer still. There would be fewer returns, and the returns that did occur would result in less violent collisions, because the players on the coverage team will have had fewer yards within which to accelerate.

I respect Coach Richt’s and Coach Schiano’s positions, but their legitimate and important concerns are able to be addressed adequately in less sweeping ways. Don’t eliminate the kickoff; just move it.

Go ‘Dawgs!

Really those are the only two reasons for posting this grainy black and white photo taken several years ago along Interstate 70 outside Wheeling, West Virginia. Buckeye fans, let's just pretend that they're a couple of hippie grifters who blew into town, swindled everyone in sight, then left like thieves in the night. The NCAA will totally buy it.

Terrelle Pryor has released a statement through his attorney declaring that he will beleaving Ohio State University. It's not necessarily surprising given the recent events in Columbus. Jim Tressel spent an awful lot of time defending Terrelle Pryor recently, and there's been a palpable level of frustration among Buckeye fans with Pryor, both on field and off. There have also been rumblings that other members of the Buckeye football team and university community blame Pryor for Tressel's ouster. Add in the 5 game suspension to start the season which Pryor was already due to serve, and it's no surprise he's in no hurry to hang around Columbus any longer.

Some quarters of OSU fandom have reacted to this news with a bit of optimism vis a vis the impending NCAA investigation, under the theory that if Pryor is no longer on campus he's no longer obligated to talk to the NCAA, and the boys from Indianapolis may not be able to really get the dirt on the Tressel era without him. I would counter that this assumes the NCAA can't find enough to convince itself without Pryor's input, which is a long shot. Just ask USC and Reggie Bush. The NCAA doesn't need all the incriminating details, just enough of them.

Meanwhile the Chicago Tribune is reporting that former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel had far more frequent contact in recent months with Terrelle Pryor's hometown "mentor" than previously disclosed. Tressel called Ted Sarniak 77 times, and also sent 91 text messages to Pryor's high school coach. In isolation this information doesn't seem significant. If the coach had other potential college prospects on the team I'm sure Tressel was sending texts about them. But it's just one more oddity in a series of details about Pryor, Tressel and the Ohio State football program that just raise an eyebrow.