Florida Athletics will be investigating Urban Meyer for his brazen recruitment of gymnast Maranda Smith, girlfriend of junior college phenom and current Gator commit Carl Moore. According to a January 16th Gainesville Sun article Meyer openly encouraged Smith to commit to Florida’s gymnastics program, a nice coincidence since he also wanted Moore to come play football for Florida. Nice how that works out.

It’s strictly internal at this point, but it is a secondary violation of NCAA regs and deserving of some form of punishment, no matter how laughable it will be. And oh, it will be laughable, no matter how badly we crave the punishment. Say it’s me that you want to dismember, NCAA. Perhaps the sight will scare Urban into less Neuheiselish recruiting gaffes.

And according to the Wiz, there may be more. Or not. Whatever: if you think Florida’s dirty, go ahead and don’t even read any of this, and if you don’t, don’t bother reading it, either. Facts are pesky things, but thus far they point to Urban Meyer being just a tad willing to soil the hem of his dress to grab the arm of a fetching young man. No outright documented flops in the mud, but some disturbing stomps through the mud and at least three pieces of anecdotal evidence he lied to recruits:

–The “Tebow is being recruited as a linebacker” bit from Meat Market.

–The Darryl Stonum incident, documented here.

–The Patrick Johnson episode where he referred to Meyer as a “coward” for back-channel questioning of his ACT score. Note: we originally had “Terrance Toliver” here, and were corrected by reader Amit. Much thanks to him.–ed.

Just win baby! Yeah! (Waves pennant, puts hands over eyes.)

Where the hell is Virginia starting qb Jameel Sewell? And what’s he doing with courtside tix to a basketball game when he’s AWOL from the football program?

Pete Carroll is already getting commits from that promising fetus you’ve got there. They just keep getting younger and younger every year, man: USC gets a commit from the best qb of 2009 according to slightly creepazoid recruiting experts, thus ensuring that crushing expectations will loom over his first year of college, but also over his final year of high school.

35 year-old Clint Bowen will take over the DC spot at Kansas following the departure of Bill Young. No big wacky changes, since Bowen was the co-coordinator with Young last year. Young has moved on to Miami to help reclaim the ‘Cane defense from the realm of semi-suck it fell into last year. Again, every defense that has to share time with a Patrick Nix offense will find itself wanting to wring the throat of said offense by the third game of the season.

Weird. After being certain he would end up at blitz-friendly, hell of a fine football team LSU, former Georgia Tech coordinator Jon Tenuta is taking his rabid scheme to…Washington? (HT: Travis.)


I WILL eat this paper if you don’t bring me a fish this long, young men! Tenuta to Washington?