That, if you’ll recall from last year’s BYU/Washington game, is what happens when you take apes, give them complex and sometimes poorly written rules, and ask them to navigate them 14 times a year under the live fire of crowd noise, bodies hurtling all over the place, and the confusion of real-life angles and blocked perspectives. Necessarily stated: officiating is hard, especially in football officiating, a job akin to being a traffic cop stuck without a car vainly trying to flag down speeders without the benefit of a radar gun or pistol.

There’s really just four sets of eyes out there to watch 22 players in motion, and this bad math leads to worse calls. Realistically, holding really could be called on every play, and every game contains a thousand variables being processed by very fallible brains working very quickly under immense pressure. Faced with an impossible job, most crews seem to stick to the big stuff, calling the most egregious penalties while letting little ones slide.

Unless, unless, unless: the crew is captained by Ron Cherry, the most annoying spotlight-slutty referee in the nation and a kidney stone of an official at best, or the crew actually decides to call the excessive celebration call. (more…)

Oh, so we’re lofty lofty enough to publish in the HuffPo, eh, and do most of it via a blockquote? Myles Brand has taken his lessons in lazy blogging from TBL, and learned them well.

Relevant metaphor goes here.

In all fairness, he’s citing the NCAA’s Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Charlotte Westerhaus, who has a lengthy explanation why there isn’t a Rooney Rule–a rule requiring a team to interview at least one minority candidate–for a position. (And no, Bret Bielema, your claim to be “criminally hung” does not make you a minority, dude.)

Her long, long explanation includes this stat:

Dedicated social change agents and pundits who urge the NCAA to adopt the “Rooney Rule” may be unaware of of another important reality – more candidates of color are being interviewed for head coaching positions than ever before. The fact of the matter is that 27 candidates of color were interviewed for 22 vacancies at the Division I level last fall. These numbers far exceed the number of mandated head coaching interviews of minorities conducted by the NFL.

A useless stat, really. Of the 22 vacancies, only 4 went to minority coaches: Dewayne Walker, Mike Haywood, Mike Locksley, and Ron English. Of the nine post season switches in the NFL, three went to minority candidates. (more…)

TALLAHASSEE, AP–Bobby Bowden appealed to the NCAA to include wins from his past before. He may have to do it again.

Florida State will appeal the NCAA ruling in an academic fraud case including the vacating of 14 wins, but should the University lose the appeal Bowden will likely try a new tack. Rather than refuse to honor the NCAA, Florida State will instead lobby for the inclusion of several victories he participated in as a major in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

Bowden, seen here with Joe Paterno in happier times (i.e., the 1930s)

“Bowden wants that record badly enough to go that far,” said one administration source close to the situation who spoke to the AP anonymously. (more…)

Put them away when the recruits are around, and just to be sure you don’t get a secondary violation from the NCAA or have to report one yourself, obey the following rules to avoid “Game simulations” of any sort whatsoever.

–Empty stands. (University of Colorado and others as judged acceptable under this term. Hey, don’t blame us: blame Google’s first image result for “empty stands college football.” )

–Introduce football recruits over loudspeaker…at student parking office administration building.

–Refrain from saying the word “Football” in connection with anything. Instead, make references to “American strategy dashing,” “Collisionball,” “Smashypants,” “Oblate Spheroid Chase,” “Directed Tag,” “Concussery,” “Interesting Rugby,” and “Freedom Crushball.”

–Scoring touchdowns (Syracuse, Auburn, and Mississippi State Universities excepted from this by rule.)

–The presence of cheerleaders in uniform at any event, who must by rule be out of their uniforms. (And not like that, you sad, sad person you.)

–Screaming, incoherent drunks yelling at recruits full bore. (Only permitted if screaming, incoherent drunks are in fact boosters, and they usually are.)

The yearly tweaking of the rules is now on the docket, and let us humbly propose one rule in sore need of tweakage: the transfer rule, a bit of earth-salting schools may use on recruits who transfer out of programs. Robert Marve received an especially poxy variant of the treatment, with Miami refusing to allow Marve to transfer to an ACC school, in-state, or even to an SEC school. Now, it’s USC transfer Vidal Hazelton’s turn for a dose:

Vidal Hazelton, the former USC wide receiver from Staten Island, has been barred from talking to any Pac-10 teams and Notre Dame in his search for a new school, the Torrance Daily Breeze reported on Thursday.

Well, transferring to Idaho is still on the table.

Hazelton’s from Staten Island, NY, so declaring West Coast verboten likely isn’t that big a deal for someone wanting to transfer closer to home. That’s not the point: Hazelton should have the right to transfer wherever he can get an offer, and USC shouldn’t be allowed to hold him once he’s made the decision to transfer. The year penalty–or some variation thereof–makes sense to discourage transfers, but restricting where a player goes after the transfer makes not using the word “chattel” very, very difficult when talking about players’ relationship with schools in the NCAA.

In sum, it is a crappy situation. (Hey, at least Florida crapped itself in an individual case, as opposed to 22 players doing it all at once on the field at home against Alabama and in Jacksonville.)

I implore you to stop. Please.

From Myles Brand’s bit in the Huffington Post on the role of profit in collegiate athletics:

Neither higher education, of which college sports is only a small part, nor intercollegiate athletics is truly capitalistic. They do not generate revenue to make a profit; they generate revenue to fulfill a purpose, to meet the mission of higher education.

From the Sports Business Journal:

The SEC’s total payout to its schools in 2007-08 was $63.6 million after the conference’s cut. TV revenue is distributed among the 12 universities and the league; each school received about $5.3 million this past fiscal year. Under the new deal, that annual number could leap to as much as $15 million per school, which is just shy of the projected average revenue Big Ten schools get from their TV deals each year.

Myles Brand: the Kofi Annan of college athletics. Please don’t shoot each other. Really. It’s quite poor form. We deplore this violence and violation of international law. Cease and desist or face sanction. No, that’s not a very polite thing to do with a tank. Heavens, are you throwing that woman into a deep-fryer? No, that’s not specifically against charter, but it’s certainly on the face a serious violation of her human rights. I fear you shall be receiving a sternly worded letter of rebuke from me, and a condemnation from the Security Council will narrowly pass, with China and Russia abstaining, of course…

Inadvertent or not, the winnowing down of D-1 football to a Premiere League begins with the APR. Columnage hyah at the SN.

Oh, and in unrelated news, Chile knows how to throw a death-party:

Either that’s a volcano and thunderstorm going off simultaneously, or we’ve just found exclusive pictures of Nick Saban’s new office. More photos here.

The NCAA released the APR today, the Academic Progress Report, the NCAA’s opportunity to seize the spotlight and do what it does best: issue press releases.

The NCAA’s Academic Performance Program (APP) is creating positive behavioral change among Division I institutions, according to new four-year data released May 6.

The multi-year Academic Progress Rate (APR) data – with four years of data collection available for the first time – show upward trends in several categories, especially from 2005-06 to 2006-07.

GET DOWN, PARTY PEOPLE! GET DOWN!

We’re still digging through the data for this year, made even more fun by the NCAA’s propensity for releasing a press release on one page, a commentary on another, a spreadsheet here, a comprehensive list hosted on a Russian Military server and only accessible via several hours of white-knuckle hackery. Fortunately, the Indy Star has them all compiled nicely for you so you can revel in the uproarious ironies of a system where the University of Florida’s football team is on par with the United States Military Academy’s team in academic performance, and where Eastern Kentucky pwnz them both.

In the meantime, the only penalties of any relevance to college football go to Kansas and Washington State, who will suffer scholarship losses due to underwhelming APR scores. NCAA, beware: Mark Mangino will have his real estate agent call you to voice his displeasure with your metrics!

Two interesting notes regarding the NCAA, your favorite curiously defined regulatory entity, bear some mention here. Both come courtesy of the good people at Miami Hawk Talk, the smartest damn mid-major board in the universe, and both make sense, which means the sun will go dark today and the man in the rabbit costume is bound to waltz into your office and start talking to you about wormholes any second now–because this is the NCAA we’re discussing.

The NCAA first has decided to pursue where the FBI has relented in the points-shaving scandal at Toledo, conducting its own investigation into the university’s handling of the Harvey “Scooter” McDougle case. McDougle, a running back, had been accused of taking money from a Detroit gambler to recruit others to shave points in football and basketball games at Toledo.

The charges against McDougle have been dropped, but the NCAA presses forward:

“We have had repeated contacts with the university … and have been working collaboratively, including a previous campus visit to interview an individual about a potential sports wagering issue that had been brought to our attention,” NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said in a statement to USA TODAY.

Meaning that doing this as a MAC school could get you fucking fried by the NCAA, especially on the heels of the stories of Toledo coaches taking the company card to pay for expenses during trips to Germany to go “recruiting.” In Germany. Where the only football played outside of NFL Europe involves guys named Beckenbauer, Voeller, and Ballack.

Second, the NCAA’s reconsidering its ban on text messaging and other forms of digital communication. OMG URBN IZ XCTED NCAA WUZ SO NF!!! More than thirty schools filed override complaints in regards to the ruling, meaning it will be reviewed.

Walk-ons at Colorado were charged less for training meals from the years 2000-2005, a violation of some clause in the NCAA’s 3,289 page rulebook on student conduct that will cost the University of Colorado three scholarships and two years on probation.

(Pause. Inhale. Exhale.)

There’s plenty of monkey feces to hurl at everyone here–grab an umbrella, because we’re about to make it rain. First, poop on Gary Barnett for not hiring someone to notice the little things that kill or make management of something as large as a football program, or heaps of shit on him for letting little shitbag things like this fly under his extremely underpowered mental radar without considering the potential consequences cloud his thinking.

Sooper Genious Barnett strikes from beyond the career grave.

We now, more than ever, imagine Gary Barnett as the guy who fails to claim an elephant-size chunk of income from his taxes (”Hey, I never imagined the BurnLounge account would do so well, man.”) and then just hopes that sending the auditors out to his house to dig through piles of Vitamin Shoppe receipts costs more than the money they’d recoup off the audit.

Also, piles of feces hurled to the NCAA for the deepening mess that are its illegal benefits rules. The Colorado thing is most definitely a violation under the rules, but why stop with what you’ve got? Signal to Noise is thinking fierce when he suggests in a very Modest Proposal-ish way that it doesn’t go far enough–the NCAA should codify student behavior toward athletes, because surely the status and esteem they get affords unfair benefits to them in the form of especially forceful blowjobs, entry to private parties, and ultimately airtime on ESPN, a form of advertisement whose price far exceeds the $61,000 or so Colorado spent on extra calories for walk-ons.

And if you don’t think the cash value of especially forceful blowjobs and free advertising for your football skills exceeds $61,000 dollars and isn’t a benefit other students don’t get…well, like people who don’t smoke Tarrlytons, then fuck you. In the name of logic, we won’t be satisfied until Myles Brand spends a few minutes of the day writing a code stating that if a student athlete doesn’t get teeth and also gets a push on the dirty doorbell from a fellatrix, then a regular student should, too.