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you guys should just stop accepting invites to bowls unless it's a strong opponent matchup.

except none of these hawkeyes will be playing in the bowl game

Looks like Nebraska picked a bad time to join the Big Ten. The only name they get is Rimington? Couldn't they have at least combined positions and handed out the Butkus-Rimington award to the best LB/OL?

Does the Big Ten know that Paterno is only mostly dead?

so what are normal people going to call the divisions b/c no one is going to use those stupid names.

if folks really want to get into the discussion of how batting order position relates to performance, please start a new thread in baseball discussions. Or you can just review the pages and pages of discussion from one of the Soriano threads on this topic a few years ago and commence pounding your head on the table like everyone else does when they try to read them.

Temple didn't do a thing ever before Golden showed up. I think that's a pretty solid hire for Miami. I don't think it's a bad hire. He's certainly a hot name. It's just not the sort of resume you expect for a tier 1 program. He's got 1 year at a top program (as a position coach), then a few years coordinating for Virginia and 5 years at Temple. Temple was crap before he got there and now they're winning 9 games a year. That's cool. But other than losing to PSU every year, what's he hanging his hat on? Beating UConn? Could be a great hire for Miami. Again, he's got a reputation. But no big-time DC experience and only a few years as a HC at a terrible school where he can consistently beat bad teams and sometimes beat mediocre-to-decent teams. It just seems to me that he's missing a step. If Texas hired him as DC for 2 years or Kentucky hired him as HC, that would make complete sense to me. But HC at Miami right now? Just a little surprised is all.

so Miami hired Temple's head coach and Florida hired a DC with no head coaching experience?

the best Florida can do is muschamp? wow.

Pretty much this. And I think you meant AL East. b/c whip is far from the end all stat by which to measure pitchers

that's a touch misleading, isn't it? I'm sure the Sox are terribly concerned that the 20-21 year old Crawford with the .670 OPS will show up instead of the guy that's pretty consistently been in the .800-.850 range for the last 6 years.

heard espn radio in West Michigan discussing whether Urban quit so he could take the UM job. Seriously.

He'd have another game in his career if he played for Mark Dantonio. Well done. MSU suspended 15 players for last years bowl game Rucker missed two games(including one where he was not in jail) for his DUI this year...hate to let facts get in the way of your fun hard to give the coach much credit for not playing a guy who was incarcerated. work release baby

A lot of people keep saying this, but I'm not sure that it's an accurate statement. While he may see a slight improvement in his overall numbers, it's not like he's going to turn into Roy Halladay. Garza would probably be better off in the NL West, where the ballparks tend to be more favorable to fly-ball pitchers. True, but he won't have to face the mega-offenses of Boston and New York, plus it's always easier for a pitcher to go from the AL to the NL than vice-versa because of no DH. Will he put up Halladay numbers? No. But I think his stats could improve. Saying he could improve is a lot different than saying he could "excel". I never said he would "excell". But I think Garza would be an improvement in our rotation. Z/Garza/Demp/Cashner/? isn't like Oswalt/Hamels/Halladay, but it's not terrible. Solid at worst. I think so, too. I like Garza, but I'm not sure what makes him more likely to excel in a move to the NL than any other pitcher.

Right, but Mallett and Warren not being on the team isn't Carr's fault, is it? Nor the fact that Cissoko left or the big time DB from last season that couldn't make grades (Dorsey?). It's certainly possible that some of the depth issues in the DB are bad b/c Carr didn't have a ton of 4 or 5 star players in his last few classes. But some of the holes are Rich Rod's creation (or failure to fill with guys that can pass NCAA eligibility requirements). Point is - the cupboard wasn't USC-full, but it wasn't bare either. There was a lot of talent when Rich Rod got to campus. On the whole, I'm not sure if there's more or less there now.

you wanna go?

Why would you want that? Kelly may never figure out how to stop that offense. ? You mean Diaco? ND lost on a last minute drive after playing half the game without its starting QB. Maybe the game is different if Crist isn't out after the first drive and his backups throw picks (including 1 on the first play Crist was out). September Tommy Rees wasn't nearly the same as November Tommy Rees, who still had some "freshman with limited ability though a good football IQ" issues. ND's defense was significantly better in November than in September as well. I'm looking forward to seeing Michigan again next year.

in addition to it being Rich Rod's 3rd season, the cupboard was most definitely not bare. Rich Rod scared all the players away - including Mallet. The 06 and 07 classes were rated 12 and 13 by Rivals. And there was good groundwork for the class signed a couple months after Rodriguez was hired (#10 by Rivals). Rankings aren't everything, but there were quality players there on both sides of the ball, a really good QB and some play makers on D. The players didn't fit his system and they left in flocks that first spring, but he came into some talent. A heck of a lot more talent than he's going to leave for the next guy. right but a lot of the guys that were recruited by carr were not his type of player. i guess i shouldn't have said that the cupboard was bare, but when you change from a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offense to a spread option offense. mallett was the type of player who would be a disaster in rich rod's system, that's why he transferred. i think when you hire a coach with a radically different philosophy than the coaching staff that preceded him, you need to give him more time. if you look at his success at wvu, the program really hit its stride after he had been there for 4 years. obviously there's the risk that michigan keeps him on another couple of years and the program remains subpar, but he added two wins each of the last two years, and personally i wouldn't chase him off for another regime change just yet. As an ND fan, I'd love to have Rich Rod stick around for a couple more seasons. Get more spread offense players in and go through yet another defensive overhaul before you dump him, bring in a true "Michigan Man" and go through the process again. Living up here, you hear a lot about Carr leaving the cupboard bare, so I just wanted to jump in on that point. I don't care one way or another about Carr, but Rich Rod's failures are not Carr's fault. Whether the program is moving in the right direction or not - I don't know. Losing to App St a couple years ago is tough to explain. It's year 3 and the defensive backfield is in shambles and the whole defense isn't good. I don't know what all happened though I know a couple of guys Rich Rod signed couldn't make NCAA grades for admittance. But Rich Rod's actions and his "why me" attitude toward the press (not to mention the Josh Groban thing) is pretty embarrassing to the school. That with the results and the poor recruiting is probably enough to shut it down if there is a decent or better option out there.

in addition to it being Rich Rod's 3rd season, the cupboard was most definitely not bare. Rich Rod scared all the players away - including Mallet. The 06 and 07 classes were rated 12 and 13 by Rivals. And there was good groundwork for the class signed a couple months after Rodriguez was hired (#10 by Rivals). Rankings aren't everything, but there were quality players there on both sides of the ball, a really good QB and some play makers on D. The players didn't fit his system and they left in flocks that first spring, but he came into some talent. A heck of a lot more talent than he's going to leave for the next guy.

replace tulsa/hawaii with ND/Miami. Assuming Miami comes to play. If they're just going through the motions w/o their coach, it could be a really sloppy game.

mental? personality?

which is worse: a BCS team that lost to an 8-4 MAC team or a BCS team that lost to James [expletive] Madison? ETA: it sorta sucks that UCONN gets a BCS game; the system isn't great. Do our hearts go out to Michigan State? I'm sure they'd love to take UCONN's place and get beat by OU, but they'll have the pleasure of being Bama's doormat instead.

Florida hardly looked good, I'll agree. But they beat you by more than 3 TDs and you only managed 4 FGs. Use whatever verb you want, I guess, but it wasn't a close game. I'm sure you disagree. It's a tangent we don't really need to go down. Point is, Temple lost its last 2 games and finished 5-3 in the MAC. It's too bad that they didn't get selected, but it's hard to feel too bad about the 5/6 place team in the MAC getting left out.

no one's saying they beat Oregon, Auburn, and OSU. But they won 5 straight to end the season, including a top 25 team and 3 bowl teams. I'm not saying UCONN is a top-10 team. And they don't "deserve" a BCS bid, based just on their season. But they earned a bowl bid over Temple. The fact that got the auto-BCS bid for the Big East isn't really relevant to Temple getting left out of a bowl completely.

ouch. that sucks for Temple, but finishing with losses to Ohio and Miami (OH) to go 5-3 in the MAC isn't the way to endear yourself to bowls. And UCONN beat WVU, Pitt, Syracuse and South Florida at the end of the year. Sucks when a team you beat goes to a bowl and you don't, but it seems pretty clear that UCONN had the better season. You mean MAC Champions Miami (OH)? Yeah, but it would mean a little more if they didn't get owned by every AQ-conference team they played.