Jon

ESPNnews has it official now. And today was his last day, according to the AP. I guess this means that Raisin won't have to cheer against them for the Las Vegas bowl.

Hot damn. Word is that Greg Colby, our defensive coordinator, has FINALLY been let go. I'd love to see them go get someone from outside the program, but Randy Bates, 2nd year LBers coach and former defensive coordinator of Louisiana Tech, may get the promotion. He was brought it when Fitzgerald was made head coach. Of course, if they do plan on switching to the 3-4 next season, that'll definitely have an impact on filling the position. Now all we need is to get Jerry Brown out of there and bring in a defensive backs coach who can teach something other than nothing but face guarding. In related news, Mark Murphy is expected to be announced as the new CEO of the Packers this afternoon. Our search for our new AD has begun.

I'm glad I've given up on this organization enough to at least laugh about this.

It sounds like Hendry and Wade got together and wrote out what they'd say about Matsui if he was signed with the understanding that whoever actually won the bidding would get to say it.

Clutch doesn't enter into the anti-clutch equation. Anti-clutch numbers would have to be compared to overall numbers, not clutch numbers. All it means is that a player can do worse in a tight situation that what they'd normally do.

Mizzou cost themselves a TD by not taking more time before snapping after the questionable spot at the goal line.

Are you referring to the PI call? That looked pretty obvious to me. I didn't think they'd call it, but the defender had his arms all over the receiver for nearly 2 seconds before the ball got there.

That was an amazing catch.

Bah. I can't get CBS, NBC, ABC, or FOX right now on DirecTV, although WPWR is working fine. EDIT: Actually, it's just the HD signals. The regular signals are fine.

I'm not sure what the purpose of that article was other than to introduce a new way to define "clutch." His numbers didn't address whether or not it actually exists, though.

Ouch.

Don't forget the caption: Which school's football student section a few years back was having a big problem with students relieving themselves in their seats because it was too packed to get to a bathroom?

Quite the contrary; Castillo is one of the NFL's biggest spokesman to the Latino community. The double standard for PED use in baseball and football is laughable and arbitrary. I'll never be able to understand why it's a career-staining and career-ending thing in baseball, but in football, people simply don't give a crap. But that's the problem with steroid discussion. There's no context. Castillo never used steroids while playing. He used them after his college career was over to recover from nagging injuries that weren't healing on their own and stopped well before the draft. But we still don't know what effect such drugs have on pitchers, the primary culprits in baseball Along with minor leaguers, use that 99% of people won't blink an eye at. Sure the media largely ignores it, perhaps implicitly acknowledging the context (or, more likely, ignoring it because it doesn't effect HR records), but there's no dialogue at all. If steroids don't make pitches throw harder, but rather really just help in their recovery time/longevity, just how bad is such use? If not for home run records, an artibrary and useless context for discussing steroid use, baseball steroid use would be seen just like in any other sport.

What it's capable of?? Like what? I suppose getting in the way of even MORE rampant abuse of illegal substances....which aren't just illegal in baseball, but illegal in the "real world" as well. Don't any of you realize that the "Old-Timeyness" is what separates the game from other sports and makes it special? The old-timeyness also keeps us horribly depressed that our general manager can't utilize new thinking and put together a decent team despite a large payroll. And it also drives a lot of people crazy because of how the mainstream media and most baseball fans think about the game. The worst, perhaps, is the paradox of promoting individual sacrifices for the team despite it being a largely individual sport and the occasionally disturbing obsession baseball has with individual records. We're so far away from having any sort of intelligent discussion about baseball on a national level that it's just sad. There's a lot about baseball's past that is important to our culture, but that doesn't we have to obsess about it. When sports fans and the media care about steroid abuse in baseball only because of "sacred" individual records, yet don't care about it other sports, there's something wrong. And besides, the baseball obsession over steroids mostly just clouds what PEDs actually do and who they're mostly used by.

I don't think mandatory steroids would make us/them much happier about the contracts given out for those players.

A very disappointing end to the season. The empty netter with a few seconds left was just insult to injury. To lose to Ohio State in the semi-finals of the Big Ten tournament and then open up the NCAA tournament with a loss after a first round bye hurts. At least the crowd was pretty good at Lakeside last night. Or so I heard. Of course, it wasn't as stunning as Indiana's loss to Bradley. They fell on penalty kicks when their 5th hit the crossbar down 5-4.

Here's the article. The vote on the waivers should occur by the end of the week.

But that sounds like good news for the Packers =D> Clue me in then. Under Murphy, Northwestern's big sports (Football and Basketball) have languished. They still aren't competitive in the Big 10 really at all, and there doesn't seem to be much of chance that they will be. So what makes him a good choice to run the Packers? He's only been at Northwestern for about 4.5 years, but he may be one of the best we've had. Plenty of credit should go to our president for his commitment to sports, but Murphy made great strides in the non-revenue sports. The 3 straight championships of the women's lacrosse team nearly didn't happen. After the 2nd one, I believe, head coach Amonte Hiller was very close to moving back east to Maryland to coach at her alma mater. Instead, Murphy was able to get her to stay when it looked like all hope was lost and signed her to a nice contract. He followed that up by spearheading the reconstruction of the lakeside field for soccer, lacrosse, and field hockey (it's beautiful, by the way), which has coincided with the re-birth of the men's soccer program. He did a similar job with the women's softball team, making sure the coaching staff stayed put and invested money to renovate the softball field after their back-to-back WCWS appearances. In regards to football, he made a very tough but ultimately correct choice for the long term in naming Fitz as Walker's replacement. The two major criticisms of what has gone on over the past few years is the retention of two of the long-time assitant coaches, but that may change this winter, and the home football attendance. The attendance problem is much greater a challenge than one man can face. The basketball team isn't doing well, but recruiting efforts have certainly improved under his watch and he helped put in money into rebuilding the Welsh-Ryan Arena locker rooms, which was long overdue. I don't know exactly how those skills are going to translate into his potential role of CEO of the Packers since I can't really say what his day-to-day duties would be. However, he has a wide range of experiences as outlined in that article, including a significant background in law and negotiation with the NLFPA. He certainly isn't the most experienced candidate in the job search, which included Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, but he's a very smart guy.

Raisin, what's with USC negotiating with the Rose Bowl to play their home games there? Is it just a ploy? By the way, here's a site with head coaches' salary and contract information: http://www.coacheshotseat.com/SalariesContracts.htm

The search committee for the next CEO of the Green Bay Packers selected Northwestern AD Mark Murphy as their choice. He may end up not being confirmed by the board, but I still feel the need to swear loudly... Horrible news for NU.

How does a 4 team playoff really solve the problem? While there may be one or two teams clearly deserving of being in it, there will probably be just as much of a debate about another 4 teams that are nearly equally deserving of the other 2 spots. Is that enough of an improvement to change the current system for? Not that an 8 or 16 team playoff doesn't have its problems.

Hooch is crazy.

I read on a different board that the officiating crew for the Hawaii/Boise State game was made up of 3 officials from the Big 12, 2 from the WAC, and 2 from the Mountain West conference. Apparently, there's a lot of speculation that over the next decade, college football will transition from crews from one conference to crews from three different conferences, or regional crews. Each crew will not see the same team twice and will officiate four games in each of the associated conferences. Maybe someone will be willing to play in Hawai'i again. But that sounds like a great idea.

I'm a little surprised he wasn't getting more than $5 million for 2 years.