The Rest of College Football

[whodean]

The SEC tends to be on the "play down" side.

How so? At least one SEC team has been in the national championship game, meaning each team below has played a bowl a notch better, right?

[Rob F]

Dropping Domers to their deserved level:

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/8...insignificance

Should be required reading for anyone and everyone connected with both ND and the powers-that-be within the NCAA, including the Bowls and NBC.

Army and Navy used to be National Powers in CFB, too, back thru the 1940's. So what if nD was able to sustain it for an additional 3 or 4 decades, it's quite clear they have regressed nearly to the current level of those 2 Service Academies, lets put an end to their so-called "mystique"!

[THE_WIZARD_]

I don't think this is true..

if you're a QB for OSU, you have difficulty identifying the field vs the stands

[Hannibal]

How so? At least one SEC team has been in the national championship game, meaning each team below has played a bowl a notch better, right?

They sometimes get to play down when the Big Ten gets two teams into the BCS (which is almost every year). If they get a second place team into the BCS, it's never a tough matchup for them. They get teams like Hawaii, 2007. That was the year that Illinois had to play USC in the Rose Bowl. The SEC absolutely never gets hit with that kind of matchup. The closest thing that they ever got to a tough game for their second place team was Utah, 2008 (and they lost).

When the Big Ten has fair and reasonable matchups, we tend to do pretty well. 2009, for example, we beat Oregon, LSU, and Georgia Tech in post New Year's Day bowl games. As a conference, we do tend to get some brutal matchups, like last year's Iowa vs Oklahoma.

[entropy]

Joe Posnanski has been around the block, as an old-school newspaper hack and a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, but even he had no idea what he was biting off last year when he convinced Joe Paterno's family to grant him unrestricted access for a deep, definitive biography of the venerable Penn State coach at the end of an exemplary career. The goal, Posnanski said, was an inspiring book that "will tell the remarkable story about a man who could have been anything but decided that the best way he could help change America was one college football player at a time." Instead, he had unwittingly stumbled backstage for the most dramatic, traumatic scandal in the history of American sports.

The resulting book, Paterno, is out later this month, and there is already some concern that Posnanski's tendency for feel-good reverence will gloss over the more disturbing aspects of JoePa's mini-empire in State College, particularly Paterno's role in ignoring or covering up multiple allegations of sexual abuse against his longtime assistant, Jerry Sandusky. (In June, Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts of sexually assaulting ten underage males over the course of more than a decade, several of them in Penn State facilities.) Today, we get the first glimpse of the finished product, courtesy of several brief excerpts in GQ.

In one scene, as public opinion begins to turn against Paterno in the days following Sandusky's arrest last November, Posnanski describes Paterno's icy relationship with Penn State's Board of Trustees through the perspective of the family's new PR specialist, Dan McGinn:

This is when McGinn learned just how far Paterno's influence and reputation had fallen. He asked [family adviser Guido] D'Elia for the name of one person on the Penn State board of trustees, just one, whom they could reach out to, to negotiate a gracious ending. D'Elia shook his head.

"One person on the board, that's all we need," McGinn said.

D'Elia shook his head again. "It began in 2004," he whispered, referring to an old clash Paterno had with [university president Graham] Spanier. "The board started to turn. We don't have anybody on the board now."

That's when McGinn realized that this was going to be the worst day of Joe Paterno's professional life.

Paterno responded on Nov. 9 by announcing his retirement, effective at the end of the season, which would have allowed him to remain on the sideline for the Nittany Lions' final three games – including the home finale against Nebraska on Nov. 12 – and a bowl game. "At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status," Paterno said in a statement. "They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can." The same night, the board voted unanimously to fire Paterno and Spanier, effective immediately.

The following week, Paterno was diagnosed with lung cancer. Two months later, he was dead at the age of 85.

The excerpts also describe (briefly) the initial reaction of Paterno's son, Scott, to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's indictment of Sandusky on Nov. 5, when he called his father and said, "Dad, you have to face the possibility that you will never coach another game." The day after he was fired, Paterno "sobbed uncontrollably" when meeting with coaches at his house and "cried continually" throughout the day, with reporters camped outside his door. "My name," Paterno told his other son, Jay, "I have spent my whole life trying to make that name mean something. And now it's gone."

A longer excerpt appears in print editions of the September GQ, and will be published on the magazine's website next week, on Aug. 20. Posnanski's book is scheduled to hit shelves on Aug. 21.

[entropy]

Joe Posnanski has been around the block, as an old-school newspaper hack and a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, but even he had no idea what he was biting off last year when he convinced Joe Paterno's family to grant him unrestricted access for a deep, definitive biography of the venerable Penn State coach at the end of an exemplary career. The goal, Posnanski said, was an inspiring book that "will tell the remarkable story about a man who could have been anything but decided that the best way he could help change America was one college football player at a time." Instead, he had unwittingly stumbled backstage for the most dramatic, traumatic scandal in the history of American sports.

The resulting book, Paterno, is out later this month, and there is already some concern that Posnanski's tendency for feel-good reverence will gloss over the more disturbing aspects of JoePa's mini-empire in State College, particularly Paterno's role in ignoring or covering up multiple allegations of sexual abuse against his longtime assistant, Jerry Sandusky. (In June, Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts of sexually assaulting ten underage males over the course of more than a decade, several of them in Penn State facilities.) Today, we get the first glimpse of the finished product, courtesy of several brief excerpts in GQ.

In one scene, as public opinion begins to turn against Paterno in the days following Sandusky's arrest last November, Posnanski describes Paterno's icy relationship with Penn State's Board of Trustees through the perspective of the family's new PR specialist, Dan McGinn:

This is when McGinn learned just how far Paterno's influence and reputation had fallen. He asked [family adviser Guido] D'Elia for the name of one person on the Penn State board of trustees, just one, whom they could reach out to, to negotiate a gracious ending. D'Elia shook his head.

"One person on the board, that's all we need," McGinn said.

D'Elia shook his head again. "It began in 2004," he whispered, referring to an old clash Paterno had with [university president Graham] Spanier. "The board started to turn. We don't have anybody on the board now."

That's when McGinn realized that this was going to be the worst day of Joe Paterno's professional life.

Paterno responded on Nov. 9 by announcing his retirement, effective at the end of the season, which would have allowed him to remain on the sideline for the Nittany Lions' final three games ? including the home finale against Nebraska on Nov. 12 ? and a bowl game. "At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status," Paterno said in a statement. "They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can." The same night, the board voted unanimously to fire Paterno and Spanier, effective immediately.

The following week, Paterno was diagnosed with lung cancer. Two months later, he was dead at the age of 85.

The excerpts also describe (briefly) the initial reaction of Paterno's son, Scott, to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's indictment of Sandusky on Nov. 5, when he called his father and said, "Dad, you have to face the possibility that you will never coach another game." The day after he was fired, Paterno "sobbed uncontrollably" when meeting with coaches at his house and "cried continually" throughout the day, with reporters camped outside his door. "My name," Paterno told his other son, Jay, "I have spent my whole life trying to make that name mean something. And now it's gone."

A longer excerpt appears in print editions of the September GQ, and will be published on the magazine's website next week, on Aug. 20. Posnanski's book is scheduled to hit shelves on Aug. 21.

[whodean]

SEC always gets a second team into the BCS too.

Truth is, the big discrepancy of quality is in the middle, the SEC has teams like Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina etc. who are usually quite a bit better than the Iowa, Wisconsin, Northwesterns they might meet in Bowls. When these schools play each other it is a mismatch because of quality disparity.

[entropy]

The biggest discrepancy is the SEC recruited 30-35 kids a year and cut those who were not good enough. In a sense, they got an extra recruiting class every 4 years.

[Wild Hoss]

I don?t know that extra recruiting class analogy really works...they don?t get extra scholarships, which is kind of how that reads IMO. What they do have, as you referenced earlier, is Draconian retention policies that cull the herd.

I wouldn?t say that they don?t attempt to develop kids, but they have a short window to prove they are worth the staff?s time or else they are out the door and replaced by fresh stock. For example, near as I can tell nearly one-third of Alabama?s 2010 recruiting class is no longer on their roster (9 of 27, with one transfer to NU). That?s harsh.

[WM Wolverine]

Actually it kinda is true. Not only do some schools (mostly SEC) sign an extra recruiting class over a 5-year period but they get to 'release' non contributors as they see fit. I'm sure a lot of B10, Pac 12 schools have guys on scholarship that they'd like to release and give that scholarship to an incoming freshman...

Many of those schools have 90+ guys on scholarship on signing day. B10 rules dictate you must know and prove where your attrition is coming from to go over the scholarship limit of 85 on signing day. Schools in the SEC have a lot higher margin for error in recruiting as they are signing ~25 kids per class while the B10 is signing ~21.

[Hannibal]

Oversigning is, indeed, a huge advantage. Big Ten schools constantly have to turn away or slow play kids because they can't afford to hand out the scholarships. We did that with EJ Levenberry this year. We slow played Burbridge because of concerns about his academics. Even Jim Tressel turned away kids. In the SEC, you don't have to worry about it. You can oversign, and if a borderline player makes grades, you just tell somebody to move out of his dorm room ala Les Miles.

[Hannibal]

SEC always gets a second team into the BCS too.

And they always get to play a cream puff who has absolutely no business being there. The Big Ten rarely gets that opportunity, but when we do, we win too (Ga Tech in '09, Va Tech in '11). In 2006 and 2007, our second place team had to play USC in the Rose Bowl. The same year that Michigan got creamed by USC in the Rose Bowl, LSU got to play ND in the Sugar Bowl as a virtual home game. Both Michigan and LSU kicked the shit out of ND that year, but LSU's win counts more for some reason because it's a bowl game. In 2008, our #2 team played Top 5 11-1 Texas. The Big Ten has easily the hardest bowl schedule every year.

[entropy]

If I recruit 30 or 35 each year, I get rid of the kids who will never be a starter.. You end up with extra 20-40 kids over 4 years. That is a huge advantage.

[entropy]

Philadelphia product Greg Bucceroni said he reached out to the U.S. Postal Investigative Service on Tuesday in an effort to assist the agency with its investigation of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

The Postal Service’s criminal investigators are reportedly looking into whether Sandusky had any ties to a pedophile ring that involved child pornography and other supporters of the Penn State football program.

Bucceroni told the Daily News last month that he was a sex abuse victim of Edward Savitz, a well-known Philly businessman and advocate for at-risk youths, who was charged with multiple counts of abuse of minors in the early 1990s. Savitz died of AIDS days before his 1993 trial was to begin, but Bucceroni said he was abused by Savitz in the late ’70s, and that Savitz introduced Bucceroni to Sandusky during a 1979 fund-raiser for The Second Mile, the charity Sandusky founded and through which he met and groomed his victims.

Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of sex abuse in June.

“(The USPS) asked me questions about Savitz, about his connection to Sandusky and about any illegal child pornography operations that I remembered hearing about or knew about,” Bucceroni, a police officer in Philadelphia’s public school system, told The News. He added that he spoke with FBI authorities last fall and again earlier this summer about Savitz.

Although he does not think Savitz was a booster for Penn State, Bucceroni said Savitz was a financial supporter of The Second Mile. Bucceroni was on track to enroll in The Second Mile in 1980, but said an altercation between him and Savitz and a subsequent arrest quashed his chances.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-...#ixzz23itCwp78

[entropy]

Philadelphia product Greg Bucceroni said he reached out to the U.S. Postal Investigative Service on Tuesday in an effort to assist the agency with its investigation of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

The Postal Service?s criminal investigators are reportedly looking into whether Sandusky had any ties to a pedophile ring that involved child pornography and other supporters of the Penn State football program.

Bucceroni told the Daily News last month that he was a sex abuse victim of Edward Savitz, a well-known Philly businessman and advocate for at-risk youths, who was charged with multiple counts of abuse of minors in the early 1990s. Savitz died of AIDS days before his 1993 trial was to begin, but Bucceroni said he was abused by Savitz in the late ?70s, and that Savitz introduced Bucceroni to Sandusky during a 1979 fund-raiser for The Second Mile, the charity Sandusky founded and through which he met and groomed his victims.

Sandusky was convicted of 45 counts of sex abuse in June.

?(The USPS) asked me questions about Savitz, about his connection to Sandusky and about any illegal child pornography operations that I remembered hearing about or knew about,? Bucceroni, a police officer in Philadelphia?s public school system, told The News. He added that he spoke with FBI authorities last fall and again earlier this summer about Savitz.

Although he does not think Savitz was a booster for Penn State, Bucceroni said Savitz was a financial supporter of The Second Mile. Bucceroni was on track to enroll in The Second Mile in 1980, but said an altercation between him and Savitz and a subsequent arrest quashed his chances.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-...#ixzz23itCwp78