Posts by Brian Cook at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

"Old School" is the College Football FanHouse's irregular look back at the rich history of college football, usually through the medium of embeddable flash video. Check out the Old School archive for more famous plays and infamous hair.

Before Tim Brewster was Minnesota's head coach, he coached tight ends in the NFL. Before that, he coached tight ends in college. And before that, he was an Illinois tight end with a killer Buckstache and coachspeak down pat:



About two minutes into the video, Thomas Rooks scores the game's only touchdown in a 16-6 Illinois win over Michigan, Illinois' first since 1966. Illinois would go to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1964.

The Illini were, naturally, cheating their asses off, though Mike White's wikipedia page completely omits mention of that.

Another in a moderately long list over the past few years:

Georgia Tech cornerback Jerrard Tarrant has been charged with rape and has been suspended from the football team.

The alleged victim said she was raped at an on-campus dormitory April 25 and reported the incident to police that morning, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday.

Tarrant was released on $40,000 bail and has received the standard indefinite suspension from new Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson. A redshirt freshman, Tarrant was battling for a starting job this fall.

It seems every paper in Pennsylvania has a reporter dedicated to scouring the seven seas for information about Joe Paterno's pending retirement: is it pending? Like... how pending? Are we talking "imminent" or "his dessicated bones will still lord over us when it's Planet of the Apes time?" And who will they hire? Schiano? Al Golden? Bender?

No one knows. Except maybe these guys:

Players recruited by the Nittany Lions are being assured that when Paterno retires, his replacement will come from the current coaching staff rather than an outside hire.

''Mr. Paterno told me himself that his replacement is already within the staff, so he'll just bring one new guy in and bump everybody up in the ranks,'' linebacker Mike Yancich from Washington, Pa., said.

Any reasonable observer must therefore conclude that the job will go to defensive coordinator Tom Bradley, and outpost of competence amongst-

What about me?

Find out after the jump.

Garrett Goebel wants to CRUSH THIS BOOM!

These are the words of Garrett Goebel, a highly-touted defensive tackle who will be a freshman at Ohio State this fall:

BPRT: This is your senior year...what goals have you set personally and for your team?

GG: I plan on winning Conference, winning all playoff games, and becoming the Illinois Class 5A Champions!!! Also, developing leadership skills while convincing my teammates that they can perform at a higher level and accomplish team/personal goals IF THEY ARE WILLING TO MAKE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE!!!

Dude. The first five relevant hits for "ultimate sacrifice" in Google: the crucifixion of Jesus, catrato castration, Indian woman climbing on top of husband's funeral pyre, memorial to deceased American soldiers, and... awwww, goddammit, Tim Russert. (No offense to Russert, but... maybe his death was not the equivalent of a pope or something?)

Goebel is clearly AMPED up and likes to WIN. WIN AT YELLING. MORE! After the JUMP! GRRR AAARRGH!

The Big Ten Network's Comcast deal is done, and now there may be a thaw in relations with Time Warner:

"I think the fact that the Big Ten Network and Comcast came to an agreement is very encouraging and is a positive development," [VP of public affairs Mary Jo] Green said. "I think the fact that Comcast had similar concerns that we do, and that they were able to come to an agreement is encouraging."

That's a far cry from the standoffish quotes from Time Warner last summer and may indicate a potential deal in the offing. Or it may just be "please don't switch to satellite" posturing. This one, however, seems indisputably positive:

"We know that certain customers are interested in the network and we do hear from them," Green said. "We're hopeful that we can reach an agreement before football season."

Never in the thousand-year history of the Big Ten Network-cable war has a cable company acknowledged that customers might want the channel, and never has anyone come out and claimed they would like to make a deal.

"Old School" is the College Football FanHouse's irregular look back at the rich history of college football, usually through the medium of embeddable flash video. Check out the Old School archive for more famous plays and infamous hair.

A little tribute to The MZone, the recently departed Michigan blog that had a brief fling with fame when Colin Cowherd ripped off some of their content, in the form of a 1980s Ohio State commercial heavy on the Buckstaches:



Oh, yeah, and there's AN ENORMOUS INSECT ROBOT THAT'S GOING TO KILL US ALL.

(via Our Honor Defend.)

Anyone who's lived on a college campus in the past ten years knows that Jimmy Johns delivers. If we are talking about the delicious sandwich purveyor, the delivery is... well... delicious sandwiches. If we are talking about the Alabama running back/linebacker, however, the delivery is delicious narcotics:

Investigators with the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force picked up Johns Tuesday morning around 8 a.m. Sources tell FOX6 News Johns has been under investigation for a couple of weeks.

Tuscaloosa Police Chief Ken Swindle says Johns is charged with 5 counts of distribution of powder cocaine, and 1 count of possession.

And that's goodbye to one awesomely-named but unfortunately crappy and felonious (allegedly) football player. Alabama is now one scholarship closer to cramming its enormous 32-player recruiting class on campus. Just two more to go!

(Via Bama Sports Report.)

Previously On Fanhouse:
Nick Saban's the Real Snake Oil Salesman Around These Parts
Snake Oil on the Recruiting Trail
Saban Made Him Do It: 'Bama DE Arrested

Bill Doba... not so much.

The Seattle Times has decided to leave no instate Division I-A program unbashed, following up their epic series on Washington's wacky ways under Rick Neuheisel with an expose on the disaster train that is the Washington State Cougars program.

Most of the article is the usual blah blah blah about very large men getting into very minor legal trouble. Since WSU was terrible during the period in question and the coach is now an ex-coach, there's not much outrage to be generated. But... Washington State is located in Pullman, which is sort of a legendarily horrible little town just down the road from appropriately named Moscow, Idaho. And never has a town been blown up in two sentences like this:

"WSU is a hard school to go to, man," [ex-DB Courtney] Williams says. "You ain't got nothin' to do but get drunk and smoke weed, and not go to class because you're too tired from doing what you're doing."

As WSU Football Blog ruefully concludes, "ouch." They have much more on the situation, too... if you're interested, check them out.

"Old School" is the College Football FanHouse's irregular look back at the rich history of college football, usually through the medium of embeddable flash video. Check out the Old School archive for more famous plays and infamous hair.

Michigan blog MVictors keeps Michigan fans appraised of the weird goings-on of the eBay memorabilia market, and this time he's got a doozy:



As you can probably surmise, that's a watch presented to legendary Michigan State coach Biggie Munn by the governor of Michigan, and it went for a cool $500 a couple days ago. A whistle purporting to be the very item Munn used at workouts before the 1954 Rose Bowl fetched $90. (Mmmmm... Rose Bowl spittle.)

Munn was frickin' ridiculous as a Michigan State head coach, going 54-9-2 in seven season and winning two national titles. Duffy Daugherty, Munn's successor, would experience similar success as the Spartans raided the south for black players SEC teams refused to recruit, but once he retired and the SEC integrated Michigan State embarked on 40 years of mediocre results.

I lost my contact... not that it matters since I'm Duke's quarterback.

The Wizard of Odds brings us this entertaining story about Duke football, justice, and the American way: Duke backs out of a scheduled four-game series with Louisville after the first game, causing the Cardinals to sue for the buyout money.

The buyout stipulated that Duke had to pay $150k for each voided game if a "team of similar stature" could not be lined up as a replacement, and here comes the catch for Louisville. Duke's lawyers argued the 6-45 Blue Devils sucked so badly that virtually any football team would be of "similar stature" and the buyout was unenforceable.

The judge agreed:

"At oral argument, Duke (with a candor perhaps more attributable to good legal strategy than to institutional modesty) persuasively asserted that this is a threshold that could not be any lower. Duke's argument on this point cannot be reasonably disputed by Louisville."

Duke sucks: now a valid legal precedent. What a country!