Posts by Pete Holiday at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Michigan Coach Rich Rodriguez, in his tireless effort to weasel his way out of paying his buy-out, has reached the point which even casual observers will recognize as the beginning of the end: he's just making stuff up now.

A Fox Sports column today asserts that, in a deposition, Rodriguez claimed that he was "coerced" into signing his contract. Coerced. Into signing a multi-million dollar contract. Somehow, it seems, that Rodriguez wants us to believe that the powers that be at West Virginia are powerful enough to intimidate him into signing on the dotted line, despite his ready access to legal counsel, agents, financial advisors, and really any other sort of assistance he could ever want.

This is, in a word, nonsense.

The inimitable Orson Swindle from Every Day Should Be Saturday and football blog old-timer veteran Kevin Donahue from Fanblogs.com have teamed up to help victims of the recent string of natural disasters, from Myanmar to right here in our own back yard. Since this is college-football-land, it had to be pitched as a contest. Kevin explains the rules like this:

1) Make a donation online to the American Red Cross, CARE, or the International Rescue Committee.

2) Email the donation confirmation to kevin@fanblogs.com and state your team affiliation by 8pm EDT on Wednesday, May 14th.

3) Results will be displayed at Every Day Should Be Saturday and Fanblogs throughout the week, with the final results shown by Thursday, May 15th.

4) The winning school will have its colors displayed at EDSBS and logo/mascot shown on every page at Fanblogs.

This is an outstanding idea, so head on over and get your dollars in. This may be the only shot at a bowl win some of you have.

Surprising to nobody, the BCS and big-time conferences have once again decided that they like their fat paydays better than they like the indentured servants on whose backs they're getting rich.

At a recent meeting, BCS officials shot down a "plus-one" proposal from SEC Commish Mike Slive. Apparently, the BCS folks "like where [they] are". They like it because the major conferences are making money hand-over-fist, and any move toward a play-off would mean a more even distribution of money.

The playoffs versus bowls argument has been done to death, and despite the overwhelming logic and reason behind moving to a playoff, religion is religion, and the fans of the bowl system continue to insist that the world is flat. When you dispense with all of the strawman arguments, though, what you're left with is a simple fact: the national champion is determined by journalists, coaches' assistants, and computers.

The problem with creating rules to try to force all college football coaches to be lazy recruiters, is that some of them just won't. When the NCAA tried to "fix" the so-called "bump" rule, they did in in a way that makes sense only to those who value, for example, duck hunting over college recruiting. Instead of allowing coaches to evaluate players during the "Spring Evaluation Period", they have to sit back on their campuses and wait for someone else to tell them how great some player is.

FanHouse's own Brian Cook described the rule this way:

It looks like the NCAA is moving to lessen the impact of the "bump" rule and provide a level playing field for coaches from enthusiastic frequent NCAA violators to guys who can't be bothered to get out of bed in March

Of course, the new NCAA rule "leveled the playing field" by catering to the laziest common denominator. It's about like making the no-huddle offense illegal because some teams don't have the personnel to run it. Or canceling a playground kickball game because you don't want to hurt the feelings of the kid who gets picked last. What most will be unsurprised to learn is that artificially induced slothfulness doesn't work.

In front of the second-largest crowd of the spring games (78,200 according to the half-time announcement), Alabama threw the ball early and often.

I made my way down to Tuscaloosa for A-Day this year, and what I saw didn't surprise me in the least. The traffic to Tuscaloosa and around town was not quite as bad as a typical game day. The "Kick-off on the Quad" was scaled back, but still well attended, and the campus was swarming with crimson and white, with nary a sign of another teams fans to be found. It was a thing of beauty, really.

Inside the stadium, Alabama looked like a young team with a lot of talent, exactly what everyone expected. John Parker Wilson seemed to have improved in the off-season and Leigh Tiffin split the uprights from 44 yards out (both things fans should be relieved to hear).

Coach Nick Saban, who spent most of the scrimmage standing behind the offense, managed to get in the way of one play (pictured at right) as John Parker Wilson scrambled from pressure. He didn't go down, but it was certainly a funny situation nonetheless..

Before the start of last season, I argued that Ryan Perrilloux was nothing but trouble.

I realize that this kid was seen as something of a catch when he was signed, but he really is nothing but trouble. No matter where he is on the depth chart, he's already causing a headache and the season hasn't even gotten started yet. Miles should just cut the kid loose. He hasn't learned his lesson

I was chastised by the commenters, though, for trying to keep a black man down, and admonished to "wait and see" (because two different fake-ID incidents isn't enough).

But after all of the trouble lately, and all of the extra chances, he's still just running around, acting like a thug.

A server at Kona Grill in Perkins Rowe told The Daily Reveille late Tuesday night that Perrilloux arrived at the restaurant 30 minutes after it closed Friday.

Perrilloux entered the bar and attempted to order drinks. After he was denied service, Perrilloux began to curse and use racial slurs, the server said.

A Kona Grill manager approached Perrilloux, who then cursed the manager. The server said Perrilloux was asked to leave. And the police were called to the restaurant, but Perrilloux had left by the time any officers arrived.

The server said LSU coach Les Miles called the restaurant Saturday to apologize for Perrilloux.

Um, yeah. Class act, that Perrilloux. That Miles has allowed Perrilloux to stay on the roster says something about him. Are there any fans (LSU or otherwise) left defending this now?

The blogosphere has been abuzz the last few days about Clemson's decision not to extend Ray Ray another year of athletic scholarship. Many reports have suggested that the reason for the cut was that Clemson had extended itself beyond the 85 scholarship limit. Take, for example, this post by FanHouse's Brian Cook titled "Oversigning Strikes In McElrathbey Cut":

Somehow, McElrathbey has juggled football, Farmarr, and school such that he'll graduate in just over three years -- a time frame that no doubt accelerated rapidly as soon as James Davis announced he'd return for 2008 -- but he's been cut three years into his college career.

This is the glory of oversigning, and the reason the practice should be either abolished or severely curtailed.

You might notice that Cook's assertion was that over-signing is to blame was completely devoid of any sort of support for the claim. If you took a look at any of the other reports around the web, you'd probably notice the same thing. Nobody seems to be able to cite, or they aren't interested in citing, any sort of sources or facts before they try to burn Clemson and/or Bowden in effigy.

Alabama offensive lineman BJ Stabler has opted to leave the team, citing chronic knee injuries. He'll spend the rest of his time at Alabama on medical scholarship and should graduate in August. While it's never good to see a player like Stabler go, he spent so much time injured (or recovering from injuries) that he never really had a chance to make an impact in the way that he could have.

Those "six" players that caused such a big stink have dwindled to "four", and that's if Tim Gayle's "number-crunching" is accurate. We're now getting down to a range in which the scholarship cap is within the margin of error for the type of guesswork Gayle was involved in.

It's also just another example of why getting all preachy about assumption-laden hypotheticals is a bad idea.

Then again, if things continue up at this rate, Alabama won't have anyone on scholarship when the A-Day Game rolls around.


(Hat-tip: Roll 'Bama Roll and Capstone Report)


Previously at FanHouse:

• Nick Saban's the Real Snake Oil Salesman Around These Parts
• Snake Oil on the Recruiting Trail
• Snake Oil: More On Over-signing
• Saban Made Him Do It: 'Bama DE Arrested

It started with a legitimate concern mixed with an unsubstantiated pot-shot at Nick Saban by FanHouse's Brian Cook. I replied, and so did a whole bunch of other Alabama bloggers. Brian took Round Two to his personal blog, MGOBLOG, and his post is most certainly neither work-safe nor child-friendly. The one good thing about Brian's post, is he more clearly enumerates his points. The bad thing is that he failed to do so without resorting to something on the order of an ad hominem every other paragraph, which tends to make him sound like a petulant child [Enter: The FanHouse Baby] as opposed to the college football analyst that he is known in the blog world to be.

Both sides have some valid points, which will be addressed in turn. The sole exception being the whine that Alabama's recruiting class shouldn't be ranked #1... the only suitable reply to which is pictured at right.