I’m doing this as hard as I can. You poor, poor thing [Bowden, that is]. We’re doing this as hard as we possibly can, Bobby Bowden, because the NCAA is not punishing you because you failed to be politically correct, but because your program stepped across even the last, most obvious warning line set by an organization loath to punish all but the most egregious violations of the extremely lenient contract set up among its member orgs.
But moving on to the actual news, found five bullets down in the MH link above:
ESPN tried to arrange a UM-Missouri home-and-home series in 2011 and 2012 (to replace Kansas State, which asked out of playing UM), but Missouri balked. But UM booked Rutgers (2018, '19) and is closing on a deal with Penn State (2016, '17).
So for those of you keeping score at home, that's Bama '10 & '11, UVA '12 & '13, Rutgers '14 & '15, and now potentially Miami in '16 & '17. Full house.
If anyone needs a ride down to LandShark Stadium (which will most certainly not be its name in 2017) I have two extra seats in my flying car.
A Southern Clarification. I detailed the eminent demise of the Capital One Bowl last week, but in the whole huba-web shuffle I ended up reading some subsequent posts suggesting this:
The Cotton Bowl’s agreements with the Southeastern and Big 12 conferences end following this season as well. Its payout was $3 million last year, which would rank third among the Big Ten’s non-BCS bowl agreements. But if the Cotton Bowl increased its payout and made overtures to the Big Ten, the league would listen, as it would with other bowls.
NWO expresses similar hopes. I'm not so sure, though. The Cotton Bowl really wants one thing, and that's to be part of the BCS. Since that's not going to happen, they are much more likely to try and steal the SEC #2 and hold on to the Big XII #2 rather than ditch their Southwest affiliate for a Big Ten team. I'm not saying they couldn't play it either way, but it makes a lot of geographical, economical and historical sense to keep the two southern leagues together. So the Big Ten really could lose this hand, unless you think Big East #2 is a good replacement, which of course it's not.
MGoStall. Brian has an excellent response, which is really just a continued exorcism of so many years watching CarrBall, regarding the misunderstanding of macro and micro Favorite strategy.
I suggest you read it if you are interested in statistics, basketball or the lead up to this:
Though Dantonio and Bielema have the most boring offenses in the Big Ten, they'll be fascinating tactically over the next few years...I foresee perpetually decent but unthreatening teams for both unless Bielema is just as bad a coach as last year suggests.
The whole thing is quite good, although once the BSD staff gets some breathing room there is probably a discussion to be had about the defense first strategy and how that fits into the concept of Score, Score, Score.