Warchant.com - College Football Roundup

June 20, 2003

Brent Beaird

Conference expansion, all-star games, verbal commitments, revised television schedules, player updates, the police blotter and much more are a part of this week?s roundup.

Arkansas athletic director Frank Broyles has accepted a new five-year contract. University Chancellor John White had expressed concern about athletic director Broyles because of his recent health issues. White said the 78-year-old Broyles could move to another position within the university if he desired. This caused a firestorm of speculation that Broyles might be forced out, but the chancellor made it quite clear that Broyles will leave on his own accord. Last year, Broyles had surgery for prostrate cancer and was hospitalized for infections. Broyles was the Hog head coach from 1958-1976. He has been AD since 1973, which is estimated to be the longest such tenure in Division I-A. According to The Morning News, White called out Broyles and football coach Houston Nutt during a May 9 compliance meeting. In a tape obtained by The Morning News, White included Broyles in a group of big-screen photos with former Alabama football coach Mike DuBose, former Georgia coach Jim Harrick and Kentucky officials. He chastised Nutt?s players for trash talking and various scraps with the law, but ignored many of the team?s off-the-field accomplishments.

Auburn?s Sept. 6 game at Georgia Tech has been selected by ABC for a 3:30 p.m. broadcast. The Tigers may be without their mascot ?Spirit? for the first few games. The Bald Eagle is being tested for a respiratory infection and doctors will not know before August if the bird is capable of pre-game flights.

Tennessee backup quarterback James Banks will work more at receiver this summer. Banks has gained 10 pounds of muscle in the offseason and is now weighing 220 pounds.
Outside linebacker Kevin Burnett, defensive end Parys Haralson and receiver Tony Brown were Volunteering Outstanding Leadership and Service Award winners for 2002-3.

Ole Miss coach David Cutcliffe was inducted in the Independence Bowl Hall of Honor last Thursday according to Clarionledger.com. He is 3-0 as a coach in the bowl game with wins over Texas Tech in 1998, Oklahoma in 1999 and Nebraska last year. The Colonel Rebel mascot will not be allowed on the field this season. However, the Colonel Rebel logo will remain as a trademark of the school.

Mississippi State?s investigation with the NCAA is ongoing. Last week, a NCAA investigator interviewed nine athletes according to the Clarion-Ledger. State AD Larry Templeton refused to name the athletes involved. Two NCAA reps interviewed 12 State football players on campus last summer. In March, the school received a preliminary investigation from the NCAA.

Kentucky-Tennessee High School All-Star game is scheduled for Friday night in Lexington. Among the players scheduled to participate in the game are linebacker Daniel Brooks, a Tennessee signee; linebacker Joe Sanders, a Colorado signee who is out with an injured shoulder; and receiver Adarius Bowman, a North Carolina signee.

Florida football players Taurean Charles and Channing Crowder have pleaded no contest on separate cases according to Gator Bait magazine. Steven Harris, a backup defensive end, will be arraigned on felony battery charges in two weeks. Charles, a redshirt freshman linebacker, pleaded no contest to simple battery for allegedly shoving a female into a computer desk, against a wall and onto the floor. He has a choice of paying court costs or serving community service. Crowder, projected as a starter at strongside linebacker, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery for his allegedly kicking and punching a man who was already unconscious after being attacked by Harris. Florida finished seventh in the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) Director?s Cup. It was the Gators? 20th consecutive top-10 finish in the national all-sports competition.

Georgia officials are not happy that the Bulldog tickets for the Georgia Tech game are in the upper deck of the newly renovated Bobby Dodd stadium according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. All but 785 of Georgia?s 8,500 tickets are in the upper deck. Two years ago, the Bulldogs got 3,985 lower-level tickets. Bobby Dodd stadium now seats 55,000. ABC will televise the Clemson game at noon, Saturday, Aug. 30. UGASports.com is reporting that running back Albert Hollis is attending preseason workouts in hopes of playing this season after a long rehab following dislocating his knee and subsequent nerve damage.

Vanderbilt has sold fewer than 2,000 season tickets according to The Tennessean.

South Carolina former play-by-play announcer Charlie McAlexander will not broadcast Gamecock basketball next season according to The State. The partnership of ISP/Learfield took over media rights for the school in April and offered McAlexander less money and a smaller role. Todd Ellis, a former Gamecock quarterback, has been awarded the play-by-play duties. The NCAA is looking into USC possibly breaking rules to keep former running back Derek Watson eligible before he transferred to South Carolina State last summer according to The State. School officials believe they did nothing wrong. The school has not received an official letter of inquiry. Watson is preparing for training camp with the New England Patriots as an undrafted free agent.

LSU has verbal commitment No. 7 from Curtis Taylor (6-3, 180), a defensive back from Franklinton, La., according to TigerBait.com. He turned down offers from Arkansas and Ole Miss. Baton Rouge has been selected as the home of The Football Network. The Tigers have added Troy State to their 2004 and 2008 schedules. Troy State will travel to Baton Rouge Oct. 23, 2004 and Sept. 6, 2008. The Sept. 6 road game at Arizona has been selected by TBS for a 9 p.m. kickoff.

Alabama coaches welcomed back defensive lineman Nautyn McKay-Loescher after he left the team due to complication from mononucleosis. McKay-Loescher?s weight went down from 265 to 229, but now he is back up to 255 according to the Tuscaloosa News. After catching up in the classroom, he is now eligible to play this fall. ESPN has picked up the opener against South Florida for a 2 p.m. kickoff. Offensive lineman Grant Dickey of Tyler, Texas is transferring out of state. He would have been a redshirt freshman. Alabama also lost quarterback Cliff Davis, who agreed to terms with the Houston Astros. He signed with the Tide this past February. Former Alabama offensive line coach Jimmy Fuller has been selected as the athletic director at Jacksonville State according to the Birmingham News. Head coach Mike Shula is close to finalizing his contract with Alabama. The contract is worth $900,000 per year with a $1 million buyout.

Miami?s Sept. 13 home game against East Carolina has been picked up by ESPN2 for a 7 p.m. start. East Carolina has won the past two meetings including the most recent Sept. 25, 1999 win in Raleigh. Including the ECU game, the Hurricanes have six nationally televised games set: 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 28, at Louisiana Tech on ESPN, 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 20 at Boston College on ESPN; TBA, Thursday, Oct. 2, at home against West Virginia on ESPN; TBA, Saturday, Nov. 1 at Virginia Tech on ESPN and TBA, Saturday, Nov. 29 at Pitt on ABC.

N. C. State has announced four kickoff times. The home opener against Western Carolina is set for 6 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 30. The next week, ABC has selected the Wolfpack?s game at Wake Forest for a noon kick. N. C. State travels to Ohio State Sept. 13 for a second straight noon start. The Wolfpack?s Oct. 11 home game against Connecticut begins at 1 p.m. Television plans for that game are undecided for now.

Georgia Tech has sold 21,600 season tickets, a drop of 6% from last year. Tech?s top athletics department official in charge of academics, Carole Moore, has been reassigned in a shakeup after 10 football players became academically ineligible. James Stevens, a former Yellow Jacket quarterback and most valuable player of the 1972 Liberty Bowl is the replacement. Tech was honored this week for graduating 70% of its freshman class from 1997-98.

Florida State?s game at Duke has been set for 7 p.m., Sept. 27. There are no plans to televise the game as of yet. The Maryland game has been picked up by ESPN2 for a 7:15 p.m. kickoff. The following week, ABC will televise the Georgia Tech game at 8 p.m.

North Carolina has a 2004 commitment from in-state kicker Connor Barth from Wilmington Hoggard High. He made 11 of 14 field goals last year. Dan Orner, the Heels starting kicker, is a senior this fall.

ACC expansion: Virginia Tech along with Miami, Boston College, and Syracuse will now be invited to join the ACC. The vote that was coming Wednesday was been delayed. ACC school presidents met for more than eight hours in eight days, but did not come to any resolution. North Carolina, Duke and Virginia were the three schools that were not budging. It now appears that with the invitation of Virginia Tech, Virginia President John Casteen, who suggested the idea, will vote yes, thus giving the league the needed seven votes in order to extend the invitations. Virginia Tech president Charles Steger was going to meet with the school?s board Thursday to see if they were interested in joining the ACC. Big East officials said they would continue to pursue their lawsuit.

The ACC had been working North Carolina extremely hard since ACC commissioner John Swofford is a former athletic director at UNC. Before Wednesday, Virginia has told the ACC that it is not willing to change its mind and vote yes according to Canesport.com. The political pressure on Virginia was coming from not inviting Virginia Tech. Andy Katz of ESPN reported that the Big East is considering expanding to 16 teams regardless of what the ACC does. Katz considers Louisville a lock to come to the Big East if and when any teams leave the Big East. UConn athletic director Lew Perkins left a promising situation to go to Kansas for the same job. The Huskies have a new $90 million stadium and a good football coach in former Jacksonville Jaguar coach Randy Edsell. According to SportingNews.com, the reason Perkins left is because the Big East is on shaky ground. The Charlotte Observer quoted N. C. State AD Lee Fowler last week as saying that under the right financial circumstances Miami, only, could be added to the ACC. The difficulty with adding only one team would be that the NCAA requires 12 teams to add a conference title game. The league would have to petition the NCAA in order to have a championship game for a 10-team league. Another option according to Canesport.com has surfaced. ACC attorneys are researching the conference constitution and bylaws that allows for amendments to be made by two-thirds (six of nine) of the members. This means the six pro-expansion schools could change the bylaw and make it six of seven schools necessary to vote affirmative. There is a stipulation that says any bylaw change should be submitted four weeks before the meeting through the commissioner to the bylaws committee. The problem with any changes is that they would occur after June 30, when an exit fee would double. ACC officials have hired the largest public relations firm in North Carolina to combat any bad press. In looking at the big picture, Tim Layden of SI.com said in a conversation last year with a respected former coach, he was told that eventually expansion would leave around five conferences and roughly 60 teams that would control all the BCS berths and TV contracts. The conferences would later leave the NCAA.

UCF officials have made the politically correct answers when asked if there is a chance that they might join the Big East if Miami, Syracuse and Boston College leave. There are many rumors that the Big East might want a team with a Florida presence with the loss of the Canes.

Texas had its opener against New Mexico State moved ahead one day to a 7 p.m. kickoff on Sunday, Aug. 31, to be televised by FoxSportsNet. The Longhorns have not played a Sunday night game since losing at Rice 19-17 in 1994.

Chad Henne, a heralded quarterback from West Lawn (Pa.) called a press conference to announce his five final schools in the recruiting process: Penn State, Miami, Georgia, Michigan and Tennessee. Henne said if any of the schools got an oral commitment from another quarterback that he would probably eliminate them from his list.

New South Florida Bowl: The FedEx Orange Bowl committee has approached the ACC about the possibility of a secondary bowl game being played in the Orange Bowl or Pro Player Stadium according to the Orlando Sentinel. The bowl would start probably in December 2005 and would involve an ACC team and a Big East team.

Brent Beaird is a sports writer for The Clay County Line. He also writes for Rivals.com and Samsportsline.com. Brent can be e-mailed at bcbeaird@bellsouth.net

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