This Tim Floyd situation is going to get uglier and uglier. His resignation, and the speed and seeming joy with which the athletic department at USC took it, is a clear indicator of his guilt in the alleged cash-spreading incident, and it’s not hard to imagine him being guilty of more, either. The NCAA combined their investigation into the basketball team with their one into Reggie Bush and the football team et al . That would suggest that they are taking it pretty seriously, and this just adds fuel to their efforts. It will be very interesting to see what happens here. It could end very badly – loss of scholarships or post-season eligibility or the like. This really makes you wonder if maybe Pete Carroll will find the next NFL offer too good to refuse. If he does have some blood on his hands then he’d be much better off following the example of John Calipari – get out ahead of the scandal – than that of Tim Floyd.
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It’s always fun to look for the guys who are getting noticed in the draft process that certainly weren’t getting noticed before now – the guys who toil at obscure schools in obscure conferences. Here are five guys that are getting good buzz out of small schools this year. Telling that four of the five players on this list are corners – teams are absolutely starved for cornerbacks and the major conferences just haven’t come through with good prospects this year, so teams are looking further and further for opportunities.cause of small school corners that Dominique Rodger-Cromartie came out of Tennessee State and looks like a very legitimate pro. You may notice if you follow such things that I have left two of the bigger small school names off this list. Johnny Knox of Abilene Christian was the fastest wide receiver at the Combine, so he’s getting more than enough attention without me, and Rhett Bomar of Sam Houston State is a well known story. The former Oklahoma QB is also an idiot, and I try not to write about idiots more than I have to.
I’m no NFL general manager or scout, and I don’t have access to a tiny fraction of the data that they do. That doesn’t stop me from getting hunches about players in the draft, though. I can’t pretend to be always accurate, but I have my moments both good and bad – I had a strong sense that Robert Gallery wasn’t going to pan out, but I thought the same about Matt Ryan. My hunches are imprecise science, but then so is the draft. At the very least I have about the same track record this year as the Lions. Better, even – I wasn’t fooled by Joey Harrington. Here’s a look at four likely first rounders this year who I just can’t seem to warm up to:
Matthew Stafford – Let’s start right at the top. I know Stafford has all the measurables, and that scouts have been drooling over him since before the season. I just can’t reconcile what everyone says with what I have seen when I have watched Georgia play. He can be extremely impressive at times, but he can also look rattled and out of his element. I think back most to the Georgia Tech game. The Bulldogs should have won very easily, but the Tech clearly got into Stafford’s head and rattled him. That was just one example of what I feel about Stafford – some guys can get more out of their team than they should be able to. Stafford never seemed able to get his team to live up to its massive potential.
This is not a very interesting draft year when it comes to quarterbacks, Matthew Stafford is the clear leader, but he’s far from a lock, and he probably would only have been third or fourth to go last year. Mark Sanchez has his backers, and he has obvious skills, but just one year of real experience raises questions for him. Josh Freeman has risen up to become the clear third choice, and he’s physically impressive, but Kansas State was far from a powerhouse under his watch, and questions about his leadership and intelligence are right below the surface. Any one of those three guys could turn into a very good NFL quarterback, but it’s not too hard to imagine any of them as disappointing flops, either. Things don’t get that much more positive further down the list of quarterbacks, either. Still, we all know the stories of guys who are drafted late and with few expectations and turn into serviceable players. Or better in the obvious case of Tom Brady. With that in mind, here’s a look at three quarterbacks who could be the next big bargain:
It remains to be seen where he ends up on draft day, but few guys have free fallen more since the end of the season than Ball State QB Nate Davis. Davis had an incredibly impressive start to his season this year, and Ball State turned into a national sweetheart after running through the regular season undefeated. He’s got a nice arm, he can scramble, and he plays an exciting style of game. There was talk then that he could even be a first round choice. But then things went awry. Ball State lost to Buffalo in the MAC title game, and then got crushed by Tulsa in theGMAC Bowl. Davis had eight fumbles in those games and the questions started to come up. Things didn’t get better when he was lacklustre at the Combine. The ultimate sign of the depth of his problems was evident when only one team showed up to his pro day. That’s ugly.
There are few things I take more pleasure in than watching Notre Dame fail. As a Michigan fan I don’t particularly have any love for the Irish to begin with. The general hatred has elevated to a whole new level in the Charlie Weis regime, though. I think it was a bad joke that they got rid of Ty Willingham when and how they did, a bad joke that when they gave Weis, a guy with no head coaching experience, the reins, a really bad joke when they gave him a massive extension before he did anything to earn it, and a really, really bad joke when they kept him around for another year. With a nod to Marvin Lewis, Weis is the worst head coach in football. That makes the latest news from South Bend particularly ridiculous.
Continue reading “From The Ridiculous To The Really Ridiculous”
Most of the dust has cleared from signing day, and we have a pretty good sense of how things will turn out. As a Michigan fan I am reasonably pleased – we lost two defensive ends that we needed, but we gained three players we weren’t supposed to get including a promising QB prospect in Denard Robinson and a nice receiver. Given that we went an incredibly lousy 3-9 last year this is one heck of a class. We should end up about 7th overall. Rich Rodriguez never had a class at West Virginia anywhere near this strong, so I am feeling good. Hope things went as well for you and your team. Unless you like Ohio State, in which case I hope none of your recruits qualify academically, your current players all quit, and you are forced to use the tuba players in your band as the offensive line, and the drum major at QB.
It’s all over. No more college football for almost nine months. Nine long, painful months. I’ll miss it. There are millions of reasons, but here are 10:
1. Good teams are often good bets. The final top five of the year is likely to be made up of Florida, Oklahoma, USC, Texas and Utah. Those teams are a combined 42-16-1 ATS, and that includes USC’s uninspiring 6-6 ATS mark. That’s a 71 percent win rate. What’s not to love about a sport where identifying the better team is often the biggest part of the battle.
It’s all over. The last game wasn’t exactly a classic, but it was interesting. Here’s what I took from the game:
1. Anyone associated with the Oklahoma program is going to be haunted for their entire lives by those two red zone failures. It’s bad enough that it happens once, but twice in one game is totally unacceptable.
It’s kickoff time, and I am about to watch what I hope will be a classic. I have gone back and forth for a while now, but I have settled on Oklahoma. Quickly, here are seven reasons why (as always, the disclaimer – this is my opinion and doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinion of Maddux Sports):
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