College Football

I know there are many video game players on the board. We also know the many complaints of our fair leader about the current NCAA Football game (damn anti-Chris Graham super linebackers with their great hands and leaping ability). Here's your chance for change.  This company has a kickstarter to create a new college football video game to launch prior to the 2014 season. Check out the link and watch the video to see how this one will be different. For those that don't know, Austin is a center for video game production. I have questions about the ability to get the NCAA licensing, but I do know this is a legit program.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1318442419/college-football-championship-game

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/magic-nick-saban-everyone-wants-alabama-155022258.html

An interesting read about revenue changes at Alabama corrrelated with Nick Saban becoming the coach.  Athletic department revenue went up by 11.7 million.  Tuition revenue increased by 58 million (mostly from increases in tuition and enrollment from out of state students).  Nick Saban only costs 5.3 million (in money).  Selling your soul in the name of football can, in fact, pay well. 

The Michigan-relevant takeaway would be that a successful athletic program generates a lot of income for the school.  That conclusion is obvious, but seeing it in print is nice.  It's also nice to have a retort for your friend who is convinced that schools waste money on football.

US News rankings for rough perspective: Michigan 29, Rutgers 68, Michigan State 72, Delaware 75, Alabama 77.  The student in the article, who is from Long Island, cares more about Alabama and Delaware than Rutgers; read into that what you will.

All of those empty seats we saw in a large number of  non-Big House games this year were no mirage.  College football attendance is at its lowest levels since 2003.  It also seems that our students are not alone with respect to their attendance "issues" of the last few years.

I also thought this piece was relevant in view of yesterday's PSD increases noted on an Mgoboard thread.

Five of the six BCS conferences reported attendance decreases, and per al.comreporter Jon Solomon, the only exception -- the Pac-12 -- was an exception only because Cal left its temporary limited-capacity stadium setup in 2011 for its newly renovated Memorial Stadium.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/blog/eye-on-college-football/21...

Note - this was not OT because BIG football was discussed.

According to Scout.com, Iowa pulled their scholarship offer to Braylon's little brother Berkley Edwards.

"They said if Berkley didn't choose Iowa by now, he wasn't coming," Stan Edwards said in a text message.

Stan Edwards said on Monday that he and his family were waiting to see what happened with the coaching situations at the schools he was considering - Iowa, Cal and Minnesota. The Bears fired Jeff Tedford a day later.

It looks like the Gophers or a MAC offer for the 2013 Chelsea (MI) High running back unless Cal stays with the recruitment.

I know Michigan doesn't have any serious interest in him at this point, but hopefully he ends up at a quality school where he can get some playing time.  He definitely put up some nice numbers for Chelsea the last couple years.

Bad real estate deals the cause:

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/apnewsbreak-arkansas-smith-facing-bankruptcy-134615988--ncaaf.html

Long, who is continuing to research potential candidates for a long-term solution as head coach - including Smith - said he doesn't believe Smith's personal financial problems will influence his ability to coach.

 

''I think the people that want to make more out of it than there is here will do that, regardless,'' Long said. ''But I think those will be the minority. This is clearly to me a man who has made a poor financial choice, and I think if we look across our society today, especially in these times, we will see many very good people leading their organizations who have made some poor financial decisions. That's the way I see it.''

Just thought I would post a bit of this article that I found on the Rivals.com college football page about players' who made their college choice based on something besides football.

In the article, E.J. Levenberry confirms that he chose FSU over Michigan because of their highly respected criminology department (he wants to work for the FBI after graduation).

From the young man himself:

Michigan has a better overall academic reputation than Florida State. The 2012 U.S. News rankings rated Michigan 28th and Florida State 101st among national universities. But Florida State does have a renowned criminology department. In fact, Florida State's criminology department was ranked No. 1 for faculty research last year in an article by the Journal of Criminal Justice Education.

The strength of that department led Levenberry to Florida State.

"That basically was the deciding factor because Michigan and Florida State were so close," Levenberry said. "They were basically identical for me. The only way I could choose a school was by what would be best for my future. Florida State had criminology. That's what I want to do. They had the major in the exact field [computer forensics] that I want to work in."