RealClearSports
Advertisement

RealClearSports College Football

Wedding Plans Yield to NCAA Realignment

Jeré Longman, New York Times

Leach Joins Cougars at Right Time

Kirk Bohls, Austin American-Statesman

Big East-Bound Memphis' Historic Day

Geoff Calkins, Commercial Appeal

There are any number of reasons to get nervous about planning a wedding, but the realignment of college football conferences is rarely among them. Yet some brides and grooms, hot...(full article)

Mike Leach is back in the game. And so might be Washington State before you know it. Really, Washington State, which hasn't been to a bowl game since its 2003 Holiday Bowl victor...(full article)

One thing we know is nothing stays the same,” said Big East commissioner John Marinatto. And nothing ever will be again. At the end of the conference call announcing Memphis ...(full article)

Last month, BCS executive director Bill Hancock told reporters that conference commissioners would be discussing "50 to 60 concepts" for reforming the sport's postseason. This we...(full article)

Why is this a fabulous day? Let us count the ways. 1. No more Comcast Sports South! 2. The return of the Memphis-Louisville rivalry. 3. Other teams that will be on the regular seas...(full article)

More Recent Articles

Memphis to Big East Would Have Major Impact

About seven years after the rest of Conference USA's upper echelon bolted to the Big East, it appears Memphis will finally join them. CBSSports.com reported that Memphis is in "fi...

NCAA Making Example of Ohio State

A few days before Christmas, Ohio State AD Gene Smith met with his new $4-million-a-year coach of less than a month. Even today, Urban Meyer's richly appointed office...

Might Memphis Move to Big East?

It happened again, Memphis fans: Someone mentioned "Big East" and "Memphis" in the same sentence. The wheels of speculation concerning the Tigers' conference future are once agai...

Coaches Upset About Recruiting? Get Real

This is rich. But they are rich — and this is how they got that way — so this probably shouldn't come as a surprise. Still, isn't it the height of hypocrisy for high-profile c...

Big Ten Superior to SEC in Integrity

When it comes to the really cutthroat aspects of the business, no conference should want to be like the SEC. Just look at the most recent ways, shapes and forms of Les Miles and ...

ESPN Lags Behind on Signing Day Coverage

Yesterday was the biggest online traffic day of the entire sports year. I'll attempt to prove it below with some graphs directly measuring traffic from Quantcast, but find me an ...

Tressel Takes on New Challenge

Jim Tressel's new title at the University of Akron is vice president for strategic engagement. University President Luis Proenza, in his introductory comments Thursday, referred t...

4-Year Scholarships Good in Theory Only?

Four-year scholarships. The B1G encouraged schools to offer them. Other conferences allowed schools to do so. The NCAA is expected to approve them formally within the month. We kn...

OSU's Meyer Strikes Gold Right Away

Thirteen months ago in the conference room not too far from here, a career was falling apart and Ohio State football was breaking apart. You remember the legend formerly know...

OSU Criticized for Recruiting Tactics

“I can tell you this,” says Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema. “We at the Big Ten don’t want to be like the SEC—in any way, shape or form.” Just so ...

Urban Meyer Is MSU's New Nemesis

There was once a "gentleman's agreement" among Big Ten football coaches. It was an unwritten policy that once a player verbally committed, he was considered off-limits to other p...

In Springfield for Green-Beckham's Signing Day

8:30 AM CT -- I arrive at the Springfield Hillcrest gymnasium. Students have not been released to attend yet, so most of the crowd consists of adults from the community and, pri...

Golden Rebuilding Miami With Stellar Recruits

Recruiting against rival football coaches and other schools would have been the easy part. Al Golden was recruiting against rumors and lies, too. Against uncertainty and doubt. A...

How Mizzou Landed Top Recruit Green-Beckham

After four years of being recruited, Dorial Green-Beckham’s college decision was made in less than a minute. As he and his family drove home from his official visit to Missouri o...

How Vandy Landed Its Best Recruiting Class

James Franklin got an iPhone for Christmas. Eventually, the Vanderbilt football coach will migrate everything from his old BlackBerry to the new phone, but for now, both phones d...

Social Media Making Mark

Bill Curry spent only a decade away from coaching. But when Curry returned to coach Georgia State in 2008, in some ways it felt like it had been a century. "I didn't know doodly-...

Few Will Make Immediate Impact

Being an elite recruit doesn't necessarily lead to making an immediate impact in college. Much depends on a player's position and choice of school. "The two easiest positions y...

Alabama Claims Top Recruiting Class

1. Alabama: Not a lot of drama today in the Alabama camp. While other war rooms were buzzing, the Crimson Tide coaching staff could pretty much sit back and relax. They managed t...

South Central Loses a Football Icon

President Obama has never heard of Southwest College’s iconic football coach, Henry Washington, South Central Los Angeles’ Joe Paterno. In his quest to market Nike shoes, Phi...

Ohio State's Meyer Balancing Life, Football

Throughout the fall, as the debate about Tim Tebow as a NFL quarterback swayed back and forth, Urban Meyer kept thinking of the particular game that first convinced him of Tebowâ...

National Signing Day a Guilty Pleasure

National signing day is the Lady Gaga of college football. It's absurd, excessive, self-important and ridiculous beyond belief. It's the equivalent of Maryland's unis worn with O...

Green-Beckham Avoids Drama, Not Hype

It's official: Dorial Green-Beckham is a Missouri Tiger. And …well, that just about sums it up. Mizzou beat out Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas for a 6-foot-6 freak of nature they...

Many Misses for Every Signing Day Success

His name very likely means nothing to you today, nor do so many just like his. In February 2003, the name James Battle meant something. Sound familiar? Battle was a four-star rec...

College Football's Strongest Female Cheerleader

It's one thing for professional athletes to have to make an ethical decision about using steroids, but college cheerleaders? Anna Watson has to be America's strongest female cheerl...

Flipping Part of Recruiting Game

Picture yourself 18 years old again. Now—and you will have to stretch your mind a little on this one—imagine that you are one of the most sought after football recruit...

O'Brien Juggles Super Bowl and Signing Day

As most of Bill O'Brien's peers in the business of big-time college football spend Wednesday huddled by fax machines, the new Penn State coach will be hundreds of miles from camp...

Boise's Success No Help in Recruiting

It has been widely reported that the commissioners and presidents who run the BCS are leaning toward eliminating the concept of automatic qualifier conferences. They've expressed...

Rutgers' Hiring of Flood a Big Risk

Rutgers has hired as the new face of its football program a lifetime assistant with strong ties to the Northeast, an ace recruiter who is popular with the powerful high school c...

Coaching Changes Play Havoc With Signing Day

Every December and January, the college football coaching carousel spins wildly, with head guys and assistants changing jobs and positions at dozens of schools across the country...

Recruiting Bust Making It in Hollywood

"He's just going to be great at Florida, probably an All-American." -- Recruiting analyst Max Emfinger to The Tampa Tribune on Jan. 5, 1995 SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Bobby Sabelhau...

National Signing Day's Meteoric Rise

As we approach National Signing Day 2012, I can’t help but marvel at the way college football fans have turned this into their Christmas, hoping to unwrap new recruits like WR ...

Green-Beckham Is Top Prize

Signing Day is back. What will the storylines be this time around? Who will make a decision that will shock the world? Who will make a decision on national television, only to ha...

Great Man Who Made Great Mistake

For two hours, they honored the late hero-villain. Humans always become better people when they are dead. It is the nature of eulogies. So, feeling both grief and persecution, th...

Process Is Often Hit-or-Miss

On national signing day, every college coach, every recruit and every friend and family member is an incurable optimist, and what's the harm in that? At this point, every re...

Wisconsin Losing Key Recruits

When the University of Wisconsin football team landed an oral commitment from highly regarded offensive tackle Kyle Dodson back in June, the recruiting world was buzzing about th...

Success Boosts Michigan's Future

Since that Sugar Bowl victory earlier this month, Michigan has received no verbal commitments and actually had one player decommit.What's more, the Wolverines have only two commit...

Top Questions Ahead of Signing Day

1. What’s the biggest storyline this recruiting season? What’s the big buzz? Aside from Penn State, I think Urban Meyer getting back into coaching is the biggest sto...

Cincy Legend Cook Took His Story With Him

It was halftime of the Cincinnati vs. West Virginia football game at Paul Brown Stadium last November. I was the Enquirer’s sidebar guy that day, meaning I’d probably b...

Rutgers Recruiting Class Now in Flux

Five Rutgers assistant coaches stood in the gym of Don Bosco Prep this morning, decked out in school colors and ready to put the final press on two of the top recruits in the sta...

Schiano Latest Bright Coach to Leave Big East

This week in the Big East Conference, Navy arrived and Greg Schiano departed. With all due respect to our future servicemen and women from Annapolis, that’s a net loss for the ...

Yale QB's Rhodes Scholar Lie

On Nov. 13, Patrick J. Witt, Yale University’s star quarterback, announced that he had withdrawn his Rhodes scholarship application and would instead play against Harvard six d...

Paterno Service 1st Step in New Legacy

Every funereal shade of gray in nature's catalog draped Penn State for the occasion of Joe Paterno's public memorial service, a perfectly lachrymose contrast to the brilliant col...

No Coach Will Ever Equal Paterno's Power

Now that Joe Paterno has passed on from Happy Valley we must ponder whether we will ever see his like again. But please understand, I am now writing about Coach Paterno. Let us f...

Penn State Recruits Few Stars

A seemingly endless stream of negative headlines. Prolonged coaching limbo that left men on the verge of getting fired selling the school that was about to fire them. A new head co...

Fortune 500 CEO Taking Over Coastal Carolina

The new boss opens the door of his office, where the walls are still bare, and walks into the adjacent conference room. When he sits at the head of the table, his employees get q...

One Mother of a Recruiting Battle

LANDON COLLINS, the nation's top-ranked high school safety, rides shotgun in an old Jeep Cherokee headed toward his mother's house in Harvey, La. Collins is not pleased with his...

A Last Look at His Numbers

Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died Sunday at age 85, a little more than two months after he was fired midway through his 46th season leading the Nittany Lions. ...

No Bitterness in Paterno's Final Days

In the moments after Joe Paterno died, it became common for people to write and say that he died of a broken heart. He did not. Joe Paterno died of lung cancer and the complicati...

Remembering Paterno at His Best

Maybe you will never be convinced Joe Paterno was a good man who made one catastrophic mistake, but do you have time for just one story?   In 2000, Penn State freshman defensive ...

Old Joe Would Shame Young Joe

What would young Joe Paterno have said about old Joe Paterno? What would young Joe, intent on his "Grand Experiment," in which athletic excellence and intellectual rigor entwined ...

Life Ends in Jumble of Confusion

In death as in life, timing matters. Had Joe Paterno died Jan. 22, 2011, he’d have been hailed as the one coach who’d negotiated the murky waters of contemporary coll...

Cancer's Timing All the More Painful

If the cancer had been more kind, it would have come earlier. The cancer would have come, say, in late summer. Joe Paterno would have been deified then, with the funeral of a ...

Judge Paterno on Whole Book, Not Last Chapter

Can a great man's life be judged by its final two months? Joe Paterno died Sunday morning, and that central question remains unanswered. An American legend passed and his le...

Chip Kelly Pulls Flip-Flop for the Ages

It was a flip-flop for the ages. A double-reverse, pass. A game-changer. Chip Kelly, gone to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, then, suddenly, trotting back out the tunnel at Autzen Stad...

Remembering a Complicated Legend

"Virgil's ability to plumb the complexity of human affairs is a key to his greatness, a key to his relevance for us today. We live in an age in which simplistic versions of reali...

Broken Heart for Soul of Penn State

When time does what it does, and the full measure is taken, Joe Paterno’s legacy will be a fine and remarkable thing. It will be very close to what the great man hoped and drea...

Coach Gone, But Paterno the Institution Remains

A pair of smoky, dim glasses hovering on the sldeline. Herschel Walker in 1982 was high-socked invincibility to a six-year-old, but he met a miserable end in the 1983 Sugar Bowl ...

Conflicts Go to Grave With Paterno

As recently as Nov. 4, 2011, a memorial service for Joseph Vincent Paterno probably could have been held in a packed Beaver Stadium, the massive football monument on the outskirt...

Joe Paterno Dies a Tarnished Legend

  Perhaps the most ironic element when looking at the way Joe Paterno lost his job as Penn State's football coach after 46 seasons lies in the fact that Paterno, as a young ma...

Sad Irony in Paterno's Final Days

There is considerable confusion in what feels like the somber final days of Joe Paterno's life. The winningest coach in college football history was reported dead on Saturday by ...

How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life

Ohio State boasts 17 members of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, three Nobel laureates, eight Pulitzer Prize winners, 35 Guggenheim Fellows and a MacArthur winner. But sp...

State of American Sports in 2012

On so many levels, most sports fans are happy to see 2011 in the rearview mirror. Both the NFL and NBA had prolonged work stoppages that threatened their seasons. Two major college...

As Expected, Defenses Rule

This was Alabama vs. LSU. You were expecting the Big 12? Let's hope you didn't come to the Game of the Century to see touchdowns. No, this was the place for the grit and the hits...

LSU Leaves No Doubt It's No. 1

What? You thought the Game of the Century would feature 100 points? Admittedly, most of us assumed there would at least be a few touchdowns. Just one would have been nice. But fo...

Kickers Decide the Outcome

Streets oozed with pedestrians. Lawns grew into epic tailgates. And fraternity homes lived up to legend. The Game of the Century? The partying Saturday in anticipation of the bi...

Jefferson Steps Up at Right Time

The finest hour of LSU's still-perfect season occurred at approximately 10:35 p.m. Saturday night, in as hostile of an environment as can be conjured, against the toughest oppone...

Top Defenses Collide

With open arms into a community recently ravaged by tornadoes and a sport ravaged by a spate of negative news since the beginning of last year, from various NCAA violations to con...

Coaches Are Complete Opposites

The most noticeable difference is the coaches. Yes, both Nick Saban and Les Miles have won national championships, and, sure, they have almost identical records against ranked op...

Big Mistake Might Be the Difference

LSU: Here’s an interesting number: LSU runs the ball more than Alabama. The Tigers have 352 carries (38 more than the Tide), and share a bulk of the load between TBs Spenc...

Home Recruits Key LSU Dominance

Before the age of contrived commitment press conferences, before recruits began pulling bullpups from underneath a table to drive home the point they were becoming Bu...

LSU Nearly Turnover-Proof

LSU's three turnovers are the fewest in the nation, they did not turn the ball over once in October, and they have gone 59 possessions without losing a fumble or throwing an inte...

Left Tackle May Be Alabama's MVP

Barrett Jones is a nerd, at least by football standards. The Alabama redshirt junior left tackle is so talented at the violin that he can play what people hum. He has such a big v...

Richardson Not Only Heisman Hopeful

Trent Richardson stiff-arms Heisman Trophy questions the way he pounds through tackles. Alabama's star running back can dip, dodge and outrun all the inquiries, but it won't sto...

Running Game Looms Large

When Louisiana State played at Alabama two years ago, the game was so physical the Tigers were carting players off the field. The injured included running back Charles Scott, who...

Future NFL Players to Watch

Claiborne is a tall cornerback who has shocking quickness, explosiveness and playing speed. He has been an impact playmaker in 2011 because he has excellent instincts and natural...

Big 12 Exploring Options

Chuck Neinas, the Big 12’s interim commissioner, said there was some resistance among Missouri’s Board of Curators about remaining in the conference. “You&rsquo...

Source: Big 12 Eyes TCU, Louisville

With all nine Big 12 presidents announcing their intentions tonight to remain in the league, the latest development in conference realignment could become problematic for the Big...

Big East Solidarity Gives TCU Hope

Instead of a wake, the presidents and athletic directors of the Big East Conference held a virtual solidarity rally Tuesday in New York. And while no reported blood oaths were ta...

Big East Plans 'Aggressive' Expansion

After two high-profile schools departed for the ACC this week, and amid fears they could be left behind during college conference realignment, the Big East finally got good news ...

BCS President OK With Realignment

As the dizzying carousel of conference realignment scatters college athletic departments to new leagues across the country, the NCAA’s reshaped landscape won’t alter ...

The Money Question Is Money

Why is Florida State rumored to be considering the Southeastern Conference? Because it can get upwards of $40 million a year, perhaps double the haul in the Atlantic Coast Conferen...

Limited Immunity Keeps Many Eligible

In the immediate aftermath of the Miami scandal, Purdue released a 37-word statement last week saying there were no "eligibility issues" with quarterback Robert Marve. ...

15 Players Under Investigation

The probe into Miami athletics is growing, with the university looking into the eligibility of 15 athletes who might have accepted improper benefits from a rogue booster. Miami Pre...

Ex-Player Denies Taped Quotes

Despite evidence to the contrary, former University of Miami running back Tyrone Moss, the only football player to talk on the record in last week’s Yahoo! Sports expos&egr...

QB Harris Faces Uncertainty

Jacory Harris came into this season believing Miami coaches would struggle deciding if he or Stephen Morris should be the Hurricanes' starting quarterback. Well, he was right. Fi...

How Boosters Buy Influence

When Nevin Shapiro pledged $150,000 to the University of Miami athletic department, he got a student-athlete lounge named after him. But the bigger perk was access — to the...

Sympathy for Shapiro's True Victims

Please spare us the outrage about how Nevin Shapiro, the rogue booster, has victimized the University of Miami athletic program. Please, all of you bleeding heart pundits, save yo...

Former Coach Coker 'Distraught'

Approached Friday morning outside the function at which UTSA would receive a $1 million gift from B.J. “Red” McCombs, Roadrunners football coach Larry Coker brushed o...

Miami Should Prepare for Worst

If the worst of the allegations are true - from the money and other gifts to the prostitution to providing for an abortion - then it's time to shut down the University of Miami f...

Should Anyone Be Surprised?

The scandals rocking intercollegiate sports in the past few months apparently were just the warm-up acts. We give you now the main event. The University of Miami has taken the sta...

Massive Ties to Current NFL Players

Now that the University of Miami has become the latest victim of the ever-vigilant eyes of Yahoo Sports' Higher Learning Takedown Team, it's time to ask: what does it all mean? We...

Interview With Coach Al Golden

Here’s what Al Golden had to say before Wednesday morning’s practice. No other coaches or players were made available to reporters: What is the eligibility situation w...

Other Scandals Pale in Comparison

Tempting as it is, don’t start here with the messenger, OK? Yes, any decent defense attorney’s instinct and stock in trade is to question the accuser’s credibil...

NCAA President Has No Clue

Forget the NCAA’s bluster about reform. Less than a week after college sports’ governing body held a retreat in Indianapolis for university presidents, conference comm...

Miami Faces Serious Questions

The University of Miami is back in the headlines in every way it doesn't want with former players making claims, athletic leaders playing defense and the school's image chained t...

Videos

Top 25 Scoreboard

More College Football Coverage