
Big East Pins Hopes on TV Deal
If television producers wanted to cast the Big East Conference as a 1980s sitcom, the plot would revolve around a series of hastily arranged marriages constructed to avoid deport...
College FootballTony Barnhart, CBS Sports
Wright Thompson, ESPN
Andy Staples, Sports Illustrated
Mark Bradley, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gregg Doyel, CBS Sports

With apologies to Mark Twain, the reports of the Atlantic Coast Conference's impending death as a relevant football conference have been greatly exaggerated. Ever sin...(full article)

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Something important is being lost. Each rising sun takes a little more from the couple who live in the small brick home southwest of downtown. Billy Varner h...(full article)

When Mississippi State men's basketball coach Rick Ray turned in his paper and walked out of the room after less than 10 minutes, I knew I would be the dunce for this particular ...(full article)

Let’s be clear: The ACC has work to do. But that’s not nearly the same as being doomed, which is how some have characterized the conference after the double hit of Florida St...(full article)

Florida State will be the death of the ACC. That's real. That's honest. And that's irony. Because Florida State has been killing the ACC softly, like Roberta Flack in s...(full article)


If television producers wanted to cast the Big East Conference as a 1980s sitcom, the plot would revolve around a series of hastily arranged marriages constructed to avoid deport...

Looks like the SEC is getting into the TV business after all. Four years after striking its landmark deal with ESPN, there are indications the SEC will launch its own network in ...

There remains consternation that the ACC, Big East and, who knows, even the NCAA itself is in danger – real or imagined – following last week's news that the SEC and Big 12 w...

With a four-team playoff now imminent and the face of college football's postseason about to undergo a reconstructive makeover, the SEC and Big 12 made a bold statement Friday pr...

Somehow, some way, the human committee concept has gained traction as a method to decide which four teams should play for the national championship beginning in 2014....

In the shape-shifting world of college athletics, the eye can no longer be trusted. There is beauty, to be sure, but most of the beholders wear the realignment equivalent of be...

The last time they stopped playing the “Realignment Rhapsody” and everybody scrambled for a seat, the SEC had 14 available chairs. One year later, they’re cranki...

The ongoing waves of NCAA conference expansion and realignment have generally been all about football, television revenues and schools doing what's in their own best intere...

They seemed like an odd couple. It wasn't surprising to see Arizona's new football coach chowing down at some of the city's best steakhouses shortly after his arrival last Decemb...

Nobody knows how it happened, but there's someone actually in charge of college football now. Probably something to do with a reanimated Teddy Roosevelt. First things first, play...

Of all the love stories ever told, there may none purer than the Big Ten's undying devotion, commitment and pure heart-throbbing lust to the Rose Bowl. True love always. Best fri...

The Florida State Seminoles are upset with the Atlantic Coast Conference. They are mad because the ACC is not considered an elite football league. They are insulted because the ACC...

Big is good in this state. Bigger is better still. A short walk away is a 20,000-square-foot weight room and an equally recruiting-friendly, state-of-the-art locker room complete...

The English Premiere League may not play the best soccer in the world, but they do play the most Michael Bay soccer in the world. This movie, year in and year out, is rigged to e...

Just as the rumbling rumors of Florida State moving from the Atlantic Coast Conference to the Big 12 had begun to hush, here came the Saturday afternoon bombshell. "How do you no...

If Boise State is indeed having second thoughts about joining the Big East in 2013, as CBSSports.com reported on Friday, then it only makes sense. Boise State should have pause abo...

They spoke about Joe Paterno rarely in a room filled with his spirit, his followers and his replacement. Maybe that's the way it was supposed to be at Bill O'Brien's grand ...

Within weeks, the conference commissioners and university presidents who run the Bowl Championship Series are expected to adopt a four-team playoff, the first in the history of m...

Pay college football players? Not on my watch. That has been my opinion for years, and not one of those 51-49 kind of opinions -- the ones where I can see both sides,...

On Tuesday night, four eminences in sports and culture met at NYU’s Skirball Center to debate the question: Should college football be banned? According to the crowd of New Y...

When Big East Commissioner John Marinatto resigned Monday, the battered league was left at another crossroads. It could either crumble or find itself a billion-dollar television ...

A secret affair. Hidden payoffs. A bungled cover-up. The John Edwards trial? Not exactly. More like the worst week in the life of Arkansas football this spring. In fact, I can't r...

Football players are killing each other. The death sentence isn't immediate, but it's there -- and we all know it. Whether they die from dementia or Alzheimer's or th...

There cannot possibly be a tougher job in college football than Big East commissioner. That is not meant as a defense of the outgoing John Marinatto, who is as responsible for wh...

Common sense suggests a university's athletic success translates to more athletic donations. But do victories on the field also help academic giving? For years, that's been a reb...

Bob Bowlsby is his own man. The strong-willed native Iowan once wrestled in college, and as a youngster, he used to sell soft drinks at Kinnick Stadium on the same University of ...

It is seldom good news when your quarterback is in the same story with the words "pepper spray'' and "handcuffs.'' Tommy Rees, after quarterbacking in the Notre Dame spring game no...

As the Bowl Championship Series dies a slow death over the next two years, don't expect many mournful tributes. It became the repository for endless complaints. But like with eve...

Has a major college coach ever lost a job for expressing religious beliefs? A fascinating story is unfolding at Nebraska, where running backs coach Ron Brown denounced homosexual...

Of the 12 BCS decision-makers sequestered in a conference room last week in Hollywood, Fla., Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick found himself in the most unique position...

Like any player from a small school hoping to make an NFL roster as an undrafted free agent, Delaware State's Jaashawn Jones has plenty of supporters echoing the same sentiment. ...

The Death of the BCS is upon us, and there is no minimizing the news that college football, after 143 years, is on the verge of adopting a playoff. The powers-that-be finally bro...

“This won’t be another book about X’s and O’s, will it?” Joe Paterno’s daughter Mary Kay asked. Joe Posnanski, then a senior writer for Sports Illustrated who had done ...

The most despised entity in sports now has an expiration date. College football’s infuriating BCS system is set to die in two years, and once we’re all done celebrating the b...

Eric LeGrand stared at his finger. He was determined to make it do something simple yet amazing. Move. Just a little bit. He stared and willed and kept mentally barking orders. Fin...

We gather here today to pay our respects to a fallen regime. The two-team BCS National Championship Game, college football's annually frustrating, fascinating and infuriating cul...

College football’s brain trust finally said it Thursday. The always-inevitable word that for years has been so taboo to the ever-controversial Bowl Championship Series that it m...

In this cloudless April afternoon, Matt Barkley, the Heisman-hopeful quarterback of the USC Trojans, manages to get five steps out a side door of Heritage Hall before meeting an ...

There are few more enduring symbols in college football than the Rose Bowl, which, at the Bowl Championship Series meetings, has become emblematic of a sport caught between traditi...

BCS executive director Bill Hancock, who has served since 2009 as the public face of the most hated entity in sports, finally got to say something Wednesday that made college foo...

Nothing is more invigorating than a new story about the Bowl Championship Series considering a new format that looks more like a playoff and less like what it is. Tha...
One of the dirty secrets of many bowl games is that almost nothing is cheap. The industry, in this case represented by Sugar Bowl Inc., long ago learned how to squeeze every last...

Smith, a 63-year-old football lifer, was racked by indecision and stress. Could he really leave his alma mater before coaching a single game? How bad would the backlash be in Odg...

We're not even to May yet, but Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long gets the early vote for Administrator of the Year in college football. Long did the right thing – even though...

My favorite moment of the John L. Smith era at Weber State -- all 4½ months of it -- was the crock pot full of alma mater nonsense he served during his introductory news c...

Bill Moos likens it to an episode of the old TV spy series "Mission Impossible." Only a tight circle of confidants — "less than you can count on one hand" — knew he wa...

Every once in a while it happens. In the midst of all that is wrong, something so right finds its way through. Arkansas should be utterly embarrassed today at the very thought of B...

Welcome to the post-Penn State era of college athletics. Welcome to a world when athletic directors and college administrators finally have the power again, and welcome to a tim...

“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 ...

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...

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...

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-...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...
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...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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. ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...