I tend to start these Saturday Skull Sessions with casual reference to a song about Saturday, or that otherwise references the weekend. Some months ago, I already referenced Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend" and can't go back to that well again. Regrettably, I don't know the full lyrics to one of Loverboy's other hit songs, "Pig and Elephant DNA Just Won't Splice", to see if that contains a lyric about Saturday to include here.
More to the point, how close does college football seem now that Big Ten Media Days are over and Friday Night Lights followed? Friday Night Lights is a signature recruiting event for Ohio State football now that Urban Meyer and Mark Pantoni brought that concept with them from Gainesville to Columbus. I still think it is a year or two from attracting a larger crowd in Columbus than it already does. Make sure to read all the updates and the recap provided by 11W's Jeremy Birmingham, Jordan Wagner, and Mike Young here. There are a lot of names mentioned by them that could be the future of Ohio State football.
This Skull Session, though, will look elsewhere around the college football landscape to see what else is happening.
PENN STATE GOES ALL ACCESS. Do you remember ESPN's All-Access feature on Ohio State football last year? Of course, you do. It's where we learned Urban Meyer drives a black Mercedes Benz and was introduced by ESPN using Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man". It is the program that brought "Juice" into the Ohio State football fan's lexicon and it is where we learned that Ohio State football has a defensive line coaching intern that could win any dance-off against college football assistant coaches across the country.
This year, ESPN's All-Access feature will not return to Ohio State again. It will, however, stay B1G and head east to Happy Valley to profile the Penn State Nittany Lions.
This should be a good feature. Ohio State and Penn State are not exactly friends on the gridiron, but that should not diminish the Ohio State fan's casual interest in what to expect from Bill O'Brien in Year Two.
There are a lot of interesting stories to watch develop on the feature. The obvious one will be who replaces Matt McGloin as Penn State quarterback. The quarterback battle looks to pit Tyler Ferguson vs. Christian Hackenberg right now. Both Ferguson and Hackenberg were brought to Penn State in the program's 2013 recruiting class. Ferguson is a junior college transfer and Hackenberg is a true freshman, brought to Penn State from Fork Union Military Academy.
The backdrop of the All-Access feature will no doubt be the NCAA sanctions that will hinder Penn State football for the next three years. Fans know of the postseason ban, but the scholarship reductions loom even larger. Penn State can have a max of 65 players under scholarship and can bring in no more than 15 new additions in each recruiting class for the remainder of its probation. How Penn State deals with it will be a subject of the feature. For example, Bill O'Brien moved senior tight end, Garry Gilliam, to tackle for this season to compensate for attrition on the offensive line that he cannot fix with recruiting.
It should also be interesting to hear Bill O'Brien talk about the job amid a focus on the 2013 football season. Penn State fans may have "fallen up" with the O'Brien hire, much like Ohio State did by hiring Urban Meyer after its own turbulent 2011 season. An 8-4 season in 2012, under those conditions, was no small feat for Bill O'Brien. Further, he pleasantly surprised me by showing almost none of the impulses that still cripple Charlie Weis' collegiate coaching performances. Both were offensive coordinators for the New England Patriots with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.
But, the NFL question remains unanswered for O'Brien. Will he leave if presented the opportunity? He certainly will not address that on ESPN's All-Access feature, but fans could get a glimpse or a sense of how invested O'Brien is in the long term at Penn State. I get the drift that if O'Brien does not leave Penn State for an NFL head coaching gig after this season, then he is probably in it for the long haul. It will be very interesting to see what O'Brien can do when the NCAA eventually unties that hand behind his back.
KANSAS SUCKS AND ITS PLAYERS KNOW IT. Maybe you heard Charlie Weis' comments from Big XII media days. When asked to elaborate what is his recruiting pitch to Kansas, knowing his recent poor head coaching results and the poor results at Kansas, Charlie Weis said this.
...everyone wants to play. There's no one that wants to not play. I said, have you looked at that pile of crap out there? Have you taken a look at that? So if you don't think you can play here, where do you think you can play? It's a pretty simple approach. And that's not a sales pitch. That's practical. You've seen it, right? Unfortunately, so have I.
Well, yeah. One could comment about who should be considered responsible for that "pile of crap" on the field in Kansas last year, as well as the "pile of crap" that Notre Dame fans had to begrudgingly watch in 2007, 2008, and 2009, and that "pile of crap" offense that Florida football fans had to watch in 2011. However, Weis is not wrong, at least, technically.
It would be easy to imagine that Kansas players would be in uproar about this, especially the program's recent alumni that inherited Weis for a year before leaving. But, nope. Kansas' recent graduates agree that they were a pile of crap last year.
Weis made the comments during Big 12 media day in Dallas this week, and defensive back Bradley McDougald and fullback Toben Opurum -- a captain on that Jayhawks team -- said Thursday they came up with the same evaluation of a team that finished 1-11 last year.
"I mean, that's what it was, truth be told," said Opurum, who along with McDougald is trying to make the Kansas City Chiefs as an undrafted free agent. "We didn't put out a good product on the field and he was just expressing how he feels about it.
"He may have been able to word it differently but that's the type of guy he is," Opurum added. "He's going to tell you straight forward. He's not going to beat around the bush."
[...]
McDougald admitted that he was offended "to an extent," but said he didn't believe that Weis was disrespecting any of his players. The defensive back also pointed out that Kansas went 1-11 last season, "so it was a crap season."
"He's complimented me many times on my skill and me as a player," McDougald said, "so I can't really take too much offense to it because of what we produced last year."
Nice.
If the name "Bradley McDougald" looks familiar, it should. He was a one-time commitment in Ohio State's 2009 recruiting class, from Dublin Scioto High School, but made an eleventh hour switch to Kansas because he did not want to play safety. And, yes, he became a safety for the Kansas Jayhawks as an upperclassman.
I'm surprised there isn't a coffee mug ring stain... THAT STATIONERY, THOUGH... Despite making statements at SEC Media Days that he is not one to put things on Twitter or communicate through social media, Jadaveon Clowney found himself in a pickle through another social media application: Instagram. He posted a photo on Instagram that at least gave an indication he had done something incredibly stupid if he was intending to play for the Gamecocks in 2013. The photo suggested he had reached some type of agreement with Jay Z's Roc Nation Sports to be represented by them when he declared for the NFL Draft. Yes. He may have Cris Carter-ed himself.
To be clear, the photo posted on Instagram, and since deleted, was vague. A lot of statements by college athletes, especially on Twitter and associated outlets, are vague. We, as fans, enjoy reading tea leaves or creating narratives around it. We probably should be doing something else and that is not necessarily an indication of any wrongdoing by Clowney. Still, that was awfully myopic for Clowney to do that.
What exactly is at stake in this issue? Clowney is free to talk to Jay Z all he wants. He could call up Jay Z and talk about ponies for hours on end. He can even ask for professional advice from the rapper-turn-sports agent. He is not, however, allowed to have Jay Z pay for any expense associated with that communication (e.g. transportation, meals). Further, he is not allowed to reach any type of agreement with Jay Z. That was the issue at stake. Not only can money not change hands between both Jay Z and Jadaveon Clowney, but the two cannot even reach an implicit agreement. Otherwise, Clowney forfeited his eligibility.
So, did that happen? Maybe. Maybe not. Unless one side confesses to something, or money actually changed hands, there is no way of knowing. Both sides can deny everything and there is nothing anyone can do about it. South Carolina's compliance department was forced to look into the matter. Whatever their intentions, and however enthusiastic their review of the matter was, there was no way the press release was going to say anything other than "we found nothing". "Nothing" is easy to find, and it is everywhere. "Something" is not.
My only critique of South Carolina's handling of the matter was the stationery. Seriously, Jadaveon Clowney is one of the three most exciting players in college football and the most important part of the team, and that press release was hastily scribbled on stationery that looks like it was bought from the university's bookstore. I think it can do a bit better than that.
MISCELLANY. Rushell Shell finally found a home: West Virginia... Simpsons' co-creator, dying from advanced colon cancer, will give all his multi-million dollar fortune to charity... We are finding out this week that everyone is doing performance-enhancing drugs (here, here, here)... Almost makes you wonder out loud when a performance-enhancing drug scandal is going to come to college football... Steve Nash is going to try to play for Inter Milan, yes, the soccer club... Friend of the program, Will Muschamp, is $250,000 richer... CONCACAF hates America, and probably puppies and other nice things too... This guy, eh?
