Wednesday's Skull Session will offer some commentary on things happening around the world of college sports.
What is it about this college basketball season? It's that awkward moment when you realize the AP no. 1 team in the country is from the SEC. It's not Kentucky either. It's a fine Florida outfit, one with a recent championship pedigree, but also one with losses to Wisconsin and Connecticut that do not seem to be appreciating in value at the moment.
Behind Florida, with 14 first-place votes, is Wichita State. Wichita State is undefeated on the season, though questions persist about Wichita State's schedule. Three of Wichita State's marquee non-conference opponents—Alabama, DePaul, and Tennessee—are a combined 37-45.
Heck, the no. 1 team in the country barely put away a 15-12 Vanderbilt team last night. For what it's worth, I think Ohio State would look fantastic against Missouri Valley Conference competition like Bradley.
It's been a weird season, one in which it feels like any one of 16 teams could possibly win the NCAA Tournament. Sadly, Ohio State does not appear to be one of those 16 teams, though stranger things have happened. Hopefully.
Here are some other things that happened that are worth mentioning.
BIG LIFE. BIG STAGE. B1G FEDERAL INVESTIGATIONS. We are not even three years removed from the Penn State child sex abuse scandal that rocked college sports, and higher education, in general. The fallout of that scandal is still ongoing. Importantly, the Department of Education has an ongoing investigation into how Penn State handled the scandal. Whether Penn State violated the Clery Act of 1990 is still an open question.
Violating the Clery Act has far-reaching repercussions for the receipt of federal financial aid, among other things vital to universities.
Penn State is now not the only Big Ten program subject to a federal investigation from the Department of Education. Michigan and Michigan State are now in the Department of Education's crosshairs. The subject concerns how each institution handled allegations of sexual assault.
The Michigan case is one familiar to Big Ten fans by now. Discussed elsewhere on this site, it was the worst kept secret in Ann Arbor. Brendan Gibbons, a former kicker for Michigan football between 2009 and 2013, allegedly sexually assaulted a woman. Known as early as 2009, no action was taken until Gibbons was "permanently separated" from the university a few week ago. It was five years from incident to a formal acknowledgement of the matter.
Taylor Lewan's alleged involvement in this incident makes it worse. What he was accused of doing is heinous. That the athletic department seemed to be tongue-in-cheek regarding Gibbons' status as the internal investigation was ongoing makes no involved party at the university look clean.
Accordingly, the Department of Education is investigating the university to determine if Michigan handled this case properly.
Upon hearing the university was subject of a Department of Education investigation, a group of approximately 35 students protested how the university handled the case.
Michigan State is now subject to a Department of Education investigation for the same thing. We do not know, as of writing, the exact subject of the investigation and cannot say if it involves the athletic department or not.
D.J. Byrnes affords emphasis to the other recurring theme of these two stories: student newspapers.
The saddest part about these two cases (other than the sexual assaults themselves, of course) is these two stories were broken open by the student papers of their universities. Without them, we'd all think Brendan Gibbons missed the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl due to "family issues," and we wouldn't know about the MSU case at all.
Very true. The Michigan Daily deserves special praise for its work on the Gibbons story.
THE SENIOR QUARTERBACKS DO NOT LOOK IMPRESSIVE. I did not think I would talk about this for this session, but I found it interesting. Florida State blog Tomahawk Nation looked into the senior class of quarterbacks in anticipation of the 2015 NFL Draft.
The top five senior quarterbacks for next year's NFL Draft are Bryce Petty (Baylor), Sean Mannion (Oregon State), Taylor Kelly (Arizona State), Braxton Miller (Ohio State), and Cole Stoudt (Clemson).
Bryce Petty has just one year as a starter. Cole Stoudt has thrown 119 passes in his career, total.
The next five quarterbacks on the list are Hutson Mason (Georgia), Bryan Bennett (Southeastern Louisiana), Bo Wallace (Mississippi), Anthony Boone (Duke), and Andrew Manley (Eastern Illinois).
That group includes two FCS quarterbacks (Bennett, Manley), a quarterback who threw 141 passes total before Aaron Murray got injured on Senior Day (Mason), and Dr. Bo. Dr. Bo!
Under these conditions, it makes a little more sense why Miller returned to Ohio State for his senior season. His last two games would not have been great additions to his film package for NFL scouts. It should be easier to compete against that lot for a high pick in the NFL Draft than doing the same against Teddy Bridgewater and Johnny Manziel.
It is worth reiterating that Brett Hundley (UCLA) and Jameis Winston (Florida State) will be draft-eligible in 2015.
BERT'S FALL FROM GRACE. Readers who have followed my blogging before I arrived at Eleven Warriors know that I love Bert. "Bert" is my shorthand for Bret Bielema, the one-time coach of Wisconsin and current coach at Arkansas. I started calling him Bert in 2009, just because that's what he looks like. He looks like a "Bert".
I work under the assumption his parents, anticipating he would become Bert, wanted to name him Bert but did not proofread the birth certificate when it was first drafted. Eleven Warriors' fact-checking team has cautioned against me offering this unproven assertion, but I like my version of reality better anyway.
Another reason I have referred to him as Bert involves who he is. Bert is a bit of a butthole. He always has been. When sportswriters were praising him for running up the score on Indiana or needlessly going for a two-point conversion against Minnesota because his "card" thought it advisable, I thought it was dickish without accomplishing anything. Who feels it necessary to make a statement against Indiana and Minnesota?
When he left Wisconsin for Arkansas, sportswriters praised him for how he courted Arkansas and how Arkansas courted him. All told, it was damning that the Big Ten could lose its three-time, defending Big Ten champion coach to a lowly SEC rebuilding project.
One year later, his assistant coaches are fleeing him again, en masse. Chris Ash left for Ohio State. Taver Johnson left for Purdue. Charlie Partridge took the head coaching job at Florida Atlantic and took Chris Hurd with him. He lost two other administrative assistants to other jobs as well.
Further, his recent comments about Ted Agu's death as evidence in favor of slowing down high-tempo college football offenses was the height of poor form. Whatever good will he accrued in arriving at Arkansas is long gone now.
He got the full Mandel treatment for it yesterday.
The decline of Bielema's reputation is a wholesale transformation from the public perception of him while he was at Wisconsin, where he was indisputably cocky but largely noncontroversial. That can be attributed somewhat to the everything-is-bigger-in-the-SEC phenomenon. The coach of the Badgers is a national figure for roughly four months out of the year. At Arkansas or any other SEC school, a coach is always one sound bite away from becoming a weeklong storyline on The Paul Finebaum Show. There's also the possibility that the coach could become a caricature of himself, something encapsulated by the mocking #BERT nickname that became an unofficial metaphor for Bielema's persona sometime after his move to the Razorbacks.
Two things are worth clarifying. One, diligent Big Ten fans would not characterize Bielema as "largely uncontroversial". Him exploiting those idiotic clock rules of the 2006 season to freeze out Penn State in the final minute of that game was awfully dickish.
Second, he was Bert in the Big Ten too. He's always been Bert, dude. Calling him that since 2009 has been my one public good contributed to college football.
MISCELLANY. Ray Small is very likely looking at hard time... I expect better of you, Ohio... Football Writers Association of America unveils new college football poll... Knock it off, Hollywood... Buckeyes Cruise for Cancer raises $1.5 million... Bradley Roby just misses the mark for fastest time in the NFL Combine... He beat Michigan Man Rich Eisen by almost two seconds... C.C. Sabbathia loses a ton of weight... Aaron Hernandez makes the news again... The NBA should become Rock 'n' Jock Basketball.
