wednesday linkpile

Time to deal with a bunch of that stuff that piles up while I'm off plowing through projects that I just have to put out there. First up is that tired-looking recruiting board, and the updates to it:

- Removed a bunch of names that we hadn't heard from or about since before the regime change. Said regime change means it's not likely we're bothering.

- Removed S Ed Reynolds, probably once and for all, who committed to Stanford, and DT Johnathon Hankins, who committed to Ohio State.

- Added LB Ralph Williams to blue. Might be able to snake-oil this guy away from Tennessee. He is Michael Strauss's high school teammate.

- Added OT Dan Foose and RB Dejor Simmons to yellow.

- Recategorized Strauss as an early enrollee. Technically he isn't enrolled right at this moment, but he'll be at spring practice, sure enough to the point where it'd be news now if he wasn't. This is awesome, by the way. Early enrollers always get a nice little boost from being at spring practice, but for quarterbacks the benefit is immeasurable compared to just about any other position.

Frankly, this 2010 board is getting very boring. I'm guessing three, maaaybe four more commits. Total of about 15-17. Not quite the furious finish we had to last year's class. In the near future, therefore, the 2011 board will have its debut. Won't that be fun. My too-early projection for that class size is about 18-22, so the commitments should be at a bit of a faster pace than they have been this year.

Before I forget, the "other" football team spit out some disappointing news today: Tony Tchani is leaving school for the pros. Eh, it's probably time: he's got a championship and he's plenty talented enough to make the jump. We weren't going to lose any major, major pieces of the championship team to graduation, so Tchani leaves the one real hole in the lineup. Which can be filled just fine, thank you: for one thing, we'll actually get to use Brian Ownby for the whole season, and Jimmy Simpson should be able to find his way to the field more often. Simpson, you might recall, had a pretty nice freshman season in 2008 with six goals, but didn't see hardly any time this year. We've got the depth to cover Tchani.

Even if you've been under a rock since New Year's, you probably still know that Jim Reid, formerly the Dolphins' linebackers coach, is going to be the new DC. Cross your fingers for Bill Musgrave to be rehired as OC - myself, I don't see it happening. We gotta get this stuff in place and Musgrave is playing the waiting game. I'll probably make some kind of stab at an overview of the new coordinators once they're both in place and announced.

Remember Aaron Corp? He was USC's dauphin quarterback this year, the heir in the dynasty behind center for the Trojans. That was until Matt Barkley horned in on his territory and kept the job all season. Barkley is firmly entrenched for the next two seasons at a bare minimum, which as bad luck would have it is all the time Corp has left in college. Yeah, I'd transfer too. The neat part is that some guy told some guy who told some guy that UVA had inquired into his availability. Have we? Who knows, but it makes sense. We're thin at quarterback, and all our options in 2011 are going to be pretty young still.

Let's pretend for a hot minute Corp does end up transferring here. As you probably know, he couldn't play in 2010 because of transfer rules, and he's already used up a redshirt year so the working assumption would be that he'd get one year: 2011. I'm also going to assume Marc Verica, the only upperclassman on scholarship, gets handed the keys next year, so that it's once again an open competition for the job in '11. Right now that's going to be between redshirt sophomores Smalls and Metheny and redshirt freshman Strauss, and probably an as-yet-unknown redshirt or true freshman. Would be nice to have a little senior leadership in there, no? Corp could take the job for a year, strut his stuff for NFL scouts, and leave the reins (spelling hint time: it's reins, not reigns, as in, what you use to control a horse) to that same bunch which is now a year older and hopefully wiser in 2012.

Of course, Corp might find it beneficial to have two years to get ready for what he clearly hopes will be a bid at being an NFL draft pick, and therefore transfer to a I-AA school where he can play right away. His decision comes down to, is it better to play two years in a place where getting noticed is that much harder, or one year in a spotlightier place? Me, I'd be thrilled to bring him in, and would promise to keep all Christian Olsen comparisons to a minimum.

OK, so one of the best parts about college football in the Internet age is that the moment something hilarious shows up on TV, it goes straight to YouTube, every blog everywhere, and the message boards, usually before the game is over. Whether it's Lee Corso trying to shake hands with a blind kid or Clemson fans taking a flying leap off the metaphorical ledge, it goes right to your computer screen before Sportscenter even comes on. Such was the case with Sad Cowbell Girl, as she was known in the 12 hours or so before it became common knowledge that she is blind. Unfortunately for the Internet, we'd all already had our jollies. So if you saw a major uptick in the past couple days on the InterWebz We Are All Total Assholes Meter, that's why. We may have a new record for edited blog and board posts in one day, which in itself restores the humor by changing the target to All Of Us Being Dickheads. Don't feel bad, Internet: blindness is not synonymous with emotionlessness. Obviously she had no way of knowing there was a camera and therefore wasn't going to make silly faces at it the way humans are genetically wired to do whenever inside a stadium. But still: when's the last time you ever saw a bored marching band member? Even the cowbell calls for slightly more enthusiasm than it takes to shuffle over to the fridge for another beer.

I'll wrap this up with a complaint, complete with bad language: I hate you, TV networks. I hate what you've done to my bowl system. I hate how you allow shitty bowl games to take place after New Year's Day. I hate how you make good and damn sure there cannot possibly any competition for the bowl game you're airing by making the ACC champion play on a Tuesday fucking night five days after New Year's. I hate how you make this possible by airing something called the "Papajohn's.com Bowl**" on New Year's weekend instead of the Monday before Christmas where it belongs. I hate how you give airtime to some stupid midlevel asshole representing the sponsor so he can pimp his company under the cover of pretending to "wish the best of luck to the finest student-athletes in the nation." This is only funny when watching a team which has suspended half its depth chart for thugging it up at a fraternity fundraiser. I hate how you're putting the BCS CG on a damned Thursday because heaven forbid it compete with your precious NFL. GET OFF MY LAWN.

**This is the only context in which a bowl named for its corporate sponsor will appear on this blog without asterisks like you'd use to represent a curse word in more family-oriented contexts: to emphasize the point that it sounds really stupid. You may see "E*******k Bowl" or "ex-Peach Bowl" but you won't see the actual name if a corporation has whored out the bowl for itself. And by the way, Papa John's pizza is terrible. Putting the cheese on top of the toppings means you have to guess which one is the delicious pepperoni and which one has the nasty disgusting green peppers on it, and even if they did put the toppings where they belong, Pizza Hut and Domino's and Little Caesar's and Sbarro and just about everyone else still kick the ass of Papa John's.