If it seems like Notre Dame has been involved in a game of will-they-join-a-conference-or-won't-they for eons now, it's because, well, they pretty much have. And the answer, in the end, has always been a pretty emphatic "won't." But athletic director Jack Swarbrick, surveying the increasing prospects for Pac-10 and/or Big Ten expansion, pulled a surprising 180 on that position today, indicating that his program's opposition to conference affiliation might not be rock-solid after all:

"I believe we're at a point right now where the changes could be relatively small or they could be seismic," he said. "The landscape could look completely different. What I have to do along with Father Jenkins is try and figure out where those pieces are falling." . . .

"You have two conferences [the Big Ten and SEC] that have separated themselves economically and you've got all the other conferences lined up for their [upcoming television] renegotiations," said Swarbrick. "The bar has been set so high, and the [current] media market is so tepid, that it creates a lot of tension."

Swarbrick's explanations are cryptic enough that the precise "scenario[s] that would force our hand" are left to our imaginations, but whatever they are, they speak to some uncomfortable trends regarding Notre Dame's continued ability to command respect -- and dollars -- on a national level.

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Here's a pick-me-up for your Tuesday afternoon post-lunch slump: A post that has nothing to do with conference expansion, Tim Tebow, or players in handcuffs.

Every major college program has some sort of community outreach initiatives going, but a group of Northwestern's coaches and players will be upping the ante with a sweeping visual gesture for charity Wednesday, when they plan to shave their heads for a childhood cancer research benefit. Bruce Feldman talked with head coach Pat Fitzgerald about the event subscription req'd):

"When you see little people inflicted with such a traumatic experience, it's hard not to really want to do something for them. It's really just a symbolic gesture to those little guys and little girls who are going through a really tough time."
[...]
"We tried to raise awareness to the team. We said 'Hey, as a coaching staff, we're going to be part of the St. Baldrick's Event. If any of you guys would like to be a part of it, please sign up.' And right away we had 13 players sign up. It's a pretty cool deal to see those guys jump on board."

Fitzgerald goes on to talk about other service hours the team has put in this year as well as across-the-board improvements in player GPAs. All this, and they're turning in winning seasons? This is not your big brother's Northwestern anymore. For a fan base yearning for the days of the '96 Rose Bowl, the enthusiastic guidance of a guy like Fitzgerald has to bode beautifully for future Wildcats.

Coach Fitz is also a prolific Twitterer, so look for the event to receive ample coverage on his feed.

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Matt Hinton is on vacation this week. Holly welcomes your adulation and veiled threats at nastinchka-at-yahoo, etc.

At least two of our burning (OK, lukewarm) questions regarding the proposed bowl game in the New York Yankees' new stadium have been resolved: First, and most importantly, what will it be called? Why, the "Pinstripe Bowl," of course, with a title sponsorship from New Era Cap Co. (for the first four years, at least).

Not entirely sure how much this name is actually going to resonate; I've never known Big 12 fans, as a group, to be particularly reverential toward Yankees lore, or anything related to baseball in the Northeast, for that matter. It may, however, offer an answer to the second important question, i.e. how they're going to fit a football field into Yankee Stadium to begin with. Vertical stripes are very slimming, you know.

The questions that remain unanswered include "Will anyone in their right mind want to go to a football game in the south Bronx in late December?" -- though marketers could always tie it in with the Big Apple's general New Year's celebration -- and "Will the NCAA even certify it next month?" A "yes" to the latter question, though, seems a lot more likely now that the financial backing of a title sponsor has been added (as if George Steinbrenner's mountains of cash weren't enough already). Finally, there's the question of whether college football needs a 35th (or 36th, or 37th) bowl game, which might be the most controversial of all. But as long as the Pinstripe Bowl promises to lock down Jay-Z for the halftime show, it gets this author's tentative stamp of approval.

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Matt Hinton is on vacation this week. Inform Doug Gillett what a poor substitute he is at dougie_doodle-at-yahoo.

It's March, spring practice is just now grinding into gear for most teams, and there's barely any on-field action to write about. So it must be time for the nation's college football pundits, for the sake of showing the world they're still paying attention, to start putting together their "pre-preseason" top 25 lists.

Actually, it's way past time, evidently: As you'll see from the brief rundown below, three people had taken their first cracks at a 2010 ranking before the newly minted national champions had even checked in for their flights home from Pasadena. Most of the usual suspects from last year's pre-preseason rundown return, and as with last year, there seems to be a general feeling that the previous year's champions are nicely set up for another run at the crown this season. But that feeling isn't unanimous, and there are plenty of other head-scratching picks to be found:

• Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News had one of the more amusing pre-preseason lists last year, and this year's offering, evidently banged out immediately following Alabama's national-title victory, is a doozy as well. Wilner seems to imply that USC traded up in going from Pete Carroll to Lane Kiffin -- the Trojans finished 2009 ranked in the 20s in both polls, but Wilner has them at No. 10. He's also got Arkansas following close behind at  No. 12 (the Razorbacks and Crimson Tide are the only SEC West teams able to crack his top 25) and Houston, which started strong in '09 but closed out the season on a 2-3 skid, at No. 16. Rounding out the weird picks are the Tennessee Vols, who endured the most tumultuous January in recent memory but still are on his list at No. 18 with a bullet, and Rich Rodriguez's beleaguered Michigan squad, clinging to No. 24 despite not having beaten a single FBS team since September. After all that, the Miami Hurricanes seem like only a slightly optimistic pick at No. 5.

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Making the morning rounds.

• But with high-altitude conversion rate's that's only ... wait, no, that's baking. It would cost the University of Colorado about $9 million to decamp to the Pac-10. And why is that a problem, again?

The athletic department has an operating budget of about $45 million, which means a forfeiture of roughly 10 percent. That's a lot of money for a department that balked at firing Dan Hawkins because a $3 million separation package was viewed as too steep a price.

• Jo-seee, Jose Jose Jose. One of 2010's most excellently-monikered recruits has a knack for following drama. (Jose Jose's first two intended destinations were Tennessee and South Florida.) Last week, however, drama found him in the form of assault and weapons charges, and now UCF has withdrawn Jose's scholarship. So much for our long-held dream of hearing less-literate fans call him "Josie" all year.

• Broncos move in sinister ways. Boise State's defense is down one coordinator to the coaching carousel, and now finds itself short a safety as spring practice kicks off. Jason Robinson, key participant in the Broncos' Fiesta Bowl fake punt gambit, is serving an indefinite suspension for the ever-popular Undisclosed Violation Of Team Rules. The backup junior from L.A. saw playing time in 11 games last year, recording a high of five solo tackles against Hawaii.

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As winners of the 2009 national title, the Alabama football team got to make the traditional visit to the White House Monday to be personally congratulated by the President. Depending on your team allegiance, you may be displeased to know that there was indoctrination going on from the minute the team walked through the door -- but perhaps not the kind you think:

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One item that we missed in this morning's police-blotter-esque Headlinin' post: Georgia QB Zach Mettenberger, one of two highly touted redshirt freshmen poised to compete for the starting job this season, was arrested early Sunday morning near Valdosta for, among other things, underage possession and false ID. If that doesn't win this year's Worst Way To End Spring Break Award, it's sure to be at least a finalist. (Actually, if Valdosta is Mettenberger's idea of a party, he may also be in the running for the Worst Way To Spend Spring Break Award, but that's a different post entirely.)

Call it mo-ped mania maybe, or a surge in scooter scofflaws - but two University of Georgia football players now have been busted in less than two weeks for committing traffic violations while operating the popular miniature motor vehicles.

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Just a couple of months removed from the most crowded postseason (34 bowl games) in college-football history, we're on the verge of packing in even more. Three new games are awaiting a certification decision from the NCAA next month:

• The Cure Bowl, not a celebration of Robert Smith's trendsetting New Wave band but rather a benefit for the Susan G. Komen breast-cancer research foundation and the American Cancer Society, is tentatively scheduled for December 18 at Bright House Networks Stadium (home of the UCF Knights) in Orlando. It is slated to match up teams from the Sun Belt and Conference USA.

• The Yankee Bowl, which aims to match up the #4 team from the Big East and the Big XII's #7 squad on December 29, is intended, as far as anyone can tell, mainly to show off the New York Yankees' shiny new baseball palace (a facility the game itself may or may not fit into).

• The Dallas Football Classic would pit a Big Ten team against a Big XII or C-USA team in alternating years and would represent the return of postseason football to Dallas's Fair Park on New Year's Day after a one-season hiatus. (The Cotton Bowl game left the Cotton Bowl stadium for shinier, newer pastures at Jerry Jones's Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.)

Sound like fun? There's just one problem: Thirty-seven bowls means we need 74 bowl-eligible teams -- and we only had 71 last season. 

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Making the morning rounds.

• LSU wideout does not have a great day. As you read this, Terrance Toliver may still be smarting from a tasering he received at the hands of the Baton Rouge police early Sunday morning. The junior wide receiver allegedly got into a fight outside a bar near campus and proceeded to "not cooperate with officers," setting up both the tasering and an arrest on charges of interfering with a police officer, disturbing the peace and public intoxication. (Also scooped up in the melee: freshman basketball player Dennis Harris, who probably has even less standing with the local gendarmes after going 2-14 in conference play this season.) [USA Today]

• The award will be a pair of bronzed eyeglasses, and will weigh approximately 100 pounds. The Maxwell Football Club, which presents the Maxwell Award to the nation's best player each fall, is adding the Joseph V. Paterno Award to its repertoire, to be given each year to an outstanding college coach. The exact criteria of the award is still "in the development stage," but will include the impact the coach has had on his community and state as well as his players and university. The award will be presented, along with the Maxwell Award and 12 other football awards the club hands out, at MFC's annual black-tie banquet in Atlantic City. [GoPSUSports.com]

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Proud programs on hard times.

Other teams have fallen harder in terms of wins of losses, but in relative terms, no established program ended the last decade further from where it began than Florida State, which went from national championship mainstay -- the 'Noles played in three straight BCS title games from 1998-2000, the tail end of their 14-year run with at least 10 wins and a top-five finish in the polls -- to perpetual ACC also-ran almost overnight. That path is well chronicled since FSU's last conference championship in 2005, but with three disappointing 7-6 seasons and zero major bowl appearances in the last four years, the vast majority of today's recruits literally cannot remember Florida State as a national power.

The transition to the Jimbo Fisher era will go down as the moment the sleeping giant either awoke to resume plundering the countryside or else permanently resigned itself to the status of another toppled dynasty whose best days are firmly in the past, well out of reach.

• What Went Wrong. For years, coordinator Mickey Andrews' proud, punishing defense suffered opposite an inept offense, specifically a string of pedestrian quarterbacks that often seemed to be holding the entire team from its dominant birthright by themselves -- Seminole QBs finished 68th or worse nationally in pass efficiency every year from 2004-08. Last year put the lie to that narrative, pitting poor, resourceful Christian Ponder (see below) against the persistent failings of by far the worst defense in the ACC. Andrews' charges bottomed out as the league's worst in rushing, pass efficiency and total defense, and just missed the cellar in scoring D, giving up at least 26 points in every ACC game. In one four-game stretch in October and November, one-time whipping boys Georgia Tech, N.C. State and Clemson all cracked 40 on at least 480 total yards.

At its best, FSU allowed just 17 points on 368 yards to South Florida, a game it still lost thanks to two 70-plus-yard completions and 154 yards rushing by a redshirt freshman quarterback in his first career start, against a unit led by seven senior starters. Et cetera.

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