Mon Jun 17 04:21pm EDT
Wes Lunt is heading home.
The former Oklahoma State quarterback has chosen to transfer to Illinois, deciding on the Illini over Louisville. Lunt hails from Rochester, a 90-minute drive from Illinois’ campus in Champaign.
From ESPN’s Joe Schad:
"I know it's a team game and I can't do it all by myself," Lunt said. "I do hope we can add some more good recruits."
Lunt called Illinois coach Tim Beckman on Monday to inform him of his decision.
"I am OK with how I left Oklahoma State," Lunt said. "God had a plan for me. No hard feelings with Coach (Mike Gundy)."
Mon Jun 17 03:00pm EDT
When you're the best college football program in the nation, how do you improve the experience for your players? Apparently, by adding a waterfall to the locker room.
The news of Alabama's new waterfall got out when quarterback prospect David Cornwell tweeted about it ("That waterfall in Bama's locker room is about to be legit! C'mon who has a waterfall.. No one!" he wrote). And in fairness, Twitter was pretty much invented so people could tweet about football teams installing a waterfall in the locker room, right?
Now here's where we get serious, but only for a second.
Mon Jun 17 02:44pm EDT
If you wanted to be a curmudgeon and complain about how back in the day teams didn't need seven different uniform combinations and walked uphill in snow both ways to the stadium, pointing to this video could really help your case about the sartorial absurdity in college football. The folks at Compete4ever - an eSports community - put the above together, taking the time to scroll through every preset uniform in EA Sports' upcoming game.
It takes 35 minutes.
Mon Jun 17 01:23pm EDT
There's an interesting book if you're a fan of football history called "Blood, Sweat and Chalk" which traces the history of various formations and famous plays from Pop Warner through the Wishbone triple option to the modern day spread offenses. A theme throughout the book is that it's almost impossible to figure out the true origin of any Xs and Os innovation because every coach borrows at least part of their schemes from someone else.
So when Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin gets credit for his offensive brilliance (which he should), just know that he had to steal some of his ideas from another coach. That's how it has gone throughout football history.
And in Sumlin's case, it seems his offensive lineage started with Mike Price.
Mon Jun 17 12:08pm EDT
The college football offseason is long and arduous, but its end is almost in sight. We’re going to take a look at five games you have to look forward to for every weekend of the season. (This is also a handy guide to decide how to RSVP for any autumn weddings.)
All times are Eastern and all games are played on Saturday unless otherwise noted.
These games take place the weekend of August 31st.
Ole Miss at Vanderbilt (9:15 p.m., ESPN, Thursday) – Two of the trendiest coaches and programs in the game squaring off in their conference opener on the first night of football? That will do nicely. James Franklin is cleaning up on recruits (19th in the Rivals rankings in 2013 after finishing 70th in 2011) and wins at Vanderbilt, guiding the Commodores to a 9-4 record and Music City Bowl victory in his second season. At Ole Miss, Hugh Freeze is bringing in five-star recruits left and right, building off of a debut season as Rebels head coach that saw the program appear in (and win) its first bowl game since 2009. Both of these programs have bright futures but razor-thin margins of error in the loaded SEC, which should make this a dandy of a game to help kick off the 2013 season.
Mon Jun 17 10:35am EDT
When you consider some of the tactics that have been used by high school recruits in their commitment ceremonies – tattoos, live animals, black outs – we should not be surprised that a human child would become prominently involved. We’ve seen it a few times before, like when Richie Brown tasked his infant nephew with helping him choose Mississippi State, but La Salle (Cincinnati) wide receiver Derek Kief took his ceremony to a whole other level.
Kief has been very active in keeping folks informed about his recruiting, updating DerekKief.com and releasing his top five of Notre Dame, Kentucky, Ohio State, Alabama and Northwestern in an elaborate poster incorporating the logos of all five schools. When it came time to make his choice, he did not disappoint.
Mon Jun 17 09:42am EDT
The SEC is proactive in the battle to keep fans coming to the stadium and has looked into creative ways to keep attendance high, including adding WiFi to their stadiums.
One thing that didn't come up as much was fixing the increasingly overwhelming cost of going to games. And – spoiler alert! – don't expect that to be high on the priority list for any school.
But many fans do feel the price of going to college football games is overwhelming. AL.com did an informal survey of SEC fans from around the country, and even some outside the United States, and the most interesting finding is 83 percent replied yes to, "Do you believe average fans have been priced out of attending college football games?"
That's a problem.
Mon Jun 17 09:11am EDT
Florida linebacker Antonio Morrison has some legal problems to deal with, but at least along the way he provided one of the funnier lines of the year.
Morrison got to the Kava Lounge and apparently did not want to pay a cover charge. Then, according to the Associated Press, like a misplaced signature line from a movie superhero, he identified himself.
"Do you know who I am? I am a UF football player. I am Antonio!" Morrison said, according to the AP.
"I am Antonio!" did not get Morrison out of the cover charge, though it should have. That's gold.
Sun Jun 16 11:43am EDT
Here we thought Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel was too busy attending the NBA Finals to be harassed in College Station.
Apparently something happened in the early morning hours on Sunday to tweet – with an expletive – that he was very ready to be done with his college experience at Texas A&M. He has since deleted the tweet but it was grabbed by a few of his 360,000 followers, including @tverdeur04 (link has uncensored tweet), which we saw via the Houston Chronicle:
Fri Jun 14 01:27pm EDT
Earlier this week we looked at the possibility of smaller conferences creating new bowl games in 2014 to ensure their eligible teams didn’t get left at home for the postseason. It didn’t take long to get some specifics on the first candidate:
If approved, "Rice Bowl" in Little Rock, Ark., will pit MAC vs. Sun Belt starting in 2014. Would be 36th bowl
— Brett McMurphy (@McMurphyESPN) June 14, 2013
If you’re wondering what rice and Little Rock have in common, Arkansas produces more of the crop than any other state. But what interests me here isn’t the MAC/Sun Belt match up – although I will obviously watch next December if it becomes a real thing – but the details of the contracts schools are signing with the bowls.
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