Recapping Colorado Buffaloes Athletics, Pac-12 and College Football News, Links, and Stories
CU Buffs use break to regroup - Buffzone
Tad Boyle gave his team last weekend off to rest their bodies and focus their minds on academics. Most of the Buffs gathered together on the hardwood at the Coors Events Center anyway. Colorado is trying to regroup after last Friday's loss to Wyoming dropped the transitioning team to 5-4 on the season.
"It was a team thing. We just got back on the court to settle some things," freshman guard Askia Booker said. "We talked things over for a while. We don't want to have any upsets like that again or make the mistakes that we made late in the game. We're trying to get back on track."
"We feel like there's some recurring things that we need to fix by taking a look at ourselves and what we're doing in the film room," senior guard Carlon Brown said. "We just need to change it as fast as we can because before we know it conference is going to be here...
New Pac-12 hires make Greg Brown's job tougher at CU - Buffzone
In the three weeks since the Colorado Buffaloes' football season ended, something happened that defensive coordinator Greg Brown wasn't sure was possible. His job became even more difficult. Four new head coaches have been hired in the Pac-12 and at least three of them will make an already punishing offensive league even more grueling for the conference's defensive coordinators. Brown will face them all in 2012.
Bowl season provides its own rewards - ESPN
The original purposes of the bowls remain valid. They promote tourism in their cities. They promote the teams that performed well enough to be invited. They promote the sale of junk food, beer and firewood from sea to shining sea. And they promote agita in their critics, who see a boondoggle for the bowls, schools and the networks at the expense of the student-athletes who play in them.
The idea of promoting tourism dates to the Pasadena Valley Hunt Club, which in 1890 modeled its civic celebration on the "Battle of the Flowers" in Nice, France. Members settled instead on the name Tournament of Roses. In 1902, they staged their first football game. Michigan led Stanford 49-0 in the third quarter when the losers decided they had had enough.
The Tournament of Roses abandoned football for chariot races. Football didn't return to Pasadena for 14 years. Once the Rose Bowl took root, the decision to pair a Western team with an Eastern team made the game important to college football fans across the nation.
After the jump; is Craig James actually running for Senate?
Yes, yes he is. To which I say, "%$# $^$%"
CRAIG JAMES FOR SENATIVE: BORN TO RUN - Every Day Should Be Saturday
Hello Real 'Merica. My name is Craig. I want to be your Senative. You may be wondering to yourself: how are Craig James qualified to represent me in the United States' most prestigious body of water?
[Vulture with wig flies across the screen. SCREEEE.]
Craig James expected to run for Senate | Trail Blazers Blog | dallasnews.com
Former SMU standout Craig James will file his candidacy for the U.S. Senate by Thursday's deadline, according to sources close to his developing campaign.
The 2011-12 bowl season starts in Albuquerque, N.M., and ends in New Orleans. Here's a look at the schedule from the New Mexico Bowl on Dec. 18 to the Allstate BCS National Championship Game on Jan. 9 in the Louisiana Superdome.
Bowl season brings choice matchups, duds - College Football - Pat Forde - Rivals.com
One of the great things about working for Yahoo! Sports is that there is no reason to pretend a 35-game bowl onslaught is a truly delightful way to finish the season. Let’s call it what it is: a bloated, ridiculous postseason, rife with mediocrity and bad matchups and clunky bowl names. Don’t get me wrong: I will watch plenty of bowl games between Dec. 17 and Jan. 9. I love college football more than everything but a perfect steak, a cold beer and select few family members. But that doesn’t mean I love Florida International vs. Marshall in the Beef O’Brady’s Bowl.
2011 Bowl Predictions: Picking All 35 Bowl Games | Bleacher Report
But there are plenty of other games to watch before Jan. 9 (34 more, in fact) as bowl season provides a college football overload for us fanatics, and these will be some extremely close games for the most part. The only bad thing about the long list of bowl games is that they signal the end of another season, and boy, was this one exciting.
5 best non-BCS bowls | National Football Post
While there are plenty of intriguing matchups this postseason, let's take a look today at the five best non-BCS bowl games on the schedule.
Outback Bowl: Michigan State vs. Georgia
Cotton Bowl: Arkansas vs. K-State
Insight Bowl: Oklahoma vs. Iowa
Alamo Bowl: Baylor vs. Washington
Capital One Bowl: South Carolina vs. Nebraska
EDSBS STUDY GROUP: LITERATURE, THEATER, AND POETRY - Every Day Should Be Saturday
Because sometimes we struggle to make peace with the fact that we'll be watching 9+ hours of football played by the likes of Temple, Wyoming, Ohio, Utah State, San Diego State, and Louisiana-Lafayette this coming Saturday, it's important we also masquerade this hobby problem addiction with thinly veiled delusions of academia.
EDSBS Study Group continues to further brain development and growth and according to our scientists friends in "Japan" (like that's a place), is less bad for you than *most* street drugs!
The interplay of recruiting, eliteness and pro-style versus spread schemes | Smart Football
Blutarsky and B&B discuss some interesting points. Explicitly or implicitly, the discussion turns on the role of schemes and top-flight recruits, coupled with scheme transitions. In short, are there advantages to recruiting to pro-style offenses versus the spread, and is it wrong (or at least misguided) to hire coaches who will transition their team from one to the other? And what’s the better plan for the long-run? I don’t think there even could be an answer to these questions, but below are some non-systematic thoughts.
ASU Hires Pitt's Todd Graham As Head Coach: Your Reaction? - House Of Sparky - Click to see House of Sparky's fan's rating the hire evenly distributed between "B, C, D, and F."
Arizona State football finally has a new head coach, as they have hired Pitt's Todd Graham. Graham spent just one season at Pitt, going 6-6. However, prior to coaching the Panthers, Graham spent four highly successful seasons at Tulsa, including three 10-win seasons. Overall, he has a 49-29 record as a head coach at Rice, Tulsa and Pitt.
I want to rate it E for Excellent, but they wouldn't let me.
The things football coaches do when hopping on the carousel and hopping off at a more lucrative job are rarely honorable, and usually leave at least some people left in the coach's wake feeling betrayed and used. Few players will be more justified in that anger than the Pittsburgh players who heard that their coach, Todd Graham, was leaving for Arizona State via a text message Graham sent to his director of football operations to forward to the team.
Mike Leach Has A Pistol, But How Will He Use It? - CougCenter
Mike Leach has a gun, but nobody's quite sure how he's going to use it. The gun is a pistol and the trigger man is Jim Mastro, a former assistant at Nevada and, most recently, UCLA. It's the hiring Mastro that says a lot about what Leach may have learned during his time away from football and how he'll apply that knowledge to his job at Washington State.
Sources -- Arkansas State Red Wolves hire Gus Malzahn of Auburn Tigers to be football coach - ESPN - Remember when we might've hired this guy? He went home instead...
Auburn coordinator Gus Malzahn agreed Tuesday to become Arkansas State's new football coach, replacing Hugh Freeze, sources close to the coach confirmed to ESPN.com.
CU Buffs moving up in recruiting rankings - Buffzone
The major recruiting services have rated just one of Colorado's recruiting classes among the top 25 in the nation since 2003. Former coach Dan Hawkins' 2008 class received a No. 15 ranking from Rivals.com that year, but every other class over the past eight years has been ranked in the mid-30s or lower.
After receiving its 19th commitment for the 2012 class this weekend, CU has moved into the mid-30s in team rankings by Scout.com, and considering coach Jon Embree still plans to add at least nine more recruits to the class, there is a chance the Buffs could get back into the top 25 this year.
Go Buffs!