Ballers, Gamers and Scoundrels

At some point, we all knew technology and the underbelly of college sports would converge into one sickening mass. It’s happened.

Thanks the Seattle Times, a scum alum has been exposed. Based on two emails sent to University of Washington president Mark Emmert - the first on, Oct. 30, the latter on Nov. 29 - and obtained via public record by the Seattle Times, Ed Hansen, a lawyer, developer, banker, 1966 graduate of the university’s law school and former mayor of Everett, Wash., said he’d donate $100,000 to the school if head football coach Tyrone Willingham was fired. He also offered to donate another $100,000 if athletic director Todd Turner was fired.

Here are the contents of the emails, as reported by the Times: In the initial email, Hansen said he’d “decided to defer establishing the law school scholarship until Ty Willingham is replaced as Husky football coach,” according to the report.

Later, Hansen went on: “By this letter I hereby pledge to contribute a minimum of $100,000 towards a law school scholarship within 90 days, conditioned upon the termination of Ty Willingham as football coach.

“In addition, I hereby pledge a second $100,000 towards a law school scholarship within 90 days, conditioned upon the termination of Todd Turner as athletic director.”

I am sure this sort of thing has gone on as long as there have been fat-cat boosters and college coaches. But damn. It’s still amazing.

The Huskies were 4-9 this past season, their third straight losing record under Willingham, who took over a program that had been in turmoil under former coach Rick Neuheisel. There have been some rumblings (aren’t there almost everywhere except, maybe , LSU?). As well as support: Seattle Seahawks running back Shaun Alexander e-mailed, saying that he’d hung out with several Husky players and was pleased “with the direction of the program and the character of the guys Ty has been bringing in … Let him finish what he started and you’ll be pleased with all your decisions.”

To his credit, Emmert, the school president is ignoring the madness. He says he ignores any financial threats or inducements related to personnel decisions. he told the newspaper that the emails are “grossly inappropriate.”

Ya think?

Watch a report on Willingham’s rehiring:

Here they are, with gratitude to thebiglead.com, which was first to dig up pics of the four knuckleheads who’ve now been charged with the murder of Washington Redskins All-Pro Sean Taylor in his Florida home earlier home last week.

The police are being pretty mum on the whole thing, thankfully. They’re only saying the killers had no intention of killing Taylor, whom they didn;t hink would be home. They only wanted to rob the place.

Small comfort.

Jason Mitchell, Charles Wardlow and Venjah Hunte (from left) were denied bail after appearing separately before a judge via a video link today. The fourth suspect, Eric Rivera, who has been ID’d as the gunman who shot Taylor, was still in custody in  Florida jail.

Worthless. That’s what I think of preseason polls.

Oh, I know they’re fun for fans and they invoke a heavy dose of chest puffing among players. But they don’t mean squat. And if you don’t know that by now, well, you’ve been in a coma since early fall when Appalachian State thumped then No. 5 Michigan in Ann Arbor to ignite the most curious ( and entertaining, may I please add) college football season perhaps the in the history of the sport.

Now a conference no one outside of the players blood relatives has even heard on - the Atlantic Sun (doesn’t that sound like a casino? - has transformed the college basketball preseason polls into filthy rags. Gardner Webb and Mercer, the Bulldogs and Bears, lack-of-respectively, embarrassed some guys wearing big-time unis last week and rendered their vanquished to the ranks of the unranked. Kentucky and USC, Nos 22 and 18 in early polls, will probably climb back into the rankings before long - although one could argue that they’re right where they belong right now: out of the top 20 and starting at a long season of attempted redemption.

If you look at college footballs’ preseason rankings and four teams that were in the top ten -No. 1 USC, Texas, Michigan and Louisville - are ghosts (at worst) or understudies (at best) in the current rankings. Quite simply, none of them were nearly as good as their preseason hype. And since then teams that were nowhere to be found in the top 20 - No. 2 Oregon, undefeated Kansas, Missouri, Clemson, South Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, UConn (who knew they played football there?!) - have made 2007 a season to remember.

College basketball’s prognosticators obviously learned nothing. The preseason rankings are filled with unis - name schools whose biggest strength lies in the letters across the players chests. Nary a surprise among them. Neither Gardner Webb nor Mercer cracked the Top 25, and perhaps they shouldn’t. In college hoops, at least, those wins will count for something in March, should the two teams continue to play well and notch perhaps another couple of quality wins and do well in AS (Atlantic Sun). That’s when the venerable suits comprising the NCAA basketball committee locks itself in a room with a ton of very expensive shrimp and decides which teams receive invitations to the not-so-elite field of  65 teams that will have the opportunity to compete for the national title.

USC and Kentucky are the kinds of teams that typically qualify just by showing up for every regular season game with clean unis.  Not so GWebb and Mercer. But they’ve already opened some eyes.

The problem with the college football preseason poll is that it provides teams with an unfair advantage given the few spots in prestigious - read: phat payoff - postseason bowls. It’s like spotting the New England Patriots a touchdown every Sunday. Most seasons, those early notches prevent less-prominent teams with great records from breaking into the bowls of golf. This season is an aberration (though I hope not). LSU v Oregon (or even Kansas) in the title game will be refreshing.

Kill the preseason polls and allow the season to exist at least for a few weeks before releasing the first rankings. At least, by then, they won’t simply rank.

Okay, this is officially the best college football season ever. At this point, the national champion is almost moot. We could be looking at Kansas State v South Florida for the title and, well, it will be alright.

Today, on a Saturday with few games of an real national interest, Kentucky QB Andre Woodson - this year’s Vince Young, and my favorite player this season - orchestrated another stunning upset my leading the once woebegon-Wildcats to a 43-37 victory over No. 1 LSU. The win snapped LSU’s 13-game win streak and further threw the national title race into Twilight Zone.

Woodson (are the Jets watching???) hit Steve Jackson for a 7-yard TD to take a six-point lead in the third OT. Then after the Wildcats failed on the two-point conversion (required starting with the 3OT), vaunted LSU could not get 10 yards in four downs and were done.

Woodson was 21-for38 with 249 yards and 3 TDs. He was poised and powerful His arm zipped passes into places Chad Pennington couldn’t reach on ‘roids.

Kentucky is one of many Cinderellas in this Grimm’s of a season - the best college football season ever.

Okay, the 2007 college football season is officially in the Twilight Zone. Tonight, Stanford, my alma mater and a school whose football team likely possesses the most lopsided ratio of brains to football skills of any team on the planet, beat arch rival and No. 2 (or No. 1) ranked USC 24-23 at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

The victory snapped the Trojans’ 35-game winning streak at home, dating back to 2001 when, yes, the Cardinal last beat the Trojans. Stanford was a 40-point underdog. Yeah, forty. ( Unbelievable.

There were myriad subplots to this name - not the least of which was the bit of trash-talking by Stanford rookie coach Jim Harbaugh, which began almost before the new Cardinal coach had gotten a key to his new office. He told reporters he’d herd that USC coach Pete Carroll would leave following the 2007 season. (Carroll denied it saying Harbaugh had not checked with him about career moves.” ) Then at media day, Harbaugh said with a sarcastic tone: “There is no question in my mind that USC is the best team in the country and may be the best team in the history of college football.”

Harbaugh didn’t back down from his comments in the days leading up to the contest that was to be no-contest. But in a sly twist he also said: “We bow to no man. We bow to no program here at Stanford University.”

Coach arm-wrestling makes for good copy. But this is real: The Cardinal’s starting QB was out of the game after suffering a seizure last Sunday while watching former teammate - and now Buffalo Bills rookie QB p- Trent Edwards beat the New York Jets. (I am not making this up.) That left starting duties to sophomore Tavita Pritchard. The last time Pritchard started a game he was in high-school. In college, he’d thrown a total of four passes.

Pritchard

Tonight, his numbers (11-for-30, 147 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT) weren’t particularly impressive. But this was: Trailing 23-16, the Cardinal had fourth and-ten on the USC 10-yard-line with :50 left. Pritchard had just throw two successive incomplete passes and. At the snap he back-peddled to avoid a USC assault, lofted the ball towards the left corner of the end zone and hit WR Mark Bradford (whose father passed away last week) for the game-winner. Add the extra point, and you had the biggest upset in Pac-10 football history. Some even called it the biggest upset in college football history. Unbelievable.

Mark Bradford

Lest you wonder whether Pritchard was just an out-of-nowhere wonder, consider this: His uncle, and the man who tutored him as a child for hours at a time? Jack (“The Throwin’ Samoan”) Thompson, the former All-America QB at Washington State. Ya gotta love it, especially during this wacky season

The only downside of this is that if Florida upsets LSU tonight, Cal could be No. 1. Ugh.

Nephew Tavita (top) and Uncle Jack

I love stories like this. I love watching players emerge from nowhere to make us care. make us watch. Make us go: Damn, where has he been?

It happens most in college sports, where pundits like myself declare Guy 1, Guy 2 and Guy 3 as all that and a bag of peanuts even before the first snap or tip-off. This year, the race for college football’s Heisman Trophy began with a handful of players. Among them: USC QB John Booty. Louisville QB Brian Brohm, Arkansas running back/stud Darren McFadden and my favorite, Rutgers running back Ray Rice (full disclosure: Ray hails from where I live - New Rochelle, NY - and he’s a great kid).

But right now, I’m blown away by Kentucky QB Andre Woodson.

Let me be straight with you. He won’t come close to winning the thing. But after wins over highly ranked Louisville (and Broehm) last week and a 42-29 thumping of Arkansas on Saturday, the 6-foot-five-inch, 230-pound statue of a QB (Check out his stats: Click here.) has got to be the dark horse guy heading into the stretch of the college football season.

Woodson is a prototype QB, Big guy. Big arm. And smart. Think Tom Brady. Not flashy. Just gets the job done. On Saturday, he was 20-for-38 for 270 yards and two TDs, including a 32-yarder to Keenan Burton and a one-yard plunge that capped a come-from-behind thriller.

Oh,BTW, in the second quarter, Woodson also threw his 272 consecutive pass without a INT to set an all-time collegiate record, surpassing the mark set by Trent Dilfer when the now-NFL QB played for Fresno State.

Kentucky is now ranked 21st in the nation. They’ll likely move up this week - if for just the time being. The next three weeks are, well, a bear - South Carolina, LSU and Florida. By the time the Gators come through town, Woodson might just be a feel-good afterthought for the season.

But write this down: Come next spring at the NFL draft, Andre Woodson will be a Top 10 pick. Ahead of Brohm, unless the NFL geniuses are nuts. write it down.

And I’ll not yet give up on seeing him in NYC in January. he may not win the Heisman, but he’s already college football’s story of the year.

Blue Blooded Opinions

So there is life at the Associated Press. The venerable newswire actually made news last night by announcing that any college football team in the nation was eligible for ranking in its 71-year-old poll. Duh. Isn’t it supposed to be the top 25 college teams in the nation?

Well, at least now it is. The move was spurred, of course, by Appalachian State, who represented U’dogs everywhere with its inspiring victory over Michigan last Saturday in what was the biggest upset in college football history. (If ya’ll have a better one, holla.)

App State is a Division I-AA school (I refused to get into the new Subprime, or Subdivision terminology), a notch below Division I-A where all the college football behemoths reside - or so it’s supposed to go. Division I-AA programs are supposed to comprise the dregs of the college football crop, players who either didn’t fit the Division I-A mold (i.e. they were smaller or slower than the Div. I-A box) or couldn’t make the grades that would allow them to be eligible for the top schools.

Well, the differentiation gap has shrunk in recent years as Division I-AA programs began to attract better coaches and upgrade facilities. They began attracting better local athletes, too, guys who’ve come to know that in this digital age talent will be found no matter where it matriculates.

The kids from Boone, NC arrived in Ann Arbor believing they belonged on the same field as the boys in maze and blue, believing that they were the right team at the right time.

Then they went out and proved it.

Now, as I stated on SNY’s “Daily News Live” on Wednesday, they indeed belong in the rankings, too.

Here’s RSJ’s Today College Football Top 25:

1. LSU

2. Florida

3. USC

4. OU

5. West Virginia

6. Wisconsin

7. Texas

8. Cal

9. Ohio State

10. Georgia

11. UCLA

12. Auburn

13. Penn State

14. Rutgers

15. Georgia Tech

16. Arkansas

17. Boise State

18. Appalachian State

19. Virginia Tech

20. Nebraska

21. TCU

22. Hawaii

23. Texas A&M

24. Boston College

25. Cincinnati

Time to root for Brady Quinn. I was pretty much through with Brady Hype in the days, weeks and months leading up to the NFL Draft. Through no fault of his, the Notre Dame QB was painted as all things good by a combination of Gold Domers, Charlie Weiss Disciples and people who just didn’t know any better.

Now, after watching him agonize through the first round of the draft and fall faster than Don Imus, I’m gonna root for the guy. He handled it as well as can be expected. (Better than his family, it seems) After being shuttled the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s private suite, he agreed to be interviewed live by ESPN’s Suzy Kolver and hung in there as he slipped to 22d after being touted by many as the potential No 1 pick in thedraft.

In truth, he probably ended up where he should have been all along. A native of Ohio, he’s now a Cleveland Brown. As he walked onto the stage, looked skyward and held his new jersey proud, I thought to myself: Waiting often has its rewards. Here’s hoping Brady Quinn gets his.

There are no more simple sports stories. We know that now. The boundaries between our games and our lives are all but gone. We learned that last week when the ugly words of an aging talk show host, talking about a group of female college athletes, reverberated through out collective consciousness and struck him down. Now this. Now the tragic deaths of 33 young people at the hands of a troubled young gunman on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Sports fans know VT as the Hokies. They know it as the place that gave us Michael Vick.

When the shots rang out on Monday morning and the newsheads began showing us the pain and tragedy, we saw the rest of Virginia Tech, the tree-lined walkways and gray-stone buildings. Most important we saw the faces. We saw the students and the teachers, the survivors and the dead, all affected, all changed.

Words hurt, but we get over them. One young lady from Rutgers, the team targeted by the former talk-show icon, said the words used to describe her would scar her “for life.” Those among us who barely remember being that young know she’ll get past it and that such a scar would heal sooner than she thinks.

The young men and women of Virgina Tech, their teacher, families and friends are not so lucky.

Our prayers should go out to each of them, and even to the perpetrator (as difficult as that may be), and especially to his family. May God touch them all.

Note: Former Hokies Michael Vick and DeAngelo Hall, both ATL Falcons, expressed their grief over the tragedy, and today Vick’s Foundation announced it was gathering donations from locals communities in ATL and Virginia to aid the families of the victims. Vick contributed $ 10,000 to the fund.