Linkbacker U is waving good bye to summer

There is less than one week until college football. This time next week, a full slate of games will already be in the books.

That being said, expect a bit of a change in our "Linkbacker U" posts, as they might not be a daily morning feature during game weeks. Of course, you all out there have the final say in these kinds of things, so if you want us to keep it going on a daily morning basis, please let us know. Our new staff email is Staff.LBU(at)gmail(dot)com and we want to hear from you on this, as well as during the season. Send us your thoughts, questions, and input. Maybe we could even start a weekly mailbag feature. But again, that depends on you, the readers.

So, on with the final summer-edition of Linkbacker U...

But it's not the Nittany Lion Hotline anymore. Joe Paterno may not be a weekly guest on the Thursday night radio show hosted by Steve Jones. But the show will go on, and this week we (well, not we, since I live 250 miles away) got some air time with Tom Bradley and Galen Hall. The Collegian had a nice recap of this week's show.

FedEx Discover Orange Bowl. Discover Financial Services will be the new sponsor of the Orange Bowl game. This isn't really incredible news, but I thought it was interesting to see this photo used in the story by NJ.com:

So, 7-5 is now good enough for Michigan? UM AD Dave Brandon has been in the news a lot lately, specifically after he basically said Michigan and Ohio State were going to be in separate divisions, period. But talking to the Free Press this week, he said there was no "win benchmark" for Rich Rodriguez to keep his job as Michigan head coach. Specifically, the record of 7-5 was mentioned by Brandon as an example of what wouldn't get Rich Rod fired. It's going to be a lot of fun to watch what goes down in Ann Arbor this year.

Maybe we didn't want him after all. Remember Dominique Easley, the top rated New York recruit who screwed Penn State for Florida this past recruiting class? Well, things aren't so peachy in Gainesville, according to Jason Lieser of the Palm Beach Post. Lieser reported this week that Easley and fellow lineman Ronald Powell skipped practice on Tuesday, because... get this... the older players were too hard on them. I don't know what happened, but someone isn't handling the situation correctly. Players can be upset with stuff. Coaches can be upset with players. Players can be upset with other players. But someone has to step up right away and smash some heads. Otherwise, that's a pretty crappy way to run a college football team.

U-N-See ya later bowl games. Hello probation. The possible infractions by Butch Davis and North Carolina just got a whole lot worse. The NCAA can deal with things like Michigan's practice situation, but when it comes to academic impropriety, watch your ass. Unfortunately for the Tar Heels, their problem is exactly that.

"During the course of the joint investigation by the NCAA and the university into possible agent violations we have learned of a situation that includes possible academic misconduct involving a former undergraduate tutor and student athletes on the football team," Chancellor Holden Thorp said during a press conference on Thursday.

Davis confirmed that the tutor in question was also hired by his family to tutor his son, and said he is cooperating fully with the investigation.

The tutor in question has apparently been accused of writing papers for several football players. Can you say... lack of institutional control?

Quick hits...

Penn State will go 8-4 according to several computer models.

Texas and USC will play a home-and-home series in 2017 and 2018.

Michigan-Ohio State breakup news gets a once-over from Phil Steele.

OMG ESS EEE SEE, courtesy of USA Today.

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