Ohio State is in Deep Doo-Doo, like Bowl-Ban Deep

Well, well. It's all catching up with Ohio State in a big hurry. I tend to not throw stones in a glass stadium, since it's well-known that if Penn State is ever accused of violations, it's 10 times worse since we stake our reputation on running a clean operation. But that doesn't diminish how royally f-cked Ohio State could be if the NCAA brings down the full sledge on Tressel & Co.

HBO hits Auburn, Ohio State tonight at 10... and it's going to get UUUUUGLY

I'm feeling pretty good right now having not canceled HBO today like I was planning to do yesterday. Then again, had I followed through with those plans, this is the kind of thing that would make me pick up that phone and re-subscribe for the next 48 hours faster than you can say CHEETERZ!

Kremer voiceover: “But McClover says there were money handshakes from boosters at other football camps too. At Auburn for a couple hundred dollars and at Michigan State. All the schools denied any wrongdoing. And things really started heating up a few months later when he went to Ohio State for an official visit where schools get a chance for one weekend to host prospective athletes. McClover says there were money handshakes from alumni there too. About a thousand dollars. And something else to entice him.”

McClover: “They send girls my way. I partied. When I got there I met up with a couple guys from the team. We went to a party and they asked me to pick any girl I wanted.”

Kremer: “Did she offer sexual services?“

McClover: “Yes.”

Kremer: “Did you take them?”

McClover: “Yes.”

Sports By Brooks got an advance copy of the show, and it only gets better... juicier, to say the least. There's much more about Auburn, since most of the show focuses on what went on down south, figuratively and literally, if you get my meaning. For all of us non-Buckeyes, Tigers or Spartans, this should be like watching a horrible train wreck from 300 yards away; for anyone closely tied to those colleges--well, it could be like parking your butt right on the cowcatcher.

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Unborn 5-Star Recruits Now On eBay

Folks, the revolution has begun in college sports recruiting. No more official visits. No more verbals. No more coaches taking recruiting trips across the nation. All a program has to do is make sure they set a high enough maximum bid.

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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Linkbacker U likes the ground game

We had a last minute issue, so this is going to be a straight link dump post today.

Quick Recruiting Update. Hours after I wrote that Cyrus Kouandjio was still good with Penn State, he narrowed his list to 11 schools. The Nittany Lions didn't make the cut, because they were "too strict."

Curtis Dukes blasted Stephon Morris in practice yesterday, sending the sophomore cornerback to the hospital for a check. Morris is apparently fine, but shaken up. This Penn State running game could be very fun to watch the next few seasons.

More on Curtis Drake from Nittany Whiteout. An expected analysis, but still worth a look see.

ESPN Power Rankings are out. Penn State is about where you'd expect.

The Rivalry, Esq. is now Off Tackle Empire. Good name change, if you ask me. But still the same great blog.

Brandon Wegher isn't practicing with Iowa. This could be a good thing for everyone not the Hawkeyes.

Four major programs are facing NCAA issues. UNC is a team sinking fast, after everyone was looking at them as a not-so-darkhorse BCS team.

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NCAA 11: The USC problem

If you're not interested in purchasing an accurate depiction of college football in a video game format, then don't bother reading this post. But if you're like me, and figure that if you're going to fork out $60 we better not get a seriously flawed product, then stick around.

The flaw I'm describing isn't really a flaw in the gameplay, or the nuts and bolts of the game itself. So let me just ask this question...

Is USC's two-year bowl ban important enough to EA for a fix to be released? Probably not, but it's going to be really frickin' annoying to see the Trojans make it to the Holiday, Rose, or even the damn national championship game in EA's NCAA Football 11.

I know I'm probably being overly picky here. But again, $60 is a decent chunk of money these days, and this kind of "glitch" will most certainly bother the hell out of me for the next year. I'm not the only one, either.

And nothing would irritate fellow PAC 10 teams like knowing the real life Trojans can’t make a postseason bowl game, only to let them slip through with a BCS appearance on NCAA 11 by EA Sports.

In other words, if you want to replicate the situation of the Trojans, you’re going to have to do it the hard way. By beating down all that is USC in your dynasty. And if your team is USC, it’s like the real world doesn’t even exist.

Oh, it won't just bother other Pac-1012 gamers. It's going to piss off anyone who likes to play these games to have fun seeing how the teams will "do," before the season starts.

By the way... We will probably try to get an online dynasty going when the game comes out, so send us an email if you're interested in getting in on it. Since there will only be one Penn State team, let us know which other team you'll want to play. We'll revisit this in a later post, but figured a heads up was due.

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