http://youtube.com/watch?v=JKnkyg2MI7c
Boise St. reels in IHSA champ
Dylan Reel is taking his wrestling talents to the mountains.
The Washington High senior, a two-time state champion and three-time Journal Star Wrestler of the Year, made a verbal commitment to compete collegiality at Boise State.
“I’m really excited,” said Reel, who informed Broncos coach Greg Randall of his decision over the phone Thursday. “A lot of pressure is off my shoulders. I’m glad to get it out of the way and have this whole year to get better at wrestling in general.”
Reel, who made his official visit to the Boise, Idaho, campus the first weekend of October, chose the Broncos over Central Michigan and Missouri.
“I just fell in love with Boise,” said Reel, an avid outdoorsman. “I knew as soon as I got there that it was the place for me. The campus, the wrestling room, everything out there was just what I imagined it to be. It was just a perfect fit overall.”
I enjoy wrestling and this kid looks to be a good one.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pBStTEQ9jS4
College Football Nation: Time for the Big (L)East to go
The club pulses with energy.
The bass pumps so strong that the floor shakes with each beat. Celebrities sit in VIP areas, bottles worth upward of $1,000 sitting on their tables. Beautiful young women are seemingly everywhere, some huddled in groups sipping cocktails, others dancing, many hoping for the right one to approach, or at least make eye contact from afar.
A man stands alone by the bar and surveys the scene.
He’s a little older than everyone there, especially all those lithe women. He once had running-mates, waiting to make eye contact and get that signal that he should approach, and inevitably getting it.
But now his group has disintegrated. The rest are married, or on the way.
As the night goes he talks to some of the women. They view him from afar and think he has potential, but when they get up close they see the lines by his eyes, the slight paunch around his waste. One by one they decline his advances.
He’s out of his element now. Hip has passed him by. He needs to go.
It’s not that he doesn’t deserve to find someone to share drinks and dances with. And it’s not that he can’t or won’t. But when it comes to that environment where he once thrived, where his clothes were right and his look was perfect – where he was picked by the bouncer to get past the velvet ropes out front – it’s over.
The club is the BCS. The Big East is the lone man at the bar. The top football schools are the beautiful women.
The Big East is the big loser in conference realignment. Its best football schools, which once found the Big East attractive, have discovered cooler partners over the last decade. It’s left the conference no longer worthy of having one of the precious six automatic berths to the BCS bowls, and the financial windfall that comes with such a gift.
It’s left the Big East a weak football conference that suddenly has the stink of desperation as it tries to find one new group to run with after another in a pathetic attempt to stay in the club.
The latest reports have the conference trying to add Boise State and five other teams – among them such powerhouses (sarcasm) as Houston, Air Force and Central Florida – to bring its membership to 12.
The Big East has lost its dignity. And when the current BCS contract is up after the 2013 season it’s time for the Big East to lose its status as one of the six conferences with an automatic bid to a BCS bowl.
Frankly, it’s never really deserved one, almost always sending the worst AQ team to one of the precious bowls and essentially making that game uwatchable. Last year, when Connecticut represented the conference and got waxed by Oklahoma, was merely the latest example of many.
“The bottom line,” former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese told the Newark Star-Ledger in September, “is that the Big East’s problem has always been that they’re just not good enough in football.”
The Big East began as a great basketball conference, the vision of the late Dave Gavitt come to life, a giant beginning in the 1980s with Georgetown, Syracuse and St. John’s before UConn surged to become the best of the bunch.
It spun off a football conference in 1991 that excluded its small Catholic schools (G’town, St. John’s, Villanova, Seton Hall) but included schools like Rutgers and West Virginia.
Miami was the centerpiece, the jewel.
But the conference never quite delivered on its promise. Miami was hit with major sanctions and fell off for much of the ’90s, and only Virginia Tech was able to be a consistent winner.
Then the rejection started, because the Big East couldn’t measure up to the attractiveness of other conferences.
Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College bolted for the ACC by 2005. The Big East reinvented itself with the additions of schools like Louisville and Cincinnati – fine for basketball, but not all that attractive when it comes to football.
But the conference hung onto its AQ status, and the riches that come with having a team in a BCS bowl. It stunk compared to the SEC and Big Ten (and Big 12 and Pac-10), but at least it was there.
Suddenly, just over a month ago – after other conferences recently strengthened themselves with additions like Texas A&M (SEC) and Nebraska (Big Ten) and the Big East could only lure Texas Christian – Syracuse and Pitt bolted for the ACC.
TCU then got a look across the crowded club from the right suitor and walked away from the Big East before it ever even joined, and signed on with the Big 12.
So the Big East turns to a school in the Northwest more than 2,000 miles from its base, a military academy in the Rocky Mountains, and a pair of ex-Southwest Conference also-rans.
It’s understandable that the Big East isn’t giving up. There’s money and prestige in being one of the Big Six that’s worth pursuing. So someone from the club needs to tap the aging playboy on the shoulder and tell him it’s time to leave.
There’s a perfectly good pub down the street. The MAC and Mountain West are already there.
Obviously Eric doesn’t think to highly of the Big East and despite some of those in Bronco Nations desperation at getting in to a AQ conference, many in Bronco Nation feel the same way as this writers does in regards to the Little East.
Good News Bad News for Bronco Nation
First the Good news , it would seem after all there are some in college sports that will do the right thing even before what many feel is a trap game for LSU, as LSU suspended cornerbacks Tyrann Mathieu and Tharold Simon and tailbackSpencer Ware from the team after they tested positive for synthetic marijuana in a school-administered drug test earlier this month, two people familiar with the situation told ESPN.com on Thursday.
While Auburn doesn’t sit high on my ability to upset list since it’s near defeat at home to Utah State they have shown me some life so with Mathieu and Simon out for this game I hold out hope.
Now for the bad news Georgia suspends two starters for it game against Florida, Georgia nose guard Kwame Geathers and safety Shawn Williams this could prove to be even more untimely then MSU suspending William Gholston for the Wisconsin game this Saturday.
What a time for the NCAA and AQ conferences to get moralistic on us.
On the brighter side Ricky Tjong-A-Tjoe is back and I don’t even want to get started on all the B.S. around him. Just glad to have him back on the field this week against Air Force we are going to need him.
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