Winners and Losers from Signing Day

Getty Images

National Signing Day is just about over, so it’s time to take stock at who the winners and losers were on Wednesday.

Winners

Alabama – The rich get richer. Alabama nabbed yet another No. 1 recruiting class, thanks in part to the signing of the nation’s top recruit, defensive end Da’Shawn Hand. Ho-hum.

Kentucky – No, this is not a basketball recruiting ranking. Head coach Mark Stoops signed the best Wildcats recruiting class in recent memory, landing at No. 16 on the Rivals.com team list. It’s led by safety Mike Edwards and quarterback Drew Barker.

Virginia – The state of Virginia had three five stars this recruiting cycle and coach Mike London nabbed two of them, including the nation’s No. 5 player, safety Quin Blanding, and the No. 32 player, defensive tackle Andrew Brown. The other? The nation’s top prospect, the aforementioned Hand. Can’t get ‘em all.

Stanford – Given the difficulties of recruiting to an elite academic institution, perhaps Stanford should be graded on a curve. The Cardinal checked in at No. 14 in the team rankings, with quarterback Keller Chryst and defensive end Soloman Thomas being the elite prospects.

LSU – The Tigers signed a monster class and finished second in the team rankings behind Alabama. The nation’s top running back, Leonard Fournette, should make an instant impact as a freshman, as should No. 2-ranked wide out Malachi Dupre.

Michigan State – The Spartans used their Rose Bowl victory and No. 3 national finish to sign the No. 21 class, one of the best recruiting finishes by MSU in a long time. The jewel of the class is 5-star defensive end Malik McDowell, who should end up with the Spartans once issues with his dad get worked out.

Losers

UCLA – The Bruins thought they had a chance at Adoree Jackson. He went to USC. They thought they might get Malachi Dupre. He went to LSU. They hoped to get Budda Baker. He went to Washington. It was still a good class for Jim Mora (ranked 18th), but he swung for the fences a few times and whiffed.

Michigan – The Wolverines felt the effects of a disappointing 7-6 season and their class slumped to 31st in the national rankings. Michigan needs some instant help this fall and, outside of top corner Jabril Peppers, it fell short.

Virginia Tech — The Hokies received a major blow when top DT Derrick Nnadi signed with FSU. They missed out on Isaiah McKenzie, who signed with Georgia. A top receiver commit, Javon Harrison, also jumped ship to sign with the Seminoles. Overall, the Hokies finished 25th nationally but could’ve finished much higher with a stronger signing day.

ESPN’s Jon Gruden is often criticized due to his bouts of hyperbole, but his stance on Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer may have redefined even his barometer.

What Ohio State accomplished last season was certainly astounding.

After the team lost to the hapless Virginia Tech Hokies 35-21 during the second week of the season, the Buckeyes changed gears and eventually ran roughshod through the Big Ten’s conference schedule and championship game, into the first ever College Football Playoff and grabbed the school’s eight national championship.

“Maybe the best coach in the SEC went to the Big Ten,” Gruden told Colin Cowherd during a radio interview, via CoachingSearch.com. “Urban Meyer did the greatest coaching job of all time. Winning a national championship with his third-string quarterback, I’ve never seen that before. … I’ve always respected him. Won two national titles at Florida.

“What he did at Ohio State, losing a Heisman Trophy candidate and then doing what he did with two different quarterbacks that were backups. Amazing to me.”

All of this came a year earlier than expected. Next year’s Ohio State squad was supposed to be the breakthrough team for Meyer in Columbus. Instead, the program is a year ahead of schedule and will almost certainly enter this coming season as the No. 1 team in the country.

However, none of that makes the most recent National Championship run the greatest in football history. Yes, the Buckeyes were forced to start three different quarterbacks. But all of them were more talented than…say…Craig Krenzel, who led the Buckeyes to the 2002 National Championship.

In fact, Ohio State was considered a 12-point underdog to an absolutely loaded Miami Hurricanes squad that year. The difference in overall talent level from top to bottom was actually in Ohio State’s favor against the Oregon Ducks in January.

It was a tremendous run by Meyer and his Buckeyes, but this is another case where Gruden remains completely over the top with his comments.

All of the discussions regarding whether or not Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen will eventually leave Starkville to take another job at a different university should die down now.

After being linked to multiple openings over the past two years, Mullen signed an extension with Mississippi State Thursday through the 2018 season.

“Dan has done a phenomenal job in leading our football team the past six years, and we’re happy to be in a position to reward his efforts while making sure he’ll be able to continue building a championship program for Mississippi State,” Mississippi State athletic director Scott Stricklin said in a statement.

“Under Dan’s guidance, Bulldog football has achieved a level of consistent success unparalleled in our history, during which time we’ve been ranked No. 1 in the nation and appeared in elite bowl games. We’re proud Dan is our coach.”

HailState.com’s Bob Carskadon provided some of the contract details:

Mullen’s contract starts at $4 million this year and averages 4.275, so presumably it escalates each season. Meets state maximum on contract

— Bob Carskadon (@bobcarskadon) February 27, 2015

With an average salary of $4.275 million, Mullen becomes the ninth-highest paid coach in college football. He still trails Alabama’s Nick Saban, Texas A&M’s Kevin Sumlin and LSU’s Les Miles among SEC coaches, according to USA TODAY Sports.

Mullen shouldn’t be too concerned about where he stands in the SEC pecking order, though. It’s clear the school is committed to retaining its head coach after a 46-31 overall record — including last season’s 10-3 campaign — during his six seasons with the program.

“It’s a privilege to represent our university, our program and our fans here at Mississippi State,” Mullen said. “I appreciate Scott Stricklin and our administration who have given us the tools and resources to be successful and develop Bulldog football into a national brand over the last six years.”

“We spent five weeks ranked No. 1 last season for the first time, but we have only scratched this surface on what we can accomplish here. We have created a winning culture both on and off the field and built a program that has sustained success in the nation’s toughest conference. I’ve always said we are going to win a championship here, and I firmly believe that.”

Spring practice begins Tuesday for the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

Before a new season gets underway, the program needed to clean up some loose ends.

The school officially announced the hiring of five new assistant coaches to Mike Gundy’s staff:

Titles weren’t bestowed on former Buffalo Bills tight ends coach Greg Adkins, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterbacks coach Marcus Arroyo or Montana State offensive line coach Jason McEndoo, but they’re expected to serve in similar roles to their previous stops.

#OKstate Mike Gundy on the five new hires (via @OSUAthletics) pic.twitter.com/gQK0RV3N3L

— Kyle Fredrickson (@kylefredrickson) February 27, 2015

Those within the Big Ten Conference aren’t presenting a united front on the topic of freshman ineligibility.

A week ago, the league was trying to drum up interest among its members to support a potential rule change. University of Maryland president Wallace Loh even came out publicly in support of the possibility.

The league has yet to officially propose any changes but it wants to continue the “national conversation.”

Apparently, Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio didn’t get the memo.

Mark Dantonio on the idea of freshmen ineligibility – “If you’re ready to play, if you’re the best player, you should play.” #MSUThanksBTN

— Sean Merriman (@BTNSean) February 26, 2015

Dantonio’s comment clearly isn’t just a chance to appeal to recruits. He doesn’t appear to be an advocate of the rule in any form or fashion.

The coach could have worded his answer differently in order to tow the party line. He didn’t. He stated freshmen should play if they’re good enough after being directly asked about the issue.

If the Big Ten Conference wants the possibility of freshman ineligibility to become more than a national conversation, the league needs to develop support from its coaches.

Unfortunately, one of the best names in college football retired Thursday.

Andre Yruretagoyena won’t return to the Oregon Ducks football program this year. An exact reason wasn’t provided, but the redshirt senior decided it was time to leave.

Best of luck to @ayruretagoyena, who won’t return to the UO football team for personal reasons. Helf: “We wish him all the best.” #GoDucks

— Rob Moseley (@DuckFootball) February 26, 2015

With his final year of eligibility coming up, Yruretagoyena said he will “focus on getting my body healthy and graduating.” #GoDucks

— Rob Moseley (@DuckFootball) February 26, 2015

Yruretagoyena finally found his way into the Ducks’ starting lineup last year, but it was short-lived as he dealt with a lingering foot injury.

After the amount of injuries Oregon suffered along the offensive line a season ago, Yruretagoyena’s loss hurts the team’s depth at offensive tackle.

Tyler Johnstone is expected to return from a torn ACL he suffered last summer to start at left tackle, while sophomore Tyrell Crosby should prove to be the team’s bookend at right tackle.

Getty Images

The new home of the San Francisco 49ers has already hosted a conference championship game.  Now, it appears the club wants to get to know an even more important postseason game as well.

Citing a source a source with knowledge of the plans, the Associated Press is reporting that the NFL organization is planning to bid on becoming a future host of the College Football Playoff championship game.  The 49ers will be focusing their bid — or bids — on the 2018-2020 games that would be played in newly-built Levi’s Stadium.

Bids for those games must be received by May of this year, with the winning bids expected to be announced at some point this fall.

The 2016 (following the 2015 season) and 2017 (following the 2016 season) national title games have already been awarded to Glendale, Ariz., and Tampa, Fla. The first ever playoff title game was played in Dallas at AT&T Stadium, home of the NFL’s Cowboys.

Levi’s Stadium, which opened in 2014, has hosted a regular-season college game as well as the Pac-12 championship game. It will also serve as the host of that conference’s title tilt the next two years as well as being the site of next year’s Super Bowl.

In addition to that stadium in Santa Clara, officials from New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium — home of the NFL’s New York Giants and Jets — have also expressed an interest in bidding on CFP title games from 2018-20.  Also, city officials in New Orleans are beginning the process of considering the feasibility of hosting a title game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported this afternoon.  The Superdome, of course, is the home of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints.

First, what we know in this situation: LSU has been slapped with some rather hefty recruiting sanctions.

What we don’t know?  Exactly what recruit led to the sanctions… although the Baton Rouge Advocate has an idea.

According to the Advocate, and citing public records obtained by the newspaper, “LSU is banned from signing early enrollee recruits to financial aid agreements for the next two years, and the program will be stripped of 10 percent of its recruiting evaluation days in 2015.” The latter sanction works out to 21 of 210 days allotted on the recruiting calendar. The penalties stem from a recruit who had originally signed a financial aid agreement with LSU last August, with the intention of enrolling in January, but ultimately signed a National Letter of Intent elsewhere.

The financial aid agreement (FAA) mentioned binds the university to the player, but not the player to the university. That policy was enacted by the NCAA in 2013, and allows high school seniors who intend to enroll early to sign the agreements and, in theory, end their recruitment and allow them to focus on what’s left of their senior years.

Football programs that have recruits sign such agreements are permitted unlimited contact with the prospects, although there are penalties for the program if that player enrolls elsewhere. That appears to be the boat in which LSU finds itself.

The public records obtained by the Advocate do not list the name of the recruit involved. However, all the signs seem to point to one who signed with an SEC West rival.

Matt Womack, an offensive tackle from Mississippi, signed a financial aid agreement with LSU in August intending to enroll at the school in January. Instead, Womack de-committed — as hundreds of prospects do each year — and signed a National Letter of Intent with Alabama in February.

One twist in the plot is that the three-star lineman’s father, David Womack, told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger in mid-September that “LSU is not using [the FAA to take advantage of the unlimited contact] because if Matt was to change his mind they would have to report it.” Exactly why LSU got slapped, or if said slapping involved another unknown recruit who signed an FAA with LSU but enrolled elsewhere, is unknown.

Four other LSU recruits who signed FAAs with the Tigers ultimately enrolled at the school.

(Photo credit: Rivals.com)

AP

An injury that actually occurred four months ago will impact one of the top quarterbacks in the country a couple of months down the road.

In October of 2014, TCU acknowledged that, after some initial misdirection, Trevone Boykin had indeed sustained an injury to his left (non-throwing) wrist.  Boykin didn’t miss a game because of the snap, but he will miss a portion of spring practice this year as he surgically deals with the issue.

According to David Ubben of FOX Sports Southwest, Boykin will undergo surgery the first week of April to repair what’s being described as a small fracture in the wrist.  The timing of the procedure means that Boykin will miss the final week of spring practice, which for the Horned Frogs begins this weekend.

As for a rehab timeline, Ubben writes that Boykin is “expected to return in about five weeks and will be 100 percent in time for voluntary summer workouts.”

Boykin is coming off a season in which he was widely regarded as the most improved quarterback in the country.  He’ll also enter the 2015 season as one of a handful of Heisman favorites.

Don’t expect this to quiet the critics of Baylor’s scheduling habits.  In fact, if anything, it’ll likely do nothing but increase the volume of the howling.  And laughing and/or chuckling, as the case may be.

According to Brett McMurphy of ESPN.com, Baylor and Louisiana Tech have scheduled a future three-game series.  The 2020 and 2022 games will be in Waco, while the 2021 game will be played in Ruston.  Additionally, McMurphy’s ESPN colleague, Jake Trotter, tweets that BU will face FCS-level Abilene Christian in 2018.

As it stands now, Baylor has just one non-conference series scheduled against a Power Five program: Duke in 2017 and 2018.  Aside from that, it’s a cornucopia of lower-level creampuffs as far as the eye can see.

Four of the next five years, BU has an FCS team on its schedule: Lamar (2015), Northwestern State (2016), Liberty (2017) and Incarnate Word (2019).  The other teams on the Bears’ future schedules through 2022 include those from the AAC (SMU, 2015 & 2016) and Conference USA (Rice, 2015, 2016 & 2019; UT-San Antonio, 2018; La Tech, 2020-22).

Part of the reason Baylor was shut out of the first College Football Playoff was its strength of schedule, or lack thereof.  If such a scenario plays out in the future, the Bears can look to ongoing — and some would say stubborn — scheduling decisions such as the ones revealed today as a reason why.

Depending on how things go in the future, The Big House may not be the sole province of professional hockey games played on a college campus.

In the past it’s been rumored that the home of the Penn State Nittany Lions, Beaver Stadium, could be in line to host an outdoor NHL regular season game.  The level of chatter in that vein has increased a bit of late, so much so that it prompted the question of an NHL game in Happy Valley being asked of the man in charge of the sport in North America.

While not even remotely ruling it out, Gary Bettman acknowledged that it’s not something that’s imminent, either.

“There’s been talk about it,” the commissioner told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Wednesday. “I’m intrigued by the possibility. But it’s not anywhere close to fruition.”

In January of 2014, Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor hosted the annual Winter Classic, which that year featured the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs, although it did fall short of its goal of setting the outdoor hockey attendance record. That record, incidentally, still resides in the Big House, which saw 113,411 fans witness Michigan beating Michigan State in a college hockey game.

There have also been rumors that Notre Dame could host a hockey game at either the professional or collegiate levels, although that speculation hasn’t gained much steam over the past couple of years.

(Photo credit: Penn State athletics)

Sign No. 1,783 that we’re diving deeper into the offseason?  This post.

With snow and wintry weather blanketing areas of the South, people in that part of the country are being forced to deal with the kind of precipitation seldom seen at any time of the year.  Parts of Alabama have seen 10 inches of snow; much of Georgia, including Atlanta, are under a winter storm warning that could see up to eight inches of snow in some areas; and temperatures in general are upwards of 30 degrees colder than normal for this time of the year, leaving frozen water pipes and general mayhem on many a roadway.

Some, though, have flipped a potential negative into a positive.

Students at the University of Tennessee, for the second year in a row, are just one example as some of them “found their way” onto the field at Neyland Stadium late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning for an impromptu snowball fight.  The snowy romp on the football turf ended, Wes Rucker of 247Sports.com reported, when “the cops came.”

On a completely unrelated note, the 2015 college football season kicks off in exactly 189 days.

(Photo credit: Andy Jeffers)

Now we have a little further clarity to a situation that blew-up Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier that day, Baylor walk-on Silas Nacita tweeted that he had been declared ineligible by the NCAA for receiving impermissible benefits in the form of housing “instead of choosing to be homeless” as he put it.  Those benefits, which he said he received from what was described as a “close family friend,” led to a statement from BU in which it acknowledged rules violations committed by Nacita and essentially ended the football team’s involvement with the player moving forward.

It also led to a significant public backlash against an already-despised NCAA, although that entity subsequently revealed that it “did not declare Silas Nacita ineligible and Baylor has not requested a waiver for him.”

In another social media posting Thursday morning, Nacita (again) accepted responsibility for his actions while at the same time clarifying the relationship with the individuals who provided him with what turned out to be impermissible.

Nacita clarifying the distinction between “friend” and “close family friend” is relevant when it comes to current NCAA bylaws. In the simplest terms, accepting benefits from the former is impermissible, while accepting the same thing from the latter is permissible.  Additionally, the fact that Nacita is a walk-on instead of a scholarship player has no bearing on this specific situation.

That said, it’s a sad state of affairs when a kid who is at least partially paying his own way through school has to publicly apologize for accepting a place to live, or accepting money for a place to live, from people he considers friends in some form or fashion. It’s just yet another example of how twisted and warped the current state of collegiate athletics in general and the NCAA membership specifically truly is.

It’s amazing, though, that the NCAA can find the time to parse levels of friendships while at the same time overseeing a membership that spends significant time stuffing millions of dollars into its collective coffers, dollars made off the backs of the very student-athletes it keeps under its thumb.  Quite a feat.

On offseason of roster attrition continues for Iowa State, with a former defensive starter the latest to leave the football program.

In a Twitter conversation with Cincinnati offensive lineman Billy West, Alton Meeks acknowledged that he has decided to transfer away from the Cyclones. No reason was given for the linebacker’s decision.

The school subsequently confirmed the departure to the Ames Tribune.

Meeks, a three-star member of ISU’s 2013 recruiting class, started two games he played as a redshirt freshman in 2014, including the season opener. He subsequently lost his starting job and played in 11 games at middle linebacker.

Meeks’ departure brings to nine the number of Cyclones who have either been dismissed, left voluntarily or transferred since January. That nonet includes the projected starter at running back, one of ISU’s top returning receivers and a starting defensive back.

It’s that time of year again. Spring ball is about to get (or already) cranking on a number of campuses, which means head coaches across the land offer status updates on their club for the first time since the end of the 2014 season. This time around it’s TCU head coach Gary Patterson. The Frogs open spring practices this week, and the head Frog revealed Wednesday that two returning starters will miss the action.

Defensive end Mike Tuaua and offensive tackle Halapoulivaati Vaitai will both miss spring after undergoing shoulder surgeries.

— David Ubben (@davidubben) February 26, 2015

Vaitai started all 13 games as a junior in 2014.

Tuaua was a part-time starter and posted 30 tackles with five sacks, eight tackles for loss, three forced fumbles and a team-leading three fumble recoveries.

Patterson also this Ghandi-like gem in response to TCU’s College Football Playoff snub.

Nevada added UCLA lineman Kevin McReynolds to its roster as a graduate transfer, the program announced Wednesday.

A former four-star out of Silver Spring, Md., McReynolds garnered Outstanding Defensive Scout Team Player as a redshirt in 2011 and moved to the offensive line under a new coaching staff in 2012, seeing action in 13 games. He did not see the field in 2013 and contributed as a special teams player in 2014.

Though it will have been four seasons since his last action there by the time this fall rolls around, Nevada is treating McReynolds as a defensive lineman.

“We’re looking forward to having a veteran like Kevin join our defensive front,” head coach Brian Polian said. “Kevin is a quality young man who has experience playing Pac-12 football and we’re excited to have him join our program and continue his education at Nevada.”

(Photo credit: UCLA athletics)