He wanna be a macho man.

Utah AG Mark Shurtleff is feeling his oats these days on his Twitter feed.  Fresh off presiding over the firing squad execution of an inmate on death row, he’s got some swagger in his step.

So watch out, college football powers-that-be.

Hey BCS & NCAA – if you think the recent conference realignment will avoid an antitrust lawsuit – THINK AGAIN! http://bit.ly/cBrTdl #twackle

First off – and for the umpteenth thousandth time – the NCAA has nothing to do with the BCS.  You’d think someone in Shurtleff’s position would know that.

But secondly, that link is to a piece that’s almost a year old now.  If you’re gonna file the lawsuit, man, quit talking about it and just do it.   Or, in the immortal words of Tuco…

When you have to shoot…Shoot! Don’t talk.

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Early lines at the Golden Nugget

The first Vegas book out of the gate with college football lines on the top 200 or so games is the one posted at The Golden Nugget.

Glancing through there, it’s a mixed bag for Georgia (favored against Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia Tech; underdog against Florida and Auburn), not promising for South Carolina (favored against Tennessee;  getting points against Auburn, Alabama, Arkansas and Florida) and weirdly inconsistent as to Auburn (favored against all three East opponents and LSU; even money with Mississippi; underdogs to Arkansas and Alabama).

Alabama is favored in every game on the board, including Florida by three.

And it’s not looking good for the Vols, who are underdogs in six games (four by a TD or more).  Which means this only adds insult to injury:

… Professional sports bettor and Two-Time defending Hilton Champion, Fezzik posted that he “smacked in twelve anti-Tennessee Vols bets”. He shared three of those bets as he played SEC rivals Georgia -7, Florida -8 and Alabama -8.5 against the Volunteers.

Oof.

It doesn’t sound like he was the only one thinking like that.

No, the most exciting and important college sports happening of the summer occurred on June 11. On that day Golden Nugget race and sports book director Tony Miller put nearly 200 college football games on his betting board. Despite capping wagers at $1,000 and limiting bettors to three bets at a time, Miller says the Nugget’s handle reached six figures within the first hour. By day’s end, Miller had taken about $150,000 in wagers.

Most of the money that poured in that first day came from “sharps” (i.e. professional bettors), and much of the action focused on three teams. “We got a lot of anti-Tennessee money, and a lot of people like Texas A&M and Oregon,” Miller says.

Not so coincidentally, one of the biggest line moves centered on a Sept. 11 matchup between Oregon and Tennessee. The visiting Ducks were installed as a 3-point favorite, but when bettors loaded up on Oregon, Miller pushed the number to 6 even though Ducks QB Jeremiah Masoli was kicked off the team this month after repeated run-ins with the law.

Home is where the car drives.

I’m beginning to see a pattern in how Derek Dooley measures his relationships with players.

First, there was the rather bizarre rule that he set in the case of Aaron Douglas.

… In an unusual move, Dooley told the sophomore that he would only release Douglas from his UT scholarship if he enrolled at a school that was at least an eight-hour drive from Knoxville.

Dooley’s decision is being reviewed by a financial aid committee. A final decision is expected this week.

Dooley had long refrained from commenting on Douglas’ reasons for transferring, only saying that it was a personal matter. Dooley offered a bit more insight Monday.

“It’s always been that his problems are from being here, being close to home,” Dooley said. “I felt like, first off, you don’t run from problems, you get problems to run from you. That’s what I tried to work with him on.

“The problems don’t go away, but he was convinced that his problems were here. And so I said ‘OK, Aaron if that’s the case, I think we need to move away from the problem to help you.’ ”

Now he’s decided to rewrite the geography books.

… Now, under Dooley, the Vols want to recruit their border states (Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas), close states like South Carolina, Indiana, Illinois and West Virginia, as well Florida and Ohio. Dooley and company want to recruit a five-hour, 300-mile radius from Knoxville and treat everything in that circle as “in-state” for UT. [Emphasis added.]

Does that mean I have to change my mailing address?

Somewhere in all of this I’m sensing a potential addition to the Lexicon – “Dooley Unit”?  “XXX-Hour Drive from Knoxville”? “‘In-State’ for UT”? Help me out here, guys.

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UPDATE: Spencer Hall goes with “Dooley Units”.

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UPDATE #2: This is only going to get more confusing.

“My mom showed up at the Big Orange Caravan in Atlanta wearing an orange boa wrapped around her,” Derek said recently with a laugh. “I had to remind her that the event was not about her.

“She has developed a bit of an icon status in Tennessee, and I’ve had to ban her from the state.”

Derek said he asked his mother not to do any interviews with in-state (Tennessee) media.

The NCAA, recruiting and unicorns

Another daft idea from your friends at the NCAA:

An NCAA cabinet that oversees recruiting is ready to put an end to the practice of offering scholarships to underage prospects.

A proposed rules change drawn up by the Division I Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet would prohibit verbal offers before the summer following an athlete’s junior year of high school — specifically before July 1. Prospects would have to have a five-semester academic transcript on file at their high schools.

Gosh, it sounds so noble.  Lane Kiffin would no longer be allowed to tempt thirteen-year old quarterbacks into thinking about going to college.  One problem, though.  How do you enforce the ban?

Answer:  um, well… gee, that’s a good question.

… If adopted, Long acknowledged the difficulty of monitoring verbal agreements and allowed that the measure could be difficult to enforce. “People who don’t plan to follow the rules don’t follow the rules whether we can monitor them or not,” she told The NCAA News. “There has to be an agreement among coaches and administrators that the spirit of what we’re doing is as important as the rule itself, and the spirit is clearly that we do not want this behavior to go on.

“Can a coach purchase a cellphone, call someone, and throw it away? Yes. Is that the kind of people we really want in this business? No.”

She’s kidding with that, right?  Those are exactly the kind of people whom half the schools in the country would love to hire as their head coach.  But who knows?  Maybe wishing will make it so John Calipari turns over a new leaf.  Petrina Long probably still believes in the Tooth Fairy.

More and more, I think Andy Staples has the best solution on the early commitment front.  Let ‘em sign, let ‘em sign, let ‘em sign.

Sympathy for the devil

Just wondering – the next time Mack Brown, Texas head coach in the newly rejiggered Big XII, starts whining (again) about how his program is getting screwed in the BCS, do you think anyone will shed a tear for him?

Nice shirt.

I’m looking forward to his moment of recognition at Sanford Stadium this fall. Guaranteed goosebump moment for a DGD.

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