College Football Recruiting Prediction Model

Their class of 2008 numbers are out.

The model predicted every one of Georgia’s actual commitments from the Rivals Top 250 would commit to the Dawgs.

Man of the year

This is inspired.

(h/t Loser with Socks) 

“It’s disappointing to hear that a judge would be doing something like that.”

Hey, University of Illinois, want to find a way to piss off your fanbase?

This looks pretty solid.

You know everything has to be on the up and up when a judge says this…

“I would never knowingly or purposely do anything to harm or compromise my professional or personal integrity, or that of the court where I have had the honor to serve the past 19-plus years,” Flannell wrote in an e-mail to the Tribune.

Mistakes were made, though.

“It was my error to list the street address of the courthouse when the account was set up,” Flannell said. “I have taken steps to change that.”

And the University’s level of concern is duly noted.

“Once we sold the tickets,” said U. of I. associate athletic director Shawn Wax, “what a person does with those tickets is entirely up to them.”

***********************************************************************

UPDATE: The inevitable spin – he’s doing it for the kids.

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Random SEC stuff

• Georgia love is turning up in unexpected places:  former UT QB (I still hate him for that ’92 game) and current Congressman Heath Shuler has much praise for the Dawgs’ chances in ’08.
• Rivals‘ first six questions of the Top 25 questions for 2008 season are SEC related.
• Former Georgia QB Mike Usry:  stupid or ruthless?  You decide.
• From yesterday’s Be Our Defensive Coordinator For A Day sweepstakes, Ellis Johnson gets off the understatement of the week:

“He was disappointed, but Coach Petrino handled it with class,” Johnson said. “He’s been in this profession long enough to understand these things. He’s been through a tough, demanding change himself recently.”

The sooner, the better

All I can say after reading the South Carolina message boards this morning is that should Tommy Bowden ever leave Clemmins, it sure would be fantastic if his successor were Brian VanGorder.

SEC conventional wisdom, 2008 edition

I did this last year. It’s one brief last look back at the past season for the conference based on my personal perspective of what I heard and saw in the media and from fans.

SEC EAST

Florida

• Preseason: Defending national champs rule! The young defense doesn’t matter.
  
• Midseason: Tebow is Superman. The young defense doesn’t matter.
  
• End of season: How ’bout that Heisman.

Georgia

• Preseason: Can you win nine games in the SEC without an offensive line?
  
• Midseason: Please, God, not again.
  
• End of season: What got into these guys? And will it get into them again next year?
  

Kentucky

• Preseason: This could be the year.
• Midseason: Down goes LSU!
  
• End of season: This wasn’t the year.
  

South Carolina

• Preseason: Spurrier’s a genius.
• Midseason: Spurrier’s a frickin’ genius.
  
• End of season: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Tennessee

• Preseason: They should contend for the SEC East title.
  
• Midseason: Fulmer sends Richt a thank you box of doughnuts.
  
• End of season: When you play in the SECCG despite giving up more points in the conference than you scored, it’s safe to say you’ve gotten a few breaks.

Vanderbilt

• Preseason: A bowl game – maybe.
  
• Midseason: Is there enough in the tank?
• End of season: They’ll always have Columbia.

SEC WEST

Alabama

• Preseason: There’s a new sheriff in town, brotha.
• Midseason: 8-0, babee!
• End of season: A lot of money for a one game improvement over Shula.
  

Arkansas

• Preseason: MacFadden plus the second weakest schedule for any BCS conference school = 10 wins.
• Midseason: No Marcus Monk = 8 wins.
  
• End of season: Did you hear about the new coach?
  

Auburn

• Preseason: Senior quarterbacks mean good things for Auburn.
  
• Midseason: Gator chomp, my ass.
• End of season: Doing the coordinator shuffle. Again.
  

LSU

• Preseason: Absolutely loaded. Decent chance to go undefeated.
• Midseason: You could see it coming.
  
• End of season: With a couple of breaks, they get over the hump. When healthy, the nation’s best team.

Mississippi

• Preseason: Coach O can recruit, but can he coach?
• Midseason: Coach O can recruit, but can he coach?
  
• End of season: No.

Mississippi State

• Preseason: That’s one bad looking offense.
• Midseason: Don’t turn the ball over to this team, or you’ll pay for it.
  
• End of season: The man can coach a little.

Bowl you over

If you’re looking for an exhaustive listing of viewership, attendance and trivia about the just concluded bowl season, brothers and sisters, look no farther than here.

Here are some noteworthy points:

First, the money continues to roll in for the schools.

With more than 1.7 million combined fans attending a bowl game and close to another combined 129 million households tuning in to watch the games on television, bowl payouts ran an estimated $225 million in 2007-08 and have totaled $1.6 billion over the last nine seasons. Over the next ten years, bowls are projected to pay $2.4 billion to the teams and conferences in the Football Bowl Subdivision who participate.

The regular season maintains its broadcast popularity.

Highlighted by its relationship with the SEC, CBS posted an average national household rating/share for the season of 3.5/8, up 13% from a 3.1/7 last year. The 2007 season marked CBS’ best year since a 3.7/10 rating/share in 1999. ESPN also posted impressive viewership with its third most-viewed season ever, averaging 2,013,687 households per game, and ESPN2 recorded its most-viewed season ever with 1,027,368 households per game. ESPN on ABC averaged 4,364,148 households per game with two games landing in the top 10 audiences ever: the Nov. 24 Missouri-Kansas game with 10,960,755 viewers (ranking 7th all-time) and the Dec. 1 Oklahoma-Missouri game with 10,841,849 (ranking 9th all-time). The Versus network saw a 50 percent increase in national household rankings and a 92 percent increase in total viewership.

Strangely enough, many of the minor bowls continue to prosper in terms of TV viewership.  Which, of course, means that ESPN is thrilled.

… Especially noteworthy, all of the pre-Christmas Bowl game ratings increased this year, and all the games continued to produce strong interest from the powerful demographic of 18-49 year-old males. For the bowl season, ESPN delivered an average of 2,866,410 households while ESPN2 delivered its most-viewed bowl season ever with 1,502,134 households and 1,950,490 viewers, posting an 11 percent increase with males 18-49 and a 17 percent increase with males 25-54.

Evidently not enough people got James Carville’s message about the Rose Bowl.  Viewership was up 2% from last year, as the Rose was watched by more people than any other bowl game except the BCS title game.

The least watched BCS game?  The Sugar Bowl.

You might also be interested to learn that the PapaJohns.com Bowl drew more Alabama viewers than did Saban’s inaugural ‘Bama bowl appearance at the Independence Bowl.  Maybe everyone in the Tide Nation was too busy making plans to attend spring practice to have time to watch.

Oh, and by the way, from that Birmingham News article, here’s something unearthed in a recent Nielsen survey:

In a telephone survey of 1,482 people by Nielsen, 73 percent indicated they planned to watch three or more bowl games, 20 percent said they would watch five to seven, and 14 percent said they would watch at least part of every game.

Forty-one percent indicated there are too many bowl games, and 51 percent said they believe college football needs a playoff system. [Emphasis added.]

Admittedly, if you’re George Bush, 51 percent is a mandate.  For the rest of us, it’s not quite so overwhelming.