Part of SEC Week.

After his openly bitter exit from Notre Dame in 2009, it would have come to one’s surprise if Charlie Weis spent the rest of his days stalking assorted film caves and press boxes around the NFL. As Mr. Decided Schematic Advantage admitted himself, he always seemed more comfortable assembling game plans than exchanging slaps on the back with boosters, and had the Super Bowl rings to prove it. His first year out of the college ranks, overseeing the league’s No. 1 rushing offense and a surprising playoff run as offensive coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs, only served to drive home the point.

So exactly why Weis agreed to move his family into a horse farm mad revamp Florida’s sagging offense in the “pro style” vision of new head coach Will Muschamp is a mystery. But there is no question about his first mission: Reclaim the Gators’ shellshocked senior quarterback, John Brantley.

If he can, the same Gator fans who spent three snickering over the comedy of errors on Weis’ watch in South Bend will have no choice but to acknowledge his powers. Because they have seen Brantley in action, and not as an up-and-coming underclassmen with years ahead of him after some initial growing pains. He was a fourth-year junior in 2010 who demonstrated almost none of the alleged promise that made him one of the most coveted quarterbacks in the country coming out of high school. He can’t run (73 positive rushing yards for the year, not including sacks, on a long gain of 12), he’s not a great decision maker (his 118.8 efficiency rating was 10th in the SEC among regular starters) and his 400-caliber arm supplied precious little of the downfield firepower that was supposed to be his greatest advantage over Tim Tebow. Brantley finished dead last in the conference in both yards per completion (10.4) and completions covering at least 25 yards (9).

For some context on that number, half the regular passers in the SEC hit on at least three times as many downfield strikes, and the two not-so-celebrated starters at Tennessee combined for four times as many. Pound for pound, Brantley posed the meekest threat to defenses of any starting quarterback in the league, and of any Florida QB of the post-Spurrier decade, by far. In four of their five games against opponents that finished the season in the top 25, the Gators scored six points on two field goals against Alabama, seven points against Mississippi State, 14 points (including a kickoff return for a touchdown) against South Carolina and seven points against Florida State; in the fifth, the offense put three TDs on the board against LSU only by virtue of a pair of short-field starts in the red zone following Tiger turnovers. Their record in those games: 0-5.

By November, the offense was at least as effective in sporadic appearances by either of two jack-of-all-trades freshmen, Trey Burton and Jordan Reed, who were shuttled in an effort to rekindle the Tebow magic as oversized runners out of the shotgun. From the perspective of the new staff, though, that might have been a symptom of the real problem — namely, that Brantley was shoehorned into a system designed for a more mobile quarterback, under a coordinator, Steve Addazio, who had somehow managed to rein in Tebow’s big-play tendencies in 2009, too. Addazio refused to change horses in midstream, even after it was obvious that a) Brantley was a nonentity when it came to the “option” part of the spread option, and b) It was getting him killed. Brantley spent the entire second half of the season in various states of “banged up,” and never looked like he was comfortably in control of the offense. No wonder he seriously considered a transfer at the end of the season.

For better or worse, the fact that he’s still around seems overwhelmingly due to Weis’ longstanding reputation with statuesque pocket types whose mission is to stand and deliver. That starts with Tom Brady, but certainly doesn’t end there: Given a competent veteran quarterback, Weis’ offenses at Notre Dame regularly lit up box scores. With Brady Quinn in 2005-06 and the more seasoned version of Jimmy Clausen in 2009 — as opposed to the overwhelmed freshman-in-the-headlights version of 2007 — the Irish unleashed top-10 passing attacks that averaged upwards of 30 points per game all three year.

In fact, in terms of total offense Weis’ attack finished ahead of or in a dead heat with Urban Meyer’s spread option machine at Florida in all three of those seasons, including the Gators’ BCS Championship run in 2006 and the Tebow-led march to a 13-1 finish in 2009. With the exception of the ’07 debacle and a mediocre follow-up in ’08 — two alarmingly green teams across the board — Weis has a solid decade of first-rate offenses on his resumé, from the sideline and the booth.

At worst, the oversight of a respected pocket-passing teacher could still do for Brantley what it did a couple years back for Tennessee’s Jonathan Crompton, who rebounded from a catastrophe of a season under first-year offensive coordinator Dave Clawson in 2008 to become a viable starter under Lane Kiffin in 2009. Applied to Brantley, the same rate of improvement Crompton showed from his junior to senior years would make Brantley one of the most productive slingers in the SEC and give Florida a fighting chance to retake the wide-open SEC East.

At best — well, it’s probably better if Gator fans don’t contemplate anything beyond basic competence, lest they get their hopes up. If Brantley still doesn’t measure up, there has to be a little optimism left to burn on the freshmen.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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Part of SEC Week.

After his openly bitter exit from Notre Dame in 2009, it would have come to one’s surprise if Charlie Weis spent the rest of his days stalking assorted film caves and press boxes around the NFL. As Mr. Decided Schematic Advantage admitted himself, he always seemed more comfortable assembling game plans than exchanging slaps on the back with boosters, and had the Super Bowl rings to prove it. His first year out of the college ranks, overseeing the league’s No. 1 rushing offense and a surprising playoff run as offensive coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs, only served to drive home the point.

So exactly why Weis agreed to move his family into a horse farm mad revamp Florida’s sagging offense in the “pro style” vision of new head coach Will Muschamp is a mystery. But there is no question about his first mission: Reclaim the Gators’ shellshocked senior quarterback, John Brantley.

If he can, the same Gator fans who spent three snickering over the comedy of errors on Weis’ watch in South Bend will have no choice but to acknowledge his powers. Because they have seen Brantley in action, and not as an up-and-coming underclassmen with years ahead of him after some initial growing pains. He was a fourth-year junior in 2010 who demonstrated almost none of the alleged promise that made him one of the most coveted quarterbacks in the country coming out of high school. He can’t run (73 positive rushing yards for the year, not including sacks, on a long gain of 12), he’s not a great decision maker (his 118.8 efficiency rating was 10th in the SEC among regular starters) and his 400-caliber arm supplied precious little of the downfield firepower that was supposed to be his greatest advantage over Tim Tebow. Brantley finished dead last in the conference in both yards per completion (10.4) and completions covering at least 25 yards (9).

For some context on that number, half the regular passers in the SEC hit on at least three times as many downfield strikes, and the two not-so-celebrated starters at Tennessee combined for four times as many. Pound for pound, Brantley posed the meekest threat to defenses of any starting quarterback in the league, and of any Florida QB of the post-Spurrier decade, by far. In four of their five games against opponents that finished the season in the top 25, the Gators scored six points on two field goals against Alabama, seven points against Mississippi State, 14 points (including a kickoff return for a touchdown) against South Carolina and seven points against Florida State; in the fifth, the offense put three TDs on the board against LSU only by virtue of a pair of short-field starts in the red zone following Tiger turnovers. Their record in those games: 0-5.

By November, the offense was at least as effective in sporadic appearances by either of two jack-of-all-trades freshmen, Trey Burton and Jordan Reed, who were shuttled in an effort to rekindle the Tebow magic as oversized runners out of the shotgun. From the perspective of the new staff, though, that might have been a symptom of the real problem — namely, that Brantley was shoehorned into a system designed for a more mobile quarterback, under a coordinator, Steve Addazio, who had somehow managed to rein in Tebow’s big-play tendencies in 2009, too. Addazio refused to change horses in midstream, even after it was obvious that a) Brantley was a nonentity when it came to the “option” part of the spread option, and b) It was getting him killed. Brantley spent the entire second half of the season in various states of “banged up,” and never looked like he was comfortably in control of the offense. No wonder he seriously considered a transfer at the end of the season.

For better or worse, the fact that he’s still around seems overwhelmingly due to Weis’ longstanding reputation with statuesque pocket types whose mission is to stand and deliver. That starts with Tom Brady, but certainly doesn’t end there: Given a competent veteran quarterback, Weis’ offenses at Notre Dame regularly lit up box scores. With Brady Quinn in 2005-06 and the more seasoned version of Jimmy Clausen in 2009 — as opposed to the overwhelmed freshman-in-the-headlights version of 2007 — the Irish unleashed top-10 passing attacks that averaged upwards of 30 points per game all three year.

In fact, in terms of total offense Weis’ attack finished ahead of or in a dead heat with Urban Meyer’s spread option machine at Florida in all three of those seasons, including the Gators’ BCS Championship run in 2006 and the Tebow-led march to a 13-1 finish in 2009. With the exception of the ’07 debacle and a mediocre follow-up in ’08 — two alarmingly green teams across the board — Weis has a solid decade of first-rate offenses on his resumé, from the sideline and the booth.

At worst, the oversight of a respected pocket-passing teacher could still do for Brantley what it did a couple years back for Tennessee’s Jonathan Crompton, who rebounded from a catastrophe of a season under first-year offensive coordinator Dave Clawson in 2008 to become a viable starter under Lane Kiffin in 2009. Applied to Brantley, the same rate of improvement Crompton showed from his junior to senior years would make Brantley one of the most productive slingers in the SEC and give Florida a fighting chance to retake the wide-open SEC East.

At best — well, it’s probably better if Gator fans don’t contemplate anything beyond basic competence, lest they get their hopes up. If Brantley still doesn’t measure up, there has to be a little optimism left to burn on the freshmen.

- – -
Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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To look at him, Stephen Belichick is just your everyday, run-of-the-mill, undersized walk-on trying to find his niche among the behemoths on scholarship at Rutgers — except that, well, his last name is Belichick, which tends to stand out on any roster. Yes, young Stephen is the spawn of Bill Belichick, noted curmudgeon and architect of the New England Patriot dynasty that made him one of only five coaches in NFL history with three Super Bowl rings to his name.

Like his father, who played football and lacrosse at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Stephen started out on the Scarlet Knights lacrosse team, appearing in 34 games over the last four years. With one semester of eligibility remaining, he migrated to the football team this summer to try his hand as a long snapper, one of the several positions he once handled (along with tight end, fullback and linebacker) as MVP of his high school team in Weston, Mass. Alas, at 5-foot-11, 185 pounds, even getting the chance to wing a few snaps for the extra point team in an actual Division I game would be a Rudy-esque achievement, minus all the bogus context.

But it’s not a lark: According to coach Greg Schiano, the younger Belichick may also have some aspirations to become a coach himself, where his size presumably will not be an issue. As you can see, he’s already got the surly, Emperor Palpatine look down under that hood. Drop a Hall of Fame quarterback in his lap in the sixth round of the draft, and the kid’s ready to go.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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Making the morning rounds.

• Hope the horses can swim in heaven. Former Michigan State defensive lineman Bubba Smith, member of both the College and Pro Football halls of fame and gap-toothed star of the “Police Academy” films of the eighties, was found dead Wednesday in his Los Angeles home. A spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner said no cause of death had been determined; a spokesman for L.A. police said the circumstances do not appear suspicious. Smith was 66.

At 6-foot-7, Smith was the Jim Brown of defense — an early, terrifying version of a modern prototype who towered above the outmanned mortals of his era. As a Spartan, he was arguably the most decorated player in school history, and certainly the most dominant, earning back-to-back All-America honors in 1965 and 1966 for teams that combined to go 19-1-1 and claimed a share of the national championship both years. As a pro, he was the No. 1 pick of the 1967 NFL Draft, a two-time Pro Bowler and a Super Bowl winner as an anchor of the 1970 Baltimore Colts. He was slightly less successful, however, at tennis and polo. [Associated Press, Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times]

• Nailing down the newest ‘Nole. Continuing its impressive roll on the 2012 recruiting trail, Florida State picked up a commitment Wednesday from Hueytown, Ala., quarterback Jameis Winston, ranked by Rivals as the No. 1 “dual-threat” quarterback, the No. 1 player in Alabama and the No. 52 player nationally in the 2012 class. (That’s a conservative estimate: Other services are even more bullish on his national standing.) Winston’s pledge gives FSU six verbal commitments from players ranked in Rivals’ top 100, easily more than any other school except Texas. [Rivals, South Florida Sun-Sentinel]

• One step at a time. Oregon State coach Mike Riley said Wednesday that receiver/kick returner James Rodgers has been cleared to practice “in a limited fashion” for “a to-be-determined amount of time” on the heels of two knee surgeries in the last nine months. At the moment, Rodgers has more all-purpose yards to his name going into the 2011 season than all but one other active player (Tulsa‘s Damaris Johnson, the NCAA’s all-time leader) and has already been cleared for a fifth year of eligibility, but still remains unlikely to play due to lingering complications from the grisly knee injury he suffered last year at Arizona. [The Oregonian]

• Comings and goings. As expected, suspended Alabama defensive lineman Darrington Sentimore is transferring to a junior college in Mississippi, making him the seventh Crimson Tide player to leave the team since the end of the 2010 season — and putting ‘Bama one step closer to meeting the magic number under NCAA scholarship limits. [al.com]

Elsewhere, former Penn State offensive lineman Tom Ricketts is transferring home to Pittsburgh, where his dad, Tom, was a star offensive lineman in the late eighties before being drafted in the first round by the Pittsburgh Steelers. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

• The wheat! Ah, the wheat. Given carte blanche to update and redefine its image at the brink of a new era, the slimmed-down Big 12 decided to go with a lot of wheat, a lot of horses and at least one barn:

To be fair, at least they didn’t go with their first choice: Five minutes of Mack Brown polishing his BCS championship ring while lounging against Bevo. [Big12Sports.com]

Quickly… Ohio State‘s incoming freshmen say the expected things about Jim Tressel and the absence of Jim Tressel on their first day of camp. … Some old dudes eat it up. … Georgia Tech loses a defensive lineman to an undisclosed medical condition. … Steve Spurrier says some ridiculous things about Jadeveon Clowney after his first practice. … Brady Hoke advises coaches to assume players are complete idiots. … Auburn christens its new indoor practice facility. … Georgia is looking awfully thin on the offensive line. … A former Oregon safety may see his football camp on MTV, which apparently still exists. … The basics of becoming a college football fan. … And Lane Kiffin actually stops someone else from committing a minor NCAA violation.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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Making the morning rounds.

• Reform, Terrelle. Reform. Today is the day Ohio State files its official response to accusations of major NCAA violations, the second formal bureaucratic exchange before OSU’s all-important appearance before the Committee on Infractions later this year. Among the mountain of paper en route to Indianapolis is a five-step to improve the Buckeye compliance department, including:

• Better documentation of car purchases from both dealers and players to ensure that athletes aren’t getting inappropriate deals;
• A time limit on “loaner cars,” also know as the Terrelle Pryor Rule;
• More frequent “audits” of vehicles to ensure the rides athletes are actually driving are the ones they registered with the university;
• More thorough checks on everyone who receives games passes from football or men’s basketball players. (Currently, OSU conducts random checks.)
• Examination of player budgets, by way of a new software program that purports to boost both education and enforcement.

OSU’s appearance before the infractions committee is still set for Aug. 12, likely resulting in a verdict — along with accompanying sanctions — at some point during the regular season. [Associated Press, Columbus Dispatch]

• The boys are back in town. In more optimistic Ohio State news, the simmering “Mike Vrabel” buzz in Columbus intensified Thursday with multiple reports that the ex-Buckeye All-American and longtime New England Patriot is set to return to his alma mater as linebackers coach as soon as next week. Officially, Vrabel is still waiting out the lockout to return to the Kansas City Chiefs for his 15th NFL season, and has never coached any position on any level. But he also played alongside new Ohio State head coach Luke Fickell on some hellacious Buckeye defenses in the mid-nineties, and already has three Super Bowl rings to flash for those recruits who have been abandoning OSU in droves. [Eleven Warriors, College Football Talk, @davebiddle]

• He’s got high hopes. Former Nebraska quarterback Cody Green plans to visit USC next week, the “pie in the sky” option in a transfer derby that also includes a pair of more realistic destinations, Baylor and Tulsa. The Trojans may be willing to take a chance on the 6-foot-4, 235-pound Green under normal circumstances, but with dramatically reduced scholarships and at least three young, blue-chip quarterbacks already in the fold for 2012 — not including Matt Barkley, who could still return for his senior season if he doesn’t opt for the NFL — there’s not a whole lot of room right now. [Lincoln Journal Star]

In other free-agent quarterback news, former Michigan starter Tate Forcier — having already extricated himself this offseason from both Miami and a second-story window in Grand Rapids — will be visiting Hawaii next week with an eye toward becoming a Warrior. “Hawaii will be my first official visit. It might be my last,” Forcier told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, adding he was also interested in WAC rivals Nevada and San Jose State. “I have to go with how things go. If it feels right, I’m going to make my decision.” [Honolulu Star-Advertiser]

• Man, nobody gets here in August anymore. Alabama‘s top-ranked freshman class is all present and accounted for, save for two members: Touted in-state running back Brent Calloway, object of a down-to-the-wire battle with Auburn, and somewhat less touted La Mirada, Calif., lineman Isaac Luatua, both of whom plan to enroll in August. “There was a bunch of mix-ups at my school,” Calloway told TideSports.com. “Somehow, somebody messed up something, and I’m the one who has to pay the consequences for it. I’m very excited (to get to UA), but every time I get ready to get down there and I think I’m good, something always comes up.” [al.com, TideSports.com]

• Get well soon. Florida linebacker Neiron Ball is expected to miss the entire 2011 season as he continues to recover from an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) found in his brain in February. According to the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, AVM is a congenital condition that results in “snarled tangles of arteries and veins” before or shortly after birth. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]

Quickly… Indiana adds a three-star juco running back to its incoming recruiting class. … A top defensive tackle prospect opts for Iowa. … Miami lands a much-needed quarterback commitment from Texas. … Notre Dame‘s quarterback prospects for the 2012 class are beginning to look a little thin. … Tennessee still hasn’t interviewed anyone for its vacant AD job. … The trial for Auburn’s alleged armed robbers is being pushed back to Halloween, at the earliest. … Georgia fans may be surprised to learn that they have “a tested backup” behind Aaron Murray. … The face of the Longhorn Network will be improbably young. … Andrew Luck is fully bearded. … And I’m sorry to report that your girlfriend has just left you for this picture of the 1974 Louisiana Tech Bulldogs.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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As navel-gazing offseason memes in college football go, 2011 has been dominated so far by the twin specters of oversigning and cost-of-attendance scholarships. But for a brief period in 2010, at just about this point in the summer, there could be no greater threat to the future of the sport than the corrupting influence of the pro agent. Nick Saban compared agents to pimps. Urban Meyer called agents “predators.” Bob Stoops said agents have to be punished. Mack Brown was one of several high-profile coaches who discussed agents wit the NFL. The lengthy “confession” of an ex-NFL agent who claimed he’d paid off dozens of college players made the cover of Sports Illustrated. After agent-related activity in his own program started making headlines, North Carolina coach Butch Davis insisted that “there is no place for that in college athletics.”

With that as a backdrop, then, here’s the first of three formal charges against ex-North Carolina assistant John Blake outlined by the NCAA in the 45-page notice of allegations it delivered to Chapel Hill on Tuesday:

It is alleged that from 2007 to 2010, then assistant football coach John Blake partnered with Gary Wichard, National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) certified agent, and Pro Tect Management to represent individuals in the marketing of their athletic abilities in violation of NCAA legislation. Specifically, Blake was employed and compensated by Pro Tect Management to influence football student-athletes to hire Wichard to represent them in marketing their athletic abilities and reputations.

Which, if true, makes Blake arguably the single most flagrant offender of the modern, post-Death Penalty era of NCAA enforcement in football.

Since the Association turned SMU into a crater in the mid-eighties, the “rogue coach” has almost always been defined (officially speaking) by what he doesn’t know. Even the shady good-ole-boy types who earned scofflaw reputations at schools that landed on probation in the immediate aftermath of the SMU scandal — guys like Jackie Sherrill at Pittsburgh and Texas A&M, Pat Dye at Auburn, Billy Brewer at Ole Miss, and Mike Dubose at Alabama — were accused of turning a blind eye to corruption, not facilitating it. They lacked control, in NCAA parlance, and perhaps willingly relinquished it. But it was always boosters and other third parties who occupied the smoke-filled rooms, operated the slush funds and handed over the keys to recruits. The “smoking gun” that cost Rick Neuheisel his job on NCAA grounds at Washington was a bracket in a basketball tournament pool. When the NCAA emerged from nearly a decade of dormancy to take on USC last year, its final verdict against the Trojans rested heavily on its contention that assistant coach Todd McNair “knew or should have known” about star running back Reggie Bush’s longstanding partnership with a pair of wannabe agents in 2004-05, and that link — the only direct charge that anyone at USC actually knew Bush was on the take — was based entirely on circumstantial evidence.

By the same token, it wasn’t the corruption that spelled Jim Tressel’s doom at Ohio State: It was the knowledge. Tressel’s fall from grace occupies a unique place in NCAA history not only because of the squeaky-clean persona he nurtured over the last decade, but because he violated the cardinal rule: He knew about likely violations involving several of his star players, and he simply didn’t tell. By NCAA standards, it was the ultimate crime of omission, but one still defined by what the coach didn’t do with the knowledge.

But the case against North Carolina is far too sprawling, touching too many people in too many different corners of the program, to allow for ignorance. If there’s any charge the NCAA can’t levy at Blake, it’s inactivity in the face of corruption. On the contrary: By all accounts, he embraced the corruption with vigor. He took one of the most unambiguous, inviolable taboos in his profession, and made it a side job.

Compared to McNair (who’s still battling to get his career back), the case against Blake is open-and-shut. The notice of allegations lists the specific dates and amounts of seven payments Blake allegedly received from Wichard between 2007 and 2009, adding up to $31,000, as largely outlined last year in multiple reports by Yahoo! Sports’ Charles Robinson. Phone records released last week showed that Blake was regularly in contact with Wichard and with players Marvin Austin and Cam Thomas when they were in California to work out at Wichard’s gym in the summer of 2009. (For his contact with undergrads, the NFL Players’ Association saw fit to suspend Wichard for nine months last December.) At some point, Blake’s pitches on Wichard’s behalf apparently began to extend beyond his own school.

Short of the revelation of an unfathomably massive conspiracy to manipulate multiple witnesses, reporters, sources and documents for the sake of bringing down the defensive line coach at a basketball school, Blake has — possibly singlehandedly — redefined the genre of “rogue coach” on the Division I level.

For Butch Davis, the disappointment is personal: He once coached Blake as a young assistant at Sand Springs High in Oklahoma, later won a Super Bowl with him as colleagues on the defensive staff of the 1993 Dallas Cowboys and made Blake one of his first hires when he landed in Chapel Hill in late 2006. For his program, that decision may prove to have been the seed of destruction in the form of vacated wins, a postseason ban and heavily scholarship losses, all of which remain very much in play despite the absence of the dreaded words “lack of institutional control” in the official notice of allegations. That key omission may be enough to save Davis’ job, but if the NCAA is as serious about the nefarious influence of agents on campus as it’s always said it is, it can’t save his team from one very determined hammer.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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By now, the backup quarterbacks at Ohio State are no strangers to scrutiny or speculation: They’ve know for six months now that one of them would be filling in for starter Terrelle Pryor at the start of the upcoming season, and spent the spring in a closely watched, four-way duel for the honor. None of them have taken a college snap in an actual game with the outcome in serious doubt.

Before Tuesday, though, the job didn’t exactly require the candidates to slay any dragons: The five-game stretch they were applying for opens with a pair of in-state gimmes (overmatched MAC-rifices Akron and Toledo), demands only one road trip (at Miami) and includes only one conference game (Michigan State), in Columbus. With the permanent end of Pryor’s college career, the job description suddenly got a little steeper. Now, it’s a full-time position, requiring road trips to Lincoln, Champaign and Ann Arbor, with visits from Wisconsin and Penn State in between. Instead of one game to get off on the right foot, the new starter bears the burden of managing an entire Big Ten title race with little margin for error. Instead of navigating a bumpy detour for a team still sitting on top of most preseason polls as the odds-on conference favorite, he inherits a full-blown rebuilding year.

Even with the persistent foreshadowing since last Christmas, the complexion of the Buckeyes’ entire season has changed dramatically in the span of a little over a week. Here’s what you need to know about the short-term scramble to fill the new void left by their star quarterback’s sudden absence:

• The offense is a blank slate. Deposed head coach Jim Tressel and Pryor both personified the offense in their own way, one as the architect and gameday play-caller, the other as the explosive talent that slowly drew Tressel out of his ultra-conservative shell over three years. Now, the initial phase of the rebuild likely falls into the hands of offensive coordinator/offensive line coach Jim Bollman, who’s spent the last decade as one of Tressel’s right-hand men in Columbus and 15 years under the Senator altogether. Accordingly, he’s considered a leading apostle of the ultra-conservative shell — the major advantage of which is that it doesn’t require a freak of nature to be taking the snaps.

That was memorably proved in 2002 by the patron saint of the Church of Tressel Ball, Craig Krenzel, who managed to keep the Buckeyes out of the ‘L’ column en route to the becoming the lowest-scoring champions of the BCS era. Five years later, Todd Boeckman picked up Krenzel’s torch in 2007 as the unheralded successor to the prolific Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith. From there, 235-pound thumper Beanie Wells carried a Herculean load for a plodding attack that found itself in the BCS Championship Game despite finishing ninth in the Big Ten in total offense.

But that approach is given certain conditions in the backfield and on the defense that the current lineup doesn’t necessarily meet: The rest of the team around the quarterback in 2011 looks nothing like it did in 2002 or 2007. The ’02 defense was loaded with veteran stars, a dozen of whom were snapped up in the NFL Draft over the next two years, and the ’07 D (stacked with seven future draft picks itself) led the nation in both yards and points per game allowed. The ’11 edition brings back just four of last year’s top dozen tacklers, and shipped out all five of last year’s All-Big Ten picks. Even with Herron in the lineup, there’s no proven Maurice Clarett/Beanie Wells-esque workhorse who’ll carry it 30 times at Wisconsin or 39 times at Michigan, which may force the quarterback to do more than avoid interceptions.

• Joe Bauserman is basically Todd Boeckman. Actually, quarterbacks coach Nick Siciliano compared him to Trent Dilfer during the Baltimore Ravens‘ unlikely 2000 run to the Super Bowl, but the concept is the same: He’s the “Tressel Ball” candidate, sans Tressel. This is not an insult.

Physically, Bauserman is in the Krenzel/Boeckman mold, a heady, within-the-offense type with NFL-ready size (if not an NFL-ready arm) and more than enough experience in the system — Krenzel and Boeckman both took over a fourth-year juniors; Bauserman, a former pro baseball player, is a 23-year-old fifth-year senior — to at least keep everything from spiraling out of control. The only regular starter in the conference who passed less often than Boeckman in 2007, or for fewer yards, was Illinois‘ Juice Williams, and it took almost no time at all for Boeckman to be scuttled to the bench in favor of then-freshman Pryor the following September. But the fact remains: As a full-time, first-year starter with limited talent, Todd Boeckman had an attrition-ravaged, allegedly rebuilding Ohio State within grasp of another national championship. That’s the guy Bauserman wants to be, if the supporting cast will allow it.

• Braxton Miller is the future. Miller is a local, a touted athlete in the Troy Smith mold (at 6-foot-2, Miller is slightly taller and rangier), and was given every opportunity to establish himself in the spring as the Next Big Thing in Pryor’s absence. The five-game window to start the season offered him a perfect opportunity to grow into the role and take a few lumps in the warmup games without the overwhelming pressure of putting a Big Ten frontrunner on his shoulders in the process of keeping a veteran starter’s seat warm.

In that scenario, though, Miller didn’t have to assume the full burden of a Big Ten title run, which includes at least six games that could conceivably come down a single mistake. Where the prospect of Pryor’s quick return might have allowed the freshman to get his feet wet before the stakes got too high, now the idea of Miller as the full-time starter seems more like throwing him in the deep end.

• Taylor Graham is slow, but can still win the race. Graham is far less experienced than Bauserman and far less hyped than Miller. But he’s the son of former Buckeye/NFL starter Kent Graham, was a solid four-star prospect in his own right in 2009 and held his own in the spring despite taking five sacks (including three straight at one point) in the spring game. He also showed off his arm on the longest play of the scrimmage, a 68-yard touchdown pass to T.Y. Williams, the only play all afternoon (run or pass) that covered more than 20 yards.

• It’s a fluid situation. If Miller manages to work his way into the opening day lineup, it’s a good bet he’ll remain the starter for the entire season — even if things go poorly, the struggles can be chalked up to “growing pains” that will pay off in the long run. For the veterans, the pressure to succeed is more immediate: If the season begins to slip away, it will be increasingly difficult to keep the heir apparent on the bench.

That said…

• Brace yourself for Bauserman. Miller may have the best odds of finishing the season as the top guy, and will almost certainly see the field in some capacity right away. But first crack belongs to the veteran, Bauserman, who is by far the most experienced despite having never taken a really meaningful snap in a game (the longest shot for the job, Kenny Guiton, also saw some very limited time last year in the grisliest blowouts) and the most prepared at age 23 to hold a badly fractured unit in one piece.

Frankly, he may also the most “expendable” in what could turn out to be an expendable season: With an interim coach and a possible bowl ban looming, the steady fifth-year senior is just the guy you want to get the ship through the storm in one piece before a fresh crew comes aboard to chart a new course.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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Traditionally, the beleaguered Midwesterner’s first line of defense against taunts over the Big Ten’s record in bowl games* is a challenge for their Sun Belt rivals to try making the trip north for a change. Then they’d get a taste for real Big Ten football, in the elements: Snow, wind, freezing rain, skin-shredding tundra, offenses groping for traction behind 235-pound tailbacks — you know, the way it was meant to be, and all of that stuff Brady Hoke is selling in Michigan.

But then, for its first foray into the December championship circut, the Big Ten leapt for the splendor of the great indoors last August, when it chose Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis over outdoor venues in Chicago and Cleveland as the site of the inaugural Big Ten Championship Game this December. Now, the league has opted to settle in Indy for the long haul, announcing today that it plans to extend its stay in Lucas Oil Stadium through 2015, encompassing the first five championship games of the post-expansion era.

OK, so a retractable roof will not necessarily crush anyone’s soul in and of itself. Nor will a tastefully faux-nostalgic facade that manages to simultaneously elicit a public library, a factory and a Starbucks. Lucas Oil Stadium is centrally located, has already been home to a Final Four and plans to host the Super Bowl next February, if there is a Super Bowl. It will provide a level playing field for a game defined by the actual play, not by the weather.

But as for all that salt-of-the-earth, Manball business people have been evoking to define the conference for decades — even after more than half the league has embraced the spread in one form or another — here’s one more reason to drop it. Given the choice, the Big Ten prefers to come in out of the cold just like everyone else.

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* Which, by the way, is not really as bad as all that: Prior to this year’s Jan. 1 flop, the Big Ten was 10-10 against the SEC in their annual New Year’s Day tie-in games — all played in Florida — between 2000 and 2009. The Rose Bowl, however, has been a different story.
Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

Other popular stories on Yahoo! Sports:
• Nadal holds off Federer, wins French Open title
• How many teams are interested in WR Plaxico Burress?
• Vancouver will reignite Olympic cauldron to support Canucks

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Traditionally, the beleaguered Midwesterner’s first line of defense against taunts over the Big Ten’s record in bowl games* is a challenge for their Sun Belt rivals to try making the trip north for a change. Then they’d get a taste for real Big Ten football, in the elements: Snow, wind, freezing rain, skin-shredding tundra, offenses groping for traction behind 235-pound tailbacks — you know, the way it was meant to be, and all of that stuff Brady Hoke is selling in Michigan.

But then, for its first foray into the December championship circut, the Big Ten leapt for the splendor of the great indoors last August, when it chose Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis over outdoor venues in Chicago and Cleveland as the site of the inaugural Big Ten Championship Game this December. Now, the league has opted to settle in Indy for the long haul, announcing today that it plans to extend its stay in Lucas Oil Stadium through 2015, encompassing the first five championship games of the post-expansion era.

OK, so a retractable roof will not necessarily crush anyone’s soul in and of itself. Nor will a tastefully faux-nostalgic facade that manages to simultaneously elicit a public library, a factory and a Starbucks. Lucas Oil Stadium is centrally located, has already been home to a Final Four and plans to host the Super Bowl next February, if there is a Super Bowl. It will provide a level playing field for a game defined by the actual play, not by the weather.

But as for all that salt-of-the-earth, Manball business people have been evoking to define the conference for decades — even after more than half the league has embraced the spread in one form or another — here’s one more reason to drop it. Given the choice, the Big Ten prefers to come in out of the cold just like everyone else.

- – -
* Which, by the way, is not really as bad as all that: Prior to this year’s Jan. 1 flop, the Big Ten was 10-10 against the SEC in their annual New Year’s Day tie-in games — all played in Florida — between 2000 and 2009. The Rose Bowl, however, has been a different story.
Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

Other popular stories on Yahoo! Sports:
• Nadal holds off Federer, wins French Open title
• How many teams are interested in WR Plaxico Burress?
• Vancouver will reignite Olympic cauldron to support Canucks

Read the Article »

Making the morning rounds.

• Get well soon. TCU offensive lineman Marcus Cannon, a two-time All-Mountain West pick expected to go in the first two or three rounds of this weekend’s NFL Draft, has reportedly been diagnosed with a treatable form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The diagnosis is an apparent result of a biopsy the 6-foot-6, 350-pound behemoth had performed last month to quiet doubts about a mass in his groin, which was present throughout his college career. While tests showed that growth is benign, they also uncovered the lymphoma.

Cannon is set to begin the first round of multiple rounds of chemotherapy today. Depending on the location and stage of the cancer, survival rates for non-Hodgkins patients under 34 years old are well over 90 percent, and Cannon may eventually return to the field. [ESPN, Pro Football Talk]

• RIP. In even more depressing cancer news, former Michigan All-American Jim Mandich succumbed to bile duct cancer Tuesday at the age of 62. Mandich was a star tight end and captain on Bo Schembechler’s first Michigan team in 1969 before going on to pick up two Super Bowl rings in a solid eight-year run with the Miami Dolphins, including one as a member of the perfect 1972 squad. “Mad Dog” moved into radio in 1983 and spent the last 19 years as the Dolphins’ color man. [Detroit News]

• Nothing to see here. SEC official John Wright went on the record Tuesday to assure fans that refs won’t be too “nitpicky” about enforcing the hated new taunting rule that negates touchdowns on personal fouls that occur during the play. “[I]f somebody does something borderline, we will not call it. Everybody in the stadium will know (that it was an unsportsmanlike act) if we call it,” Wright told the Knoxville News-Sentinel. “The way we have been told (by the SEC), these things have to jump out at you. … We want to use good judgment. We don’t want to be too technical.” But the question is, can middle-aged white men reconcile their idea of “good judgment” with the spontaneous reactions of adolescent black men in the heat of the moment? Because they’re not always so good at that. [Knoxville News-Sentinel]

• I assume Michael Vick has a good alibi. Four Tamaskan dogs related to N.C. State’s mascot, Tuffy, became seriously ill over the weekend after eating fish laced with antifreeze in a possible poisoning attempt. The dogs’ owner claims the fish was placed on the property intentionally, in a bowl that had been set in a freshly dug hole and covered with grass on the grounds where the dogs live in New Jersey. All four, including Tuffy’s father and sister, were recovering at a nearby animal hospital. [Associated Press]

Quickly… Your semi-regular reminder that the NCAA is still looking at North Carolina. … Auburn drops verbal commitment Alex Taylor after Taylor was kicked off his high school team. … USC releases a post-spring depth chart, and Lane Kiffin declares it meaningless. … Oft-flagged Vontaze Burfict still insists some of the personal foul calls against him are “bull crap.” (And some of them aren’t.) … Ex-Tennessee receiver/armed robber Nu’Keese Richardson wants to become a fighting okra. … Texas somehow resists the urge to plate the athletic facilities in solid gold. … Attention search engines: Erin Andrews poses with Mark Ingram. … San Diego State And the guy who wants Cam Newton to take a lie detector test gets a response from a guy pretending to be Cam Newton.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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