After a nice summer break from college football teams shifting conferences, the fall has brought more changes to the landscape, as Fresno State and Nevada announced they will leave the Western Athletic Conference and join the Mountain West Conference.

According to Pete Fiutak at Foxsports.com “the two schools have solid football programs, have been bowl regulars over the past few years and add more meat to the Mountain West’s midsection that should raise the overall profile of the league.”

I’m not 100% on board with Fiutak’s statement. Both teams are OK, but a combined 56-46 record over the last four years isn’t exactly anything to write home about, especially in a conference as weak as the WAC. Nevada has had a lot of losses to major conference teams over the last four years including:

52-21 to Arizona State in 2006
52-10 to Nebraska in 2007
35-19 to Texas Tech and 69-17 to Missouri in 2008
35-20 to Colorado State last year (not to mention a 35-0 whipping by Notre Dame.) Read the rest of this entry »

College football is one of America’s most celebrated sports. Millions of dollars are spent by fans on tickets, tailgating, sportswear and concessions. That doesn’t even begin to take into consideration the money spent by colleges on recruiting players, paying coaches, putting uniforms on the team and paying for players scholarships. The college football industry is driven by fans, tradition and money. Winning games means more money, more students wanting to go to the school and more fans.

One expense that highly winning football schools pay close attention to is the football coach’s salary. Schools with more winning programs pay their coaches a lot more than those with mediocre programs. If a coach wins a national championship or consistently goes to the more prominent bowl games, he’s pretty much able to write his own ticket.

No matter what, the coaches with the highest salaries have worked to get the best results from their players and for their schools. As of 2009, the highest paid college football coaches, with their yearly salaries, are: Read the rest of this entry »

College basketball may be the only sport that has an entire month devoted to its championship tournament – March Madness. Teams across the country work hard their entire season so that they’re eligible to play in this highly anticipated tournament each year. Good teams work hard and average teams work even harder to have a chance to participate. The coaches of all college basketball teams dream for the chance to compete for that championship as well.

Like with any sport, there are some schools that are known as basketball powerhouses. Each year there are schools that consistently make it to the tournament. One thing that can be agreed upon when looking at school programs is that no one makes it to the March Madness tournament without a good coaching staff. Head basketball coaches are valued, especially when their team wins. As with any sport, only the most successful coaches make the most money. When a coach is winning, schools want to keep him coaching at their school. The natural way to do that is to offer the coach large amounts of money in the way of a coaching salary. Of course, the flip side to that is that when coaches start losing, they get fired.

The best coaches know how to continue their winning streaks for many years. The top ten college basketball coaches and their reported 2009 salaries are as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

USC announced today that it will give the 2005 Heisman Trophy, won by the school’s former star tailback Reggie Bush, back to the Heisman Trophy Trust. The Trust will meet July 27, and according to Rivals they have declined comment on what will come of the trophy.

In June, USC was slapped with a laundry list of NCAA sanctions after it was discovered that Bush, and former basketball star OJ Mayo, were both receiving “benefits” under the table, which is not allowed in the NCAA. The sanctions included a ban from bowl games for two years, a loss of 30 scholarships for three years, and the removal of their 2005 national championship over the Sooners from the record. Read the rest of this entry »

The day after the Major League Baseball All-Star game is one of only two days on the calender where there are no major professional sport’s games scheduled. So ESPN has seized that day as an opportunity to do an annual award show, the ESPYs.

Started in 1993, the show has grown in size and stature much like ESPN. There are awards given in a variety of categories, some so similar it’s impossible to differentiate (best moment and best play?). Others, like the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance and the Arthur Ashe Courage award, take the focus off sports.

This year’s event was held Wednesday night in Los Angeles. Denver Nuggets head coach George Karl received the Jimmy V award, named after former NCAA basketball coach Jim Valvano. Karl is battling throat and neck cancer. The Courage award was given to the family of Ed Thomas, the Aplington-Parkersburg (Iowa) coach who was killed in the school’s weight room by one of his former players. Read the rest of this entry »

With the recent closing of Dana College, the Great Plains Athletic Conference is left with a few empty spots in its schedule.

Conference commissioner Corey Westra says schedules through the 2012-2013 season were already set when Dana announced its closure last week. Affected sports are football, basketball and volleyball.

Dana College has been an active member of the conference for the past ten years. This recent development has conference commissioners scrambling to alter the 2012-2013 athletic season. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though college football is months away, it’s never too early to discuss the Heisman Trophy. Vegas NCAA football odds makers have released a list of 26 candidates for college football’s top honor, and Alabama running back Mark Ingram, last year’s winner, is the favorite.

You can find the full list here. And here are my thoughts:

Tyrelle Pryor at number two seems way high on the list. Yes, he finally seemed to hit all of his potential in the Rose Bowl, and maybe Jim Tressel has finally figured out a way to utilize Pryor’s amazing potential.

But consider that Pryor was ranked 62nd in the country’s quarterback rating last season, and 85th in completion percentage. Or the fact that he had as many games (four) with under 100 yards passing as he did games with over 200. Read the rest of this entry »

Lance Edward Armstrong was born September 18, 1971 in Plano, Texas. He is a professional American road-racing cyclist who has won the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times and also a notable survivor of testicular cancer, which motivated him to found the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer research and support. Currently riding for the UCI Pro Tour team on Team Radio Shack he began his sport’s career the age of 12, when he was a swimmer at the City of Plano Swim Club.

Armstrong attended Plano East Senior High in his hometown, but during his senior year the U.S. Olympic development team invited him to cycle in Colorado Springs, Colorado. After leaving high school early he attended private make-up classes in order to graduate from high school on time in 1989. Read the rest of this entry »

South Carolina starting pitcher Blake Cooper. Image Via: AP Photo/Nati Harnik

When you only allow two runs in two games, it’s a safe bet that you’re going to win a lot of baseball games. And behind a stellar pitching performance, the South Carolina Gamecocks just won the biggest game of them all.

With a dramatic 2-1, 11-inning victory, South Carolina beat the UCLA Bruins two games to none in the best-of-three College World Series Championship.

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Image via: ACLU.org

Title IX is often referred to when speaking about high school or college athletics. It’s part of the Education Amendments of 1972 and ironically, when it was originally written there was no mention of sports in the statute.

Title IX was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in 2002 to honor the principal author of the act, Congresswoman Patsy Mink.

The official language of Title IX says “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

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