Posts from the Big 12 Category at FanHouse

The Preseason NIT field and locations have been known, but not the match-ups or seedings. Well the NIT has released the schedule (PDF). The top four seeds are Purdue, Oklahoma, Arizona and Boston College

*North Bracket
Monday, November 17, host and No. 1 seed, Purdue faces Eastern Michigan and will play the winner of Georgia-Loyola Chicago on the 18th.

*East Bracket
Monday, November 17, host and No. 4 seed, Boston College versus Loyola (Md.) and then goes against the winner of St. John's-Cornell.

*North and East champs will play each other on Wednesday, November 26 at Madison Square Garden.

*South Bracket
Monday, November 17, host and No. 2 seed, Oklahoma plays Mississippi Valley State and will get the winner of Davidson-James Madison.

*West Bracket
Monday, November 17, host and No. 3 seed Arizona goes against Florida Atlantic and then faces the winner of UAB-Santa Clara.

*South and West champs will play each other on Wednesday, November 26 at Madison Square Garden.

*Championship game is Friday, November 28, afternoon game at 3:30 on ESPN2, the day after Thanksgiving..

There are consolation games, including a runner-up battle before the championship game at 1:30.

Just eyeballing the games in the first couple rounds, it's hard to see a Gardner Webb over Kentucky scenario -- but then no one saw that scenario until it happened. Arizona would seem the most likely, based on the turmoil and turnover from last year. Still, hard to envision, though, Arizona looks to have the toughest game in the second round with the winner of UAB-Santa Clara.

Assuming Davidson beats James Madison, the Oklahoma-Davidson will be the most hyped game with Stephen Curry and Blake Griffin.

With most of the games being shown on the ESPN networks, the timing of the games makes sense. They scheduled around most of the college football still on the schedule. (Your choice. Colorado-Nebraska or Bowling Green-Toledo in college football or the pre-season NIT Championship game.)

It also provides a nice early treat for those who do whatever they can to avoid shopping on Black Friday.

When last we heard from rap impresario Josh Jarboe, he was being dismissed from the Oklahoma football team for having bad timing, questionable rapping skills, and a moron of a friend who posted the rap video on YouTube. Fine, Oklahoma felt they took a chance on the kid after an arrest for having a firearm. He showed more bad judgment in rapping about more firearms and using foul language, embarrassing the school and football program. Okay, time for everyone to move on.

Well, Jarboe did. He decided to go play for Troy in the Sun Belt Conference. Closer to home. Less attention. In a way, it makes sense as Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops in the announcement that Jarboe was dismissed from the football team said, "We hope he can move forward in a positive manner."

Probably not a bad idea. Of course, Oklahoma isn't making it that easy.

According to Troy coach Larry Blakeney, Trojans wide receiver Josh Jarboe currently is not eligible to play this season after transferring from Oklahoma earlier this week.

Because OU told Troy officials that they didn't refuse him admission for the fall, Blakeney said, Jarboe is now being treated as a transfer student by the NCAA, with this season being his sit-out year.

Nice. Technically the NCAA rules are the problem, and Troy is appealing to the NCAA. After all,the NCAA is so reasonable about these things.

Still Oklahoma doesn't seem too interested in making it easy for Jarboe to "move forward in a positive manner." They dismissed him from the team -- which means losing the scholarship -- but also says since he was admitted, he is a transfer.

Again, he was dismissed from the football team. He didn't quit the team. No scholarship. Left Oklahoma before the fall semester as expected. So, now he's a transfer. Kafka sends his regards.

Barry Sanders, as we're all well aware, was an absolutely transcendent talent at tailback. As great as it was seeing him juke NFL linebackers and safeties out of their jocks, it was even better when he was running against vastly inferior competition at the college level.

One helpful YouTube user, in fact, has combined footage from both Barry's college and pro careers. You'll notice that Barry's college highlights are quite a bit longer, if not as numerous--it's a lot harder to turn a spin move into a 40-yard TD in the NFL, after all.

Oh, you'll also miss the greatest soundtrack selection for a football highlight reel in history. When you think Barry Sanders, you don't necessarily make the jump to these guys. But that's what art does. It takes risks. For those purely interested in NCAA content, the NFL stuff starts at 1:48. You'll probably stop watching long before then, though, so mesmerized will you be by the music.

(I promise it's not a RickRoll, by the way. It's so much worse.)



Any commentary I make about the preceding video would only serve to A) ruin the surprise, and B) cheapen what you just experienced. That. Just. Happened.

I think that (a) winning a National Championship and (b) crushing Roy Williams in the process does call for a new contract at Kansas.

And that happened for Bill Self, who signed a new 10-year deal to stay in Kansas through 2008. The deal is reportedly worth $30 million.

"This will take me to 55 if both parties want to continue, which hopefully will happen," Self said in a phone interview with The Associated Press while playing golf at Pine Valley in New Jersey. "I like to think I'll still want to keep coaching when I get to 55. But if we continue to do our job, this will get us close."

If you remember, Self was being heavily pursued by Oklahoma State during the Final Four -- a job Self turned down. Remember that last year, Florida's Billy Donovan won the title and actually left the Gators for the NBA's Orlando Magic before eventually coming back to Gainsville and signing a new deal.

Self and Kansas agreed to the deal in April, though it wasn't completed. This contract is retroactive to April 1.

Start your work week off right with Monday Morning Coffee, where Fanhouse scours YouTube for the finest college football footage available. Either that or we give up after a couple minutes and just post the "I Like Turtles" kid.

College football fans who hadn't seen the 1985 Oklahoma-Nebraska game would have been mildly surprised to see an easy 27-7 victory for the Sooners (Nebraska's only score came on a fumble return in the last minute of play). They would have been even more surprised to see the following notation in the scoring summary:

TD: K. Jackson 88 yd run

Jackson, of course, is a tight end, and 99% of the time, the only way they're running 88 yards is if they slept through class and the head coach is exacting punishment. But this is all-everything TE Keith Jackson, and this is the best tight end reverse in the play's brief but beautiful history. We do not recommend this trying this at home with your team's tight end.



Yes, that was also Keith Jackson calling the play. The odds of the two Keiths being related are about negative a billion percent.

Wide receiver Josh Jarboe has been relieved of his scholarship by Bob Stoops and Oklahoma after a video of him that middle-aged sportswriters invariably refer to as "violent" and "expletive-filled" showed up on the youtubes. It does indeed have some expletives, so keep it away from children and those constitutionally prone to fainting spells:



This would be the most insane player dismissal ever if Jarboe hadn't gotten expelled from his high school and charged with a felony for bringing a gun to school. Still, the Wizard of Odds notes that Bob Stoops was of one mind Thursday...

"Kick a guy off the team for what he says?" Stoops said. The whole Internet culture frustrates Stoops. "We're starting to talk about everything kids say and do," Stoops said. "Now we're in people's homes, in their private spaces."

...before he was of the opposite mind a couple days later. What happened?

Only one team wins the national title every season, but that doesn't mean that only one team has a successful year. (At least, as long as we don't have a playoff, it doesn't mean that.) Everybody loves to see a team that seems to be part of college football's permanent underclass rise up and make some noise.

Until the next season, that is.

Two teams from the Big XII North stepped in to fill the vacuum last season: Missouri and Kansas. Neither team has ever been considered part of college football's elite, even though they've both had intermittent success in the past. Last season they both wound up in the top 5. This season they'll return most of of the players who got them there.

How are they handling the pressure?

In Missouri, Gary Pinkel is apparently having a little trouble keeping his team from getting overheated. Missouri comes into the season as one of the official Brightly Lit Dark Horses in the national title race, with many seeing Oklahoma as mortal and Texas as fading a little bit, thus softening up MU's path to the title game. Pinkel is trying to keep his troops focused on the tasks in front of them, like actually winning the Big XII championship first. But at least they're getting some respect.

During their down time, ESPN loves to do rankings to see who is the best/worst/whatever at something. Since college hoops is in their dead period, they decided to rank the top 300+ programs since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams (1984-1985 season).

They have finally gotten to the top and ... to no one's surprise ... it was occupied by Duke.

By any measure of success, Duke is king of the hill in college basketball in the 64-team era of the NCAA tournament. Besides the three national titles, Duke is No. 1 among all basketball programs with 69 NCAA tournament wins, 12 first team All-Americans, 11 top-10 NBA picks, 10 No. 1 seeds and seven title game appearances. An easy selection in any format for No. 1.

Now, ESPN used some sort of formula to come up with these rankings, so it is a numbers thing and not a "they love Duke" thing. No one has won more NCAA Championships, Final Fours, Sweet 16s, NCAA Tournament wins, first team All Americans, 30-win seasons, #1 seeds or top-ten NBA picks in the time frame.

The rest of the top ten: 2-Kansas, 3-North Carolina, 4-Kentucky, 5-Arizona, 6-UConn, 7-UCLA, 8-UNLV, 9-Syracuse, 10-Georgetown.

Oh, and there is a bit of a oopsie in regards to Kansas and North Carolina after the jump ...

Shiny new facilities. Every BCS Conference program needs them. Kansas is no exception. The just completed Anderson Family Football Complex is a $31 million project is occupying 80,000 square feet and offer a full practice field and other now standard amenities such as, "offices, academic areas, a weight room, locker rooms, an audio-visual room, meeting rooms, a cardio room, a hydro-therapy room, a nutrition area and a display area."

Most of the money was coming from two donor sources. The Anderson Family Building Fund -- who got the whole thing named after them -- and Tom and Julie Kivisto -- they settled for the practice field being called "Kivisto Field."

The Kivistos pledged $12 million for the new facility, but have only given $4 million so far. Good luck in collecting the rest.

SemGroup, the private energy company that Kivisto founded in 2000, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The petition documents said that SemGroup's losses total more than $2.4 billion and that Kivisto owes the company $290 million in trading losses through his personal trading company.

Tom Kivisto was removed from his position as CEO, and apparently the company and Kivisto ran into trouble trading oil futures. Between this and the raises for Mark Mangino and Bill Self, Kansas fans might see a slight bump in their mandatory donations to the Kansas Athletic Department for season tickets in the coming years.

Start your work week off right with Monday Morning Coffee, where Fanhouse scours YouTube for the finest college football footage available. Either that or we give up after a couple minutes and just post the "I Like Turtles" kid.

The most infuriating opponent in Big XII history may be Seneca Wallace, the juco transfer quarterback for Iowa State in 2001 and 2002. While guys like Vince Young and Tommie Frazier were surrounded by unbelievable talent (and have the rings to show for it), Wallace single-handedly propelled ISU to victory on numerous occasions, all while playing with a reckless abandon that usually caused opponents' fans to yell things like, "TACKLE HIM TACKLE HIM AAAAGGGHAGHGH" as he turns a sack into a gain of 17.

On this play, Wallace is flushed out of the pocket and chased all the way back to the 32-yard line, a full 20 yards behind scrimmage. Defenders have pinned him near the sideline, and all that remains is the simple task of bringing him down.



Um, Texas Tech? EPIC FAIL, sirs. Take special note of the defender at :23 as he throws himself at nothing in particular, like he's a character in NCAA '09 being controlled by someone who's really terrible.

Iowa State would go on to win 31-17 to improve to 6-1 and enter the Top 10 for the first (and only) time in school history. The next week, they traveled to Norman, Oklahoma to lose to the Sooners in a 49-3 squeaker. They won only one game the rest of the year and haven't sniffed relevancy since. But hey, sweet run.