Monday Skull Session

By Jason Priestas on April 22, 2013 at 6:00 am
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Welcome to a huge week as far as offseason college football happenings are concerned.

Later this week, the Big Ten Conference is expected to vote to move to a nine-game league schedule and abolish "Legends and Leaders." The new B1G divisions, "East" and "West", actually make sense and mean that you can once again be proud of your beloved conference.

This week will also bring some clarity to the new college football playoff picture, when conference commissioners and an athletic directors advisory group meets in Pasadena, Calif., to vote on a name for the event as well as pick the host of the inaugural title game, to be played Jan. 12, 2015 at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, or Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.

As for the name of the event:

“It will be simple and descriptive,” said Bill Hancock, the executive director of the playoff and championship game. “And not cutesy.”

The College Bowl?

The Gridiron Classic?

Hancock wouldn’t play the “getting warmer or colder” game, but affirmed something Big 12 Conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby said earlier this week: “We want it to be more like the Masters than NASCAR.”

We can certainly get with that.

What won't be decided this week is the identification of the playoff selection committee. All we know is that it will number about 20 members and it will be used to select the four teams:

“We’ve made strides, but there’s more work to do,” Hancock said.

Hancock said the committee will consist of 15-22 members with all 10 Division I conferences represented. Its makeup will somewhat resemble the Division I basketball committee, which selects the NCAA Tournament at-large field, but could also include former commissioners, coaches and even a former media representative.

“We are reinventing the wheel,” Hancock said. “There’s never been anything like this in Division I football. We want to be deliberate with it.”

While the name and host of the first title game are formalities to some degree, expect the committee composition to be a subject of debate for a while. If the NCAA men's basketball tournament selection committee has taught us anything, selecting worthy teams is no walk in the park.

Another topic of conversation in Pasadena figures to be the NCAA's role in the larger picture. It's been a tough year for the organization and members are getting restless:

According to a person in the room, whose version of events was confirmed by two others, one athletics director asked Emmert directly whether it was time for the top football conferences to split from the lower-tier conferences of the Football Bowl Subdivision, and perhaps even away from the NCAA altogether.

"I think he responded in a way that, it was a little political," said the person, who spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was supposed to be private. "It was more along the lines of, we're going through a lot of changes now and he had heard about those kind of backroom-type conversations, and he basically said it might be time to put everything out on the table and talk through all these issues that we see in the future. He didn't back away from it."

Clearly, any eventual split from the NCAA is a long way away, but the fact that members are publicly discussing the topic is something that would have been unimaginable even five years ago.

RISING: DAMON WEBB. Last week, we told you about 2014Bucks.com, the recruiting website created by Ohio State commit Damon Webb's family. The site, highlighting Ohio State commitments, was created with the goal of recruiting other talented players to the class.

Over the weekend, Webb did his part on the gridiron, where he starred at the Cincinnati Rivals camp, becoming the only player in attendance to earn an invitation to the Rivals100 Five-Star national camp. Webb performed so well that talk is now centering on when, not if, he earns a coveted fifth star from the recruiting service.

Definitely the work of a JuggalosAVENGE ME!!! AVENGE ME!!!

 SPARTY NO! Michigan State's Spartan statue, a campus fixture in some form or another for over 70 years, was tagged late Friday night.

The statue, known to some students as "Sparty," has been vandalized before. But Friday's incident was particularly heinous. Sparty's helmet and greave had been painted blue and a large yellow "M" was scrawled on his chest.

The Michigan fan that shared the news of the tagging spent the better half of his weekend confessing to charges that he is, in fact, a Walmart Wolverine, while simultaneously denying his involvement in the vandalism.

Thankfully, all is well in East Lansing. Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis praised the quick work of the MSU Grounds Department for cleaning the statue before most students had a chance to see the damage. He also got in this zinger:

May we suggest retaliating with dyed green water in Michigan's Cooley Fountain, State fans?

 SALUTE. UMass won all of the spring games with these jerseys from Saturday:

UMass FTW

ALL THEY DO IS WIN. For a program that hasn't lost a home match in over a decade, a Big Ten title is almost a birthright. Luckily, winning conference crowns never gets old and the men's tennis team wrapped up their eighth-straight with a 4-0 blanking of Michigan in Ann Arbor Sunday. #BEATMICHAGAIN #ALWAYS

In other exciting non-rev news, redshirt junior Michael Newburger captured the 2013 NCAA pommel horse championship Sunday, becoming just the second gymnast in program history to win a national championship in the event.

MISC. Deshaun Thomas posing with students at the men's volleyball game Saturday... Former Ohio State wide receiver (and prep quarterback) Verlon Reed is getting a chance at quarterback for Findlay... WUT... THIS IS HAPPENING... Londoners salute Boston at their marathon... Fascinating: Paul Lukas of Uni Watch conducts a Q&A with his personal troll... Nikola Tesla on the 21st century... The humble life of George R.R. Martin.

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