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According to an ESPN.com report, a number of players from Georgia, Georgia Tech and Northwestern staged a peaceful, but visible protest of the NCAA's alleged treatment of student-athletes — donning equipment marked with the initials "APU," as in All Players United. The National College Players Association, which is seemingly co-opting this movement with a number of players from various schools throughout the country, has the following message posted on its Web site.

The College Football Czar: Week 4 Week three in review: Everybody is convinced that the Pac 12 officials were at fault in last week’s Arizona State-Wisconsin fiasco, but nobody seems to know what they should have done differently. The strange scenario began when Badger QB Joel Stave grazed the turf with his knee, then popped back up and placed the ball on the ground with 15 seconds to play. One of the Sun Devil defenders, unable to see Stave’s knee touch the ground, jumped on what he thought was a live ball as the clock continued to run. By the...

Thursday, September 19 TIME (ET) MATCHUP 7:30 PM No. 3 Clemson at North Carolina State Friday, September 20 TIME (ET) MATCHUP 9:00 PM Boise State at Fresno State Saturday, September 21 TIME (ET) MATCHUP 12:00 PM Florida A&M at No. 4 Ohio State 12:00 PM Florida International at No. 7 Louisville 12:00 PM North Carolina at Georgia Tech 12:00 PM Vanderbilt at Massachusetts 12:00 PM San Jose State at Minnesota 12:00 PM Marshall at Virginia Tech 12:00 PM Wake Forest at Army 12:00 PM Toledo at Central Michigan 12:00 PM Middle Tennessee at Florida Atlantic 12:00 PM Western Michigan at...

Keith Jackson has some stories, all right. Of riding his horse four miles to his rural Georgia high school. Of nights carousing with Paul "Bear" Bryant. Of the time Howard Cosell, smelling like a Russian distillery, set Jackson's pants on fire during a telecast of "Monday Night Football." ... Any other tips for today's broadcasters? "They talk too damn much," he says. "You wear the audience out." ...

Thursday, September 5 TIME (ET) 7:30 PM Florida Atlantic at East Carolina 10:00 PM Sacramento State at Arizona State Friday, September 6 TIME (ET) 8:00 PM Wake Forest at Boston College 8:00 PM UCF at Florida International Saturday, September 7 TIME (ET) 12:00 PM Eastern Kentucky at No. 8 Louisville 12:00 PM No. 12 Florida at Miami (FL) 12:00 PM No. 13 Oklahoma State at UTSA 12:00 PM Tennessee Tech at No. 21 Wisconsin 12:00 PM Southeastern Louisiana at No. 24 TCU 12:00 PM Miami (OH) at Kentucky 12:00 PM South Florida at Michigan State 12:00 PM Norfolk State at...

The College Football Czar: Week 2 Week one in review: If you thought you were watching the same game throughout the long weekend, that’s because it was everyone’s last chance to wear white before Labor Day. Watching highlights from around the nation, one might have thought that all the games had been sponsored by Sta-Puft marshmallows. One of the big story lines was the number of Division I-A teams that were upset in their openers by Division I-AA opponents. This is really nothing new, but viewers are more aware of it now, because so many of those games are being...

Trayvon Martin’s father led the FAMU football team onto the field before the Rattlers’ season opener Sunday at the Citrus Bowl, embracing his role as honorary captain this season. .. “It feels good just to be a part of that, man. I had a son that used to go to FAMU and Trayvon wanted to go to FAMU,” Martin said immediately after taking the field.

Johnny Football will start the season on the bench. Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel of No. 7 Texas A&M has been suspended for the first half of Saturday's season opener against the Rice Owls, a source told ESPN's Brett McMurphy on Wednesday afternoon. An agreement has been reached between the NCAA and Texas A&M that a source told McMurphy closes the book on Manziel's recent issues. The NCAA had been investigating whether Manziel was paid for autographs, a potential violation of amateurism rules that could threaten his eligibility.

The College Football Czar: Week 1 If you're reading the College Football Czar’s week one picks, that must mean that yet another long summer of terrible TV is about to come to a merciful end. So – if you’ve become so starved for anything remotely sportslike that you’ve resorted to watching ESPN’s Nine for IX series, and pretended to like it ... If you’ve actually found yourself engaged in discussions about whether it’s fair for Wigan Athletic to be relegated after winning the FA Cup ... If you not only managed to sit through the entire Tennessee Orange-White Game, but...

The College Football Czar 2013 Season Preview a sports publication from The Shinbone by Daniel Clark Welcome to the 2013 season preview issue of The College Football Czar, a seasonal sports publication by the author and editor of The Shinbone. In the coming months, you will find weekly analyses of upcoming college football action posted at this site. To find out more, please see the Ground Rules. This issue contains conference preview capsules, potential upsets to watch for, bowl projections, and a guide to help you locate head coaches on the move. Most importantly, it includes early nominees for the...

Madison – Speaking on his monthly radio show Tuesday night, Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez shared a nugget of information that should cheer football fans who long for better nonleague games. According to Alvarez, Big Ten officials recently agreed to stop scheduling nonconference games against FCS programs. “The nonconference schedule in our league is ridiculous,” Alvarez said on WIBA-AM. “It’s not very appealing… “So we’ve made an agreement that our future games will all be Division I schools. It will not be FCS schools.”

On Tuesday morning, commentary on the broadcast of the Bowl Championship Series national title game between Alabama and Notre Dame included words like “creepy,” “awkward,” “uncomfortable” and “heteronormative.” The subject was not Alabama’s 42-14 victory, but comments made during the game by the ESPN play-by-play announcer Brent Musburger regarding the girlfriend of Alabama quarterback A J McCarron. In the first quarter, ESPN showed McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb, who was sitting near his parents. Musburger called the 23-year-old Webb, a former Miss Alabama, a “lovely lady” and “beautiful,” and said to his broadcast partner, Kirk Herbstreit, a former quarterback at Ohio...

As often happens during boring, blowout bowl games, the cameras and commentary shifted tonight from the action on the field to the stands and Alabama QB A.J. McCarron's girlfriend Katherine Webb. Okay, sure, mention she goes to Auburn and how scandalous that is—that's normal. ESPN announcer Brent Musberger, though, couldn't leave it at that.

Alabama Wins National Championship Cork GainesJanuary 7, 2013 In the end, it wasn't even close. Alabama blew out Notre Dame 42-14 and Nick Saban has now won three national titles in four years. Here are the final moments...(Click to the site to see the video)

BCS Championship Game thread - Alabama (2) at Notre Dame (1) (+9, O/U 40.5), ESPN 830pm EST. Miami Gardens, Fl. Weather, temperature around 73 degrees, chance of showers 10 percent.

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The images will be vivid, history will be haunting, ghosts will be everywhere.This is Knute Rockne versus Bear Bryant, Touchdown Jesus versus Dreamland Bar-B-Que, Four Horsemen versus Lynyrd Skynyrd, Joe Montana versus Joe Namath, and, of course, in the battle of the little guys, Rudy versus Nick.It will be a football game bathed in a complicated mess of legend, religion and roughhousing, but most folks think Monday's BCS national championship heavyweight fight between Alabama and Notre Dame can be symbolized by a single disparity.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Jeremy Pike is a 37-year-old native and resident of Tuscaloosa, Ala. Like all proper fans of the Alabama Crimson Tide, he maintains an abiding hatred of Southeastern Conference rivals Auburn and Tennessee. But there is a third member of his unholy fan trinity, and always has been. "Oh, I hate Notre Dame," Pike said. "I never pull for them." On Nov. 3, Pike and about 50 other Alabama fans were in Louisiana getting ready to watch the Tide play LSU – the most anticipated game of the year. But before the game, they were glued to...

Does it seem that almost every bowl game is on ESPN?  That’s because almost every bowl game *is* on ESPN. There are 35 bowl games.  32 will be on an ESPN network whereas CBS, FOX, and ABC will have one each.  Given that ABC and ESPN have the same parent company, Disney, Disney will have 33 of 35 games on one of its networks.  For industrial organization fans, that’s a Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index of  8384 if ABC and ESPN are considered separate firms and 8906 if they are considered the same firm.  An HHI of 10,000 is 100% monopolized.  Dang.HT Craig...

I searched and didn't find a thread already underway, so...the Heisman will be presented within the hour. FReepers' thoughts/reactions?

The 2012-13 bowl season starts in Albuquerque, N.M., and ends in Miami. Here's a look at the schedule from the Gildan New Mexico Bowl on Dec. 15 to the Discover BCS National Championship Game on Jan. 7 in Miami's Sun Life Stadium.