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Michigan State has called a press conference for 1:30 ET Wednesday to discuss its football coaching situation. The Spartans started the season 3-0 under head coach John L. Smith, but have gone just 1-5 since. That slump started with a 40-37 loss to Notre Dame in which Michigan State squandered a 16-point fourth quarter lead. That was followed by a 23-20 home loss to Illinois, a team now 2-7 on the season. Blowout losses to Big Ten powers Michigan and Ohio State came next before a stunning comeback in a 41-38 win at Northwestern.

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Weekend Eight was the weekend of near-misses and close calls. Texas, Cal and Notre Dame all escaped their games with wins. Texas won on a last second field goal in Lincoln against Nebraska, while ND drove 80 yards for a winning TD pass from Brady Quinn. Cal, however, had to go to overtime to defeat a steadily improving Washington team. It was business as usual for most of the top 5, with West Virginia, Auburn, Michigan and Ohio State all rolling to relatively easy wins. Unfortunately ND’s narrow win and subsequent drop in the polls prompted whining from Charlie Weis,...

An LSU Police investigation that already netted one arrest has now gone inside the University. WAFB 9 News has confirmed that assistant LSU strength and conditioning coach, Travelle Gaines, has been arrested for violation of sports agent laws. This is a felony in Louisiana. The charges may also violate NCAA regulations. Two weeks ago, Charles Taplin of Houston, Texas was arrested for talking to LSU football players about signing as a client for an agent Taplin was representing. Now that the University has been implicated, it's unclear at this point how this will affect the football teams status this year.

Week Seven brought another major upset in the Big Ten and the SEC. Iowa lost to Indiana; Vanderbilt beat Georgia snapping a 53 game losing streak to ranked teams. While this season has been kind of odd in that here have not been very many major upsets, the past two weeks have provided their fair share. The Auburn – Florida game lived up to the hype and went down to the last minute with Auburn winning the game. It was not without controversy either, which is another long running story this year. This week features two games that should get...

MIAMI -- Former Miami player Lamar Thomas lost his TV analyst job Monday over comments he made during a sideline-clearing brawl involving the Hurricanes and Florida International. "We were disappointed in the incident that happened on the field and regret the way it was handled in the broadcast booth," Comcast Sports SouthEast general manager Mark Fuhrman said. "We do not support or condone the inappropriate comments made by color analyst Lamar Thomas and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a similar situation from ever occurring again." CSS, a regional cable network that hired Thomas before the season, also decided...

College Football – Week Seven Week Six brought the first major upset of the year down on the plains in Auburn. Arkansas went in and physically dominated Auburn for 4 quarters en route to a shocking 27-10 victory over the Tigers. Florida followed that up by winning rather easily against LSU at the Swamp. The Buckeyes and Michigan held serve, while West Virginia had another easy game. USC was pushed again by the Huskies of Washington. This week features what was looking to be the game of the year in the SEC only last Friday night. Florida leaves the friendly...

DETROIT -- Michigan wide receiver Mario Manningham will miss the fourth-ranked Wolverines' conference game at Penn State on Saturday after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery Tuesday. "We got great news as far the injury," Michigan coach Lloyd Carr said during a conference call. "He'll miss this week, but we're very excited about the news we've received." Carr did not describe the injury further, and refused to discuss a timetable for Manningham's return. The Detroit News, citing sources close to the situation, reported that the Manningham's surgery was to repair a partially torn meniscus and a partial tear of the medial collateral...

Week Six – College Football Week Five was a fun week if you were a Buckeye fan. The weekend started out with Auburn getting a severe test at South Carolina in the super tough SEC. Ohio State went to Iowa and dismantled the Hawkeyes. USC was pushed by Washington State and Florida received a good push by Alabama. This week features the Red River Shootout between Texas and Oklahoma and another great match up in the SEC when LSU visits Florida in the Swamp. As always, all rankings are from the ESPN.com Scoreboard page. The betting lines (used sorely for...

Week Five – College Football wasn’t supposed to be a weekend that gave us great games, yet it gave as many as “Separation Saturday” did. Between the instant classic that was Notre Dame vs. Michigan State(or an epic choke job if you listen to this clip, to the shocking upset of Boston College by NC State, to the near heart attack that Georgia gave it’s fans against Colorado, the weekend was absolutely spectacular. This week features one real marquee matchup. #1 Ohio State visits Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City to play #13 Iowa. This should be an excellent game. Other...

CINCINNATI -- Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Odell Thurman was arrested early Monday on a drunken driving charge. Thurman, already serving a four-game suspension for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy, registered 0.18 percent on a blood-alcohol test - more than twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent, police said. Police Capt. Dan Gerard said an officer working near a DUI checkpoint saw Thurman drive a sport utility vehicle across a double-yellow line and stopped him. Thurman was with two other Bengals players, but police declined to release their identities. Thurman was taken to the checkpoint, being operated by police and the...

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Virginia Tech defensive end Chris Ellis and split end Josh Morgan have been suspended for violating team rules and will miss the game Saturday against No. 24 Georgia Tech. Ellis and Morgan were suspended by coach Frank Beamer on Monday after both players were arrested early Sunday morning following an altercation outside of a downtown nightclub in Blacksburg, Va. Lt. Joe Davis of the Blacksburg Police Department said officers from his department responded to calls of a "large crowd forming and advised a fight was about to "break out" around 1:50 a.m. Sunday. Davis said Morgan, a...

Week Four – College Football Week Three was dubbed “Separation Saturday” by all of the big media outlets, but, sadly, only really three of the games lived up to the billing. Oklahoma-Oregon, Tennessee-Florida and especially LSU Auburn were the exceptions to this. As has been the norm for the past few years, a few of these games were not without their controversy and blown calls. Thankfully another week of college football is upon us. The Big Ten, Big East and Big XII conference schedules begins this week, while some of the SEC heavyweights take a week from conference competition. As...

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight, whose Red Raiders lost to Oklahoma on a controversial call three years ago, said he knows how fans feel about wanting a forfeit after OU's loss to Oregon on Saturday. Knight called for Oklahoma to forfeit its basketball game with Tech on Jan. 20, 2003, when the Sooners won 69-64 in overtime at Norman after two clock controversies in the final seconds of regulation. Video replay later showed the game clock started late after OU in-bounded the ball on the game-tying drive. "Maybe now those people at Oklahoma understand what I...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Florida defensive tackle Marcus Thomas was suspended indefinitely Wednesday for a second violation of the school's substance-abuse policy, leaving the fifth-ranked Gators without their top pass rusher. Coach Urban Meyer said Thomas, a senior from Jacksonville who leads the team with three sacks, will miss at least Saturday's game against Kentucky. "He is suspended," Meyer said. "The whole situation is under review. It's under evaluation, and I'll comment when it's appropriate. There's no timetable. Nothing is set in stone." Thomas spent part of Wednesday in meetings with school officials to appeal the suspension he received earlier this...

NORMAN, Okla. -- The Pacific-10 Conference suspended for one game the officiating crew and the instant replay officials that worked Saturday's Oklahoma-Oregon football game after finding mistakes were made in calls near the end of the contest. Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen said Monday that a review by conference officials of video of the game revealed that both the instant replay officials and the game officials assigned by the conference made errors in the final minute and 12 seconds of the game. Oklahoma lost the game 34-33 after Oregon scored two touchdowns near the end of the game. An onside kick...

Week Three – College Football Week Two gave everyone the earliest #1 vs. #2 showdown in modern college football history. The game, however, turned out to not really live up to the hype. This week we are treated to SEVERAL big games, some of which are in conference in the SEC, and a historically significant rivalry renews in South Bend. As always, all rankings are from the ESPN.com Scoreboard page. I will also list any games of interest (FReepmail me if you want your team included and I will include them from here on out) and any other games listed...

COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- The acrid, awful, haunting smell of charred flesh still returns sometimes, without warning. They're phantom smells, five years old, but that doesn't make them any less real to Mark Dodge. Same with the nightmares, which are less frequent now but no less jarring. "Certain nightmares will always probably be there," Dodge said. When you have been where Mark Dodge has been, seen what he has seen, smelled what he has smelled, you don't forget. When you have bagged incinerated bodies and carried them to a morgue truck, the experience lingers. When you have spent days raking...

Add Texas coach Mack Brown to the list of critics of the NCAA's new football clock rules. Brown said Monday during the weekly Big 12 teleconference that the new rules, which were designed to limit the time of games, hurt the No. 8 Longhorns in Saturday's loss to No. 1 Ohio State. "They scored with six minutes left and the game was over before we had a chance to do anything," Brown said. "I really hope whoever made these changes will go back and look them over." Under the rule changes, the clock starts on a kickoff when the ball...

Pretty self-explanatory. And a good song. NEVER FORGET!