Les Miles is Bozo The Clown Edition.

Wha? Huh? Scan down to the part about Paul Finebaum for the explanation on that one.

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Another Tuesday, another Pundit Roundup. That's how it goes 'round these parts. Carve out five minutes of your day to scan this and peruse an article or two.

---Our boy (ESPN writer) Bruce Feldman spoke with USC commit Joe McKnight this week and relays the kid's anger in the face of a media firestorm over whether or not he had contact with Reggie Bush.

McKnight vented a little on the phone last night when I asked how he was doing.

"I'm doing pretty good, but why does the media make stuff up?" he said. "The biggest thing I've learned from this (the recruiting process) is whatever you say the media is gonna flip it in a different way."

Feldman also writes that Florida State rising freshman tight end Brandon Warren is preparing to transfer to Tennessee due to an illness in the family.

Finally, some details on his much-anticipated book on recruiting:

From Jenn in Atlanta: When will the new recruiting book be out and what exactly is the focus?

Feldman: It should be out at the start of the 2007 season. The focus is following a program to see how a recruiting class comes together, going from 1,000 names right down to 25 signees. The process has been the most fascinating thing I've ever worked on. Tuesday night alone was as much of an adrenaline rush as any game I've ever covered.

I'm going to have to do some begging with Bruce or the publisher for a freebie copy when its release is imminent.

---ESPN's Ivan Maisel takes a look at "the ones that got away"

I'm shocked, just shocked to hear UCLA's staff whiffed on Carson Palmer.  Good to see that Ryan McCann experiment worked out.

Maisel also revisits the amazing Rutgers story of 2006 and whether that can be extended into 2007 and beyond.

Sounds like coach Schiano is both a dreamer and a realist.

"One of the things our staff does a good job of," Schiano said, "is dealing in facts, not fantasy:

"If Ray [Rice] doesn't rip off a [63-yard] run against Pitt, we're in trouble.

"South Florida, we're down at the half, we find a way to win [22-20].

"North Carolina was driving to win the game [before Rutgers intercepted to preserve a 21-16 advantage].

"It's a fine line between winning and losing. 11-2 could have easily been 7-6. The difference between winning and losing is finding a way to win. How did West Virginia find a way to win and we didn't?" ...

... Just as Rutgers fans revel in remembering the magic of last season, Schiano is concerned that his teams have forgotten what it feels like to lose. The fifth-year seniors who led the 2006 team lived through that 1-11 season. They understood what it felt like to be humiliated. Fear is a powerful motivator.

"The sophomores that have been here are what, 18-7?" Schiano said. "The freshmen here lost two games and they think we should have won those two."

Schiano sees opponents that will have waited a year to take revenge on Rutgers. Imagine that.

Imagine that.

---Sports Illustrated's Stewart Mandel says Florida is the new USC.

Not that USC went away or anything, but those elite recruiting classes and last year's championship suggests good things are clearly happening with the Gators.

On Saturday night, Meyer flew to Miami to attend the Super Bowl. It's not clear how much of the Colts' victory he actually watched, however.

"I spent half the game text [messaging] recruits," said Meyer.

Here's guessing this won't be his last top-ranked recruiting class.

Mandel also calls 2007 the year of the "Player's Coach"

Maybe we're throwing around that term too loosely.  At this point I think what we're calling players' coaches are guys who simply have the innate ability to relate to 17-year-olds and maintain frequent communication with them for upwards of a year.  Once those guys hit the practice field there's very little truth to the "player's coach" mystique.

---CBS Sportsline's Dennis Dodd says that in recruiting since 2002 there's USC ... and everybody else.

Think about this for a moment: of the last four "Parade Players of the Year", three are at USC: offensive lineman Jeff Byers, quarterback Mark Sanchez and athlete Joe McKnight (who shared the award this year with Notre Dame-bound quarterback Jimmy Clausen).  And, if Mitch Mustain transfers to USC, they'll have locked up the last four Parade POY's.  Amazing.

There's also this note about Alabama:

Alabama quietly went off probation on Feb. 1. To refresh: five years, the loss of 21 scholarships and a two-year postseason ban.

During those five years, 'Bama went through four coaches (if you include Mike Price and Nick Saban), won 10 games twice and finished below .500 twice

Wow, it seems like only yesterday when infractions committee chairman Tom Yeager said: "They were absolutely staring down the barrel of a gun."

That's code for Alabama almost getting the death penalty.

'Bama survived, if surviving means going through a Rolodex full of coaches and yo-yoing up and down the SEC standings.

He also pens a must-read piece just begging for the complete elimination of rule 3-2-5-e.  This is an excellent read.

I'd pull some quotes but nearly the entire thing is worth quoting.

We all know the reason behind it: three-hour TV blocks for the networks.  That's nice and all but the fans are here because the game isn't so neatly packaged.

Its a little like baseball.  We have a clock, but the games end when they end instead of this nannyish NFL way of doing things.  Sometimes that means a three hour game, sometimes it means a four hour game.  Whatever, so long as the commercial breaks don't cut into every third play we're fine.  That in turn inspires devotion and an appreciation for the nuance and natural pageantry instead of the neatly packaged way things are done in the NFL.  I don't enjoy NFL football, haven't enjoyed it for years and it tears at my soul that the game I loved in my youth has deteriorated so badly.  But I found comfort in college football and now we're heading towards doing it the NFL way.  Stop it.

Guess what folks?  If we're going to pretend to be the NFL we're going to get killed by the NFL, absolutely swallowed up.  They've been doing it their way longer and better than us and it's foolish to do it their way.  We have many of our fans because so many people are tired of how the NFL packages its game.  The product on the field is mediocre with fan attention mostly reduced to US Weekly like devotion to the latest about T.O. or the Bengals' weekly arrests or a million other sideshows.

I don't own US Weekly or anything like it.  I don't watch extra.  I don't really care about celebrities.  That stuff's unimportant.  It is the sideshow that is the machine behind the NFL's success.  What is important to me and many college football fans is the game.  I purposely try to avoid writing about the salacious stuff within college football on here.  There's so much more to our game than that and I'd rather focus on the game.

College football remains popular because we love the game.  The damn game folks, that's why the ratings are good, why we can sustain 119 teams and growing.  Tinkering with the rules changes the game and makes it worse and will cost the game its fans.  There's something in business about how expensive it is to acquire new customers.  Better to retain those you have and with rules like this it's only going to unsettle a great many "customers" of D-IA football.  Stop it.

Now that I'm worked up, onto our next pundit ...

---The Sporting News' Tom Dienhart looks at who has done the least with the most talent since 2002.

Come on down, Tennessee!  Honorable mention to South Carolina.

---The Mobile Register's Paul Finebaum ranks the SEC's top recruiting classes.

As always, he gets off a good crack at LSU:

[T]hings got worse with Les Miles' vulgar reference to Alabama as the school's newest major rival, as well as his allegations of impropriety, mostly directed toward Nick Saban's staff. When it comes to wearing the Bozo the Clown costume, this guy may retire the trophy.

He said it, not me.  I'm sure SEC media day will be fun if Miles and Finebaum cross paths.  Speaking of which, is it in Birmingham again this year or Destin?  I always get the SEC events in those two cities mixed up.

---Sun Sports' Whit Watson waxes eloquent about something other than college football: diversity in sports and America in relation to Senator Joe Biden's characterization of Senator Barack Obama as "articulate".

This is a fine read.  Why isn't there more like this on the internet?  Please bookmark Whit or watch the various Sun Sports programs (if you live in Florida) he presides over, they're always high quality and stimulating.

There's a roundtable part of several shows he hosts and they're the only television roundtables that I've ever seen lacking in screaming or mindless drivel.  That's saying a lot when the hyper-caffeinated Mike Bianchi is part of those panels.  No offense to Bianchi as he's an eloquent writer ... just exciteable.  Whit's so good he can keep a roomful of former Gator, Seminole and Hurricane stars from the 80's and 90's copacetic and cheerful.  That's respek.

So yes, Whit is "articulate" and I mean that in the most non-offensive way possible.

Alright, that's all she wrote.  Hope you've enjoyed this week's Pundit Roundup.

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