It's Tuesday, that must mean Pundit Roundup time.  Hoo rayyyyyy.

--- ESPN's Bruce Feldman starts things off with the usual Friday Mailbag - on Monday.  Feldman estimates Butch Davis will have North Carolina in the top 10 sometime before 2010.  That's optimistic but the ACC's still usettled enough to make that possible.

There's also this, first spotted at The Wiz's site:

Interesting item from the Wizard of Odds blog reporting that last month, the Iowa Athletic Department purchased the domain FireKirkFerentz.com, which was previously owned by Redshirted.com, a site that sells fireyourcoach domain names:

"Ferentz, the Iowa coach, is the highest-paid employee in the state with an annual salary of $2.7 million. His teams won 31 games during a three-year span from 2002-2004, but his past two squads have struggled to 7-5 and 6-7 records. FireKirkFerentz.com now redirects you to HawkeyeSports.com, the main site of Iowa athletics."

I think Iowa is setting a bad precedent.  In the "it's not the same but I hope you can see where I'm going with this" department, isn't this a little like negotiating with terrorists?  Trading hostages for goodies etc.?  I link to a lot of fire the coach websites but I think their effect is grossly overstated by fans and the media.

If anything the only people with the resources to probably pay up to a middleman like Redshirted.com are the athletic departments themselves.  Big pocketed fans tend to also be boosters and although they may share the sentiment of wanting a coach canned, probably won't want to openly associate themselves with such a website.  That leaves the casual fan and the athletic departments.  I'm guessing those sites are probably at least $100 if not much more which prices even the frenzied fans out.  Look at the recruiting sites, a lot of them provide great content yet only a small, committed group of fans out of rather large fan bases actually ponies up for the subscriptions that cost around $100 annually.

In my eyes Iowa made a mistake here when Redshirted.com had already done the labor for them in buying up the domain and then sat on it, probably without any tangible offers likely to come through and pay for the investment in the first place.  For some reason the phrases "barriers to entry" and "sunk costs" keep floating in my mind, although I'm not sure they're the exact concepts I'm looking for.

The point is, Redshirted.com did the athletic departments a favor (in the short term) by pricing out relatively cheap and available domain names.  As a business they naturally would charge more than the Register.com's of the world for the domain thus pricing out the vast majority of people who otherwise might've been in a drunk and disorderly enough mood to purchase such a domain and flame away at a coach in the first place.

Also: Spring QB story lines and other nuggets of info.  Example - ASU defensive end Loren Howard is now out of football due to injuries.

Also: A Q&A with Vanderbilt receiver Earl Bennett.  There's a rider at the end of the article with various other tidbits including this:

Florida president Bernie Machen said Sunday night that SEC presidents will discuss a college football playoff at the spring meetings in Destin in May. Machen thinks it's a big step that the other CEOs would even agree to talk. The Tampa Trib's Andy Staples talked to SEC head Mike Slive, who made it sound like the presidents will want to examine options for when the TV contract runs out.

Bad.  Don't do it, guys.

--- Sports Illustrated's Arash Markazi referees a trans-atlantic phone call between Boise State's Ian Johnson and ... Chelsea footballer Didier Drogba.

Excerpt:

Johnson: You wear No. 11. How did you get that number? Was it always your favorite, or how did you pick it?

Drogba: I was born on March 11. I think it's is my lucky number.

Johnson: I'm No. 41, but I didn't pick that number. When you are a freshman they kind of just give you the crappy numbers. I got the number and was like, Wow, I hate this number, these guys must really hate me. Then the next thing you know, I just fell in love with the number. They gave it to me to shame me and I kind of made it into something bigger.

--- CBS Sportsline's Dennis Dodd pens a two-part series on football in Kentucky.  Here's the UK.  Here's Louisville.  Both obviously have big hopes for 2007.

--- The Sporting News' Matt Hayes pens his annual "BCS-is-better" column.

Look, George Mason was fun last year. Just like Boise State was fun in the Fiesta Bowl. It's a rarity, not reality.

But somehow, we ridicule college football's postseason yet revel in the glory that is the basketball tournament. They're one in the same, people: inherently awkward systems devised to make money.

Only one is worse than the other: the one that acts like a "playoff."

Yet another person tired of having a hilariously flawed tournament shoved in his face as the ultimate solution for college football.

Also: Hayes' "Inside Dish".  Joe Paterno is talking to LSU about how to to use his big-armed but erratic (to put it mildly) quarterback.  Boise State's coaches want to get Ian Johnson the ball 30 times a game this year.  Yikes.

--- The Sporting News' Tom Dienhart must have been hit with the same Minnesota PR ambush that hit Rivals.com and ESPN's Ivan Maisel recently because he, too, is writing about Minnesota and/or new coach Tim Brewster.  The man has dreams, obviously -they're just dumbfounding to the writers: Big 10 Championship, Rose Bowl appearances, national title.

--- The Mobile Register's Paul Finebaum may be head-over-heels for Alabama coach Nick Saban, but he absolutely blisters the performance (relative to Auburn) of Alabama's other sports teams here.  In the process he also calls both school's athletic directors 'puppets of the board of trustees' and otherwise crudely baits Alabama fans.

Also: Finebaum attacks Alabama football's perception as a place of unreasonable expectations.

Where do these guys in the national media get this stuff?

Alabama fans were so easy on Shula it was embarrassing. Oh, there were a handful who correctly saw the handwriting on the wall. But most -- because they are fans -- were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and stick with him through thick and thin...

...But how does that square with what ESPN yapping head Colin Cowherd said in the aftermath of Shula's firing?

"The one everyone thinks is such a great job and I don't is Alabama. They have a bad athletic director, Bear Bryant's son is your boss. They have wacko delusional boosters, an absurd and unrealistic scrutiny, hyper-competitive environment. ... What's good about that?"

Frankly, I think Alabama needs more delusional boosters, more absurd and unrealistic scrutiny and a hyper-competitive environment.

Until Saban showed up in January, it had none of that. Now, at least, the Tide has a coach who demands excellence from his players.

I agree.

--- We finish with Sun Sports TV's Whit Watson who is slowly returning to blogging.  A new show has cornered most of his time but in doing so he gets to travel the state of Florida and have interesting little sit-downs with the state's various sports personalities.  Here's his writeup on Don Shula, for example.  Interesting, but not so much about college football.  Therefore I want to single out this bit about former Florida State star LeRoy Butler.

Ever hear LeRoy Butler's story? He grows up in Jacksonville, in a housing project that sees death on a daily basis. LeRoy has club feet, bad. Doctors have to break his legs and reset them while he's a toddler. When he's not confined to a wheelchair, he wears bulky braces on both legs. The only thing that gets him through the day is his infectious sense of humor, which causes the neighborhood to rally around him, to protect him. Everybody loves LeRoy.

So one day, his sister comes running downstairs in his house -- on her way to the prom, according to LeRoy -- and trips in her high heels. She knocks LeRoy over and breaks one of his leg braces. He stands up, mad as hell at his sibling, and stomps his other foot, which breaks his other brace. One of his brothers looks over and screams, "LeRoy! You're standing up!"

At which point, according to the legend, LeRoy looks down at his legs, looks up at his siblings, and barrels out the front door to join a kickball game in the street. He was eight years old, and it was the first time he ever ran anywhere.

The rest is just too preposterous to be true, yet we know it's real. LeRoy Butler gets a scholarship to play football at Florida State. He becomes a consensus All-American defensive back as a senior. He runs the "puntrooskie," one of the most famous plays in the history of college football and, in my opinion, the play that put FSU football on the map for good. Butler gets drafted by the Green Bay Packers, plays all 12 of his NFL seasons there, makes the league's All-Decade Team for the '90s, wins a Super Bowl with Holmgren and Favre and Reggie White, invents the "Lambeau Leap" -- yes, invents it -- retires a hero, starts charitable foundations in both Wisconsin and north Florida, has four daughters, and will be inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame this summer.

That, friends, is a career. That is a life. And I met him last Thursday. As one of our cameramen said after the show, "Brother, the world needs more people like you."

Alright, that's it for this week's edition of the Pundit Roundup!

***
To read articles and blog entries from many other college football writers, be sure and visit CFR's "The Punditry" links.  You can either bookmark that link or find it via CFR's College Football Links section on the menu at left.