Call this a 'spring cleaning' of sorts. I bookmark interesting items all the time and try to address them. The ones that go un-addressed ... sit there in my bookmarks folder and take up space.  Much of that out was simply deleted earlier this week but I've saved some items for commentary below.

***
BALCO, Journalism and The Law

We all love the First Ammendment. Thousands of years of civilization have passed and such a basic liberty has yet to be guaranteed to a great many people around the world. In the United States that freedom is almost universal (outside of the classic yelling "fire" in a movie theatre type scenarios). Thing is, certain speech has consequences.

When some reporters published secret grand jury testimony about the BALCO investigation, they broke the law. A great many journalists have come to their defense and there are in fact shield laws to protect journalists who break the law under certain scenarios. This shouldn't be one of them.

In the eyes of the American justice system, there is no difference between the two parties - and that's what makes the American justice system so great. Everyone is treated equally regardless of how much a sleazeball or saint one is thought to be.

Do you really think Jason Giambi would've admitted his usage of steroids if he had known his supposedly sealed testimony would later be leaked to the press? Would Barry Bonds have even copped to the "clear" and the "cream"? If we are ever to get to the bottom of this steroid problem, then we need people to testify, including players that are currently playing in the big leagues. If players believe that whatever they say behind closed doors will be leaked to the press and ultimately the public, they will never testify and we will never really get to the bottom of the problem.

In this tension between the First Ammendment, journalism, truth and the sanctity of sealed testimony, I side with the courts here. The journalists in this situation were not censored or muzzled, but there are consequences to their actions and as frustrating as that is to witness, the right thing is to prosecute both the person who leaked the testimony and the people who published something that wasn't theirs to publish.

UPDATE: I've been challenged, if you will.  Anyone care to provide further insight?

CFR,

You recently posted an egregious error that must be corrected:

"When some reporters published secret grand jury testimony about the BALCO investigation, they broke the law."

That is absolutely, 100% FALSE. The reporters were perfectly in their right to publish the information. The reason the reporters almost went to jail is because they refused to reveal how they obtained the leaked information and were held in contempt of court.

What's actually illegal is LEAKING the information not possessing it or printing it. Of course, if you were a real journalist you would know the difference.

If I were a real journalist I'd think long and hard about even looking at sealed grand jury documents let alone publishing them.  The government through the courts takes the extreme measure of making secret grand jury testimony and sealing related documents.

There must be a good reason for it, no?  There is some value in having certain testimony away from the eyes and emotions of the public, no?  Some testimony can advance a case but can only be obtained in secrecy, no?  And what happens when the public knows their potential "secret" testimony isn't so secret because people are willing to leak and/or make public such testimony?

Public faith in the competence of the courts erodes.  The courts themselves lose what to now has been an established privilege, and the privilege instead tips in favor of the press/media.  The first ammendment guarantees a free and vigorous right to speech, but there are some limits.

So far the balance between the extra-legal status jounalists strive for (such as shield laws) and the rule of law is that we tend not to muzzle those who have information.  They can choose to sit on it or go public.  But there's a cost to that, and the government is going to want the leak named so as to prosecute the leak.  It further wishes such information were never made public.  I tend to be sympathetic to the government in such a situation.

Furthermore, I said "the right thing to do" is to prosecute both the 1)leaker and 2)the publisher.  Whether both sets of prosecutions are legal or not is not what I was addressing in that sentence.  I could have made it more clear that I side with the courts in pursuing a prosecution because of a hypothetical person's unwillingness to reveal the source that leaked sealed grand jury testimony.

Look, I'm just a pundit but I don't see the compelling reason here why the reporters in this case shouldn't have suffered some consequence.  The media made it out like it was some kind of witch-hunt when in fact the two journalists were unwilling to name a source who broke the law so they could make public something not intended for the public.

Maybe they were right, maybe like I feel, they were wrong.  But there's been very little talk of them having done wrong whenever I've watched SportsCenter or read many of the CFB writers I respect chiming in on this case who have universally come to their defense.  The situation isn't so one-side as the sports media tells it which is why I wrote this here.

The public is best served by a media willing to truthfully examine its own errors and maybe I'm wrong here, but the unwillingness to so much as name a law-breaking source strikes me as bad journalism.  Yes, protecting sources is right near the top of the list in the journalist's playbook, but practicing good journalism should probably be higher.  When the evidence sat before them, the two gentlemen had a choice to 1)either not publish it and save themselves the court battle or 2)publish it but risk the government asking for their sources.  The second choice created the tension we are now all witness to.  The first one might have best served the public particularly because the Bonds investigation isn't exactly the Pentagon Papers here.

The public gained knowledge from sealed grand jury testimony but it also lost as court procedures were undermined.  In my rubric, the public gain is temporal while their loss is far more lasting.

If someone has further insight or corrections, please send me an email.
***
Cost Of Living

Most expensive college football towns, per Money Magazine.

1. Stanford (Palo Alto, CA)
   
2. UCLA (Los Angeles/Brentwood/LA's West Side, CA)
   
3. USC (Los Angeles, CA)
   

No surprise. In spite of that, those three are also tops in the NCAA in total all-sports team championships.  Well, maybe "most sports" since football isn't counted much to USC's chagrin.

***
The Terrapins Formula

But head coach Ralph Friedgen argues the unexplainable becomes quite explainable with the use of a statistic he learned during his time with the San Diego Chargers called major offensive errors.

"That's winning it for us; there's no doubt about it," Friedgen said. "It has at every level I've coached at. It's something I believe in very strongly, and it's one of the reasons we won our first year here."

The statistic is derived by adding a team's interceptions, fumbles, dropped passes, sacks and penalties during a game and dividing that by the team's total number of offensive plays. The key is to keep the result under 12 percent -- meaning that the team is committing a human error on 12 percent or less of its plays.

Maryland has been outgained each time during its five-game winning streak. But the Terrapins have stayed under the 12 percent threshold four times, winning despite a 12.7 percent rating against Clemson.

Through the years, Friedgen said the formula's accuracy is around 95 percent. In the past two years at Maryland, its accuracy has been closer to 90 percent.

***
Frozen In Time

A recap of some of the best games of 2006, dated Nov. 21 of last year. "Who needs a playoff?"

Indeed.

***
Man Law

They're silly, but Miller Lite's Man Law commercials have some redeeming value. I beam with pride watching Jim Kelly's stirring defense of "going for it" and a win over a tie.

And then there's the great Off-Fense sign.

***
Relegation

I like college football how it is, but I've always found the soccer process of "relegation" interesting. If this game weren't already so great, this proposal by Whit Watson might be intriguing.

As an aside, in the same article Watson demonstrates some of the challenges of an eight-team playoff. The ideal setup is much larger than what can be reasonably played in college football. Throw in mission creep and it's just more evident by the day that Florida President Bernie Machen's disastrous weekend in Destin hopefully put the playoff issue to bed for a long time.

***
Crazy Game

An interesting read by the FanHouse's David J. Warner on a hybrid football game born out of the tensions of war: Austus.

One of the central tenets of Australian football is the mark . Any player who catches a kick that's 15 yards or longer can "mark the ball" and take a free kick from behind the spot of the catch. Cowley, who knew that the Americans were much better at passing the ball than kicking it, created a game based on Aussie Rules that allowed players to mark the ball after catching a forward pass .
Thus was born Austus, a hybrid of Australian and American football games that allowed the servicemen from different countries to play football against each other. Austus matches began to draw big crowds in 1943, in part because of the game's novelty, but also because of the much more balanced competition. The Australians continued to kick, but the Americans proved highly accurate with the pass, which wowed the spectators and made for very close and very exciting matches. Austus matches allowed both countries' servicemen raise large sums of money for various war charities and helped bring the two countries a little closer together.
There was hope that Austus matches would continue after the war, but alas, that was not to be. Once American forces returned home, they resumed playing American football, and the Australians went back to playing Aussie Rules. Austus faded into a remote corner of history and was forgotten.

***
Heisman Frustration

The New York Times tackles the strange voting process for the Heisman Trophy. It's controversial, but then, so is college football. At the end of the day it remains the greatest individual award in all of sport and I have no problem with Troy Smith having won it last year.

***
Nature of the Game

I'm always amused when fans of certain schools associate the academic reputation of the school with their athletes. The connection is quite often overstated. Look no further than UCLA and their heavy reliance upon "special admits" to field quality athletic teams:

At the other end of the spectrum, according to the survey of 19 Western public institutions, were UCLA and San Diego State. Seventy percent of scholarship athletes at UCLA over the previous three years were special admits; for SDSU, that figure was 64.5 percent.

By contrast, the percentage of special admits for the general student body is far lower: about 3 percent at UCLA and 20 percent at SDSU.

“In order to be competitive in Division I-A athletics, you're going to have to have some flexibility compared to your normal admission policy,” UCLA Assistant Vice Chancellor Tom Lifka said. “We need those students if we're going to be competitive in certain sports.”

I don't find anything particularly wrong about this, but it's worth noting. Our Sturdy Golden Bear is less pleased, however.

***
USC's 2006 Offensive Frustration

This was written in December before the Rose Bowl.

But this year's offense?

They have the first-ever Trojan first-team All-America tandem of wide receivers in Dwayne Jarrett and Steve Smith, and a third first-teamer in tackle Sam Baker. There's a second-teamer in center Ryan Kalil and a first-team All-Pac-10 quarterback in John David Booty.

How did those five come up so short on the same two season-defining plays in USC's two Pac-10 losses when USC couldn't get the ball past the line of scrimmage?

Both losses were on the offense, which committed four big turnovers at Oregon State and scored just seven points against UCLA.

"At first, we were rolling," freshman tailback C. J. Gable said after the UCLA game. "I don't know what happened. They figured out what we were doing. They were right where I was running the ball before I got there."

For all sorts of reasons, USC had no response other than panic. Nor does it have one today. The UCLA game is not talked about around campus these days. But the Trojans will have to deal with a Michigan defense that's better than the Bruins' on Jan 1.

USC's Web site fans aren't waiting until then. After a year of holding their fire on the two-headed replacement for offensive coordinator Norm Chow, they've placed the blame squarely on offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin, 31, and quarterbacks coach Steve Sarkisian, 32. The son of Carroll's mentor, Monte Kiffin, is the guy who sends down the plays from the press box.

But it's not just the design of the plays, or the timing of the calls, or even the way they practice. What USC is doing right now just isn't working and not inspiring the kind of confidence a dynasty must among its own players.

With 32 years as a college coach and having been twice recognized as the nation's top assistant, Chow exuded a hard-nosed belief in his way of doing things and generated confidence in Heisman Trophy pupils Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart.

He could also stand up to Carroll. The result of those philosophical battles almost certainly benefited the Trojans' offense, as did his experience in many big games.

Running an injured Chauncey Washington into the game on short-yardage situations against UCLA was as ill-advised as switching 260-pound fullback Ryan Powdrell to tailback for his career-ending short-yardage try against Nebraska.

And since the Arizona game, USC has yet to replace injured third-string fullback Stanley Havili. Who can win with a 10-man offense? Despite playing 15 freshmen this year by Game 3, there doesn't seem to be much evidence of Carroll's call for competition on offense. Only the tailback spot has depended on first-year players, and that's mostly because of injuries.

What happened to Allen Bradford, who looks so good in practice?

Why haven't the young offensive guys been able to play more? On defense, they just couldn't beat out the starters. But at least they had the chance.

Although the second-half scoring outburst confirms the immense raw passing talent of quarterback John David Booty, I hunch USC's not out of murky waters with its offense.

Check back again in December and see if the concerns are the same.

***
USC Song Girls

How about eleven or so minutes of 'em? The Trojans are hoping to make a trip to New Orleans as title favorites this year. That's nice and all but c'mon, there are few things more re-assuring than seeing Song Girls hopping around on the Rose Bowl turf on January 1.

Clip One:

Clip Two:

***
Pig Stye

A breakdown of last year's mess at Arkansas.

Houston Nutt found himself in a precarious position this season - win or prepare for unemployment. The pressure has mounted against Broyles whose record with coaching hires is pathetic at best and tragic at worst (Danny Ford, Stan Heath, Jack Crowe, etc, etc). The Broyles clones haven’t had anything but sporadic success since Lou Holtz left the school in 1984. Broyles fired (aka forced a resignation from) Holtz despite a 60-21 record and 6 bowl appearances in 7 years citing that he wasn’t performing up to the ‘best of his abilities’. The Razorbacks most successful college basketball coach, Nolan Richardson, also left in an embarrassing media circus after he openly accused Broyles of treating his program as second class citizens.

So Nutt knew his place, he remained the obedient coach and hired Gus to placate the fan base for Mr. Broyles. No real fundamental philosophy change was ever expected to take place but Malzahn brought with him the kinds of players who could keep Arkansas competing for SEC West titles for several more years as well as a “perception” of offensive improvement. Whether Nutt ever intended to alter his offense over time is debatable, clearly his immediate concern was winning enough games to keep his job. And to do that he played to the strength of his team: their running backs. He didn’t allow Malzahn to install his hurry up offense and instead instructed him to utilize McFadden and Jones as the centerpiece of the Razorback offense.

These kids and their parents were misled, a common occurence in High School recruiting. Broyles contention that “experts” have determined Malzahn’s offense can’t work sounds like sheer nonsense and this would have been known prior to hiring Gus and recruiting his kids from Springdale. Plus how effective will these claims be if Florida ever gets its spread option to operate effectively (or if Alabama had hired a coach like Rich Rodriguez to install a similar system at Alabama). I believe Houston lied to both Malzahn and his recruits making promises he really couldn’t keep. But Houston did so under extreme duress from his AD. The Arkansas players and Malzahn can say they are satisfied and want to be Razorbacks but it looks to be nothing more than a smokescreen to obscure growing discontent within the program.

People can criticize Gus Malzahn, Mitch Mustain and Damian Williams but at the end of the day, it seems like some kind of promises were made about the Arkansas offense. Some pundits have come to Arkansas coach Houston Nutt's defense and although I think he's a good guy, it's very likely he made a serious mistake in this situation. Perhaps a mistake his experience should have taught him to avoid.

***
Where You From?

NFL players by state. Speaking of California players: L.A. area players, South Park style.

***
A Hurricane Doesn't Spin Like That

College football's inconvenient postseason truth.

***
One Hand Out Of The Grave

Bob Toledo's not dead yet. Just in time to steal back the next Chris Horton and Chris Markey type players from his former employer, too.

***
No Surprise

The fifth most valuable sports brand? The Rose Bowl. Bigger than the Final Four, bigger than the Olympics, up there with the FIFA World Cup and the Super Bowl.

***
The Real World

Guess how many full-time investigators the NCAA has?

The answer is 3. And a total investigative staff of about 25. Enforcement costs money. Belatedly nailing the bigger cases (such as SMU and Alabama with Albert Means) and using them as leverage is so much more cost-effective. It also fatally undermines the organization's credibility when it comes to enforcement, but hey.

My problem has always been that there's so many stupid rules out there. Real cheating and real competitive imbalance looks a lot different than what we actually get all huffed up about every few months. Perhaps the NCAA's done its job in that regard, on the cheap. Just don't count on heavy-handed enforcement for the small stuff.

***
This Is Smart

The newer, tamer SMU.

***
The Humanitarian

Maybe, just maybe, the guy isn't rotten to his core? Hm. Also: an interesting interview with Pete Carroll. The answers won't be satisfactory to some but it is a little more revealing about how he handles USC's business.

Bonus: a CNBC "Business of Innovation" special interviews Pete Carroll (starts about halfway through the audio link). 

***
Spread Is Such A Dirty Word

There's a philosophy behind it, it's not just a crutch for people who like to throw the ball and don't care about running and defense and like *style points*.

"Sometimes people hear spread and think, `Oh, you throw the ball every down,' " Kelly said. "That's not true. What it means to me is, you're making the defensive spread and cover the entire length and width of the field. The more people you spread out, the more people they need to spread out. When that happens, you create running lanes.

"The philosophy really is to spread 'em and shred 'em."

***
Remind Me Again

Which sport's postseason is the sham and which is pure and holy?

***
Sigh

Why do we so hate and envy highly paid football coaches? I occasionally hear these little straw men "what does it say about our society's values in that we pay educators so little and football coaches so much?"

It says absolutely nothing.

***
Can It Be Taught?

From the Wall Street Journal:

Thanks to new technology, the seemingly uncanny ability of many top athletes to anticipate opponents’ and teammates’ maneuvers might now be taught to average competitors. Often, the best players in a sport aren’t the fittest or strongest, but those with “field vision” - knowledge of where teammates are at all times, where the ball is headed and what opponents plan to do. Such talent has long been assumed to be innate, and impossible to teach, reports Jennifer Kahn in Wired (no link available). But now, a movement in sports training aims to use technology to show ordinary athletes how to think like superstars.

I'm skeptical.

***
An Unlikely Fix

[A] proposal, which will likely be finalized this summer, calls for the eight Sun Belt football schools to play at least 11 home football games in a two-year period. That would cut down on road games against top Division I-A teams that often pay as much as $600,000 a game.

Hooray!

***
Talking With The Man

An interview with Boise State coach Chris Petersen. He's not a playoff fan.

SB: The BCS has actually been pretty beneficial for you guys - you probably wouldn't have been in the Fiesta Bowl without the BCS system. That being said, what are your thoughts on the BCS as opposed to a playoff system?

CP: I like it. I really do. I've been around football for a long time, growing up with it. I grew up with the bowl system, and I really like the bowl system. And so I just don't see the clear-cut answer yet to the playoff system. If it would have been the plus-one, we still wouldn't have been that plus-one team going to play for the national championship. So now all of a sudden you create a bracket, and you know, you're always going to have that debate and that argument. And I can see both sides of the fence on this issue, but to tell you the truth, I like the bowl system. I really do.

SB: But unless you guys are absolutely perfect during the season, the bowl system makes it incredibly difficult for you to get into the national title picture. A team like USC can still lose a game or two and stay on the national map. Does it bother you to go into the season knowing that you're at a huge disadvantage when it comes to competing for a national title?

CP: No, because I think this: I think as our conference gets better, I think when we play better people down the road, I think when our facilities continue to grow and this program continues to change, I think that situation will change for us. You know, there's not much error in any of this. USC can lose one game. We can lose no games, so neither one of us has much error as you go through your season. I just try not to get caught up in those situations. We just worry so much about ourselves and playing to the best of our ability, and we really believe that if that happens, then good things are going to happen for Boise State no matter what the system is. And that's what happened to us last year. People were going, `What about getting into that national championship game?' Well, we wouldn't have been in it anyway! They would have chosen somebody else with a plus-one, unless you set up a big old bracket of 16 or eight teams. And then maybe they would have put us in. I don't know.

***
Yahoo/Rivals Merger

CNBC's Darren Rovell on what's likely to happen.

***
For Laughs

1) English "Pub Name" generator.  The possibilities are limitless.  My first effort: "The Caimans and Beer".

2)Sandal flask.  Cool, but then at some point you have to realize your booze has been hiding under your feet for several hours.