Recruit News...links 'n verbals

Middletown's Caleb Watkins is leading the #3 ranked team in the Cincinnati area, according to the Enquirer.

More Watkins, who accounted for two scores, including a 45 yard run in a rout over Oak Hills.

You could vote for Justin Ford to be an a West Michigan All-Star team...

WR Marcus Beaurem was 5-98 in a game in which his team clinched their conference title.

Ada's Heath Jackson was an all-state WR last year.  This year he moved to QB when the starter was injured.  He seems to be having some success...

Jackson moved to quarterback and in his third start Friday recorded 358 yards passing and ran for 155 more. 

 Gabe Walker is also having a good season, note a big INT here.  (He plays both ways, but reportedly projects as a LB for BG.

Phil Steele All-American Team

Just for yucks, Phil Steele has posted his mid-season All-American team.

BG WR Freddie Barnes is 3rd team All-American, which is pretty good.  He's the second highest ranked player in the MAC--Antonio Brown of CMU makes the 2nd team on special teams.

Nice to see Freddie Barnes getting some recognition.

Bojicic Doubtful

Starting Center Ben Bojicic is doubtful for Saturday's game, based on a BG News Report on today's MAC Teleconference.  

Everyone else seems healthy, which means we probably have enough depth to move around on the line.  Obviously wishing Ben the best for his quick return.

College Replay is Broken

Just a thought....

The instant replay system in college football is broken.  I was reminded (or convinced) of this when I heard that BG lost its one challenge in the Ball State game....for being right.

Let's review.  The announcers will tell you that "every play" is reviewed.  Accordingly, I have thought that the act of actually challenging a call is kind of wasted, because if the replay official thought it was a big deal, he would have called it in the first place, or at least hit the buzzer.

This system doesn't work.  It can only work if the replay official does one of two things:

• Can review a replay quick enough to decide before the next play starts.
• Is sharp enough to hit the buzzer if he hasn't had a chance to look.

Actually, if you think about it, a coach's challenge should never work.

So, in the Ball State game, a highly questionable fumble was called.  The replay official did not buzz down, and Coach Clawson challenged the ball just before the snap.  You should be able to assume that the replay official had a clear look at the replay and decided that the call on the field was right.  (He cannot, in that time, have had a close enough look to determine that there was no "indisputable" evidence).

After Coach's challenge, the replay official woke up, took a jolt of Red Bull, and actually watched the replay.  And determined that it was a fumble.

Now, I understand nobody is perfect.  The replay official won't get them all.  But when the Coach uses his challenge and determines that the replay official made a mistake, he should get that challenge to use for the rest of the game.

That's all.

Before there were coach's challenges, I can remember Lloyd Carr calling timeout as kind of a broad hint to the replay official ("hey dude, take the next few minutes to look at that....kthxbai.")

There shouldn't be a limit on how many times you can correct an official's mistake.

MAC East Offensive Player of the Week

For the seventh time in his career, Tyler Sheehan is the MAC East Offensive player of the week.

CBSSports.com Blog Poll Draft

Comments accepted and desired...


A few thoughts.


I am now doing my ranking for a week without looking at the previous week, so it is now a surprise to post it and see who moved.


I note that the AP poll finally followed the blogger's lead and moved Alabama to #1.


I don't really think Iowa jumps 8 solely because of their win over Wisconsin. Might be too high.


I considered dropping OSU and OK out completely. OSU has virtually nothing to show for this season in the way of quality wins, and OK has 3 losses. However, I decided to leave them both in because realistically, they are both probably better than Georgia, who was my last team out.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama
2	Florida
3	Texas
4	Iowa	8
5	Boise State
6	Southern Cal	1
7	Miami (Florida)	1
8	Oregon	2
9	LSU
10	Georgia Tech	4
11	Oklahoma State	7
12	Cincinnati	1
13	Penn State	3
14	TCU	1
15	Virginia Tech	11
16	California
17	Houston	8
18	South Carolina	3
19	Texas Tech
20	Nebraska
21	Brigham Young	4
22	Ohio State	14
23	Mississippi
24	Utah
25	Oklahoma	4
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Kansas (#19), Arkansas (#22), Auburn (#23).

A few other Ball State notes....

One thing that I didn't mention in the previews to the Ball State game was the long losing streak their Coach, Stan Parrish is on.  It dates back a long time, all the way to when he coached at Kansas State, where he immediately preceded Bill Snyder, Part I.  In fact, Parrish has a 35-game winless streak, as far as I can tell.  (Information on this is considerable scarcer than pantie-less starlets).

The Ball State board is apoplectic about now and demanding he be fired.  I can't imagine Ball State making a move after giving him only one year (not to mention costs and potential buyouts.)  It is hard to imagine that this team went from 12-2 to 0-7.  It is also hard to imagine that he is that bad a coach.

In the post-game, Coach Clawson was asked about the Chris Bullock TD run being (what I thought) was the longest TD run of the year for BG.  In fact, upon further review, it was BG's longest RUN of the year from scrimmage.  As Coach said, in response, "that isn't very long, is it?"

No. It's not.

We'll be watching the injury wires this week nervously.  In addition the injury of Ray Hutson, which we haven't heard much about, we had two O-lineman go down (Minturn and Bojicic) in the game.  It will be interesting to see how much they play against CMU.  Blaec Walker had been getting reps at tackle, so I think he might be better prepared than the back up at C is...plus C is a really important position, especially with all of our shotgun sets.

Just over 10,000 hearty souls endured the contest in Muncie.

There is sort of a prevailing idea that because Freddie Barnes has a ton of catches, he is some kind of bubble screen "system guy" who racks up numbers on easy catches behind the line.  Certainly, we do run those plays, but in the past few games, he has been downfield quite a bit.  He appears to be borderline unguardable on a slant, and at least two of his three TD catches involved him out-fighting the defenders for the ball.  He does get open deep, and while he's not a pure threat on a go pattern, he is a complete receiver who does everything well.

We did only have one sack against the porous BSU line.  There were four "hurries" on top of that.  From listening to the call, it did sound like our guys failed to "get home" on some blitzes, and to the extent Ball State was able to capitalize with downfield passes, that helped.