The marriage between Ohio State and Terrelle Pryor began with such promise. The nation's most gifted high school quarterback joining forces with the reigning powerhouse of the Big Ten? What could possibly go wrong?
Deep in preparation for a Big East mega-game Thursday at No. 21 South Florida, Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly took a day off to visit ESPN's corporate monolith last Friday. It was a match made in media heaven, Kelly being a Worldwide Co-Leader in the ways of corporate and self-promotion.
From his home in Austin, Texas, Chad Morris watches every Auburn game, just as he did for Tulsa the past two seasons and Arkansas the year before that.
We love our football in this country, don't we? Whether it's watching the pee-wees or the pros, there's nothing like taking in a game on a crisp fall afternoon.
That first Friday at Grove City High was so quiet. Any other school year, the school's nationally acclaimed band would have ended the day by marching through the halls blasting the fight song. Any other school year, more than 11,000 would have gathered later that evening at the stadium behind the school to watch the Greyhounds -- better known as the Dawgs -- open their season. Any other school year, Friday would have meant something.
"Yes, it's all gone now," Craig Dunn told me the other day. "If you're not from around here, you'd never know it was ever there."
The Ohio State Buckeyes say this time is different more than John Daly and Liz Taylor combined.
Should high school football coaches be held criminally responsible if their players collapse and die due to demanding -- or some might say oppressive -- practice conditions?
A small plane crashed Friday near an Ohio-area high school during a football scrimmage.
Before Friday night lights, there is summer suffering.
The marriage between Ohio State and Terrelle Pryor began with such promise. The nation's most gifted high school quarterback joining forces with the reigning powerhouse of the Big Ten? What could possibly go wrong?
Deep in preparation for a Big East mega-game Thursday at No. 21 South Florida, Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly took a day off to visit ESPN's corporate monolith last Friday. It was a match made in media heaven, Kelly being a Worldwide Co-Leader in the ways of corporate and self-promotion.
From his home in Austin, Texas, Chad Morris watches every Auburn game, just as he did for Tulsa the past two seasons and Arkansas the year before that.
We love our football in this country, don't we? Whether it's watching the pee-wees or the pros, there's nothing like taking in a game on a crisp fall afternoon.
That first Friday at Grove City High was so quiet. Any other school year, the school's nationally acclaimed band would have ended the day by marching through the halls blasting the fight song. Any other school year, more than 11,000 would have gathered later that evening at the stadium behind the school to watch the Greyhounds -- better known as the Dawgs -- open their season. Any other school year, Friday would have meant something.
"Yes, it's all gone now," Craig Dunn told me the other day. "If you're not from around here, you'd never know it was ever there."
The Ohio State Buckeyes say this time is different more than John Daly and Liz Taylor combined.
Should high school football coaches be held criminally responsible if their players collapse and die due to demanding -- or some might say oppressive -- practice conditions?
A small plane crashed Friday near an Ohio-area high school during a football scrimmage.
Before Friday night lights, there is summer suffering.
Norm Brown sold cookie dough. He sought donations for a 5K run fundraiser. He helped organize a football camp. Brown, the football coach at Independence High in San Jose, Calif., poured his energy this spring into raising money to save the athletic program for the East Side Union school district's 11 high schools. So on June 25, when the district's board of trustees reversed an earlier decision to eliminate the district's $1.8 million athletic budget, Brown should have been celebrating. Instead, the night was bittersweet.
Thousands gathered Saturday for the funeral of former NFL quarterback Steve McNair, who was killed a week ago.
It's happening to Derrick Brooks. After 11 Pro Bowls, six first-team all-pro nods, one Super Bowl victory and one Defensive Player of the Year award, football is saying to him, "We don't need you anymore.''
On draft day, every pick can change the world. That's the nature of hope and sports. Every recruit is a future star. Every draft pick might go to the Hall of Fame. In the NFL draft -- the biggest talent-grab of them all -- you have these fun interviews with general managers and coaches after every pick. Every one sounds the same:
Like regular people, great athletes retire in all sorts of ways. Some do it gracefully. Some do it tragically. Some do it almost invisibly. And some do it endlessly.
It's been dubbed the No. 1 high school rivalry in the United States. But last decade, Phillipsburg High School and Easton Area High School left the football field without a clear winner: a 7-7 tie.
My, a lot of folks are hot under the horse collar about the NFL's new Brady Rule, which continues the trend of making it costly to take the shortest or even longest route to the quarterback and arrive in ill humor. One site claims the league will require signal-callers to wear dresses, and ESPN's Mike Golic has suggested that players will get flagged for merely looking at a QB.
The Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a high school football coach who had been forbidden to join in pregame prayers led by his student athletes.
A popular Kentucky high school football coach was arraigned Monday on a reckless homicide charge in the heat-exhaustion-related death of one of his players.
One day in late December, dry-erase boards stood staggered a few yards apart on the track surrounding the field at the University of North Florida. A Nebraska assistant coach was posted in front of each board, and around each coach huddled a clutch of Jacksonville-area high school coaches. The Cornhuskers had come to the Sunshine State to face Clemson in the Gator Bowl, but first-year coach Bo Pelini and his staff figured that while they were there, they should lay the foundation for a recruiting pipeline into the state that, from 2004-08, produced more BCS-conference football players (981) than any other.
After a while, as a sportswriter, you get used to coaches calling. A coach in the mountains of North Carolina called the newspaper again and again to come do a story on his punter, who was averaging something like 55 yards a kick. When a reporter finally gave in and weaved along the icy two-lane roads, he found the town and he found the punter. The problem was: The guys keeping the box score were measuring the kid's punts from where he kicked the ball -- some 12 yards behind the line of scrimmage.
Florida won't take the field to play for the national title until Thursday, but the Gators scored a victory for their future Sunday when Sanford (Fla.) Seminole receiver Andre Debose committed during the Under Armour All-America Game, choosing Florida from a group that also included Georgia, LSU and Miami.
In most professions, recognition is a welcome reward for a job well done. But for NFL referee Alberto Riverón, the best days at the office are the ones in which he goes relatively unnoticed. Oct. 12 was not one of those days.
All college coaches still searching for an athletic tight end should watch this video. You may not have missed your chance to land the guy who made the play of the year in high school football.
The bus was on I-35 just north of Laredo, Texas, with about 450 miles still to go and plenty of gas in the tank, when the driver suddenly pulled over to the side of the road. Assistant coach Gustavo Adame immediately knew why. Before the bus came to a halt, he sprang from his seat in the front and shouted in Spanish, "Paperwork, out! Passports, out! Visas, out! Rápido!"
If this were any other football week, the streets of this south Florida community would be lined with banners reading "Go Blue Devils." Instead, the sign on the main drag speaks to a different mood: "Hey Pooh. We love you."
The moment Mark Sanchez cemented himself as USC's starting quarterback this season didn't come when he led the team to a fourth-quarter comeback win over Arizona last season in his first career start. It didn't come when he threw four touchdowns passes and no interceptions in a 38-0 rout of Notre Dame in South Bend. It didn't even come this spring when coach Pete Carroll named him the starter in April, leading to No. 6 jerseys being printed and sold in the campus bookstore.
At a New Orleans Saints practice, the country star is declared "part of the team"
SI.com has dispatched 10 writers to report on the 32 NFL training camps across the country. For the complete schedule of postcards, click here.
The summer before his red-shirt freshman season at Texas Tech in 2004, prized quarterback recruit Graham Harrell took a week-long working vacation. Already ensconced in workouts on the Tech campus, Harrell left to prepare for and play in the Oil Bowl -- the annual all-star football grudge match between Oklahoma and Texas high school seniors. "When Texas plays Oklahoma in college, half the Sooners roster is from Texas and vice versa," says Harrell. "With the summer all-star games, it's purely a state rivalry."
Bryce Petty knew he was good enough to earn a scholarship offer from a BCS school, yet the Midlothian (Texas) High quarterback couldn't seem to get a coach to pull the trigger. As the nation's top programs courted upper-tier recruits, Petty waited. All the while, he knew he had a better chance if those coaches could watch him throw with their own eyes or engage him in a little chalk talk.
Saints coach Sean Payton knows how to take advantage of the moment and is not afraid to take on new challenges.
Pillar by pillar, Chris Olsen's world was crashing down.
A tornado struck northeast Iowa a week ago, and seven people were killed. About 220 homes were destroyed, and much of the downtown of Parkersburg, Iowa, (pop.: 1,800) was leveled.
Illinois coach Ron Zook believes college football's ruling class has enacted a law to keep the serfs from joining the landed gentry. Alabama coach Nick Saban, the man the rule was instituted for, hates it. USC coach Pete Carroll thinks his rivals have handcuffed him because they're lazy. And while Zook, Saban, Carroll and their ilk sit in their offices this spring, a silent majority of head coaches will breathe easier.
If this is going to work, if Tom Osborne and Bo Pelini are going to turn the new Nebraska back into the old Nebraska, the process had to start in a place like this, in the rural town of West Point (pop. 3,472). It had to begin with a Nebraska kid, a tough, hardworking high school player who has always been a Husker in his heart, a kid like linebacker Micah Kreikemeier. Now, Micah Kreikemeier might one day join the long line of legendary Nebraska stars, or he might be one of those Cornhuskers who never has a bigger college football highlight than the day the most famous man in the state called to offer him a scholarship. But one thing that Micah Kreikemeier almost surely will do is work his tail off the way Nebraska boys are expected to do, treasure the block N on the side of his helmet as if it were a big red ruby and make everyone in the state proud that he's one of their own. If you don't know how important all of that is, well, then you don't know Nebraska.
The message boards buzzed when Kalispell, Mont., forward Brock Osweiler committed to Gonzaga two years ago. Would Osweiler, then a high school freshman, make it to Spokane, Wash., before changing his mind or doing something to make Gonzaga coaches change their minds? Now, as Osweiler nears the end of his junior year, he may indeed choose a school other than Gonzaga.
Scott Porter remembered the game. Asked Wednesday if he could recall the most heartbreaking loss of his junior season at Lake Howell High in Winter Park, Fla., the man who plays paralyzed former Dillon Panthers quarterback Jason Street on NBC's Friday Night Lights flicked on his mental highlight reel.
The Kevin Hart saga zoomed past weird last week and careened directly into surreal. How? Jerry Glanville got involved.
What do you suppose it was like to be inside the tiny gymnasium at Jeannette (Pa.) High last Saturday night?
If you've checked out the SI/TAKKLE.com list of the nation's top 100 high school football players recently, you probably pelted your computer screen in strawberry-banana smoothie when you noticed one particular ranking.
Kevin Plank, the former Maryland football walk-on who founded Under Armour, didn't seem concerned on Saturday that the U.S. Army All-American Bowl had a seven-year head start on the fledgling Under Armour All-America game.
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