The Columbus lawyer who sent e-mails to Ohio State coach Jim Tressel last April about players selling memorabilia said he gave Tressel the names of two players -- starting quarterback Terrelle Pryor and receiver DeVier Posey -- in an interview with ESPN's "Outside the Lines."

Christopher Cicero, a walk-on player for the Buckeyes in the early 1980s, said in his first interview that it has been a stressful time since his name and e-mails to Tressel were revealed.

A fan of the Buckeyes' program, Cicero said he doesn't want to be considered the "Judas" in the controversy, and added he has received some death threats in the past few days.

LINK

And...Only when confronted with information that university officials were aware of the presence of the e-mails between Tressel and Cicero did Tressel admit to having received them, according to the source.

Tressel knew, he misled the NCAA, and now smoke is rising over Ohio State University.

Link to EPSN story

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Four Auburn football players have been kicked off the team after being arrested and charged with robbery, burglary and theft.

Mike McNeil, Antonio Goodwin, Shaun Kitchens and Dakota Mosley all were arrested early Friday morning in Auburn, Ala.

Auburn police said that three people entered a house and displayed a handgun and stole property. After a motor vehicle stop, the four were arrested and a pistol and stolen property were recovered, according to Auburn police.

Later Friday, Auburn coach Gene Chizik issued a statement saying all four players were thrown off the team.

"The players arrested in connection with this deeply troubling incident have been permanently dismissed from our football team," Chizik said in a statement. "While we realize the legal process will run its course and these young men have a right for their case to be heard, playing for Auburn University is an honor and a privilege. It is not a right."

Auburn athletics director Jay Jacobs said in a statement: "This type of behavior will not be tolerated at Auburn. I fully support Coach Chizik's swift and decisive action to dismiss these four student-athletes from our football team effective immediately."

All four were being held in the Lee County Detention Center on $511,000 bail.

"I am extremely disappointed and embarrassed by the actions of these individuals," Chizik said in a statement. "I want to personally apologize to all of those who were impacted by this senseless act, including the victims, Auburn University and the Auburn family."

"ATLANTA - Alabama rallied from 14 points down in the final 7 minutes of regulation and pulled it out in overtime, boosting its NCAA hopes with a stunning 65-59 victory over Georgia in the quarterfinals of the Southeastern Conference tournament on Friday.

JaMychal Green scored 20 points and grabbed 13 rebounds to lead the Crimson Tide (21-10), which advanced to face Kentucky in the semifinals Saturday and surely improved its position heading into the selection of the 68-team NCAA field. "

More Here - AP via NBC Sports

ESPNU will televise Alabama's spring football game live on April 16 at 2 p.m., opting for the 2009 national champions over Auburn, the team that just won the crystal trophy.

"We have a great relationship with Auburn," said Dan Margulis, ESPN director of programming and acquisitions. "It's tough because you want to cover the stories from the year before, but you're also previewing the next season. If Cam Newton is coming back, that sort of puts a different spin on it."


http://bleacherreport.com/tb/b8tzb

Well, now that we have the forum up and running, and the blog in place for when we actually have something to blog about, it is time to turn our attention to recruiting.  I would like to build the absolute best recruiting site that we possibly can.  I am not talking about just a forum where we have sticky topics and posts, although that will be a small part of it.  That is fine if that is the only capability you have.  But we are not constrained by that limitation.  We can build whatever we want.  This site didn't even exist until last week, and look at it now.  Imagine what we can do if we focus on building a recruiting site for a few weeks.  I am very excited about this next phase of the site.

I was hoping that Tidal Surge would make his way over here by now to help us out.  But I suppose he has too much hard work invested in the other place, and I can't blame him for not wanting to do the work all over again.  If he does decide to come over, we welcome his insights and participation.

However, I am sure that there are others who would be willing to step up and help out.  The first thing we need to do is build a list of requirements for what we want from the recruiting section.  Here are some of my initial thoughts:

1.  We need a recruiting database to capture all of the information about the recruits.  I will need your help to define what types of information we want to track for each recruit.  By capturing this information in a database, we don't have to worry about posting templates or anything like that.  The database will store the raw information, and the web site will generate a nicely formatted view of that information.

2.  This will probably end up being a series of pages.  The master page will be accessed by a Recruiting command on the main site menu between Forum and Members.  That page will probably have a list of the recruits and some basic information about each one.

3.  You click on the recruit to see his details.  That will take you to another page with all of his information.  We need to put together a list of everything we want to store, but things like pictures, videos, tweets, news articles, etc. will be readily available.  Another cool thing is that we can actually watch the videos without leaving the site if they are on youtube.

4.  Each recruit will also have a sub-forum that is dedicated to that recruit, for any sort of forum discussion that takes place about him.  This forum board will be accessed from the recruits web page.

So, if you would like to help out in some way, please reply to this article with your comments or suggestions.  I am a professional software engineer, so I can handle all of the technical stuff.  Don't be intimidated by that aspect of the project.  I know some of you have serious computer skills as well, and I am sure we can make use of your talents if you would like to contribute in that way.  But the great majority of the work will be actually collecting the recruiting data, and helping determine what types of data should be collected in the first place.  Once that data is collected, we need people who are knowledgeable about recruiting to look it over, verify it, and edit it as necessary.  So there is plenty of work to go around, even if you don't know anything about computer programming.  Let's use the replies to this article as a place to brainstorm and see what we can come up with.

It should be pretty interesting.  I am excited to hear the ideas that you guys put forth.

When I was at Kentucky I got booed one night by a group of students who came to the train to see us off for a game with Cincinnati.  I had fired some of our star players, and they didn't like that.  And we'd lost three of our first five games, and they didn't like that either, which I can understand.  I didn't like it myself.  In fact, I hated it.  For a young coach-which I was then-so keyed up I couldn't get to work in the morning without vomiting along the way, it was not exactly heaven on earth.  The Cincinnati game took on added importance.

Cincinnati had fine teams then, coached by Sid Gillman, who has been a big name in the pros and is with the Houston Oilers now.  What I'm about to say should not be taken as a lack of respect for Sid.  You have to appreciate that my collar was tighter than it is now.

We got to the stadium at Cincinnati and I sensed something was wrong.  When we got out to warm up for the game there was nobody in the stands.  Just a handful of people scattered around.  I thought for a minute I was in the wrong place.  When we finished our warm-up and the Cincinnati team still hadn't made an appearance, I said to Carney Laslie, one of my original assistant coaches, "What's that no-good, conniving smart aleck"-meaning the eminent Coach Gillman-"up to now?  What the h**l is that d**n thief trying to pull?"

Carney just shook his head.  He was as dumbfounded as I was.

I ordered the team back into the locker room-and then it dawned on me.  I'd screwed up the schedule.  We were an hour early.

I was too embarrassed to tell what I knew.  I just walked around, up and down the aisles where the players sat waiting, my big old farmer's boots making the only noise in there.  I couldn't think of anything to say, so I didn't say a word.  For an hour I clomped up and down.  Finally, when I'd used up enough time, I delivered a one-sentence pep talk, the only thing I could think to say.

"Let's go."

They almost tore the door down getting out.  Cincinnati was favored that day, but it was no contest.  We won, 27-7.

For years afterward Carney Laslie and another longtime assistant named Frank Moseley used to tell the story whenever they spoke football groups or at clinics, describing it as the greatest psychological ploy they had ever seen.  I didn't let on because I was embarrassed.  I finally spilled the beans to Carney fifteen years later, before he died, and I wish now I hadn't because he was sure disillusioned.

"You mean," he said, "that what I've been calling the smartest move I ever saw turned out to be dumb luck?"

I had to admit it was.

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This excerpt was taken from the book "Bear:  The Hard Life & Good Times of Alabama's Coach Bryant", by Paul "Bear" Bryant with John Underwood.  It is available here at Amazon.  If you have not read this book, I highly recommend it.  The story begins about half way down on page 1.

Dude Hennessey, a former assistant under legendary coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, died today.

Click here for link

“I was deeply saddened this morning to learn of the passing of Dude Hennessey,” said UA Director of Athletics Mal Moore. “Dude was more than just a fellow coach and administrator to me - he was a great friend in the truest sense.

“Dude means so much to so many of us, and we are devastated he is no longer with us. He not only was a great friend, but was a fine man and an excellent representative of the University and our football program.”

Hennessey coached at Alabama from 1960 to 1976.