ESPN College Football

I was a little surprised last week at Chris Owusu's comments regarding concussions.

In an article in the San Jose Mercury News, Owusu, who suffered three concussions in a 13-month span that included the horrific scene in Corvallis, Ore., last season, distanced himself as much as possible from his history of head injuries.

"I just want to move forward. It's unfortunate that I'm part of this conversation. But hopefully in the next couple of months, I'll finally get to change that. I don't want to be known as someone who is surrounded by this topic."

Part of me understands where he's coming from. Owusu was an undrafted free agent and he's doing his best to impress his new employers -- the San Francisco 49ers and former Stanford head coach Jim Harbaugh -- and he's trying to make a team.

This isn't going to be a Owusu-should-hang-'em-up story. Because he shouldn't. He has a dream. He has the physical and mental faculties to live out that dream and, more importantly, he has the blessings of doctors to play. Go for it.

But why distance yourself from concussion talk? This is a time when it's most important to be talking about concussions.

Owusu -- clearly an intelligent individual, as Stanford grads tend to be -- could be at the forefront of change. Tell your story. Tell the doctors and the general managers that concussions are dangerous, but they aren't contagious. Owusu took some of the hardest hits I've ever seen in football. He was strapped to a gurney and taken off a football field via ambulance. And now he's fighting for a spot on an NFL roster. That's something he should be proud of, not running from. Some might even call it gritty and inspirational.

There will always be coaches and general managers who will dismiss Owusu regardless of what the doctors say. There are also GMs who won't take quarterbacks shorter than 6-foot-3, running backs taller than 6 feet and defensive ends less than 260 pounds. Doug Flutie, Eddie George and James Harrison would disagree.

In an interview last month with SI's Jim Trotter, Owusu talks about how he reluctantly agreed to be shut down for the rest of his senior season following the Oregon State incident.

"Did I put up a fight a couple of times to get back on the field? Yes, I did, because I love the game so much," says Owusu. "When you get the game taken away from you like that, it's something where it opens your eyes and it's frustrating. I respect what the coaches and the doctors and the medical staff did for me here at Stanford, I really do. They looked out for my overall well-being and did not take any chances. But could I have played? I felt that I could have. Did they do what they felt was in my best interest? In their eyes, I think they did. But it was a frustrating process."

Of course it was frustrating. Owusu is a football player. But cooler and less-concussed heads prevailed, and Owusu is clearly thankful for that.

I don't expect Owusu to change his style of play, nor do I expect his concussion history to affect his game in the future. He's healed and cleared. That should be that. But with so much talk about concussions and the lingering impact, this strikes me as something Owusu should be running toward, not from. Concussions are a scary part of the game and Owusu has shown tremendous courage by getting back out on the field. He can show the same kind of courage off the field by educating and informing from his past experience.

OXFORD, Miss. -- Ole Miss’ football program is stuck in the wilderness -- a scary place, filled with a plethora of overgrown obstacles.

When coach Hugh Freeze arrived last December, he says the jungle was as thick as ever and it didn’t look like his new team was ready to cut its way out.

That was until Freeze offered a solution: his “Journey.” He told players that he didn’t know how long it would take for them to make it out or find some sort of salvation, but if they followed him, they’d find the light.

“The reasonable expectation for us in Year 1 is for us to compete passionately for this university for 60 minutes,” Freeze said. “And whatever that scoreboard says at the end of that 60 minutes we’ll have to live with.”

The Rebels will have to plod through this quagmire, but Freeze insists patience is the key to turning around a program that is less than three years removed from a second straight Cotton Bowl victory.

“It’s well-documented that we don’t have the talent level that people in the SEC West have right now at a lot of spots, at least not the depth,” Freeze said. “That’s not fixed overnight.”

And it’s just one of the handful of problems Freeze is looking to fix, as he replaces Houston Nutt, who was once heralded as Ole Miss' greatest hire. Academic and discipline issues are also on the agenda. As Freeze puts it, he has “a few mountains to climb” before he can shape things up, but since the journey began in December, progress has been made.

Freeze said probably 65-70 percent of the players have bought in, which might be a conservative number. It’s better than what he expected, considering the trust issues and players being set in their old ways of doing “what they’ve wanted to do for themselves for so long.”

“They think they like it the way they had it, even though, if they’re intelligent enough, they look at the results,” he said. “You’re will is something that’s hard to change once you get set.”

Freeze put the Rebels’ abysmal 6-18 two-year record and 14 straight SEC losses front and center as motivation, he made academics more of a priority, looked to adjust Ole Miss’ lenient drug policy, and created accountability groups.

Everything has helped, but the accountability groups really took off.

They were created to show players how much their actions affected everyone. Miss class? Your group runs at 5 a.m. Miss tutoring? Group run; 5 a.m. Late for anything? Welcome the sun with some running.

Rising junior linebacker Mike Marry said his group never ran – he made sure of it – but he saw other groups running as much as five times during a two-week span. The running cut down as the spring went on and there was hardly any toward the end.

“That’s what I like about him,” Marry said of Freeze, “he doesn’t let little things slide.

“The last coaches, they let certain things slide. Certain things were small, but eventually they start building up and turn into big things and people started feeling like they could get away with more and more things. Since he’s not letting little things slide, you’re seeing the team come together closer and closer and there are fewer problems.”

Freeze said eliminating off-field trouble is top priority. That’s why he’s so nervous about leaving his players in their own hands during the true offseason. Progress was made, but he worries guys will fall back on old habits when less supervised.

To ease his mind, Freeze turns to recruiting. With Ole Miss so thin at defensive tackle, offensive line, running back and safety, and needing walk-ons to fill three full teams in practice (on both sides), Freeze is stacking recruiting on recruiting.

He had some early success in his first class, grabbing three Under Armour All-Americans – DT Issac Gross, DE Channing Ware and DB Trae Elston -- and two junior college All-Americans – QB Bo Wallace and OT Pierce Burton – and his roll has continued with nine commitments in hand for 2013.

Recruiting at Ole Miss has hardly ever been easy with schools like Alabama, LSU, Auburn and Georgia in such close proximity, but Freeze believes he’ll make it work. And he’ll do it by going after the top prospects, not by getting lax and offering whomever to fill space.

“We can make it easy in recruiting, now, and I think that’s what’s happened,” he said.

“I know you can recruit here. I’ve been here before when we did it and when we had 20 kids drafted in the NFL in those three classes that we brought in.

“Is it easy? No, but it is doable.”

Fixing Ole Miss is also doable, he said. It’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of time, but it requires patience. Freeze’s mantra is “Winning the day,” not winning the week.

“The one thing that we have that’s constant and equal [to opponents] is time,” Freeze said. “So, what are we doing to prepare for that end goal -- whatever that is -- today?

“We’re a fragile state of mind right now and when you start talking about things that are so far out there, I don’t think that will be beneficial to us. Let’s just talk about today.”

Freeze might be preaching about today, but you can sense the confidence growing inside players, especially wide receiver Donte Moncrief, who took things a step further.

“Everybody keeps putting us under the radar, but once we learn this offense and the defense keeps playing like it’s playing, we’re going to shock a lot of teams,” he said.

What a journey that’d be.

CHICAGO -- When the college football playoff push kicked off, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith planted himself in the campus-sites camp.

Smith favored having the semifinals on the campuses of the higher-seeded teams. The setup would give Big Ten teams like Ohio State an advantage they've never enjoyed in the current BCS/bowl setup -- nationally significant games on Midwest soil in late December or early January. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany was among the first major college football figures to stump for campus sites this winter.

"We've shifted," Smith told ESPN.com on Tuesday. "I was originally for campus sites, and I still go back there mentally every now and then as discussions occur, but the bowls have a really good system set up to host."

The reasons for the Big Ten's shift are well known by now. Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne said Tuesday that a playoff outside of the existing bowls would "pretty much destroy the bowl system." Preserving and protecting the Rose Bowl is paramount to Delany and the rest of the Big Ten brass.

Smith also thinks there are operational advantages to keeping the biggest games at bowl sites.

"There are certain schools that would put it on and host it extremely well," he said. "Others might be challenged with that. Bowls have done this a long time. They have great local organizing committees. ... And it's good for the game."

The strongest counterargument is that campus sites would ease the burden on college football fans. Rather than make separate trips for a league title game, a national semifinal and a national championship game, fans of some teams could have one of those games closer to their homes.

Another apparent plus for Big Ten backers is the potential weather advantage Big Ten teams could exploit by hosting games. Unlike squads in the South and West, Big Ten teams are conditioned to play cold-weather football, but they typically face the best from the SEC, Pac-12 and Big 12 in ideal conditions at places like the Rose Bowl, the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and University of Phoenix Stadium.

The thought of a college football playoff in the snow is both novel and exciting to some Big Ten fans. But Smith actually sees it as a drawback.

Brace yourselves, Woody and Bo ...

"Let's say Ohio State is hosting and it's January or December, and let's say it is 5 degrees," Smith said. "Is that right for the game? We're not pro. We need to figure out what's best for the game, and I think a fast surface, good weather is important for the game. It's important for the kids."

Delany, Osborne and others acknowledge that campus sites could favor the Big Ten, which hasn't won a national championship since after the 2002 season. But in surveying presidents, athletic directors, coaches and even players, the overwhelming majority favored the bowl sites.

"It would be a competitive advantage to have semifinal games at home fields," Osborne said. "... but the bowls have been good to us."

The sentiment isn't sitting well with some folks. The Big Ten might have been alone in advocating for campus sites, but it's fair to ask if the Big Ten gave up on the crusade far too easily.

Yahoo! Sports' Dan Wetzel writes today:

Somewhere Mike Slive of the SEC and Larry Scott of the Pac-12 are kicking back with a cackle of delight. These guys are angling for every possible edge while the Big Ten and the Rose Bowl sit in adjacent bathtubs, holding hands and waiting for the moment to be right.

Wait, the rest of college football has to be asking, you're not even going to fight and try to make us look like wimps for arguing against football in the cold?

Wait, you seriously are going to ask the same fan base to travel three times in a month -- Big Ten title game, semifinals and championship game, the last two at least via airplane? And you think we won't end up with the majority of the crowd?

The Rose Bowl's power over the Big Ten is something to behold. It makes normally intelligent men say ridiculous things.

Of the Big Ten groups advocating for playoffs at bowl sites, the coaches' position makes the least sense. These are guys who typically capitalize on every possible advantage presented to them. But they seem to value their players' bowl experience over the possibility of making Alabama or USC play them in the snow.

Why should the Big Ten care if TCU and Oregon have small stadiums and can't accommodate the media and the corporate sponsors? The Big Ten, for the most part, doesn't have those problems.

In my recent interview with Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman, I asked him why so many powerful people in the Midwest care so much about bowl games located so far away.

"It's part of the tradition of college football," Perlman said. "It is a good experience for student-athletes. It makes more sense in terms of ending the season than some kind of playoff. It helps the communities that have been supportive of intercollegiate football for a long time."

What about the local communities Big Ten schools can serve by keeping games on campus?

Wetzel writes:

There's no question Big Ten fans love the Rose Bowl, although not as much as they once did. They also like to win, also would like to shut the SEC up and also really like showing off their legendary stadiums and great cities, fighting against the idea that they live in some inhospitable, rusted-out region.

Plenty of them could use the economic impact of staging these massive events in the Midwest too.

That's not going to happen. The campus-sites ship has sailed. Perhaps it's a tradeoff the Big Ten made to ultimately ensure strong playoff access for league champions.

If and when the Big Ten champion qualifies for a playoff, however, it will more than likely play a virtual road game. The team will have to fight like heck to win.

A lot harder than the league did to have meaningful games on campus.

AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. -- The topic of what the ACC has to do to improve its football image has been rehashed over and over, particularly after its BCS bowl losses.

But that did not stop Clemson coach Dabo Swinney from weighing in on the topic during the ACC spring meetings. Swinney came to his league's defense after a reporter wondered how he dealt with the perception that the ACC was not a football conference. Then he gave his own twist on what the future looks like in this league, predicting that a national champion would eventually emerge.

Pretty bold statement. You guys know the BCS record. You guys know what happened to Clemson in the Orange Bowl last season. You guys know Florida State and Miami have been down, and Virginia Tech hasn't quite gotten over the top. So does Swinney, which must give him confidence that teams in this league are ready to turn a corner.

These are his comments, in their entirety:

"The ACC is a tremendous football conference. It’s a tremendous conference as a whole," Swinney said. "We’ve got to do a better job as far as developing a dominant team from within our conference. We’ve had some good teams, but we haven’t produced that 13-0 team yet, that 12-1 team that’s going to get on the national scene. You look at us this year, we got to fifth. We're on our way and we just didn’t quite finish like we need to finish. That’s coming.

"I think we’ve got a lot of good programs. In five years from now, we’ll look back and say this is where it changed. You look at the SEC and some of the traditionally really good teams that maybe haven’t been as good of late. They’ll get back. It’s the same thing in our conference. Heck, it’s been 20 years since we won the ACC. Twenty years. I was still playing 20 years ago. We’re heading in the right direction as a conference. This is a tremendous conference. At some point we’ll produce a national champion again, there’s no doubt in my mind about that."

The ACC could have as many as four teams ranked in the preseason top 25 come August. Expectations are high at Florida State once again, while Clemson and Virginia Tech are near-certainties to be ranked. NC State could very well make the list, too. There no doubt have been opportunities.

We'll see if a different script is written in 2012.

Former Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis has received close to $8.7 million to not coach his alma mater, and the number will only grow.

Weis was paid $2,054,744 of buyout money from Notre Dame from July 2010 to June 2011, according to the Chicago Tribune, which obtained the figures from Notre Dame's Form 990 it must submit to the IRS.

Fired after the 2009 season, Weis received an initial buyout payment of $6,638,403, bringing the total to $8,693,147. He is slated to receive additional payments through December 2015.

The original $6.6 million payout was to be followed by "much smaller payments," according to previous documents. Weis also received $469,727 from Play by Play sports — now known as Notre Dame Sports Properties — and an additional $1,095 of unspecified "other reportable compensation."

The first glimpse at what current head coach Brian Kelly makes shows that Kelly took in $2,424,301, though $1,762,334 of "other reportable compensation" indicates all or part of that payment is a "one-time payment to Coach Kelly," the Tribune reported. As reporter Brian Hamilton notes, that money might have helped with any buyout Kelly owed Cincinnati after leaving the Bearcats in December 2009.

Kelly's base compensation is $617,846. The form did not include payments from "external sources."

Athletic director Jack Swarbrick made $1,026,942.

New Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby doesn't want to see any future expansion in college athletics, but recent events have given him no choice but to put the issue on the Big 12's agenda, as it is on other conferences'.

My opinion," he told USA Today on Tuesday, "is college athletics would be well served by some period of smooth water and not all of the angst and disorganization that goes with moves from one league to another."

We've heard that from the Big 12. Florida State is forcing Bowlsby's hand, though he wouldn't mention the school by name.

"I think the topic of expansion will be on every agenda going forward. But it's on every other conference's agenda going forward, too," Bowlsby told the paper.

Over the weekend, Florida State's chairman of its board of trustees opened up a big ol' can of realignment worms, however, when he offered credence to a long-held rumor rumbling around college sports. Could Florida State leave for the Big 12?

"On behalf of the Board of Trustees I can say that unanimously we would be in favor of seeing what the Big 12 might have to offer. We have to do what is in Florida State's best interest," Andy Haggard told Warchant.com.

So, here we are. After two years of attrition and a role as the hunted, the Big 12 is doing some hunting of its own? Or is it? The league just added TCU and West Virginia for 2012 after Texas A&M and Missouri bolted for the SEC, leaving the Big 12 with eight members. That move was a year after Nebraska and Colorado left the Big 12 for the Big Ten and Pac-12, respectively, costing the conference its namesake. Could Florida State move the Big 12 one step closer to a return to 12 members?

Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds tamped down some of the discussion, telling the Austin American-Statesman that there was "no traction" to the reports.

He did not add a "yet" on the end of that sentence, but more than a few assumed that was the case. How could the Big 12 and Florida State at least not sit down at a table for an exchange of ideas?

Where does the Big 12 stand right now? Bowlsby's not showing his hand.

"It's all about driving value for the member institutions," Bowlsby said. "There is a case to be made for optimal value being driven by the status quo, and there is a case to be made for some form of expansion. And I'm not prejudging or adopting either side of that right now."

He is, however, discussing it. And while that happens, there won't be many calm waters in college football.

Adam Rittenberg recaps the day at the Big Ten spring meetings, where the future postseason format and bowls were hot topics.

Three strikes and Clemson running back Mike Bellamy is out.

After a short career that was spent mainly in coach Dabo Swinney's doghouse, Bellamy has been ruled academically ineligible and won't return this fall. This is yet another off-field blow for the Tigers, who recently learned that star receiver Sammy Watkins was arrested earlier this month for possession of marijuana and a controlled substance. So far, Swinney hasn't announced any punishment for Watkins, but he has said there will be one.

While it's more negative publicity for the program, it's certainly not the end of the season for the Tigers. Even if Bellamy and Watkins are missing for the season opener against Auburn, Clemson doesn't play its first and arguably most meaningful conference game until Sept. 22 at Florida State. It's also important to remember that Bellamy finished the spring third on the depth chart at running back behind 1,000-yard rusher Andre Ellington and his backup, D.J. Howard.

It's unfortunate and disappointing that Bellamy's career ended this way, especially considering how many times Swinney has insisted that despite Bellamy's troubles, he is a good kid who simply made some poor decisions. When it comes to the good of the team, though, his absence might actually mean one less distraction.

CHICAGO -- Big Ten teams will be playing fewer bowl games in the future. And they'll likely be playing them in different locations.

It's all part of a shifting bowl landscape that Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany discussed Tuesday at the league's spring meetings. Delany said there's a "very strong consensus" among the league's athletic directors that the bowl-eligibility requirement should increase from six wins to seven wins, a sentiment that's echoed nationally.

"We think it's better for our programs, better for our fans and better for the bowl system for us to have a winning season in order to qualify," Delany said. "... For us, it means redefining a successful year at 7-5 from the standpoint of a bowl season. We argued for 6-6. We've experienced 6-6. Now we're suggesting that it's in our best interest, the bowls' best interest as well as the other conferences that might benefit by these open slots to look at a 7-5 standard."

Teams that finished the regular season at 6-6 have been eligible for bowls the past six seasons. In 2006, the Big Ten sent two 6-6 teams (Minnesota and Iowa) to bowl games, and both lost. The Big Ten has had a total of seven 6-6 teams in bowls, including four last season (Illinois, Purdue, Ohio State and Northwestern). Only two Big Ten teams that finished 6-6 since 2006 -- Northwestern and Iowa in 2007 -- didn't make bowls.

Coaches like Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald and Purdue's Danny Hope oppose the increase from six to seven wins, but they're in the minority. Delany admits the increase "probably doesn't favor us," but he said it will help the health of the sport.

"We had one team in a bowl game last year at 6-7 [UCLA] that ended up at 6-8," he said. "... You got too much of a good thing, too much ice cream, too many bowl games, too many 6-6 seasons."

The Big Ten also could tweak its bowl lineup, which expires after the 2013 season. Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said he "would imagine it will change a little bit," and Delany suggested as much during his session with reporters. Although the bowl lineup has taken a backseat to playoff discussions and where the Rose Bowl fits in, it will garner more attention in the coming months.

Five of the Big Ten's seven non-BCS bowl partners -- Capital One, Outback, Gator, Meineke Car Care, TicketCity -- are located in two states (Florida and Texas). The three Florida bowls take place against SEC foes, while the Meineke Car Care and, in some years, the TicketCity, pit Big Ten teams against Big 12 opponents.

Translation: there's not much variety. Wisconsin played bowls in Orlando or Tampa in six consecutive years (2004-09); Michigan State has played in Orlando or Tampa in four of the past five seasons.

"When you have three bowls in Florida and you're a school that is constantly in that range for selection, your fan base could end up, in a five-year period, four times in the state of Florida," Delany said. "So does that depress the interest? Again, sometimes less is more. Is there a way to give them a taste of Florida and Phoenix and Texas and other places in California? We want to have the fan base excited about going, about who they're playing and about where they're playing.

"After 20 years of experience with bowls, how do we make the next round of bowls stimulating, interesting and responsive, not only to our coaches and our players but also our fan base."

Had colleague Ivan Maisel not spelled out a little-known rule about the College Football Hall of Fame's induction procedures, there would likely be some righteous outrage in Lincoln, Neb., and Columbus, Ohio, today.

Maisel wrote this morning that the Hall has a rule preventing the selection of players from the same school in back-to-back years. That must have been the only thing keeping Nebraska's Tommie Frazier and Ohio State's Orlando Pace from being elected this year.

Frazier is simply one of the greatest college football players of all time, leading the Cornhuskers to two national titles. Pace is the only player ever to win the Lombardi Award twice as one of the best offensive linemen in the history of the sport.

But Nebraska and Ohio State both had inductees last year in Will Shields and Eddie George, respectively. So it was no dice for Frazier and Pace. What makes no sense, though, is that both players were on the ballot for induction this year, even though they apparently weren't eligible.

Sometimes it's an honor just to be nominated. But in the case of these two legends, it will be a miscarriage of justice if they're not enshrined. Certainly, you can't say that Syracuse's Art Monk -- who had 102 catches in his college career and never more than 40 in a season for the Orange -- is more deserving than Pace or Frazier when it comes to college achievements.

The rule does not seem necessary, given how many great players come from major schools. But the voters should do the right thing and elect Frazier and Pace next year -- unanimously.

USC might be No. 1 in the College Football Live spring Top 25 rankings. But it's No. 4 Oregon that has the best chance to knock the SEC off its six-ringed mountain. So says ESPN college football analyst Brock Huard, who laid out three reasons (all extremely sound and logical) why Oregon is actually the team to beat in the Pac-12 this season.

Here's a minor re-hash of his three points.

Regarding the quarterback situation: Cam Newton and AJ McCarron won BCS titles the past two seasons as first-year starters under center. McCarron filled the role of game manager, while the Heisman Trophy-winning Newton was the ultimate game-breaker. For Oregon in 2012, either redshirt freshman Marcus Mariota or sophomore Bryan Bennett will be under center as a first-year starter, a point that isn't lost on coach Chip Kelly, but also one that doesn't scare him, either.

The Ducks have an SEC-worthy defensive front: "Yeah, our group thinks they could be [on that level]," Kelly said. "We have some size with Wade Keliikipi [6-foot-3, 300 pounds] and Ricky Heimuli [6-4, 321] that will match some of those guys. Football starts up front. We've learned that in our battles with LSU and Auburn. I really think our defensive line will be the strength of this football team."

Throw in returning first-team all-conference defensive end Dion Jordan (6-7, 245), lengthy and productive redshirt junior Taylor Hart (6-6, 289) and four-star recruit Arik Armstead (6-8, 297) and it becomes clear as to why the normally reserved Kelly gets so excited about his team's prospects up front.

The schedule favors the Ducks: The only road trip in the first six weeks is to face the Washington State Cougars, and not even in Pullman, but rather at Century Link Field in Seattle where the Green and Gold could very well equal the Crimson and Grey in the stands. The easy early slate will provide a soft landing for Oregon's first-year QB.

This will obviously be a major point of contention for both USC and Oregon fans, assuming both teams do as expected, until Nov. 3 rolls around. [Utah fans, feel free to jump in on this until Oct. 4 -- and beyond if your team can top the Trojans at home]. Still, it doesn't mean we can't stoke the fires a little early.

CHICAGO -- It has taken some time, but Big Ten nonconference schedules are finally beefing up.

Michigan opens the 2012 season against Alabama and Michigan State kicks off against Boise State. The Spartans also have contracts to face Oregon, Alabama and Miami. Ohio State has Virginia Tech and Oklahoma on its future schedules. Northwestern, which used to shy away from tough non-league foes, has series set with Stanford, California and Notre Dame. Traditional series with teams like Notre Dame (Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue) and Iowa State (Iowa) aren't going anywhere.

Add in the Big Ten's upcoming scheduling partnership with the Pac-12, set to begin in 2017, and things are looking up with non-league slates.

But will the trend continue in the post-playoff era?

Schedule strength is one of many components that college football's brass must weigh as they try to decide the selection criteria for a four-team playoff. The current BCS system rarely rewards teams -- or in the Pac-12's case, an entire league -- for challenging themselves during non-league play.

"It would be my desire to have strength of schedule play a much more significant role than it does now, which is there's no role for strength of schedule," Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis said. "It's how many wins you get, not who you play. I think we need to come up with a system that motivates schools to want to play tougher non-conference games during the season."

Hollis feels so strongly about schedule strength that he wants it to be factored in selecting bowl teams, even for minor bowls.

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, who advocates a scheduling model that includes one marquee non-league game a year, is concerned about where schedule strength fits into the playoff selections.

"Will this make some teams play nobody in the nonconference schedule?" Smith said. "The strength of schedule in the polls changed. It's not as heavily weighted. So now, do I just not play Cal and Texas and all these schools? I don't know. That's going to be interesting to see. We cannot do anything that affects the greatness of the regular season."

The Big Ten and Pac-12 aren't going to rescind their scheduling partnership, which is designed to have 12 intra-league games per year. But if SEC teams can schedule patsies every year and reach a playoff based on the strength of their conference, where's the incentive to beef up?

"One of the reasons we're looking at the Pac-12 coalition is to instill that in our schedule rather than force it in," Hollis said. "But nationally, we need to have that in play, both for bowl eligibility and for championship qualification.

CHICAGO -- Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith has chaired the NCAA basketball tournament selection committee, so he knows a thing or two about difficult decisions and fan backlash.

While a four-team playoff in college football will please most fans of the sport, Smith thinks it won't mitigate the debate about who's in and who's out. Just the opposite, in fact.

Smith and his fellow Big Ten athletic directors on Monday began studying the polls, the final BCS standings and any other rankings since the 1992 season. They found that differentiating between No. 4 and No. 5 is often tougher than choosing the two best teams to play in the national title game.

"When you start looking at [Nos.] 3, 4, 5 and 6, you're going to be able to put a piece of paper between those teams," Smith said.

The final regular-season polls from recent seasons often show small differences between No. 4 and No. 5.

In 2010, No. 4 Wisconsin had only six more points than No. 5 Stanford in the AP Poll, 22 more points in the Harris Poll and 37 more points in the Coaches' Poll. In 2009, both Florida and Boise State were within 70 points of No. 4 Cincinnati in the AP and Coaches' polls. In 2004, the AP Poll had Utah at No. 4 and Texas at No. 5, while the teams were flipped in the Coaches' Poll, separated by just 24 points. In 2007, No. 4 Georgia led No. 5 Virginia Tech by just 35 points in the Coaches' Poll. The final Harris Poll that year had USC at No. 5 and Virginia Tech at No. 6.

"Who's going to pick that 4 and 5?" Smith said. "It's just like in the NCAA tournament. Who's left out? That's what's going to happen."

It's not surprising that the conference commissioners spent so much time on potential selection procedures for the playoff at last month's BCS meetings in Florida. Several Big Ten ADs say there's support for a selection committee to be used for the future format.

The playoff also will put more teams in the mix for berths than the current system, when usually only one team can have a legitimate claim to one of the spots in the title game.

"In the FCS, now they've got 20 teams in the playoff and they're talking about going to 24 because the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th teams are not happy," Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne said. "Well, you can only imagine what's going to happen here. Every team probably in the top 10 or 12, they're going to have some argument as to why they should be in the four-team playoff.

"People think this will settle it on the field, this will diminish the amount of controversy. I don't think that'll happen at all. If anything, it will escalate it because you have more teams involved."

NEW YORK -- When asked to reflect on their Hall of Fame college football careers, coach Jimmy Johnson and quarterback Steve Bartkowski talked about the fun and the camaraderie.

Both men enjoyed long and successful NFL careers. Both have been successful since they left the game -- Bartkowski in the construction business in Atlanta, Johnson as an NFL analyst on the Fox network. Yet both men, speaking Tuesday at a news conference staged by the National Football Foundation to announce the Class of 2012 of the College Football Hall of Fame, look back with great fondness on their days in the college game.

“Football is the ultimate team game,” said Bartkowski, the California quarterback from 1972-74. “I had a great group of guys around me at Cal: Chuck Muncie, Wesley Walker, Howard Strickland. We had some good, good football players. And it was fun. I was there because I wanted to be there, not because somebody was paying me a large amount of money to take the field.”

Bartkowski, the 16^th Golden Bear elected to the Hall of Fame, described it as “an absolute honor. I was humbled by it, especially now that I hear some of the guys to be inducted along with me in this class.”

It may be the passage of time. More likely, it’s an expression of the emotion the men elected to the Hall of Fame carry about their college days. But no matter how many years have passed, nearly all of them react as Colorado guard John Wooten (1956-58) did.

Wooten, who was nominated by the Veterans Committee, became one of the African-American pioneers in the NFL. He has blazed trails throughout his career to this day, when he is chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance Foundation, which promotes diversity in NFL coaching, front office and scouting staffs. Yet when he called his Colorado teammates with news of his election, tears flowed on both sides of the connection.

Johnson, who led Miami to the 1987 national championship, will be joined in this class by two other coaches, Phillip Fulmer of Tennessee (1993-2008) and R.C. Slocum of Texas A&M (1989-2002). Johnson went 81-34-3 in 10 seasons at the U (1984-88) and Oklahoma State (1979-83). He said several times Tuesday that the most fun he had in his life came at Miami, when his Hurricanes lost a total of two regular-season games in four seasons.

But the enjoyment came from more than winning.

“You’re more than a head football coach,” Johnson said. “I was in my office continually with young kids ... being homesick, young kids that had financial problems, young kids that had academic problems. They thought they came there to get ready for pro football but then they realized they had to get ready for life.

“I used to have a meeting on Thursday nights,” Johnson continued. “And I said, ‘Every one of you, I’m going through the room, and I’m going to ask you what are you going to do when you leave the University of Miami?’ And I said, ‘You can’t say you’re gonna play pro football. So you have to tell me what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.’

“So [coaching college football] is a lot more than X’s and O’s.”

Johnson, 68, is 25 years removed from his national championship at Miami, 23 years removed from his resignation to go to the Dallas Cowboys. A few “old alums” called him when his alma mater, Arkansas, fired Bobby Petrino last month. But he said he no longer gets serious inquiries about returning to coaching. His involvement in college football is limited to watching games all day Saturday at the Fox studio in Los Angeles with his “best friend,” fellow Fox analyst Terry Bradshaw.

“We’ll start at 10:00 in the morning, watching college football,” Johnson said. “We won’t turn the TVs off until that night. That’s how we prepare for our pro show the next day… . That’s how we feel about college football.”

Johnson and Bartkowski are members of an exclusive club. Including this class of 14 players and three coaches, who will be inducted in December at a black-tie dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, the Hall of Fame has 914 players and 197 coaches. That’s from a game that has been played for 143 seasons by nearly five million players.

They may have gone into their college experiences looking to get to the NFL. But when they look back, they think of the fun and brotherhood of the college game. It’s a lesson that takes a lifetime to learn.

With two new teams added to the mix, let’s take a look at what we learned in the SEC this spring:

1. Quarterback Central: The SEC gets a bad rap for not piling up Xbox-like passing yards, and granted, it wasn’t a great year for quarterbacks in the league last season. But did you know that an SEC quarterback has been taken in the first round of the NFL draft eight of the last 10 years? And that includes four quarterbacks taken No. 1 overall. The 2012 season has a chance to be one of the best in recent memory for SEC quarterbacks, especially if Missouri’s James Franklin returns to form after undergoing surgery in the spring to repair a torn labrum. Arkansas’ Tyler Wilson and Georgia’s Aaron Murray are the two most established quarterbacks. Wilson likely would have gone in the first round had he come out this year. Murray has thrown 59 touchdown passes in his first two seasons, and he also has one of the more talented backups in the league in sophomore Hutson Mason, who shared Offensive MVP honors with Murray in the spring. Some early mock drafts have Tennessee’s Tyler Bray going in the first round, and Bray has one of the strongest arms in the league. Alabama’s AJ McCarron demonstrated in the BCS National Championship Game what he’s capable of and is poised to have a big junior season. South Carolina’s Connor Shaw is one of the more improved quarterbacks in the league, and the new guy on the block to watch is LSU’s Zach Mettenberger.

2. Lining up at LSU: How many defenses out there could lose a pair of first-rounders and come back the next season and potentially be even better? LSU’s defense certainly had that look to it this spring despite the loss of cornerback Morris Claiborne and defensive tackle Michael Brockers, both of whom declared early for the NFL draft and were taken in the first round. It starts up front for the Tigers, who have the best pair of bookend defensive ends in the country in Sam Montgomery and Barkevious Mingo. Both are potential top 10 picks in the 2013 NFL draft. In the middle of that LSU defensive line is tackle Bennie Logan, who also has a chance to be a first-rounder. And from a pure talent standpoint, sophomore tackle Anthony “Freak” Johnson is exactly what his nickname suggests. Kevin Minter was one of the Tigers’ most improved players this spring at middle linebacker, and in the secondary, Tyrann Mathieu, Eric Reid and Tharold Simon are all future pros. It’s obviously a defense that’s oozing with talent, but it’s also a defense that still has a chip on its shoulder with the way last season ended.

3. Fighting back: A long list of marquee players in this league missed the spring with injuries and still have to prove they’re all the way back in the fall. Franklin’s surgically repaired shoulder will be a huge key for Missouri in its first season in the SEC, and a lot of eyes will be on the two best running backs in the league. South Carolina’s Marcus Lattimore missed the second half of last season after tearing knee ligaments, while Arkansas’ Knile Davis missed the entire season after fracturing his ankle in the preseason. At Ole Miss, they’re keeping their fingers crossed that linebacker D.T. Shackelford can return after he underwent a second knee surgery in March. He missed all of last season after tearing his ACL in the spring. Texas A&M running back Christine Michael is also coming back from an ACL tear. Tennessee receiver Justin Hunter went down in the third game last season with a torn ACL, and Florida defensive tackle Dominique Easley is trying to work his way back from a torn ACL suffered in the regular-season finale against Florida State last season.

4. Hogs hanging tough: Sure, the whole Bobby Petrino scandal was embarrassing to the entire state of Arkansas. But the players and coaches on the team didn’t lose focus this spring, and the leadership really came to the forefront. Quarterback Tyler Wilson, running back Knile Davis and linebacker Tenarius Wright picked the team up and made sure that nobody was feeling sorry for themselves, and in the process, reminded everyone that all of their goals were still intact. Credit also goes to the Arkansas coaching staff for handing a very difficult matter about as well as it could be handled. There are more tests to come, but now that John L. Smith is in place as the interim head coach, the program has a clear leader for these next eight months. Nothing is more valuable than strong player leadership, though, and the Hogs proved during that turbulent month of April that they’re made of the right stuff.

5. Getting physical: It was obvious that Florida coach Will Muschamp never felt good about his team’s ability to line up and be physical last season in his first year on the job. There were times that the Gators were downright soft on their way to going 0-6 against FBS teams that finished the season with a winning record. So this spring, just about everything they did was directed at being a more physical football team, a football team committed to running the ball and a football team determined to finish games. Muschamp has repeated several times since the end of spring practice that the Gators are a better team right now than at any point last season, and a lot of that goes back to this team adopting the kind of blue-collar, hit-you-in-the-mouth approach that has defined Muschamp’s coaching career. Clearly, he’s excited about where the program is headed, and he’s equally excited that he’ll be better equipped to play the way he wants to during the 2012 season.