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1. One of the small effects of the reduced roster on the Penn State players is that the players have to space out their reps over the course of practice. Wide receiver Allen Robinson said that his position coach, Stan Hixon, kept a close eye to make sure the receivers didn’t get overworked. That, head coach Bill O’Brien said, is by design. “I spend more time with our staff planning for practice every day personally than I have ever been around,” said O’Brien, who’s been coaching for more than 20 years.

2. Oklahoma junior quarterback Blake Bell gained a reputation over the past two seasons as the 6-6, 254-pound “Belldozer” who excelled in the Sooners’ goal-line and short-yardage offenses. But as Big 12 blogger David Ubben pointed out on the new ESPN College Football Podcast, the Sooners recruited Bell as a passer. He threw for nearly 6,000 yards and 69 touchdowns in 2008-09 at Wichita (Kan.) Bishop Carroll High. In a league in which no quarterback has more than 18 starts, the Sooners should be fine.

3. Work on the new, $66 million College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta began in January. It fell behind a couple of weeks early because work crews found the foundations of 19th-century dwellings beneath the surface of the land. Hall president John Stephenson said that workers also found a layer of ash -- the residue left when Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman burned Atlanta during the Civil War.

1. The college football world is tapping its fingers impatiently waiting for The College Football Playoff. That’s too bad for a couple of reasons. First, no matter the excitement, the game won’t be here for 20 months. Second, the final BCS title will be played in Pasadena a week after the 100th Rose Bowl. That’s a legendary doubleheader at the most historic site in the game. Sign me up.

2. Stanford released its post-spring depth chart on Monday. Fifth-year seniors Anthony Wilkerson and Tyler Gaffney are listed as co-starters at tailback. Redshirt freshman Barry J. Sanders needs to learn pass protection before he moves up the chart. But he’s one of six backs who will play. Offensive coordinator Mike Bloomgren laughed as he told this story: “Tavita Pritchard is our new running backs coach. We watched Barry make six cuts and make 10 people miss, and somebody said, ‘Tavita, you’re doing a helluva job.’”

3. Wake Forest won the 2006 ACC championship in part because head coach Jim Grobe annually does a great job of redshirting. Having older, more mature players has been a way for the have-nots to play the haves. But as Demon Deacons offensive coordinator Steed Lobotzke told my colleague Heather Dinich, Grobe is getting impatient. He wants to win now. To do that, he believes playing freshmen is more important than saving them. Is this a message that freshmen are more ready then ever? Or is it merely the work of a coaching lifer who wants to keep coaching? I think it’s the latter.

1. About the College Football Playoff: I like the name. The Super Bowl isn’t going to morph into the Pro Football Playoff anytime soon, and Mercedes-Benz isn’t going to rename its S600 the Luxury Sedan. But the College Football Playoff has clean lines. It is Zen. And after the complicated, godforsaken, unloved BCS, the College Football Playoff is exactly what the sport needs. At long last, no one has to explain anything. On the other hand, the BCS sure drummed up attention. Can the Playoff match it?

2. Former Oregon head coaches Rich Brooks and Mike Bellotti visited the Ducks’ practice Monday morning at the invitation of new head coach Mark Helfrich. Afterward, Brooks couldn’t get over what he saw from third-year sophomore quarterback Marcus Mariota. “He’s so accurate,” Brooks said. “That’s unusual for a young player. I was amazed at his accuracy last year.” Mariota completed 230-of-336 passes (.684) in his first season and led the Pac-12 in passing efficiency. Wait until Oregon opens up the playbook for him.

3. Iowa offensive line coach Brian Ferentz, in describing how his young players learned their jobs this spring, gave a perspective on his head coach that only a son can provide. “It’s kind of like I remember watching Steven learning how to swim,” Brian said of his younger brother, now a Hawkeyes lineman. “My dad (Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz) picked him up and threw him in the water and he learned how to swim.” Not to worry: Steve wore floaties. But that’s not the point. “You throw them in,” Brian said, “they splash around the water a little bit, and they figure out it’s not that bad. They are floating. They will live.”

1. The ACC administrators all leapt to praise commissioner John Swofford on Monday for keeping the league united for the next 14 years. OK, fine. But it seems to me that the praise belongs to the schools themselves. North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Florida State, Clemson -- nearly every ACC institution has had its name linked to another league. The schools decided they had enough money, and stuck with their history and tradition. They stuck with each other. And Maryland will go play Purdue.

2. Oklahoma State senior cornerback Justin Gilbert picked off two passes in the spring game Saturday and returned them for 108 yards. Head coach Mike Gundy praised him, of course, but Gundy’s comment last week is what caught my eye. “Justin’s had a really nice change of attitude in the past few months,” Gundy said. Or, as Hall of Fame coach Don James of Washington once said. “When they’re freshmen, you wonder why you recruited them. When they’re seniors, you wish they would never leave.”

3. The performance of the spring in the SEC goes to the Auburn fans. The Tigers are coming off a 3-9 season and have lost 10 consecutive SEC games. Yet 83,000 fans turned out for the spring game Saturday, about 5,000 more than rival Alabama, the BCS champion, drew at the same time. Yes, the Auburn fans went to say goodbye to the trees at Toomer’s Corner. But the truth is, that spirit is more important than the changes made by new coach Gus Malzahn. That spirit will keep Auburn from staying down long.

1. Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, speaking on the Longhorn Network, sounded genuinely excited about the new college football playoff. “I really feel like we are close to getting it right,” Bowlsby said. And here’s a nugget for those of us old enough to remember the special feeling of the New Year’s Day bowls. With the semifinals, Bowlsby said, “We will recapture December 31 and January 1 for college football. And that’s going to be a special festival.”

2. The relationship between the University of Oregon and Willie Lyles, the Texas-based talent spotter, wedged itself into the space between the lines of the NCAA Manual the moment that Oregon paid Lyles $25,000 for outdated, slapdash evaluations. But according to the media reports on the document dump executed by Oregon this week, the gray area is more light than dark. If the NCAA didn’t find a lack of institutional control, then Oregon is guilty of a misdemeanor, not a felony. That makes all the difference.

3. The Alabama football team made its third trip to the White House in the past four years. In 2010, President Obama hosted the Crimson Tide in the East Room; in 2012, on the South Lawn, and on Monday, on the South Portico. “They are starting to learn their way around the White House,” the President said. “I was thinking about just having some cots for them here, they’re here so often -- except we couldn’t find any that were big enough.” The Alabama traveling party left the White House just 20 minutes before the explosions in Boston.

1. A terrorist attack is temporary. The changes it renders to society are not. Security around major American sporting events tightened after 9/11. It would be no surprise if events on the level of the Boston Marathon -- such as college football bowls and major rivalries -- will take on the added responsibility and the added burden of increased security. And all of us as a society lose another bit of innocence.

2. Georgia coach Mark Richt went from the regular season to bowl season to recruiting to offseason conditioning to spring practice. Now that the Bulldogs have finished and Richt has room to breathe, he has circled back to last season to begin watching every game -- the TV video, not the coaches' video. Richt said he gets a better sense of the emotion of the game and of what Bulldog fans see. And, Richt said, watching the games keeps him on the treadmill another 30 minutes.

3. It is to my enduring regret that my exposure to Frosty Westering, who died Friday at age 85, was limited to a handful of phone conversations. Westering coached at Pacific Lutheran, where in more than 32 seasons he won 305 games and four national championships (NAIA and Division III). Westering taught his players football, but he taught them so much more about how to live a live filled with gratitude, with charity and with love. He was an American original. Read Chuck Culpepper's remembrance here.

1. Penn State senior guard John Urschel, a grad student in mathematics, is teaching a trigonometry class this semester. “I get these printouts of kids that have to leave practice early because they have exams,” head coach Bill O’Brien said. “They color-code it. A freshman, it’s yellow. A sophomore, he’s red. If a kid’s a junior, it’s blue. Whatever. So Urschel is purple. ‘What is this color?’ I asked. He said, ‘He’s leaving practice because he’s giving the exam. He’s the professor!’” O’Brien laughed. “I’ve seen it all now.”

2. With the decision of former Notre Dame quarterback Gunner Kiel to transfer to Cincinnati, the head coach formerly known as the Riverboat Gambler is on a hot streak. Kiel is everything Bearcats coach Tommy Tuberville could want. Big body (6-foot-4, 210), big arm, relatively local, and itching to prove himself. Plus, Tuberville has two seniors who can play while Kiel sits out this season. Credit UC quarterback coach Darin Hinshaw with making the sale. Credit Tuberville with making an early splash.

3. My colleague Ted Miller posted an interesting analysis of the Pac-12’s turnover margin over the past three seasons. USC is a cumulative plus-1 under head coach Lane Kiffin, who had a veteran quarterback (Matt Barkley) all three seasons. In Pete Carroll’s glory days, the Trojans dominated that statistic. They went plus-21 in 2005, the last Trojans team to reach the BCS championship game (has it been that long?). The three Rose Bowl teams that followed went a combined plus-13. USC doesn’t protect the ball like that anymore.

1. The appearance is that Louisville’s run in this academic year -- a BCS bowl victory, and the championship game in men’s and women’s basketball -- will catapult the Cardinals into being the top dog in the ACC when they arrive in 2014. The reality is that Louisville would be No. 1 anyway, if the measurement is athletic revenue. Louisville expected to bring in $85 million this year before it capitalizes on its competitive success.

2. Penn State used its three outdoor practice fields for 14 of 15 spring workouts a year ago. On Monday, the Nittany Lions went outside for only the second time in nine workouts to date. Snow -- then the mud underneath it -- forced the team into the indoor facility time after time. As for the other issue head coach Bill O’Brien cannot change, the shorthanded roster, Penn State is long on tight ends. If you like the Stanford offense, with two and three tight ends, you may love the Nittany Lions this fall.

3. The past week has illustrated the complete spectrum of what we love and despise about college athletics. The drug issues and charges of wrongdoing at Auburn, shoved aside by the coaching misdeeds and boardroom intrigue at Rutgers, cast a shadow on the Final Four weekends in Atlanta and New Orleans. And then, 7-year-oid Jack Hoffman runs for a 69-yard touchdown in the Nebraska spring game, a reminder of the emotion that compels us to love our teams in the first place.

1. As Tom Farrey’s report on "Outside the Lines" illustrated, NCAA president Mark Emmert’s emphasis on style and message is nothing without a foundation of competence. Emmert ratcheted up the pressure on his employees for change, and the Miami fiasco is the result. In the wake of questions about the Freeh Report, the harsh Penn State penalties meted out with a holier-than-thou flourish by Emmert last summer look like a ready-fire-aim effort. In this, the NCAA’s red-carpet week, the spotlight on Emmert is harsh.

2. That wasn’t hard, was it? The old Big East came up with a new name, American Athletic Conference, that contains geographic meaning (the league covers a lot of ground) and can be reduced to a simple acronym that sounds like the other top leagues. Who knows if the AAC will be a success on the football field? The odds are long. But the league found a good name, which is more than the Big Ten and the ACC can say about its divisions.

3. Chuck Fairbanks, who died Tuesday of cancer at age 79, won big at Oklahoma (52-15-1 from 1967-72) and lost big at Colorado (7-26, 1979-81) and coached in the NFL in between. He got the New England Patriots job after Joe Paterno took it overnight and gave it back the next morning. The coaches who replaced him at Oklahoma and Colorado, Barry Switzer and Bill McCartney, respectively, won four national championships between them.

1. Hope you read Kevin Gemmell's piece on USC junior wideout Marqise Lee, who, like most receivers, can be only as effective as the quarterback delivering him the ball. If you don’t believe me, ask the Cardinals' Larry Fitzgerald. We got a preview last season. In Matt Barkley’s 10 games, Lee caught 107 passes for 1,605 yards and 14 touchdowns. In the two starts Max Wittek made in place of the injured Barkley, Lee caught 11 passes for 116 yards and no touchdowns.

2. The labor agreement between the NFL and its players union stipulates that no one may play in the league until he has been out of high school for three years. That may not be fair to guys like Lee. A basketball player with his talent would have been in the NBA draft last year, after his freshman season. But as a college football fan, I’m thrilled with the rule. College football is thriving. College basketball suffers because of the one-and-dones. How cool would it be if Kentucky were trying to repeat?

3. As Texas joins the swelling ranks of no-huddle, uptempo offenses, it is worth noting that of the five SEC teams that finished in the final top 10 last season, four of them finished ninth or lower in the conference for offensive snaps per game. No. 7 Stanford ranked 10th in the Pac-12. Huddle-up offenses and tough defenses may be old-fashioned, but that’s what a lot of winning teams still play.

1. Bob Stoops has won 149 games in 14 seasons at Oklahoma. He is nine wins shy of surpassing Barry Switzer as the all-time leader in Sooners coaching victories. And for the first time in his tenure, the Sooners failed to reach a BCS bowl in consecutive seasons. It’s not time to panic -- Oklahoma went 10-3 last season -- but the Sooners didn’t measure up to his standard, especially on defense. Stoops discusses his career, college football and his 2013 team with me on the ESPNU College Football Podcast posting Thursday.

2. Notre Dame returned to national prominence when it got bigger and faster. It was no coincidence, as I pointed out last season, that the Irish defensive linemen came from Texas (Kapron Lewis-Moore), Georgia (Stephon Tuitt) and Florida (Louis Nix). Here’s the other side of the geographic coin: Top punt returner Davonte' Neal (Arizona) and receiver Justin Ferguson (Florida) have left the program. A year ago, defensive lineman Aaron Lynch (Florida) left. Perhaps the margin of error on national recruits is thinner.

3. For as long as I can remember, athletic administrators have sprained their wrists wringing their hands over the rising cost of college football. And yet with the announcement that FCS powers Appalachian State and Georgia Southern are moving to the Sun Belt Conference, the number of FBS schools will increase 127, up from 119 five years ago. That means schools are choosing to spend more money. Perhaps because they are chasing more money, too, not to mention the glue that college football can provide a campus.

1. There are several levels of shrewdness in Alabama’s hiring of Bill Battle to replace Mal Moore as athletic director. Battle knows football. He knows business, having virtually invented the collegiate licensing business. He loves Alabama and the timing is ideal. Battle, 71, is a year younger than university chancellor Dr. Robert Witt. Battle is signed through 2017 and along with Witt will keep the ship afloat for a few more years. The next generation of university leaders can come in together. Most important, Nick Saban is signed through 2020.

2. Not so long ago, college football coaches got five years to succeed. Now they get three. And yet the pressure on them is nothing compare to what basketball coaches face. The firings of Ben Howland at UCLA and Tubby Smith at Minnesota indicate that winning is not enough. Making the tournament is also not enough. Neither is making the Final Four in three consecutive seasons (the Bruins did so between 2006-08). I’m betting that the new college football postseason, beginning in 2014-15, will increase the demands on this sport’s coaches. Woe be onto the coach of a top program who can’t get into football’s Final Four.

3. No one can question the SEC's primacy in football. But everyone should question the league’s nonconference scheduling. Only Georgia, Florida and South Carolina play as many as two non-league games against AQ conference teams in 2013. There is no excuse, either. The SEC is stubbornly staying with an eight-game league schedule as the Pac-12, Big 12 and Big Ten are playing or transitioning to nine-team league schedules. It’s not hard. But it takes willpower. And the teams will benefit. What’s not to like?

1. As a guy with Texas roots who was coaching at Louisiana Tech, Sonny Dykes didn’t seem as if he would be the right fit at California, and that’s before the subject of his spread offense even came up. But as Pac-12 blogger Ted Miller explains on the ESPNU College Football Podcast posting today, Dykes, who ran the offense for Mike Stoops at Arizona, wanted back into the conference. He likes the perspective in which the West Coast holds college football. I bet Dykes fits in just fine.

2. Three cheers for the plus-one’s ability to force the big-name schools to play one another. For the past three months, one intersectional game after another has been announced. The demand for schedule strength convinced Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez to send the Badgers to play Alabama in the 2015 Cowboys Classic. That will make six times in eight seasons that the Crimson Tide has opened in a “preseason bowl.” Alabama coach Nick Saban understood the value of these games from the start.

3. The decision by the NCAA Board of Directors to suspend two rules that would have deregulated recruiting is a victory for common sense. The special committee rewriting the NCAA Manual pushed the deregulation through without hearing from football coaches. All of the NCAA hierarchy has heard the coaches now. Ignoring coaches is a longstanding tradition of NCAA policy. For years, it was the progressive thing to do. Coaches fought change. But this deregulation, which would have set off an arms race in recruiting, went too far. Kudos to the NCAA for figuring that out before the rules went into effect.

1. The SEC may have won seven consecutive BCS championships, but that streak is looking more like a curse come March. Since Florida began the football streak in 2006, and the basketball Gators followed up three months later by winning the men’s basketball title, only one of the next six BCS winners had its basketball team even earn a berth in the NCAA tournament, much less win it. That would be Alabama a year ago, and the ninth-seeded Tide lost in the opening round to Creighton, 58-57.

2. Colorado coach Mike MacIntyre said that the Buffs’ facilities are fine, even as the university has begun a campaign to add to them. Adding and renovating are a necessity in the Pac-12, he said. “USC has built a $70 million complex, and Washington has built a $400 million complex and stadium, and Cal has built a $350 million complex and stadium,” MacIntyre said. “They just kind of raised the bar.”

3. His college coach, Oklahoma’s Barry Switzer, called Steve Davis the “ideal” wishbone quarterback. In ’74, Davis threw 26 passes, 11 of them touchdowns. Davis, who died Sunday in the crash of a private plane, was such a good guy that even Texas coach Mack Brown tweeted his sorrow at the lost “of a great man.” In fact, Davis’ sudden demise unleashed a torrent of memories from his life that happened long after he led the Sooners to a share of the 1974 national title, which is as it should be.

1. Chicken v. Egg, cont.: Three of the five most-penalized FBS teams last season play in the Pacific-12 (No. 116 Washington, No. 119 California, No. 120 UCLA). Pac-12 coaches don’t believe their players lack discipline, which would lay the blame at the feet of exacting officials. The coaches may have a point. Arizona State finished eighth in the FBS. Stanford, the second least-penalized Pac-12 team, finished 62nd. Don’t expect much change at Cal. New coach Sonny Dykes’s Louisiana Tech team finished 118th last season.

2. As Florida begins its spring practice, the focus, as Edward Aschoff and Travis Haney wrote Wednesday, is on creating more explosive plays on offense. Coordinator Brent Pease arrived from Boise State and couldn’t get the Gators to replicate the Broncos’ success. To me, that’s not a knock on Pease. It’s one more reminder of how good Kellen Moore really was. His four-year record at Boise State: 50 wins, three losses.

3. In addition to good size and a good arm, USC sophomore quarterback Max Wittek continues to show remarkable bad luck. First, he makes his maiden start against his team’s biggest archrival (Notre Dame) playing for a BCS Championship berth. Second, the worst winds in the history of the Sun Bowl render him ineffective. Now he has sprained the MCL in his right knee -- get this -- while holding a kick. Wittek may recover before spring ball ends. Here’s hoping his curse ends sooner.