Spotting a Sponger. Huh?

With the early decision recruiting class set, attention turns to the regular-decision group. According to the St. Petersburg Times, one potential member of that class is a 6-foot-4, 275-pound offensive lineman from Tarpon Springs, Fla., named Clay Paino. From the report:

According to (Tarpon Springs coach George) Kotis, both Brown and Dartmouth have saved Paino a slot. In the Ivy Leagues, schools don’t offer athletic scholarships, but this essentially is the equivalent of getting one.

To watch clips of Paino via YouTube, click here.

Tarpon Springs, by the way, is nicknamed the Spongers. Can't say as I remember hearing of another school with that nickname ;-)

Following a few links while digging up yesterday's note about Holy Cross coach Tom Gilmore being one of the five finalists for the FCS Coach of the Year Award turned up a Q&A with Colgate coach Dick Biddle, the 2003 winner of the award. (An aside: The only Ivy League coach ever to win the award was Columbia's Ray Tellier in 1996.)

One question Biddle was asked:

Name one team that you have never played that you would like to face in the future. Why?
At the FCS level I would like to play Appalachian State. I thrive on competition. App State is one of the best, if not the best, FCS teams.

Colgate, which comes off the Dartmouth schedule in 2012, is scheduled to play at Air Force in 2013. (Colgate schedule) The Raiders add Yale to the mix that fall.

A thought-provoking story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette shared by a reader starts this way:

The study found intercollegiate athletics had become a culture unto itself, one rampant with escalating coaches' salaries, blatant commercialism and a "winning-is-everything" ethos that threatened the true mission of institutions of higher learning.

The year was 1929.

Now off to chop down (saw down, to be more accurate) our Christmas tree in 6-degree weather. Brrr...