FanHouse Big 12

After a few hours on the depth-chart bench, Oklahoma middle linebacker Ryan Reynolds is again apparently a starter.

Monday, Sooners coach Bob Stoops' released the team's depth chart with several surprises.

The biggest was in the middle, as the coaching staff had Mike Balogun listed as the starter with incoming freshman Tom Wort backing him up and no mention of expected front-runners Reynolds, who starred for the team until suffering an injury against Texas, and Austin Box, who started four games at the position last year.

But as of Tuesday at 10AM, the two-deep listed Reynolds as the No.1 linebacker and Balogun backing him up. It's unclear what prompted the quick change, whether it was a coaching decision or simply a typographical error. Sooners football media contact Kenny Mossman did not return several calls on Tuesday for clarification.

In an effort to talk about something college basketball-related other than scandals in the summer, let's talk best current coaches. We'll attempt to order the top 25 current coaches in the nation. This is about the present and the future, not the distant past. What a guy did in the mid-90s doesn't matter near as much as the direction his program is currently headed. Past pedigree also matters, to an extent. For the perfect mix of past accomplishments with present achievement and a paved road for future success, look no further than the man atop the list.

The Kansas Jayhawks team could very well enter next season as the top team in the nation.

If they remain that way throughout a grueling non-conference slate, they will deserve it.

Kansas released the non-conference portion of its 2009-10 basketball schedule Tuesday and it features some must-see matchups, including a rematch of the 2008 national championship game against Memphis while also renewing the rivalry with UCLA.

Colorado head coach Dan Hawkins announced a few moves on his staff this week, the biggest being that he will add the role of receivers coach to his duties this upcoming season.

Hawkins will coach the Buffaloes as he prepares 13-year NFL defensive back Ashley Ambrose to take over the wide receivers position for the 2010 season. Ambrose, who is carrying the title of defensive technical intern this season, will be able to observe Hawkins but is prohibited from coaching the players until after the season when he will be named a full-time assistant.

An unidentified University of Oklahoma football player committed an NCAA violation last spring by accepting a trip from a former teammate to a NFL draft party, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported over the weekend.

According to the report, the player took a trip that racked up $1,300 to attend the celebration, which his former Sooners' teammate's agent paid the bill. The school learned of the violations in November 2008 and turned over the information to the NCAA. The player was ordered to pay $832 of the money to a charity using money from his scholarship, Federal Pell Grant and school-issued spending money from the BCS national title game trip this past winter.

First-year Iowa State football coach Paul Rhoads is definitely trying to drum up support for his program anyway he can.

Rhoads has joined a recent trend of football coaches across the country, jumping aboard a tour bus and coming face-to-face with the Cyclones faithful in Iowa. In scenes reminiscent of our nation's latest presidential campaign, Rhoads is shaking hands, kissing babies and making big promises during his city-to-city Tailgate Tour.

Auburn's new coach Gene Chizik has remained under the radar thus far. Fortunately here at the ClayNation column we became aware that each new coach has to stand up and introduce himself to the other SEC coaches at the annual coaches meeting.

Fortunately we were able to capture the entirety of this fabricated introduction. And now we can fabricate it for your enjoyment today. Meet Gene Chizik. Already his introductory speech is being called the Gettysburg Address of Auburn football.

Texas coach Mack Brown understandably fumed last season after Big 12 tiebreaker guidelines eliminated his team from the BCS championship mix.

He even threatened to vote his team No.1 in the final USA Today Coaches' poll, which counts for one-third of the voting to determine the BCS national championship. That's a AFCA no-no, as coaches are obligated to vote for the BCS championship game winner , so Brown backed off his threats and voted Florida No. 1.

For a while it looked like Brown was prepared to get real ugly with his peers.

But now the veteran UT coach is all smiles after word leaked out Wednesday that the AFCA has decided to no longer make the coaches' final poll votes public beginning in 2010. So the era of transparency the coaches had been so proud of and confined by is over.

Just maybe the Big 12 football coaches thought they had seen the South Division at its most competitive in 2008 when they voted this spring not to change the league's three-way tie-breaker guidelines.

They might want to re-think that one.

The ultra-competitive Big 12 South could again have as many as three teams in a logjam for first place if the best teams take turns beating up on each other as they did last season. Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech all swapped wins and finished tied for first in the South with 7-1 league records at the end of 2008. They Big 12 had to sift through four tie-breaker stipulations before coming up on the fifth that named the Sooners the South champs by virtue of their BCS poll standing.
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A great advantage for big-time college athletics is that they are tax-exempt. From the NCAA to the athletic departments at Texas and Ohio State, they can reap the revenue and not pay taxes because they are part of educational systems.

With the country in a recession, the national deficits rising and tax revenue declining, the U.S. Government has to find other revenue streams. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in a report, suggested looking into the commercial activities of collegiate athletic departments.