1. Here’s the latest on the recruitment of defensive lineman Jonathan Bullard from Shelby, N.C.

2. Vanderbilt’s recruiting is affecting Tennessee’s recruiting, writes John Adams of the Knoxville News Sentinel.

3. Could Florida’s appearance in the Gator Bowl help its recruiting in Jacksonville?

4. South Carolina is still in the picture for Ole Miss running back commit I’Tavius Mathers.

5. Georgia Tech is pursuing a few players targeted by SEC schools.

6. See which SEC classes are “moving and shaking” according to Bryan Fischer of CBSSports.com.

7. Illinois is a new suitor for athlete David Perkins from South Bend, Ind.

8. Will Missouri be able to recruit in the SEC?

Nothing’s more important than spending time with his wife and kids.  He never wanted to coach anywhere else after wearing the orange and blue.  He wasn’t going to raid Florida’s football program for staffers.

By now, it’s become pretty clear that what Urban Meyer says and what Urban Meyer does can be two completely different things.  So prepare for the coach’s latest canard:


“I’m sure I’ll watch some (of the Gator Bowl between Florida and Ohio State).  It’s hard or me to sit and watch a whole game.  I think people are making more of it than I would.  At some point, that story is going to go away.”


Uh, yeah.  As soon as the fourth quarter ends on January 2nd in Jacksonville.  Until then, the 2012 Gator Bowl is in reality the Urban Meyer Bowl.

And if you think the head coach at Ohio State won’t be watching his new squad battle his old squad — if for no other reason than to simply gauge his new troops’ abilities against athletes he’s familiar with — then you’ve probably believed every other fabrication Meyer has spun in the past 24 months.

“I want to form my opinions after we coach them,” Meyer said of his new Buckeye players.  “It’s a great opportunity for these players to push restart.  I’m not going to develop an opinion based on this game.”

Maybe not, but the idea that he won’t be watching the game from start to finish is downright laughable.

1.  A Rob Chubb dunk with 3.9 seconds to play gave Auburn a 65-62 win over Hawaii last night in Honolulu.

2.  Nick Saban told reporters that he was scared of Santa Claus as a boy, but Tide D-lineman Damion Square thinks his coach got it backwards.  “I think Santa Claus was scared of him.”

3.  Through film study, Alabama and LSU know each other quite well.

4.  Rickey Scott awoke from his slump to lead Arkansas past Louisiana Tech 77-63.

5.  The SEC’s scheduling issues are wearing on Arkansas AD Jeff Long.

6.  With a road victory at North Texas last night, LSU has run its win streak to six games.

7.  The Tiger football team weathered off-field drama this year thanks to its “unity council.”

8.  Arnett Moultrie — a transfer from UTEP — registered his seventh double-double of the season as Mississippi State downed Northwestern State 82-67 last night.

9.  That’s 11 wins in a row for the 12-1 Bulldogs.

10.  Ole Miss forward Murphy Holloway is dealing with a high ankle sprain, not a break.

11.  Hugh Freeze will be taking a page out of Ed Orgeron’s recruiting book in Oxford.  (Hopefully that doesn’t mean a 50% wash-out rate.)

12.  Florida routed Florida State 82-64 last night thanks to the Gators’ defense.

13.  It looks like six true sophomores will start for UF in the Gator Bowl.

14.  Former Georgia tailback Jasper Sanks can relate to Isaiah Crowell and he hopes he can bounce back from a rough season off the field.

15.  Mark Fox’s basketball team will be looking or its third win in a row when the Dawgs host Furman tonight.

16.  Freshman Kyle Wiltjer led a slow-to-wake Kentucky team to an 87-63 win over Loyola (MD) yesterday.

17.  This writer believes Michael Kidd-Gilchrist has been UK’s pre-Christmas MVP.

18.  As South Carolina wraps up the pre-Christmas portion of bowl practice, the Cocks got word that safety DJ Swearinger will return for his senior season.

19.  Left tackle Kyle Nunn might be healthy enough to play in the Capital One Bowl… but if he does he won’t be eligible for a medical hardship waiver.

20.  Five-star forward Jarnell Stokes — who committed to Tennessee yesterday — could start playing for the Vols next month if cleared by the NCAA.

21.  Cuonzo Martin wants his current Volunteers to handle ETSU’s “funky” zone tonight.

22.  Meanwhile, a UCLA commit made national news yesterday when he said ex-UT coach Bruce Pearl sent a beautiful “groupie” to recruit him to Knoxville.

23.  A pair of Vandy football players will feel right at home at next week’s Liberty Bowl.

24.  Mike Slive talks expansion, scheduling and plus-one plans for football with Jon Solomon of The Birmingham News.

Charlie Weis may be gone to Kansas, but Will Muschamp says his offense — or something very close to it — will remain at Florida.

“We’re not going to come in here and change what we’re doing,” Muschamp told The Gainesville Sun.  “I don’t think that it’s smart to hire a guy and have 40 guys learn as opposed to one guy learning.  Obviously, will he tweak some things?  Certainly.  Will he change some things?  Maybe.”

“We’re not going to just take a playbook, throw it out the window and bring another one in.  We’ve got a young football team and I think continuity is the most important thing at this point with our football team.  That’s really the parameters I’m looking for right now.”

Weis’ offense — if it’s the same one he used in the NFL and it likely is — uses terminology that many other offenses do not.  Most college playbooks include everything under the sun at this point — spread passing plays, option running plays, Wildcat packages, etc — but it’s the verbiage involved in calling those plays that makes each offense a bit different.  And Weis’ is believed to be more unique than most.

With that in mind — and knowing that the clock is already ticking on him in Gainesville — Muschamp sounds like he’s about to make a very wise decision.  Better to teach the next offensive coordinator a new vocabulary than all the players on the offensive roster.

Further, the coach says current UF assistant and former Wisconsin offensive coordinator Brian White is a candidate to fill Weis’ shoes.  White’s handling of the Gators’ bowl work will serve as part of his evaluation, according to Muschamp.  Obviously, going with a man on the current staff would ease the transition a bit more for the Gator players.

But Muschamp said once again yesterday that he plans on talking to multiple candidates and will not make a hire until after the Gator Bowl against Ohio State.

For stability’s sake — and that’s something the coach desperately needs in Year Two — we believe Muschamp should take a long, hard, fair look at White.  Fans might not be wowed by his hiring in the short term, but if White can do the job, that’s all that will matter in the long run.

Remember, Weis was a splashy, fan-pleasing, outside hire last offseason… but Gator fans sure aren’t cutting Muschamp any slack right now because he “won the press conference” with that move.

If White can do the job, the fact that he knows the players and Weis’ offense (and its terminology) should give him a leg up on the competition.

The folks in Jacksonville surely expected a better fan response when they matched Urban Meyer’s old school against Urban Meyer’s new school in the Gator Bowl.  Unfortunately for the selection committee, like Meyer, it seems many UF fans won’t be in the stadium for the game.

The Gainesville Sun reports that Florida has sold just 8,000 of its allotted 15,000 tickets to the January 2nd bowl game. 

For all the talk of “best fans in the world” — and every SEC school claims that — the reality is that the majority of fans won’t spend, attend, or travel unless their school is winning.  That’s true all across the league.

And at Florida, 6-6 is not considered winning.

1.  Looking for a reason not to trust ESPN and/or Urban Meyer?  Here ya go.

2.  “A source close” to Alabama’s Kirby Smart says the defensive coordinator has not interviewed with Ole Miss yet.

3.  LSU’s Jordan Jefferson continues to improve.

4.  Trent Johnson’s basketball team rallied for a much-needed one-point win over Houston last night.

5.  The Ole Miss basketball team will head to Hawaii for a December basketball tournament next year.

6.  This writer says it’s nearly a sure thing that Florida will land in the Gator Bowl.

7.  Georgia’s Isaiah Crowell should be ready to go against LSU Saturday night.

8.  John Calipari wants the NBA to make players spend two years in college, “but that ain’t happening.”

ESPN — Urban Meyer’s employer for the last few months — is reporting today that the ex-Florida coach has indeed been hired as head coach at Ohio State.  Forget the talk of family and health, Meyer is heading back to the sideline and he’s going to do so at a program that’s about to be bombed by the NCAA.  (OSU has already sacrificed 5 scholarships over the next three years as a self-induced, “please don’t hit us anymore” penalty.  It’s likely the NCAA will take away several more scholarships.)

We finally went with the “done deal” view on Meyer-to-OSU when The Columbus Dispatch reported the matter closed last week.  The reason: Yours truly once worked for The Dispatch Broadcast Group and having lived in Columbus, I know there are three mega-boosters of the Buckeye program: the Wexners, the McConnells, and the Wolfes.  The Wolfes own The Columbus Dispatch.  If the Dispatch reported Meyer was all but hired by OSU, then you can bet the paper’s source was one of three folks in Columbus who knew for sure.  Thus, we bought that paper’s story immediately.

Meyer had denied a deal with OSU for more than a week.  But anyone familiar with coaching searches knew that the coach’s claims that no deal was in place and that he hadn’t interviewed were likely a matter of semantics only.  Is a lunch an interview or just a lunch?  Depends on the person telling the story.

At 6-6 following a loss to Michigan, OSU is expected to fall no lower than the Gator Bowl in the Big Ten’s bowl pecking order this holiday season.  Guess who’s expected to land in the Gator Bowl from the SEC’s side of things?  Yep, Florida.

WKMG-TV in Orlando reported last week that Meyer was planning to take UF’s current linebacker coach DJ Durkin and strength and conditioning coach Mickey Marrotti to Columbus with him in new roles.  So the love in Gainesville for Meyer already might be dimming just a bit.  If the ex-Gator coach takes over OSU and coaches against Florida in a bowl game, you can bet Meyer’s popularity in the Sunshine State will take another hit.

Will Muschamp — the man who led Florida to a 6-6 record with Meyer’s leftovers this year — said, “It’s good for college football” that the ex-coach is dropping the “ex.”  “If it’s what Urban wants, I’m happy for him.”

And if Meyer and OSU whip Muschamp and Florida in the Gator Bowl, just how happy do you think he and Gator Nation will be?

1. Alabama wants a rematch with LSU.

2. Gene Wojciechowski: Alabama-LSU “became 99.9 percent official Saturday afternoon at Jordan-Hare Stadium.”

3. Chris DuFresne: “There remains a chance voters will rise up again and prevent LSU-Alabama II.”

4. Looks like the Chik-Fil-A or Gator Bowl for Auburn.

5. South Carolina likely headed to the Outback or Cotton Bowl.

6. Liberty or Music City Bowl likely for Mississippi State. Ditto for Vanderbilt.

7. Bowl projections from the Orlando Sentinel.

8. Kentucky 87 – Portland 63.  Lowest turnover total for the Wildcats since 1993.

9. USC 63  - USC 60.  Gamecocks fall to Southern Cal.

10. Arkansas 86 – Grambling  44. Freshmen score 53 of the Razorbacks total.

Extras

11. Former Les Miles assistant Larry Porter reportedly out at Memphis.  

12. Washington State coach rumored to be out - Mike Leach could be the target.

Monday morning, we mentioned the fact that SEC fans should be praying their teams don’t get paired up with scandal-plagued Penn State in a bowl game this holiday season.  We also noted that it was doubtful any bowl game would want to invite controversy into its community and for that reason, the SEC — which has three higher-placed bowl tie-ins with the Big Ten — might get lucky on the PSU front.

But…

There’s still a possibility the Nittany Lions might be forced upon the Gator Bowl which is one of the SEC’s bowl partners.  According to Brett McMurphy of CBSSports.com, if Penn State wins the Leaders Division of the Big Ten — man, that’s a stupid name — they’ll go to the inaugural Big Ten Championship Game and will as a result be guaranteed of dropping no further than the Gator Bowl.

Penn State lost to Nebraska on Saturday and it’s quite possible that the two-loss team will struggle from here on out, buried under the weight of scandal and a mid-season coaching change.

The Nittany Lions are currently leading their division by one game over Wisconsin with the Badgers and Ohio State still remaining on their schedule.  So SEC fans might want to root for OSU and ‘Sconi when they host Penn State the next two Saturdays… or else some league school could get stuck in this year’s Controversy Bowl.

1.  This writer expects Kentucky to grab a Gator Bowl bid with a 6-6 record in 2011.

2.  Here’s a terrific primer on Joker Phillips’ second UK football team.

3.  Carolina freshman defensive end Jadeveon Clowney — the most-hyped rookie in the SEC this fall — is staying humble.

4.  Stephen Garcia is asking Cock fans to take him back “one more time.”

5.  New strength coach Ron McKeefery — the Vols’ fifth since the start of the 2008 season — has tried to instill a sense of pride in Tennessee players.

6.  Freshman safety Pat Martin is leaving the UT program in what Derek Dooley calls a “mutual decision.”

7.  In the end, Vanderbilt’s hopes hinge on an improved offense.

8.  James Franklin named his starters today and quarterback Larry Smith will once again get the nod.  (He’s now had three head coaches give him starts at VU.)